Relentless Bureaucracy

The beginning of the end for the United Methodist Church

Formidable Adversaries

Directors, Secretaries, Chairpersons, Superintendents, Committees, Subcommittees, Cabinets, Boards – these are words used to describe the countless positions that permeate modern day bureaucracies of all sizes. These are the entities and positions that individuals must navigate in order to conduct their business within such systems. These are the formidable inventions which create insurmountable obstacles for most of us and make streaming entertainment, surfing social media, or simply decompressing on the front porch a more palatable retreat.

But what happens when these systems are leveled against us, and we find ourselves victim to their might and single-minded groupthink? What happens when our mere survival (vocational, actual, or otherwise) depends on our willingness and ability to resist the single-minded groupthink of these systems? How many nameless victims of the various bureaucracies within our society have there been? Perhaps you know one. Perhaps you are one. But what happens when those systems are wielded by our religion?

Evidence of Bureaucracy in the Law

Why do you think that some lawyers become so wealthy? Before the emergence of formal education and law schools in the United States in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, individuals were required to read for the law in order to become practicing lawyers. This concept involved reading several core texts/statutes and apprenticing under an experienced lawyer for a period of time. Generally, the total number of texts required for a person to read for the law gradually expanded over the centuries. What began as a relatively manageable endeavor in 12^th century Europe requiring an aspiring lawyer to read approximately 3-5 texts ballooned into approximately 40-60 texts by the 19^th century in America. Today, reading for the law in a similar manner would require an aspiring lawyer to digest thousands of books, and the general practice of law is largely a thing of the past, with lawyers incapable of becoming experts on all the various fields of law.

I began my legal practice in 2001 as an associate attorney with a small general practice firm in a small town. I remember feeling continually frustrated as it seemed I was always having to spend inordinate amounts of time to simply educate myself on the area of law pertinent to the next case that walked in our door. I remember wondering how the much older senior partners had endured such rigor. Even after three years of practicing with that firm, I was finding the need to understand new areas of law I had never encountered. Could I really provide competent advice under such circumstances? I ultimately left that firm for a more specialized practice, and since then, I have watched that firm and many others like it slowly abandon the general practice approach to legal work. There is no doubt that as our culture and society has progressed, the complication inherent in our systems has increased exponentially.

Bureaucracy in Religion

Our religious systems are no exception. In my own denominational experience (United Methodism), I have personally observed a similar increase in complication. I love history and jump at any chance I may encounter to obtain an historical book. During one of our annual denominational meetings (Annual Conferences) one year, I found myself perusing a free bookshelf on the exhibit hall floor. A small, tattered spine instantly jumped out at me as I quickly scanned the titles. I retrieved it from the shelf and discovered this small book to be an 1894 copy of our Discipline (denominational governing document – kind of like the constitution and statutes for the church).

It was actually the “Doctrines and Discipline” of one of the predecessors to the United Methodist Church (which itself had not been formed until a 1968 merger), the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The small book was approximately one-half the page size of our then-existing Book of Discipline of 2016. Further, it consisted of 380 pages, as opposed to our then-existing Discipline composed of 898 pages. On the back page of that 1894 Discipline, in an article that appeared to be a promotion for the little volume, it read: “Th[is] little book contains a system of government, too, that was pronounced by a wise statesman as being the nearest perfection of any that had been formulated.”

Oh, if this little book could talk! The stories I am convinced it could tell! I suppose ultimately it was not determined to contain the perfection it propounded. Rather, perhaps an additional 518 pages were necessary to finally perfect this work. Or perhaps there is nothing of this little book that is now 130 years old that is contained in our modern Book of Discipline of 2016 of the United Methodist Church. After all, this little book belonged to the Southern division of the Methodist Episcopal Church that had split between North and South in the late 1800s over slavery.

Whatever our notions of “perfection” may be, what seems obvious from this brief anecdote, as well as the historical aspects of a legal education, is that the written complexity of our human condition has ballooned over the last 1000 years. This written complexity is merely a signal, however, of the operational complexity that has now infiltrated all aspects of our shared existence, including, sadly, our religious institutions.

The Protestant Reformation began largely in opposition to the complexity the Roman Catholic Church had placed upon the practice of one’s faith. Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) was the motto of that Reformation which sought to return to the simple notions of God’s Word in order to make the Church become what we thought God intended it to be. As a product of that Reformation, perhaps my mindset is biased. However, I am not naïve enough to ignore that it was that same Church against which our predecessors rebelled that largely compiled the Scripture to which they advocated a return. Nevertheless, that compilation is one we have all seemingly accepted as the parameters of God’s witness to this world. Or is it?

Countless Victims of the United Methodist Schism

Our United Methodist Church gathered in its quadrennial global meeting this Spring to address certain divisive issues that cut right to the core of that continuing debate about the extent of God’s witness in this world - issues such as, does God’s Word truly define marriage as being between one man and one woman, or is there a certain hermeneutic that must be used to fully grasp the meaning of that text? And how authoritative should it be anyway to our lives as followers of a man who repeatedly argued that his contemporaries were clinging too tightly to the letter of the law in neglect of what really mattered?

One thing seems certain, however - humanity possesses an uncanny ability to complicate things. And that complication creates many victims. My own experience with the bureaucracy of the United Methodist Church provides another example. Bureaucracies are the byproduct of the human tendency toward complication. I remember attending a church study shortly after I first began to discern a call to ministry that stressed the need to abandon Roberts Rules of Order in our church governance. The take-away was that the human governance structures inherent in such systems were not the intention for how the Church was supposed to navigate its way in this world. In other words, there is a better Way!

That sounds great, right? Perhaps a bit simplistic, though, when we encounter disputes over things like sexuality, or the color of the carpet! Is it, though? Apparently so, according to the now 898-page Book of Discipline of 2016 which governs the United Methodist Church (or used to govern it before the recent Spring 2024 global gathering which has now produced a new Book of Discipline of 2024, available for purchase for $27.99). Instead, that book requires countless Directors, Secretaries, Chairpersons, Superintendents, Committees, Subcommittees, Cabinets, and Boards. And those positions have now all been filled and placed into action throughout our denomination.

One Pastor’s Continuing Story

When those positions were all personally leveled at me in the wake of the church I served departing from the denomination, I discovered how harmful our complicated systems could become. If you have followed my article series, you know that our Conference (or our regional denominational bureaucracy) sought to revoke my credentials as a clergy member because I insisted that God was calling me to both continue in service to the church that had left the denomination and remain a United Methodist clergy. The effort to revoke my credentials resulted in a fair process hearing (all outlined in that 898-page Book of Discipline of 2016), which I wrote about in my last article.

What you have not heard, however, is the result of that hearing. It was after that hearing that our bureaucracy’s leadership acted in a truly unbelievable fashion. My fair process hearing concluded only days before I was set to leave on a 25^th anniversary cruise with my wife. Of course, I had advised my superiors within the United Methodist Church of that fact. I was told that the Sub-committee that had heard my case would notify me of their decision within a few days. They would have to if they were to present my case for its final resolution before our annual regional meeting (Annual Conference) set to take place a week later.

I knew that the intention of the Director/Secretary, Superintendent, and Chairperson who had led the effort to revoke my credentials wanted to complete my process before that annual meeting, so that my discontinuance as they called it would become final at that time. Although I had argued that such an accelerated timeline amounted to a violation of my rights to a fair process under that 898-page Book of Discipline of 2016, I was not confident that argument would result in much change. So, I left on my anniversary vacation, content that I had done all I could and that my fate with this denomination was truly in God’s hands.

Because we were out of cell service during most of our cruise, I went several days without hearing anything from anyone within our Conference leadership. I had been able to check my email on the ship’s Wi-Fi, which is how the Sub-committee Chairperson who had heard my case indicated I would be advised of their decision. Although she had advised they would decide my case Monday, I was surprised to receive no email. Toward the latter part of our trip, then, on the day that I knew the clergy meeting for our Annual Conference was taking place, when we arrived in a Mexican port and I was able to connect to cellular service, my messages exploded with texts from several of my friends who were in attendance at that clergy meeting.

I was shocked to learn through these text messages that my name had been spoken before the entire clergy session of our Annual Conference meeting! The Secretary apparently sought to move my name from one list noted for involuntary discontinuance, to another list noted for continuance. I assume things worked out for you? – one of my friends questioned. I had no clue! Up until that point, I had heard absolutely nothing from anyone with my Conference. Of all those Directors, Secretaries, Chairpersons, Superintendents, Committees, Subcommittees, Cabinets, Boards, not one person had communicated with me to advise me of the status of my case.

I was even further puzzled when I received an email that had actually been sent the day before by my District Superintendent asking to schedule a meeting to discuss my appointment. What could be going on? The leadership of my Conference had seemed so devoted to ensuring my status as a Provisional Elder was discontinued at the annual meeting. What had changed?

Several meetings and emails later, I am yet to receive a clear answer as to why our Conference’s leadership reversed course on my case at the last minute. My District Superintendent alluded to a procedural issue related to the Cabinet representative’s presence during the Board of Ordained Ministry meetings that led to their vote to discontinue my status. Procedural issue? In my defense to their action to discontinue my status as a Provisional Elder, I had pointed out that the Conference leadership had violated their own Book of Discipline of 2016 by allowing the District Superintendentwho was the Cabinet representative to the Board of Ordained Ministry to be present during the Board’s meetings. Through my own research, I had discovered that the denomination’s supreme court – the Judicial Council – had ruled many years ago that allowing such participation by a Cabinet representative in Board of Ordained Ministry actions violated the Book of Discipline’s separation of powers provisions.

I am confident that but for my legal training and experience, I would never have found such a binding Judicial Council decision or been able to articulate such an argument.  I was immediately convinced of the belief that our Conference’s leadership would have preferred that I had not found such a decision. I doubt seriously whether they would have ever moved my name from the list for discontinuance to the list for continuance had I not raised such a defense.

Now I find my requests to the Conference’s leadership being largely ignored. Instead, my District Superintendentcontinues reiterating that it violates the Conference’s rules for me to serve a disaffiliated church. However, those rules are apparently of the unwritten variety because I have yet to be pointed to anything within the Book of Discipline of 2016 or the Book of Discipline of 2024 that prohibits it. Instead, I believe that our Conference’s executive leadership (most likely the bishop or even the Council of Bishops) has taken a position that no clergy in our Conference (or any Conference) may serve a disaffiliated church, and the entire force of the bureaucracy has been leveled against me to enforce that rule in my case.

But for my legal training and experience, I would not presently be a clergy member of the United Methodist Church. It seems to me that this bureaucracy has acted with a singular intent to end my career within the United Methodist Church from the moment that I first expressed an intent to violate what seem to me to be the wishes of the resident Bishop. These Bishops within the United Methodist Church have established themselves as kings and queens of their own little empires. They operate with impunity as evidenced by the countless stories of Bishops who ordained LGBTQIA+ clergy across the United States. Regardless of your stance on whether you believe they were justified or not, they willfully violated rules they had pledged to uphold, and they were able to do that without consequence because of the way this bureaucracy has evolved around their power.

Any notion of the separation of powers between bishops (executive functions) and annual conferences (legislative functions) within the United Methodist Church is effectively a myth, in my opinion. Bishops possess the power to populate the countless committees, sub-committees and boards with their appointees and are thus able to obtain effective control of annual conferences across the United States. I believe that anyone who seeks to counter their authority will be overwhelmed by the weight of the bureaucracy which is able to be lodged against them. Given the lack of a local judiciary, any attempt to combat this unification of powers has little to no likelihood of success. What recourse is one left with when the only entity available for recourse is filled with bishop-controlled appointees? Will those appointees truly exercise independent authority? Can they?

I have been to many Annual Conferences at this point in my ministerial career. The body is so large, that any meaningful debate or open legislative work is not possible. It seems to me that most decisions are pre-determined by sub-committees, and those decisions which are unable to be pre-determined usually result in meaningless banter that ultimately resolves itself through groupthink.

In my case, the Conference’s leadership was so certain of my discontinuance that well ahead of the annual meeting, they printed my name on the list for clergy involuntary discontinuances in the Annual Conference Program Guide. Someone in the Conference’s leadership also notified the retirement vendor that I was no longer an annual conference clergy member, which resulted in a termination of my participation in the retirement plan. They did all of this even though I had not yet been provided my full rights to a fair process before the appropriate sub-committees. Why would this Conference leadership have been so certain of my discontinuance prior to the exhaustion of my rights to a fair process?

Which leads me to the next question – what was their reason for this last-minute about-face in my case? I had managed to establish a clear violation of my rights under the Book of Discipline, and I had communicated my intentions to pursue all of my rights under the Discipline to defend against that violation. Were they concerned about the potential public relations fallout that may occur if it became known that they had violated a clergy member’s rights in this post-disaffiliation season where budgets are being drastically slashed and there is a renewed emphasis on retaining the churches that are left in the Conference? Was it something else?

Given the complete lack of information that has been provided to me, it is hard to say for sure. What I can say for certain is that I have expended countless hours defending myself against the actions of thisbureaucracythat have clearly violated my rights under theBook of Discipline. Can this bureaucracy pretty much do whatever it wants? In a religious system that’s sole mission is tomake disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,I am deeply saddened by the way we have allowed our human tendency toward overcomplication to compromise that mission.