I came across an interesting quote: “There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes,’ and there are people who prefer to say ‘No.’ Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.”

I’m still inclined to run many things through the filter of the Missionary Church vote. That’s the biggest “No” I’ve encountered for a while: when my denomination said “No” to joining forces with another highly like-minded denomination. It would definitely have been an adventure. And yet, the No vote pretty much forced us to launch into a different kind of adventure, an adventure in remaking ourselves, an adventure in survival. And I must admit–it is kind of adventurous.

But I suspect that as we go, we’ll get increasing resistance. Because the vote, I’m more and more convinced, was not against joining the Missionary Church. It was in favor of existing comfort zones. People didn’t want to be yanked into the unknown. If they felt comfortable with the world they were inhabiting, they wanted it to remain that way. And so they were saying, “Let it be. I’m happy. Don’t force me to leave the Shire and go on an adventure.”

Not everyone held this attitude. So Anthony, don’t scold me here. But many did.

Nevertheless, we’re on an adventure as a denomination. People seem cooperative right now. But when the bishop starts stretching people with accountability and continuing education and evangelism and other things, there will be resistance. Because people don’t like being nudged out of their comfort zones, out of the safe worlds they inhabit. And they’ll start finding new things to criticize in their efforts to preserve their comfort zones. They’ll crititize the process (“process,” I’ve observed numerous times, is always an easy target, and usually the first target), and the leaders chosen, and “the way things are being handled,” and other things. So the seasoned cynic in me says.

This is the adventure which lies ahead for the bishop–dealing with the people who prefer to say No, who prefer to remain safe. Fortunately, he knows they’re out there.

I just finished posting the 2005-2007 United Brethren Discipline on our denominational website. The US National Conference always makes numerous-to-extensive changes, and the 2005 edition was on the “extensive” side of things. But I got things updated, redesigned the document in an 8.5-by-11 inch format, and posted it online in PDF format. We’re not doing a commercially-printed version this time.

The Discipline is pretty much our denomination’s “manual of operations.” It contains info on membership standards, organizational structure, and much more. Over the past 15 years, we have removed a ton of restrictions from the Discipline, particularly regarding organizational issues. Now, conferences and local churches are free to adopt pretty much whatever structure they want to get the job done, with only a few requirements to help us work together without being totally independent.

Yet, we still get calls from people wanting to know what the Discipline requires in various situations. People seem to have some magnetic attraction to rules. They don’t handle freedom naturally. “Can our church form a youth commission that reports to the administrative board?” “Yes, you can.” “But the Discipline doesn’t say anything about it, so we were wondering if it was allowed.”

That kind of nonsense.

We also get people who call the bishop’s office for guidance on silly little things. “How do we handle this situation in our church?” They have the freedom to handle it any way they want. Yet they’re afraid to seize the day. They want to see something in writing, and if not in writing, they want to get direction from On High. I just don’t relate to that mentality very well, because I’m the type who acts and then gets permission, if there is fallout. There are lots of us out there, and we can create a different breed of problem for an organization, since we can constitute a battery of loose cannons. But I think an organization is better off with loose cannons than ammunition-less cannons.

Sometimes, you just have to force people to take their destiny into their own hands. You have to say, “You figure it out. You have the ability.”

Right now, I’m finishing up installing all new Macs for everyone in the building. That has also meant migrating people to a bunch of new programs and ways of doing things on the computer. I’ve given my coworkers resources, books, and other ways to learn on their own. Yet more often than not, they’ll bring questions to my door, rather than try to figure things out on their own. And more often than not, I’ll give them the answer they need. It’s actually efficient that way–come to me, rather than spend an hour searching for the answer on their own.

But the result is that people don’t learn to fend for themselves, don’t learn to find their own answers. They become dependent. And that’s not good. Plus, from my vantage point, it can be doggone annoying.

My church is part of a conference, a regional entity, which includes about 50 churches in Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. Sometimes we start churches cooperatively. This summer, during our annual meeting, we heard a lot about a new church being started in the Cincinnati area. The church planter trumpeted the location as the fastest growing area in Ohio. So demographic studies show.

I just grinned. It seems like every time we start a new church, no matter where it is in the denomination, the location is billed as “the fastest growing area” in the state, or that part of the state, or maybe in the entire country. We go where new homes are going, and that usually means “the rich suburbs.” We pride ourselves on going to the most-burgeoning and baddest place, even though most other denominations are probably targeting the same place, because they’ve read the same demographic studies.

Meanwhile, I attend a church in a depressed, low-income, working-class (if working at all) area near downtown Fort Wayne, Ind. It’s certainly not a growing area. Mostly starter homes, lots of rentals, a lot of vacancies. I was part of what was basically a church plant in that neighborhood. Technically, it was a restart–the congregation that previously occupied that building closed, and we came in with a whole new leadership team and pretty much started over (except we had a great building already paid for).

I’m weary of bragging about going to the “fastest-growing.” I’m weary of going after the rich. There was a huge need for a church like Anchor in our neighborhood. But if we didn’t already have a foothold in that community, through the previous church, we would never have gone there. Because it’s not a growing neighborhood, not the type of place you think you can build a self-supporting church. It wouldn’t be on the radar of any evangelical denomination. Our neighborhood, with hundreds and hundreds of homes and great human needs, doesn’t grab anyone’s attention.

But amidst these cynical pronouncements, let me pause to pat ourselves on the back. Because we United Brethren did pour money and resources and people into basically starting a new church in that neighborhood. We did it. Good for us. May there be more such aberrations.

I remember when Eugene Habecker was president of Huntington College. He wrote a book in which he talked, in a somewhat passionate way, about the idea of naming a new college building not after a rich donor, but as something like “Widow’s Mite Hall.” Maybe honor all the “little people” (like Pam and I) who give regularly and not without sacrifice, but not in sufficient size to merit getting our name on the building. It was nice theory on Dr. Habecker’s part, but I’m still waiting for anything of the sort to happen. I’m not holding my breath.

Wealth counts. A lot. Let’s not kid ourselves.

Wow, I feel like a groundhog sticking his head up out of the hole, just checking to make sure the world is still there. For several weeks now, my world has revolved around preparing reports for our upcoming US National Conference in June. And for the past ten days, I’ve been working on proposals for revising the Discipline, our “manual of operations,” to fit the denominational structure authorized last February. A hugely-different structure requires a huge array of changes in how we operate. I’m not the one who’s supposed to figure out the details. I’m just organizing things for the delegates to tackle once they arrive in this fair town in five weeks.

Lots of problems with that structure. Lots of issues that require hours and hours of face-to-face discussion to work out everything from philosophy to nuts-and-bolts issues–discussions that must happen either before the conference convenes, or that will happen on the conference floor. And it’ll be the latter at this point.

And Constitutional issues. To pull off this structure, we’ll need to fudge several times on Constitutional language. How many pieces of fudge will the delegates be willing to swallow? I don’t know.

But I’m immersed in this stuff right now, desperately trying to crank out the material so other people can see it. People know that two study committees were working on the details, but nothing’s been made available yet. At this point, I’m the bottleneck. Surely my closeness to this stuff is causing me to not see things straight.

But alas, with every word I type here, I’m prolonging the bottleneck.

So excuse me, as I pull my head back into the hole. I’m not being lazy or negligent. Really. It’s just that this blog has been forced not only into the back seat, but through the trunk and into the basket on the bicycle strapped to the back of the U-Haul trailer I’m pulling. Sometime, I’ll get back to this thing. For now, my fingers have other words to type.

My denomination’s National Board met last Monday and Tuesday, and they were in the mood to do something drastic. I must commend them for leaping to some significant changes. I’m skeptical, but then, I’m still in the frame of mind that any “solution” we devise will be a very distant second-best to the humongous opportunities and synergies which we would have enjoyed by combining into the Missionary Church. But that’s not gonna happen, so I need to get over it. No sense continuing to wallow in sour grapes.

So, what is the United Brethren Church gonna do?

The initiative to join the Missionary Church emerged from a full-day long-range planning session by a group of a dozen thoughtful leaders. Last summer, I was privileged to eavesdrop on a two-day Missionary Church denominational planning meeting with about 50 people from across the country. I was impressed with the thoughtful, thorough way they approached things.

I wasn’t impressed with how we did it. I would have preferred that we start by determining such things as purpose, who we want to be, what we want to live and die for, what we want to excel at. Then structure around that. We just talked about those things, a scattershot approach, without settling on anything. Then we jumped right to structure. The first motion, the one that got the ball rolling, was to do away with the annual conference structure we’ve had for about 200 years. Whatever structure we ended up with, it would start with that building block. Like saying, “Let’s design a new car, but no matter what else it includes, it must have a V-6 engine.” My goodness that’s a stupid analogy, but my brain’s analogy-coming-up-with engine isn’t working real well right now.

Anyway, we’ll do away with conferences, group all 250 churches across the country into “cluster groups” of 5-7 churches, and let the bishop appoint all of the cluster group leaders. Interaction, accountability, pastoral development‚Äîmost things will occur within the cluster group context. Are we going to be a top-down organization, or a grassroots organization? We heard two proposals early in the meeting, and they were at odds on that point. But from the looks of it, we’re going to be top-down, which means we need to make sure we have the leadership that can make this radically-different structure work, and which can instill in our ministerial ranks the mindset needed to make it click. No matter how you look at it, a huge amount of leadership energy over the next 6-10 years will go into getting this structure in place and working out the bugs. It won’t be easy.

“Okay, Steve, rather than just gripe, give us an alternative.” That’s fair. But I’m sorry, I don’t have one. This may, indeed, be the best option out there. I’m cynical about how we got there, just as some people were disturbed with the process which led to the recommendation to join the Missionary Church. But I always say that process is an easy target; if you don’t like something, you can always find fault with the process–it’s not something that requires significant brainpower. Regardless of the process, if a solution is the best solution, then admit it. All things considered, I may need to do that in this case.

That’s all I’m gonna say for now. It’s enough.