I missed Craig Groeschel’s series of posts this week of suggestions for the United Methodist Church. The former UMC pastor and now megachurch pioneer has many suggestions.
Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Post 5, Post 6
Move the marketing budget to church plants, get rid of itinerancy, reform the ordination system, reduce apportionments on big churches, close and merge small churches, let the conservatives leave. These are Groeschel’s suggestions, which are all – for obvious reasons – predicated on the idea that his church and others like his are what the entire denomination should look like.
All the ideas he suggests have been talked about for quite some time. They continue to be worthy of conversation. In the tradition of Wesleyanism, a continuing pragmatic and practical working out of our ministerial arrangements only makes sense – so long as those arrangements are in the service of our mission.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
[...] (HT: John Meunier) [...]
I appreciated Groeschel’s series on the UMC. I didn’t get the impression that Groeschel necessarily thinks the UMC should model Lifechurch and other churches like it. As I read (several times), I felt that Groeschel was writing on how to streamline what he knows about the UMC with the hope of becoming more effective. I do think the UMC does need to overhaul/reform several of these issues as we move forward in the future