Jim Collins’ article “Aligning Action and Values” raises some interesting thoughts that may be relevant to the United Methodist Church as it ponders its future and structural changes it might make to achieve that future.
Among many of the interesting bits were these two paragraphs:
Every institution—whether for-profit or not—has to wrestle with a vexing question: What should change and what should never change? It’s a matter of distinguishing timeless core values from operating practices and cultural norms. Timeless core values should never change; operating practices and cultural norms should never stop changing. A timeless core value in an academic institution, for instance, is freedom of intellectual inquiry. A practice adopted to support that core value is academic tenure. But there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the practice of tenure probably needs to be changed or discarded because it no longer serves the purposes for which it was created.
But if I suggest that academic institutions should seriously think about changing the tenure system, the average academic is likely to say, “Never! You’re violating our core values.” But that protest arises from a failure to distinguish between values and practices. The core value is freedom of inquiry; tenure is a practice. Frequently institutions cling doggedly to practices that are in truth nothing more than familiar habits. As a result, they fail to change things that ought to change. And by defending outmoded practices under the banner of core values, they might actually be betraying their true core values.
As I read this, I thought of our debates over itinerancy and guaranteed appointment. What I often do not hear or read in those debates is any in-depth conversation about the core values that gave rise to those practices in the first place. What we tend to do is note that “something is broken” and argue for a need to get rid of these relics.
What would be more helpful would be to start with a new look at those core values – missional outreach and commitment to the notion that God gifts all ages, races, classes, and sexes for ministry – and decide what practices are necessary today to put those values into action.
Maybe some of that conversation is going on behind the public rhetoric over getting rid of guaranteed appointment and itinerancy, but my experience suggests the United Methodist Church has a hard time articulating a shared set of core values, so it is easier to focus on practices than to talk about values that we do not, in fact, share.
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.
