A thin branch bearing a lot of weight

At General Conference, the Connectional Table made a report on the state of the church. During that report, the presenters said we could find more information online about some of the things they discussed. I was interested to learn what more information I could find, especially about reports from various parts of the world speaking to what people valued in the UMC and what they wanted to see for the future of the UMC. So I went digging.

One of the coolest things in the 2023 State of the Church report is the year in photos from UM News. There are a lot of really striking and compelling images in there and it is well worth your time to scroll through that.

One of the most unintentionally ironic parts of the report was the use of John Wesley’s dying words to express our denominational resolve to move forward.

“The United Methodist Church has faced many new challenges over the past couple years, but we continue to see God at work in our daily lives and in our enduring ministries. Like John Wesley, who said ‘The best of all is God is with us,’ we look to God to guide our witness.”

But I was really there because I wanted to read what these reports, collected during a project called Imagining the Future, could tell me about the state of United Methodism. The presentation at General Conference gave a high-level summary of what they took to be most important points, but I was interested in the what each region had to say.

Unfortunately, I could only download 3 of the reports. The report from the conversations in Africa could not be found. There is a page giving some summary of the findings of the Africa report, but the link to download the report itself was broken. When I asked UM News about this on Twitter, they reported that they did not have the full report and changed the link on the report summary page to indicate that it was connected to survey questions rather than the answers those questions generated.

I was disappointed to not be able to read the African report, but the others did provide some interesting reading.

Europe – There was a glitch with this report as well, apparently. There were five online conversations across Europe in 2021 to gather data for the report, but nearly all of the 90 participants in those conversations were from Western European countries, so the report lacked perspective from United Methodism in Eastern Europe.

One or two things that stood out to me in the 5-page report was the clear awareness United Methodists in Europe have of being a tiny minority compared to the national churches that dominate Europe. These United Methodists said that they value their Methodist identity grounded in “classic” Methodist theology. The report includes specific mention of prevenient grace, sanctification, personal piety, and social engagement as core Methodist themes that they value. The report mentions their zeal for scriptural holiness and for meeting the spiritual and temporal needs of people. It highlights the plight of immigrants, climate change, racism, and economic justice as key social concerns. “Europeans want a
Christ‐centered mission grounded in disciple‐ship, the Bible, and prayer.”

The Philippines – This report was collected via an online survey of 357 United Methodists across 3 episcopal areas. The respondents self-identified as 56.3% traditionalist and 44.8% progressive, but said that 68.6% of their congregations were mostly traditionalist. When asked how they would change the UMC, only 10% identified removing language around homosexuality as one of their choices.

The structure of the survey used to collect the data seemed somewhat simplistic or amateurish. Without open-ended questions or more professional survey construction, it was hard for me to see much more of great significance or interest in the report.

The United States – This report is the longest. It was collected from the conversations of 54 groups of people from November 2021 to March 2022. The participants were by invitation only and multiple groups were composed of members of the Connectional Table itself,. The inclusion of the Connectional Table in the data collection is an odd choice if the purpose of the process was to get information that the Connectional Table could use to understand the denomination. The report is aware that its sample could bias findings and mentions that the key themes could be quite different if different groups were invited to participate.

The report is too long to fairly summarize, but a couple of things did stand out to me.

The American report makes reference to “social justice” far more frequently and more prominently than the other two reports. It also places a high emphasis on inclusivity and diversity, while expressing a sense of frustration that we do not live into diversity and inclusivity or put our social justice commitments into action enough.

The report expresses both appreciation for and frustration with our “democratic” polity. The voice we give to laity is seen as important, but our polity can also be a source of division and legalism.

One other thing I notice is a lack of any direct emphasis on salvation or converting people to faith in Jesus Christ. Of the three reports, the American one was the one that seemed least engaged with piety, evangelism, and the Bible. Perhaps I am being unfair. You can read the report yourself and decide.

I am certain that these reports involved a lot of effort, but given the prominence they got in the Connectional Table report at General Conference the reports themselves read to me like rather anecdotal and even a bit haphazard in their data gathering. In the American report, we are told that Connectional Table has been using these reports (including the missing African one, presumably) to cast a vision for the future of the UMC and “coalesce around common ideas” to shape the denomination.

If we are really trying to develop a nuanced and useful understanding of the state of the UMC today and the diversity of hopes and dreams for the UMC in the future, perhaps a more systematic and sophisticated form of data collection would be helpful.