Redistricting

Last night, Laura and I went to a meeting at Wesley Memorial UMC in Decatur, AL concerning the re-districting of the North Alabama Conference. We went, like many others, hoping to get some details about what this new structure was going to look like. All I knew was that there had been a study committee appointed a couple of years ago to look at what several other committees had looked at over the past 30 years. And, that this committee had made the recommendation to reduce the number of districts from 12 to 8.

I guess you could say that the theme word for the night was "fluff." At several points during the two-hour meeting it felt very much like we were at a political press conference. It almost became humorous the number of times their "talking points" were repeated. "Vision" this, and "challenge" that. "Trust" and "empowering leadership" were also up there.

The whole point is this, the North Alabama Conference has lost over 30,000 members in the past 30 years and the current structure is not cost effective. Though the number of churches have stayed the same or have increased, the number of people in those churches have decreased and financial resources have become increasingly limited. The committee picked the number of new district to be 8, so as to best re-align our existing resources. However, no rationale was given for the choosing of this number, nor what the new District structure would look like. The only information that was given was a new vision for what the role of the District Superintendent (DS) ought to be.

The whole focus of the presentation was about how the new structure would allow DSs to do less administrative work and more coaching and ministry. It sounds good, especially with the challenge to local churches to be more connectional and cluster their resources and ministries. But, the confusion still lay in the apparent paradox that somehow the DSs were going to be able to have more time to do this when the number of churches that they were responsible for increased.

After a while, after an hour of talk in generalities about how clustering and sub-districting would allow DSs to be more efficient in training several churches at once instead of one at a time, the people there were finally beginning to get it. THEN, Dale Cohen (the Director of Connectional Ministries) "mentions" that to help the DSs they would have an assistant to help in the administrative work. This goes over like a lead balloon because we had been talking all night about cutting costs and now they're talking about adding 8 more people (as assistants) to the mix - an overall INCREASE of 4 people! Not many people heard it, but supposedly the assistants won't be paid, or might even be shared among the Districts.

Granted, I get that our current structure is not working and we need a change, but two things have been very frustrating. One, there was very little, if any real information was given. The people just wanted to be able to say, "OK, this is what the new structure is going to look like and this will be what the new role of the DS will be. And, this is where we plug in as a local church." Granted, that's not what the vote will be bout in January at the Called Annual Conference (the conference can only vote on the number of districts, not the structure), but there was nothing that people could sink their teeth into and say, "This new idea might work." There were no ideas, just concepts, and, when you are talking to people in the Decatur and Huntsville Districts, you'd better give those Rocket Scientists something more than just a buzzword to plug into their logic.

The second thing that has bugged me is something that came up during our Order of Elders Meeting: trust and the trust that comes through communication. I could sense a deep feeling of mistrust by many in the auditorium that they were skeptical that reducing the number of districts would solve our Conference's woes. The reality is, is that there are a number of things that need to be addressed before the Conference is doing ministry as efficiently as it could be. There were many, like me, that were thinking, "Why are we focusing our time on this, when there are more pressing needs facing our local church's ability to do ministry?" Things like the skyrocketing cost of the mandatory pastor's insurance, the role of the pastor and the local church, and new ways of looking at itineracy, these affect a local church much more than how many districts we have. I hope that these things will be addressed soon by the Conference. I know that this will probably be one of the many conversations that I will be having with the Bishop as we and several other young clergy go on a mission trip to Panama.

By reducing the number of districts to eight, the conference will save close to $300,000 when all is said and done with salary, insurance, housing, etc. for DSs. but, how that money will be used is the question. It would have been nice to have heard just one program, event, something that these newly re-aligned resources would be able to provide. Just something that was on the books and we could see how it would make a difference in doing ministry in the North Alabama Conference.

Going to eight districts will not fix all of our problems, maybe not any of them, but I do hope and pray that this truly is a start in the right direction. At least serving as a wake up call to the whole Conference that we need to do something different.

Message from Bishop Will Willimon concerning Redistricting