Is Itineracy Dead?

On Clarifying the Global Methodist Church's Biggest Question, and a Modest Proposal for Consideration Going Forward

I just spent a few days at the Acts 2:42 Conference at Lake Junaluska, a conference for young clergy and ministry leaders either serving in or interested in the Global Methodist Church. It was a beautiful time of worship, attentiveness to the Holy Spirit, deep prayer, and making new friends across this new connection. I told my church folks when I returned that the conference made me feel deeply reassured that the Global Methodist Church, this new movement within the greater world of Wesleyan Christianity, is right where we need to be. Many kudos to Bishop Jones and Bishop Webb, whose idea it was to hold the event, and to the conference organizers, and to the generous gift from donors to make the conference practically free for the attendants. I came away from it renewed, refreshed, and convicted to do the work of making disciples in the GMC. There is a really good article by Matt Reynolds in Firebrand articulating exactly how I felt about the conference. He writes,

I do not know what all is in store for the Global Methodist Church, but I know that if the spiritual DNA of this new movement is anything like what I experienced this past week at the 2:42 Conference we have much to be excited about. The future of the church is in good hands. And as these emerging leaders help us recover our roots, I believe a simple yet powerful Methodist church will emerge. These young leaders are not content to play games and manage dead institutions. They are hungry to see the church fully alive, offering the whole Gospel to a hurting world. I am praying that all of us in the GMC heed their voices and follow them into a renewed Methodism full of hope.

I echo this fully, and am excited about it!

Young clergy leaders at the 2:42 Conference at Lake Junaluska.

The Big Question Going Forward: Is Itineracy Dead?

However, my time connecting with other younger clergy and hearing the dreams and desires of everyone to build a solid foundation for this new movement made me realize what a precious, unique time this is to set a new course—not in our theology, which has remained Wesleyan and orthodox—but in our polity, our ecclesiology, the structure of the church, which boils down to our strategy for making disciples of Jesus Christ.

For about two and half centuries one of the most distinctive strategies of Methodism has been the itineracy, the system of moving preachers around from church to church, at the appointment and pleasure of the bishop. This strategy worked marvelously in the early stages of American growth into the frontier, and because of the Methodist preachers’ willingness to move (to GO!), the Methodist movement became one of the great success stories of spreading the gospel and planting churches. This was a top-down, hierarchical system, which located a great amount of power in a single leader—and so the character and quality of these leaders called bishops became a great worry in the polity. In such a system, so go the bishops, so goes the entire structure. If you have a bishop like Francis Asbury, godly, humble, hardworking, profoundly dedicated to the mission, you flourish; if you have a bishop like (name one you didn’t like here), who is petty, vindictive, egotistical, etc., you throw up your hands and have a pity party, because there’s very little you can do if your bishop is ineffective.

I have no personal complaints from my few years of experience in the UMC’s itinerant system; to my knowledge, most of the leaders including the bishop were genuinely seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit to set appointments, and were doing their best to connect clergy and their giftings to churches in the areas that were needed. But I do think that in the GMC we need to have a serious conversation about if we really want to re-adopt itineracy, a top-down system originally designed for single, childless men riding horses in the 1700s.

It seems to me in reading the proposal of the TLC (the Transitional Leadership Council of the GMC) that this re-adoption of the top-down itinerant system might be what is being proposed. I could be wrong, but read one of the bullet points from their recommendations on the role of the bishop and see what you think:

Recommend the bishops will be itinerant with primary linkage to 4 or 5 geographic conferences where they will teach, preach, evangelize, guard, and defend the faith, fix appointments and ordain clergy with a plan of visitation for each annual conference. 

I am very excited about the idea of the bishop’s role being to teach, defend, and guard the orthodox faith! This seems more true to the biblical and traditional role of the episcopacy, which I think is needed and could be a profound means of grace for the church. Bishop Jones and Webb in my eyes have been remarkable examples of just how much bishops can offer to the church, and the encouragement that such leadership and spiritual authority can bring to a movement such as ours.

This is Bishop Jones, anointing my wife and me at the end of the 2:42 Conference.

But what exactly does it mean that bishops will “fix appointments”? This seems to me THE question that the upcoming GMC’s General Conference needs to clarify.

In the proposed legislation to the GMC Discipline, the language says that bishops will:

Fix the clergy appointments in each conference in consultation with the conference superintendent and conference cabinet. (¶ 503, 7.)

If this language is adopted, where, I wonder, does the local church’s input come into that conversation? And where does the clergy and the clergy family’s input enter in? I’ve looked in other parts of the discipline, and there is language of collaboration, which sounds really good to me. But it’s fuzzy and unclear how exactly this will work.

This is how the current Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline outlines how a local church’s Staff Parish Relations Committee would handle a situation where the church no longer wants a pastor to serve. The SPRC’s role in such a situation would be:

To confer with the pastor and/or other appointed members of the staff if it should become evident that the best interests of the charge and/or pastor(s) will be served by a change of pastor(s). The committee shall cooperate with the pastor(s), the presiding elder (district superintendent), and the bishop in securing clergy leadership. Its relationship to the presiding elder (district superintendent) and the bishop shall be advisory only. The committee shall not recommend to the presiding elder (district superintendent) or bishop a change of pastor(s) without first discussing its concerns with the pastor(s) involved. (TBDD par. 345, 8.i.)

And so, that current paragraph on the local church’s role, coupled with the proposed language about the bishop fixing appointments, to me will produce a system (at least on paper) that is awfully similar to a UMC 2.0. Is this what the clergy and congregations feel is best for making disciples of Jesus in our current cultural climate?

I think that there are good arguments for and against an itinerant system, but there is no good argument for an unclear system. How are clergy to be vetted, empowered, deployed, hired, and fired in the GMC? It’s no sin for a local church to want to be able to have hiring power for who their pastor will be: the question the GMC needs to answer is, well, will they or won’t they? It’s no sin for a clergy person to want the freedom to refuse to take a new church if they feel led to stay at the church they are serving, or free to take a new church if the opportunity arises: so do they or do they not have this freedom?

Clarity is kindness, and our language around clergy deployment needs to be crystal clear. Especially if we want to encourage congregations who are institutionally wary to join the movement of the GMC, particularly larger congregations who have so much to offer to the movement as a whole but who are understandably concerned about being able to oversee pastoral transitions.

I really love this movement of God called Global Methodism, and it’s out of love for what God is doing that makes me long for more clarity. And so, here are some of the questions that I believe need to be crystal clear in our new disciplinary language:

What are we agreeing to as a clergy when we become ordained as elders into the GMC? Are we promising to go wherever a bishop tells us to go?

When I was ordained as an elder in the UMC, it was very clear that I was vowing not only to lead an exemplary life in Christ and to defend the Methodist doctrine and go on to perfection, but also to go where I was sent, to be a part of the itinerant system. Everyone entering into the UMC understood that very clearly, and agreed to it, whether or not they thought it was the best system. If the bishop called and told you to move across the state, you had made a covenant to do so.

And let’s be clear: this is a really big ask! But everyone knew what they were getting into.

Is this expected in the GMC? Practically the answer seems to be no, since the right of guaranteed appointment is no longer present. At the MidSouth Annual Conference last year, we ordained 110 women and men as clergy in the Global Methodist Church. It was an awesome and holy service, and brought tears to my and many eyes.

But I am quite confident that most of the clergy that day who were ordained or who like me transferred into the GMC, as well as the congregations we served, entered with an understanding that clergy and local churches would have a lot more decision-making power (more than just an “advisory role”) when it came to moving, staying, etc. In fact, many of us (myself included) were explicitly told that we were not vowing to simply go where a bishop told us to go in entering the GMC.

So, what does it mean that a bishop will fix appointments? Let’s make it clear. If it’s like the former UMC system, make it plain, and if it’s not, make that plain—promises are made in ordination before God, and so it’s a very serious matter that we all understand what exactly we are promising to do.

Who has the power to hire and fire clergy and how does that process work?

In an era of good feelings like many of us in the GMC are in, many people don’t want to think about this question; but the reality is that churches and pastors are not always a good match for each other, not to mention the leadership and moral failings that are always possible when people are involved.

Power dynamics are going to be present no matter how a church system is set up; it is an act of love and respect to name these dynamics clearly. And so, if it really is the local church Administrative Council or SPRC or an analogous body that can in effect get a pastor fired, that governing body needs to know that and the pastor does as well. If it’s the bishop or the presiding elder that has this power, then let’s name that. If it’s both of them working together, somehow, then make that plain. Our disciplinary language needs to make this clear out of a love for our clergy and our lay leadership: what kind of power does everyone have?

Will pastors have the freedom to stay at an appointment or seek new appointments as they feel the Holy Spirit leading them?

One of the stranger side effects of an itinerant system was that at times clergy were punished for trying to move toward an area where they wanted to live, or for trying to be placed at a church where they wanted to serve. This was seen as trying to skirt the system: “You want to move there, where your mother is in a nursing home? Well we’re going to move you three hours away from there.” There are many stories like that—and again, I do believe most people involved were genuinely doing their best to place people in churches to the best of their ability—but the reality is that an itinerant system creates these kinds of weird dynamics. There were also many stories of the what ifs—what if I had been able to stay at that church where God was really beginning to move? What if I had been able to invest a little bit longer in that community? Etc, etc.

Clergy in the GMC have been told that if they are happy serving where they are, and if the church is happy having them as their pastor, then they will not be asked or rather required to leave their appointment. This sounds really good to many of us clergy—but it needs to be reflected in our disciplinary language if this is true.

A Modest Proposal: The Bishop and Annual Conference as Holy Spirit-Led Agency of Accreditation and Matchmaking

You can probably tell from this article that I think retaining the former system of itineracy exactly as it was would be a mistake. So the question is, what kind of a structure would be better? How do we jettison itineracy without collapsing into a purely congregational model of church, which would go against the very Wesleyan idea of banding together and watching over one another in love? How do we retain the very biblical office of the bishop while also giving freedom and authority to our local congregations? What system might be better for clergy who have spouses who work full time, with children, in a world that needs more stability in leadership and not less?

I feel that a better model would be to see the bishop and the annual conference level leadership (Boards of Ministry) as the connectional agency for locating, empowering, equipping, vetting, and ordaining clergy candidates for ministry. And so in order to be a congregation in the Global Methodist Church, you would have to agree that you will only hire a pastor who has been vetted by and ordained into the Global Methodist Church. Thus the specific hiring power of pastors would be located at the congregational level, but the accreditation of clergy would be at the episcopal, connectional level. And of course, what is given could be taken away—as doctors can lose their medical license, clergy could be defrocked, for moral or possibly theological reasons (with a just ability to repeal such decisions)—giving accountability from below and above, as well as encouragement and support.

And when it comes to “fixing appointments,” I think the role of bishop and conference superintendent, if that role is adopted, should be lead networker and matchmaker, rather than a top-down “fixer.” Instead of a military model of “you go where I tell you to go,” it should be instead a Spirit-led conversation of the bishop or superintendent approaching a pastor along the lines of, “this church will have an opening soon, are you willing to be a candidate for the church to consider”? And then the pastor can prayerfully put their name forward or not for the pastoral opening. It would then be up to the local church leadership to interview and select from among the best candidates for their congregation.

To my ears, that kind of a system sounds refreshing, nimble, accountable, and Spirit-led, and is also what most clergy thought the situation would be when we entered the GMC. I think we need to trust our local churches more, and relinquish a bit of control from the top, to give space for the Holy Spirit to move. No system is perfect, and every church structure will produce different kinds of problems because of the sin still at work in our very human hearts. Even the best church structure will collapse if the people within it fail to put Jesus at the center of their lives and practices.

And so, this is my modest proposal for the upcoming General Conference in Costa Rica. My prayer is that whatever strategy is most effective at bringing people to Jesus, whatever structure brings about the most holy people, that is the one we should adopt. But please, as leaders who long for a great awakening in our midst, let’s pray about this and talk about it and humbly consider every aspect of it. In my mind there is no more important question to answer in the months ahead of us, because so much of how we structure our life together will revolve around this very dynamic of clergy deployment.

And at the end of that prayer and conversation, whatever we do choose together under the Spirit’s leadership, let’s make it clear, and pray that more and more congregations and ministry leaders feel confident in joining this beautiful movement called Global Methodism—all for the glory of Jesus!