"Mission Possible"

“Mission Possible” That is the name of the book that the Listening Team has been reading since last October.  It is subtitled “A Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness.”  This model of leadership was originally created to help small churches that struggled to fill all the roles of the administrative committees according to the Book of Discipline.

The book that we are reading compares a church that does not have a commonly understood destination, course, or purpose to a cruise ship that navigates based on weather, wind and tides.  This ship has some people that want to go to Alaska and others who want to go to Aruba.  This ship is tossed about on the sea of life.  “The typical church structure is driving the mission rather than the mission driving the structure.” (p.4)

One of the most important things about Faith UMC in the choppy waters of denominational life is that we are clear about who we are and what our destination is as God’s people.  We have done the hard work of clarity of mission and purpose.  What is being proposed by the Listening Team is that we consider adjusting the model that drives that mission and purpose.

Our current structure was created in 1968 when the EUB church and the Methodist churches combined to create our current denomination.  In order to provide places for all the leaders to serve, these administrative and representative structures offered a place for everyone.  We currently have the smallest teams of administrative committees but we still nominated 42 people to serve this year on these committees.  The Simplified Accountable Structure or SAS was created to send people out into missions instead of serving on committees.

What we discovered in the pandemic was that this structure is not nimble enough to respond in a timely manner to the crises in which we found ourselves.  So guess what we did?? We created a subcommittee from the Ad Council to navigate the waters for us.  This smaller committee worked and it had people thinking about the whole church instead of individual ministries.

I want to invite you to a town hall on March 26th at 4 pm where we will present more information about this SAS structure and offer you the opportunity to ask questions.  We are also creating a page on our website with commonly asked questions and information from our book.  I hope this will help you prepare to ask questions and decide on this very important restructuring proposal.  I look forward to discussing and listening to your input. After the Town Hall, we will begin visiting with each of the adult Sunday school classes.

Please pray for this process and clarity,