Eric Van Meter’s recent commentary, “Can Our Denomination Overcome its Fear of Failure?,” considers the decades old struggle facing mainline denominations: reversing the trend of declining membership. Van Meter writes, “We United Methodists have launched one initiative after another in the past four decades, only to watch our churches decline in every measurable category, except average age.”
Well aware of the many initiatives, past and present, undertaken by his denomination and the tendency to focus on measurable outcomes, Van Meter proposes a better way forward:
If we stop worrying about our denominational survival and instead focus on our character as disciples, we might discover a better way of living together.
So What?
Far too much energy has been devoted to telling, re-telling, and naming as normative the membership numbers and expectations for continued growth of mainline denominations as they existed 40 or even 50 years ago in this country. None of us will be time traveling back to that era nor living in the world as it was at that time. While a knowledge of one’s denominational history is important, an over-reliance upon or idealistic view of any one moment in time is unhelpful and unhealthy. Van Meter rightly calls on those in his denomination to focus on something more important. This message of discipleship has much possibility for those who are United Methodists as well as for all who seek to follow the way of Jesus.
Imagine your own denomination constructing a new way of looking into the future that is less focused on membership numbers and more focused on discipleship. What might this look like? How might this shift energize the denomination and move it beyond a maintenance mentality that seeks to ensure survival?