[Reflections on The Discipline] Local Church Conference

In light of the upcoming Fifteenth General Conference of The Wesleyan Church, I have begun a review of The Discipline of The Wesleyan Church 2022, which serves as the seminal definition of Wesleyan belief and polity. My objective in this is to remind myself of the timeless things which have driven our denomination since its inception and to consider how to best pursue them in the next fifty years. Moreover, I intend to document this journey by sharing thoughts, experiences, and dreams along the way, and in so doing, I hope to encourage and even inspire those who will be elected in 2025 to be present at General Conference in 2026 to imagine what could and should be.

Part 2, Chapter 3 (Paragraphs 625-675) of The Discipline outlines the policies surrounding the Local Church Conference. Described in Par. 625 as “the highest governing body of a local Wesleyan Church,” the Local Church Conference is comprised of “the members of a local church, duly called and assembled together to do business” and required to meet at least annually, within thirty days of the end of the district year. Meetings of the Local Church Conference must be announced from the pulpit at least two weeks in advance and feature an array of reports and business items to ensure the smooth operation of the congregation.

Generally speaking, I believe the structure of The Wesleyan Church to be the among the best. In church speak, the denomination loosely follows a presbyterian model, although we utilize different terms and titles. The Local Church Conference elects the Local Board of Administration which, under other variants of this model, would be called the Session. It also elects delegates to represent the congregation at the district conference, which would be the equivalent of the presbytery in other traditions.

This model represents a compromise between episcopal (i.e., where authority flows from a central figure) and congregational models (i.e., where congregations hold all the authority and participation in the denomination is optional) to ensure that the clergy and higher levels of the denomination must be responsive to the needs and concerns of the local congregation while also ensuring that the local congregation does not go off the rails theologically or practically. I thoroughly appreciate the way authority and accountability flow from both directions of our model.

In fact, it is is that bidirectional flow of authority and accountability that prompted The Wesleyan Church to adopt this model more than a century ago. Initially, the denomination’s forefathers were intent on avoiding the abuses of a top-down hierarchy similar to what they left behind in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Then, they discovered that a bunch of independent churches that voluntarily cooperating on a few things was not sustainable in the long term. In fact, in examining this chapter of The Discipline, I have two primary observations.

Our model becomes problematic if members do not show up.

The first is that our model becomes problematic if members do not show up, and unfortunately, that is precisely the problem in many churches today. During the decade prior to the 2020, volunteerism declined steadily throughout the US. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded this trend, resulting in only 23.2% of Americans volunteering at some point in 2021. By 2023, the volunteer rate rebounded to 28.3%, but that still presents a challenge for Local Church Conferences. If members are a subset of attenders and less than one in three of them will attend a meeting, the result is a rather anemic Local Church Conference!

This is exacerbated by a second trend which I mentioned in my previous post: Wesleyan churches are seeing fewer attenders becoming members. Between 2021 and 2024, attendance at Wesleyan churches increased by 53%, but the number of members increased by only 2%. The result was predictable: the number of members fell from 94.4% of attenders to 75.9%. In some churches, the percentage of Wesleyan churches reporting an average attendance more than twice its number of members increased from 19% to 27%.

These trends are problematic regardless of a church’s governmental structure, but it is particularly problematic in a system that was designed from inception to provide balance. Like a balancing scale where weight is being removed from one side, power tilts increasingly toward the clergy side of things, and if we cannot correct this imbalance, the results will be significant. With less input into decisions, the laity will have a lesser sense of ownership in the mission and vision of the church, resulting in even lower participation. As fewer and fewer laypersons are available to serve in leadership positions, and as the power of the clergy increases, it will result in church boards, district conferences, etc., that are little more than formalities and rubber stamps. Indeed, we need not look far to find examples of such things already.

All of which raises some key questions. What will be the highest governing body in the local Wesleyan church? Will we continue to value lay input, or will we be dominated by pastors, district superintendents, and other clergy members? Will we forfeit the form of government that was deliberately chosen to avoid abuse and ensure accountability from both local and denominational ends of the spectrum?

We struggle to adapt quickly.

The other observation I would make is that, for better or worse, our system of government makes it difficult for local churches to adapt quickly to critical needs or changes. A great example of this was when the church I lead suffered a fire in 2005. In the wake of the fire, there were very real questions that could not be immediately answered because we needed to two weeks advanced notice to call a special session of the local church conference. Could the budget be amended to cover for the insurance deductible? After the repairs were underway, we ran into a couple of opportunities. For example, should we save money by replacing tile floors with cheaper carpet?

Another great example was when COVID-19 struck. Especially at the beginning of the pandemic, conditions and recommendations changed so frequently, it was difficult to keep up. In the span of about three weeks, the experts shifted from insisting there would be no quarantine necessary to every public place should be shut down for two weeks to things will be shut down indefinitely. Churches scrambled to erect the systems necessary for online worship and giving. Add in people dying, and there were certainly congregations struggling to keep up.

There is no getting around the fact that our system of government slows down decisions and changes. In fact, this is part of what it was designed to do. It is much more difficult to corrupt a system when it deliberately slows things down. Cooler heads prevail, and wisdom is sought and found.

Yet, in our rapidly changing world, slowing things down can exact a critical price. We may lose opportunities that arise suddenly, or we may struggle to remain relevant as the community changes around us.

This challenge is not insurmountable, but it will require intentionality. It can be mitigated by nominating and electing strong local boards of administration and ensuring that they meet regularly. Leadership teams should provide more frequent reports to the congregation. Find ways to include more laypersons in ministry. Ask members questions about their secular lives and workplaces to direct everyone’s attention and thinking toward emerging trends, needs, and ways the church may address those things. Perhaps even get in the habit of holding semi-annual (i.e., two per year) local church conferences to provide midyear updates and budget reviews.

Our chosen form of local church government does provide some challenges. It is tempting to work around these challenges by allowing pastors, staff, and a select few laypersons to assume more power and responsibility, but before we do that, we should remember that these challenges were actually design features when the system was adopted. Our government was designed to ensure that everyone was aligned and accountable to the mission of making more and better followers of Jesus, and as the world around us grows increasingly suspicious of institutions like the church, we should do everything in our power to maintain and celebrate those very things, including the challenges they present.