The Hybrid Episcopacy Model: Maximum Flexibility, Minimal Bureaucracy
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This article is part of our Counterpoint series, in which Firebrand explores opposing viewpoints on theological topics. For a different view, read: To Teach and Preserve the Faith: Bishops and the Global Methodist Church by David F. Watson. Each of these articles examines proposals for how bishops will function in the Global Methodist Church.
What God has done in the Global Methodist Church over the past two years is truly a miracle. We have been freed from a burdensome, top-down institution and empowered to join a movement that has grown to almost 5,000 congregations on five continents. Along the way, local churches have started new ministries to reach new people for Jesus. More baptisms are happening. The Good News of Jesus is being proclaimed in ways it hasn’t been in years. Praise God!
As we gather in Costa Rica for our historic convening General Conference, one of the key focuses will be how we structure the episcopacy. The Transitional Leadership Council convened an episcopal task force that produced potential legislation. The TLC, after editing it, has submitted that legislation package to the General Conference for its consideration. We thank them for that. We deeply appreciate the members of that task force and their love for the church.
At the same time, however, the members of the Florida General Conference delegation have also put an episcopal model forward. We feel the model we’ve offered is better attuned to ensuring our denomination stays a movement that prevents us from becoming a top-down-oriented institution. The model that we have submitted to the General Conference is a hybrid model that has three primary goals:
Maintaining the smallest institutional footprint possible keeping the emphasis on where disciples of Jesus are made: the local church.
Creating a model for bishops that is permission-giving and not gatekeeping. We want to ensure we have a church that is decentralized from the bottom up and not centralized from the top down.
Implementing maximum flexibility for annual conferences while also ensuring the cost is as minimal as possible to keep more connectional funding dollars in the local church.
Hallmarks of our Plan
To read the entire plan (Petition 244), please click here. For an interview discussing the model, please click here.
Annual conferences can decide if they desire to have a bishop serving just their conference or if they wish to share a general superintendent with more than one annual conference. This allows key missional flexibility. For example, the four annual conferences in Nigeria have long been served by Bishop Yohanna. Under our plan, they could continue to do so. Another conference may choose to have its own bishop. Making disciples in Florida looks different than making disciples in San Francisco, Kenya, the Philippines, or Panama. This model allows conferences to choose the leadership structure that best helps them achieve their mission.
Each annual conference can nominate up to two elders for bishop. The General Conference would then elect nominees to an episcopal pool (60% vote is required). The number of people elected to the pool would be set by the General Conference. The number must be at least the number of bishops needed for the next six-year period, but the hope is that the General Conference would elect more elders to the pool than needed. Elders elected to the pool continue to serve in their current appointment unless they are selected by an annual conference.
Annual Conference Committees on the Episcopacy would interview elders elected to the pool and choose one (2/3 vote is required) to be their bishop. Upon the chosen prospective bishop’s consent and the simple-majority consent of the Global Episcopacy Committee and the Assembly of Bishops, the bishop would be consecrated and serve the annual conference for at least the next six years.
If a vacancy occurred in between sessions of the General Conference, an annual conference episcopacy committee would interview and select a new bishop from the pool.
The Global Episcopacy Committee would set the salaries of bishops taking into account regional differences in cost of living. Bishops would be paid by the annual conference(s) they serve. There would be funds set aside in the general budget of the denomination to assist annual conferences that were not able to pay the salary set by the Global Episcopacy Committee. This helps to create equity between conferences and prevents a bidding war for annual conferences that want the same person as bishop.
Bishops are ordained elders and are consecrated to their office. Bishops are not an order to themselves. As such they are still accountable to the same judicial processes as elders and do not get a different accountability structure. Complaints would be handled by the Global Episcopacy Committee. No bishops may serve on the Global Episcopacy Committee.
What Happens Between 2024-2026
There will be another General Conference in 2026. Our plan proposes not electing interim, two-year bishops in 2024. We believe this process is rushed. It has already been messy with significant concerns from multiple areas of the church. We believe it’s not necessary. Our plan would rename presidents pro tempore as conference superintendents. Conference Superintendents would have all the authority they presently have with the addition of setting appointments. Bishops Jones and Webb would continue as general superintendents primarily focusing on the many new annual conferences coming into the GMC between 2024 and 2026 as well as assisting newer conferences still forming. We could hold regional ordination services for these two years, if needed, to help accommodate the schedules of Bishops Jones, Webb, and the bishops emeriti. Presidents pro tempore are known entities, have built good relationships with their conferences, and are working well by and large. This allows us to perfect an episcopacy plan in 2024 and then elect bishops in 2026. Nominating potential bishops before a model has even been decided on feels very strange to us.
Key Differences Between the Hybrid Plan and the General Superintendent Plan
The General Superintendent Plan sets up a double layer of bureaucracy: Bishops and conference superintendents. As one leader from Europe said, the plan creates bishops called conference superintendents and archbishops called bishops. We believe this is not in keeping with our desire to stay a movement and have a flatter, decentralized leadership structure.
The General Superintendent Plan separates spiritual and temporal leadership. Bishops would be the primary spiritual leaders of the denomination and conference superintendents would be the primary temporal leaders. To us, this does not feel incarnational. Jesus is a spiritual AND temporal leader. He taught and healed people, cast out demons, and fed the hungry. When Jesus sent out the disciples and all of us to Judea, Samaria, and all the ends of the earth we were tasked with both functions. Local church pastors are both spiritual and temporal leaders. John Wesley and Francis Asbury were both spiritual and temporal leaders. We want an incarnational bishop who will be at work in the local churches helping to guide them, coach them, and spur them onto revival.
The General Superintendent Plan creates a de facto episcopal fund similar to The United Methodist Church. Under the General Superintendent Plan, bishops’ salaries would be paid entirely by the general church. The annual conferences would pay for conference superintendents’ salaries. When many of us were still in the UMC and encouraging churches to disaffiliate and join the GMC, we promised there would never be another episcopal fund. We said churches wouldn’t have to worry about their connectional funding dollars paying the salaries of rogue bishops or bishops who did not meet ordination standards. Our Hybrid Plan allows for the general church to help supplement salaries, if necessary, but bishops would be paid for by annual conferences.
The General Superintendent Plan states in proposed paragraph 515.3, “Complaints not involving abuse may be referred to the Assembly of Bishops for a plan of resolution. Such a plan of resolution must be approved by the General Committee on Episcopacy. Otherwise, the complaint shall be administered according to the provisions of Part Eight: Judicial Administration.” Accordingly, this means the general superintendent plan allows complaints for things like malfeasance, having an extramarital affair, teaching bad doctrine, and presiding at same-sex weddings to be handled by the Assembly of Bishops first. We find this extremely problematic. Bishops are elders. Elders do not get that kind of process. If an elder is brought up on a complaint, it does not go to other elders for them to attempt a resolution. Bishops should not receive better treatment. We promised there would be no more foxes guarding proverbial henhouses.
Holding This All Very Loosely
We believe getting the episcopacy right is extremely important. Simultaneously, we hold all this very loosely. We have received critiques of our plan and are very open to amendments like changing the term of office from one, 12-year term to two, six-year terms, making episcopal evaluations annual, decreasing the size of the Global Episcopacy Committee, consecrating bishops at the General Conference, and requiring bishops to be evaluated on how they are teaching the faith.
While we disagree with the General Superintendent Model, we are deeply grateful to those who produced it and trust that the General Conference, led by the Holy Spirit, will arrive at a model that is Christ-centered and ensures the GMC remains a movement and not an institution.
Nako Kellum is the conference administrator for the Florida Conference of the GMC and a former member of the Global Council of the Wesleyan Covenant Association.
Monteen Pillay is the conference lay leader for the Florida Conference of the GMC and co-chair of the Florida General Conference delegation.
Jeremy Rebman is the senior pastor of First Methodist Church of Vero Beach, a member of the Florida General Conference delegation, and a former president of the WCA-Florida Regional Chapter.
Jay Therrell is president pro tempore of the Florida Conference of the GMC, former president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and the WCA-Florida, and one of the original drafters of the Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline.