Home > News & Events > News Detail

printer-friendly email a friend

Bishop addresses questions about episcopal redeployment

Kansas Area Bishop Scott Jones (UMNS photo)

Written: 10/22/2009 10:38:20 AM

By Lisa Elliott Diehl
Marketing and Communications director
WICHITA—Kansas Area Bishop Scott Jones fielded 18 questions in a live webcast Sept. 19 following the announcement that the Kansas East and West conferences and the Nebraska Conference of the United Methodist Church will share a bishop beginning Sept. 1, 2012.

“In 2008, the General Conference reworked the formula for how many bishops are allowed in each of the five jurisdictions in the United States,” Jones said. “That meant in the South Central Jurisdiction that we will move from having 11 bishops to 10 Sept. 1 of 2012.”

The jurisdiction’s College of Bishops made what Jones described as the best decision it could in deciding to put Nebraska and Kansas together, effectively creating a three-point charge for the next bishop to serve the newly created Nebraska-Kansas Area.

“Some of you all expected that decision; some of you dreaded it,” Jones said. “Some of you are excited about the possibilities that are coming. I want to emphasize that, while we in Kansas might not have chosen this for ourselves, there is a blessing that comes. Whenever change comes, it opens up new possibilities. It’s an opportunity to dream, to plan and to think about how best to do church in this part of the world. It’s an opportunity to ‘rethink church.’”

Jones said he and Nebraska Area Bishop Ann Sherer-Simpson will work with leaders in the three conferences to try to figure out how to make the transition work the best it can.
Jones said the College of Bishops helped the two areas in two ways.

First, the college made the decision early in the quadrennium, providing the maximum amount of time to plan for the transition.

Second, the unaffected episcopal areas in the jurisdiction will each contribute $10,000 toward the transition expenses. The funds will pay for meetings and hiring a consultant to guide the process.

General Conference decides how many bishops there are, since the funds for bishops are paid for out of the episcopal fund on a global level. In 2008, the General Conference decided that since the United States part of the church was declining, every U.S. jurisdiction would lose a bishop in 2012 to make way for new bishops to be deployed in other areas where the church is growing.

The jurisdictional conference votes on conference boundaries.

“We’re not proposing any changes in conference boundaries,” Jones said. “We thought about it. Frankly, we feel that some conference boundaries in o

Nebraska Area Bishop Ann Sherer-Simpson (UMNS photo)

The Book of Discipline gives the College of Bishops responsibility for determining how annual conferences are grouped into episcopal areas.

Members of the college took that responsibility seriously, Jones said. Delegates to the 2008 Jurisdictional Conference were surveyed. Rev. Dr. Lovett Weems served as a consultant, studying the results of the surveys and looking at demographic data. In addition, the bishops traveled through the jurisdiction for listening events in each annual conference. With the results in hand, members of the College of Bishops spent a great deal of time in prayer and discernment looking for the right thing to do.

“We looked at lots of options,” Jones said. “There were a number of options that required changing conference boundaries, and once we decided not to do that, they were off the table.”

Next, they looked at how best to group the annual conferences into 10 episcopal areas. Jones said there were a number of options considered.

“Nobody has raised an issue with me that the bishops did not talk about very seriously,” he said. “It’s just that we looked at all of these and kept whittling down to the ones that made the most sense.”

On Aug. 31, the final decision was made to create a new episcopal area and assign a single bishop to Nebraska and Kansas. The South Central Jurisdiction is the first jurisdiction to decide how to reduce its episcopal areas.

Jones said that, while many things remain undecided, there are a few things that are known. There will be a planning process led by a transition team, and each annual conference session will be making decisions over the coming years. Members of the transition team are being selected by the affected three conferences. Seven people from each conference and the two bishops will serve on this team. Then, the assignment of the new bishop for the Nebraska-Kansas Area will be made by the 2012 South Central Jurisdictional Conference.

“There’s no guarantee of who that person will be,” Jones said. “We also know that Bishop Sherer-Simpson will be retiring in 2012. If you’re asking about my situation, I will be finishing eight years of service in the Kansas Area in 2012. I have until 2024, which is the year that I must retire.”

Many questions will be answered over the next couple of years as the transition team makes its recommendations and the annual conferences vote on them.

Among the big questions is the location of the episcopal office. What staff will be necessary in the episcopal office? What about conference staffing? How will the next bishop make appointments? Some questions will be answered by the transition team, others by the annual conferences themselves, and still more will be answered by the bishop assigned in 2012.

“The opportunity before us, my friends, is one of creativity,” Jones said. “Change is hard, but it stimulates us. We break out of old patterns, we dream new dreams, we think new possibilities. That’s what I think is before us. There’s a lot of anxiety, and I want you to have as much information as possible.”

Jones has suspended the work of the Kansas Area Dream Team, a group requested by the 2008 General and Jurisdictional Conference delegations in the Kansas Area and charged with asking big questions about how to do ministry best in the Kansas Area. Jones said it is important to allow the transition team to begin its work and determine Nebraska’s interest in participating in the big-picture conversation with Kansas before continuing the work of the Dream Team.

No other U.S. bishop serves three annual conferences, so this clearly will mean some changes for the episcopacy in both areas. Jones said most likely people in the local church will find that the bishop is not as available to preach at special congregational events such as anniversaries and dedications. Instead, the new bishop may make more appearances via DVD.

New communication technologies also will become more and more important as meetings take place over larger geographic areas and travel becomes more difficult. Video conferencing may play an especially important role in the new area.

“We United Methodists have the best grasp of the gospel of any Christian body. I know God expects more of us than we’ve been giving for the last 30 or 40 years. If you keep doing the things you’ve always done, you’re going to get the same results. This change—a new episcopal area—well, it’s change, and nobody likes it. But—I keep coming back to this—change provides space for creative, new approaches,” Jones said.

“I’m interested in how the Holy Spirit is going to lead this process. I’m available to give it my very best. I look forward to the challenge of prayerfully and thoughtfully figuring out, ‘How can we best do United Methodist church in Nebraska and Kansas for the 21st century?’”
 

Comments

1. Dale Clare wrote on 10/23/2009 5:21:32 PM

Some may say that "change provides space for creative, new approaches," others may say, it's throwing things overboard while the ship sinks. It saddens my heart to think we are moving our bishop further away from us, and will hear from him/her by dvd.