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January 2006 |
Bishop's report to the 2016 session of the Indiana Conference of The United Methodist Church
As I conclude my tenure in the Indiana Area and move into retirement, I consider it a real privilege to have served with you for these past 12 years and am especially grateful for this opportunity to reflect upon our time together. Thank you to the Sessions Committee of the Indiana Conference for providing me with this time to report to you.
As I look back upon our years together, I believe that many of the good things we celebrate this year actually began 10 years ago (in 2006) when the work of several groups in our two former conferences, North Indiana and South Indiana, began to take shape. As you remember, it was in 2006 that both annual conferences stepped out in faith and voted to move toward merger, restructuring, a new emphasis upon stewardship, a desire to reach younger generations and a plan for transforming our existing churches and starting new faith communities.
These past 10 years have not been without problems but I am proud of the way we have moved toward a new vision for ministry and mission. In the long run, I believe that our vision for a better church in Indiana has kept us moving forward during the many issues of merger and restructuring.
In particular, I am most gratified for these accomplishments in the past 10 years:
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The turn-around of our membership decline and our movement toward growth, that seems to have begun in 2007 and gained momentum around 2012. Our membership this year has broken the 300,000 level, and I believe that we will continue to grow as we continue to focus upon our vision of reaching people for Jesus Christ.
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The improvement of our stewardship. It is obvious that our emphasis upon tithing has given our people a simple way of measuring their stewardship, and I know that many people have moved beyond tithing toward even greater levels of generosity. While the tithing model has produced a healthy financial situation for our conference, I believe the key has been how the conference partnered with local churches to teach stewardship. As our local churches improved in their stewardship, our whole connection has grown financially.
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Our United Methodist Church here in Indiana keeps getting younger. I believe that our focus upon recruiting younger clergy has helped us to reach younger generations, but so did our emphasis on youth ministry which began in 2007. Many of the youth we reached in those early years are now clergy and lay leaders.
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I am proud of the amazing results of our social witness in recent years, as we have pressed the state of Indiana to end the lottery, as we have networked with the medical community to reduce HIV/AIDS and as we have reduced illiteracy in Indiana through our partnerships with public and private schools. United Methodists can be proud that we are making Indiana a better place to live.
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I am grateful that our long-standing commitment to missions has continued to grow. We have celebrated the virtual elimination of malaria in the world, thanks to our participation with UMCOR and our friends in the conferences in Africa. I look forward to our continued work to reduce drug abuse in Indiana and around the world.
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I continue to be amazed by the many reports I receive from our clergy about their enthusiasm for our clusters of ministry teams - and the way those groups have helped our churches to work on mutual ministry issues in their regional settings. Oh yes, we still have a few clergy and a few churches which seem to live in isolation, but it is obvious that the future is with our teams of clergy and teams of churches working together in a true sense of connection. I believe that the new Indiana Conference was very wise when it flattened our structure, reduced overhead, and focused our staff and resources upon these regional groupings.
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Finally, I am excited that we have started so many new churches, new worship services, outpost Sunday schools, and other new faith communities in recent years. The fact that the majority of these are either multi-cultural or focused upon reaching new immigrant groups is a wonderful testimony to our Wesleyan heritage of keeping evangelism and social witness united in the mission of our church. While racism is still with us, I believe that many of our congregations are more multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-generational. In addition, we are seeing many of our small membership, rural churches becoming the focal point of the new population trends away from cities and back into rural areas. I am glad that we "right-sized" the pastoral support for those many rural churches the past decade, because now they are positioned to reach this newest population shift. Keeping the Indiana Conference focused upon vital local churches, rather than focused upon maintaining our conference structure, certainly continues to be the key to our health as a conference.
And now, I challenge you to keep the faith, to continue the good ministry and to trust God to lead us into an ever-changing future. Do not be afraid, but continue to trust God and to work together for God's purposes.
Last updated on 25 Apr 2008