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Distinctive Marks of United Methodist Organization

© Susan Padezanin

It is remarkable that United Methodism, despite the vast changes of more than two centuries of American history, remains so similar in organization to its beginnings, and that the fundamentals of its organization have permitted important reforms and innovations to be incorporated along the way. It is still governed by a tightly organized Book of Discipline, incorporating foundational theological principles, a constitution, and rules of procedure governing virtually all aspects of the life of the church. Ultimate authority under the constitution remains vested in the General Conference. Bishops, though now elected by regional jurisdictional conferences, are elected for life (though with a mandatory retirement age from active duty). They continue to exercise appointive power over the ordained clergy, with the normal provision that each ordained minister will receive an appointment and every church will be served by a pastor (though not necessarily by a full-time or fully ordained pastor).

Despite the tensions built into such an organizational scheme, the basic structure helps focus great organizational power in strategic ways. For instance, the resources of the whole denomination are brought to bear for the security of the local church. In many instances, local churches owe their initial beginnings to funds and strategic leadership derived from the denomination. As the basic "cell" of the community of faith, the local church can count on the provision of pastoral leadership and other resources with denomination-wide forms of quality control. While the local church is largely structured on democratic lines—with virtually all offices elected by the local church's charge conference—there is enough denominationally determined structure to ensure that a given power group within the church cannot undermine its basic character as a United Methodist church or secede from the denomination. This makes a local United Methodist church less vulnerable to the effects of prejudice than the local churches of some other denominations.

The local church often finds its own resources joined more effectively with others in the broader mission of the denomination. Through apportioned giving, every church participates in outreach missions far beyond its own limited means. Throughout its history, the denomination has succeeded in quite remarkable ventures of faith and mission because it could count on the focused resources of a connectional system. In the nineteenth century, dozens of colleges and universities were founded through United Methodist action, and missions flourished in the advancing frontier of America and in targeted territories across the world. Mission enterprises in the twentieth century came to include a much wider agenda of issues and problems, but the fundamental connectional structure continued to focus the attention and resources of many local churches collectively.

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