by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, November, 2004
Monthly Reflections from The Pacific ~ News and Events of the NCNC United Church of Christ

WE DESPISE BUREAUCRACY...

Words of encouragement and support for those ministering "in the fields."

UCC folk despise bureaucracy. On this we are pretty well united.

We are particularly committed to sniffing out any whiff of bureaucracy in our church structures and pointing censoriously at the offending source. We are, by the nature of our passions for freedom of conscience and autonomy of congregation, wary of imposition, of anything that might slow, stifle, enmesh, or limit us.

We despise bureaucracy. Yet we of the free consciences come together and form congregations. Autonomous congregations. Congregations which have the right to retain or adopt their own methods of organization, worship, and education; to formulate their own statements of faith; to admit members in their own ways, and to provide for their discipline or dismissal; to call or dismiss their pastors, and so on, according to the UCC Constitution.

And those congregations, each of whose autonomy is “inherent and modifiable only by its own action,” have banded together, affiliated, formed a pack, yea, c o v e n a n t e d with one another to be an Association, and a Conference of the United Church of Christ. No contracts or franchise agreements were signed. This is a covenant, a growing, flexing, accommodating, adapting, mutually accountable and non-hierarchical relationship.

We despise bureaucracy, and we are wary. We fear the imposition of arbitrary procedures and capricious standards by outside forces.

Back in 1986 when the first UCC Manual on Ministry was published by the national Office of Church Life and Leadership, there was an uproar of anguish, a din of groaning from ordained ministers throughout the denomination.

“What do they think they’re doing?”

“They want to jerk our standing.”

After a while, though, the reality that we truly are a non-hierarchical church settled in, and that it was up to each Association and Conference to determine how or if they would adopt and adapt the wisdom that was offered in the Manual on Ministry. And the realization spread that ministerial accountability is not a burden, but a blessed distribution of the weight of responsibility for the well-being of the whole church.

That realization is still spreading and sinking in.

In August I sent a pastoral letter to all the authorized ministers in the Conference about “fitness for ministry” and how that phrase is coming to be understood. We are, I believe, the first Conference to tackle a definition, stating that to be “fit for ministry” in the United Church of Christ an individual has a call from God, education and a combination of gifts, talents and traits of personality to allow for the gracious and trustworthy performance of ministry.

The person is also accountable to the wider church, subject to standards beyond the desires of the congregation he or she serves and is understood to be called to serve, not to be served, to place the care and health of his or her congregation above personal needs and concerns.

We despise bureaucracy. I’m right there with you on this. My pledge to you is that I am and will remain deeply committed to nurture both autonomy and covenant in our beloved church.

When the Conference staff or the Committee on Ministry or the Association offers guidance to congregations, it is not to perpetuate arbitrary procedures or capricious standards, but that guidance emerges from the accumulated experience that tells us that churches are not businesses, that calling a pastor is not the same as hiring a CEO, that having an Interim Minister allows you to become stronger and clearer about your mission as a congregation and thus more able to call the pastor who is “right” for you now; that a call agreement is not the same as a contract; that you must follow your own church bylaws, and that it is helpful to have those bylaws reviewed and clarified as theological not only legal documents; that spoken and unspoken covenants exist within a church and between and among churches; that always in our church life, there is meaning and significance beyond what might seem superficial and perfunctory.

No bureaucracy. Warn, squawk, complain and ask as many questions as it takes to identify the source of any malodorous manifestation of bureaucracy you detect in our church life. Bureaucracy crushes and impedes life. We are called and blessed by the one who said, “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”

                                                                  ~ Mary Susan

Your comments are welcome
Send to msgast@ncncucc.org