Mission comes first in appointments
The mission of the church comes first.
“We say that to ourselves, and repeat it constantly,” Missouri Bishop Robert Schnase said of the appointive cabinet meetings. “We have tried in a very conscientious way to make the appointment system more consistent, to make it more outward focused and to make it mission driven.”
Bishop Schnase spent the first hour of the last day of Annual Conference Session teaching how the Missouri Conference cabinet goes about making appointments. During this time he brought out the boards, which are always locked shut in the cabinet room, and opened them up to walk through the process that results in appointing pastors to local churches.
A friend of Bishop Schnase once shared with him that when she first started making appointments, she primarily considered how the pastor and District Superintendent would respond to the appointment. Later she put the priority on how the local church would respond. But now she primarily considers how the community around the church might respond to the appointment. It’s a process that is centered on the mission field. A pastor’s track-record of fruitfulness comes into play here. Bishop Schnase recalled a statement that he had heard made at one of Rev. John Heyward’s retirement services.
“Every time he turned his keys in, there was more church there than when he came,” he said.
In the United Methodist Church, the entire authority of making appointments rests solely with the Bishop. Cabinet members are advisors that provide information to help make decisions. Information about pastors and churches comes from district superintendent visits, the pastorparish relations evaluation, the district superintendent evaluation, the consultation with the PPR committee and with the pastor, records and statistics regarding attendance, membership, giving, etc., The statistics are considered in light of the demographics of the surrounding community (is the population increasing for decreasing?, etc.)
In early February, the cabinet spends a week in assessment at a retreat center. Every district superintendent brings a threering binder with reports of every pastor in his or her district with a full-time appointment. They also bring information about every person who is known at that time to be entering, leaving or moving into full-time ministry. The cabinet works to develop a constant pattern to award excellence in the mission field, and all appointments are supported with data. Length of appointments are a factor, and the Missouri cabinet goes by the following guidelines:
- Appointments to churches of 200 in attendance or less should last at least four years.
- Appointments to churches with 200 – 500 in attendance should last at least six years.
- Appointments to churches with 500 or more in attendance should last at least eight years.
- Pastors will not be moved during their provisional period. If they request to be moved, their provisional time will start over.
- Consultations occur before appointments are made • Introductions are not interviews (Out of about 400 fulltime appointments Bishop Schnase has made, they have only changed three times)
- If a second offer is made to a pastor, the first offer will always be the best one.
- If a pastor desires to stay at a church, the cabinet may honor that, more likely than if a pastor says he or she wants to move.
The cabinet begins looking at strategic appointments. Issues like cross-cultural appointments and women in leadership are considered. By the time the cabinet closes the week-long retreat, they have a good idea of how many openings they need to fill.
Then it starts getting complicated. The number of churches needing a pastor and the number of pastors needing a church (elders are guaranteed an appointment) is not necessarily the same. Some of the most strategic appointments may be to associate pastor positions. Some people who weren’t planning on moving may be asked to do so. Whenever someone moves, it creates another opening. These are referred to as appointment chains.
Bishop Schnase started moving representative pastor cards and church cards around on the board to demonstrate the complexity of the process. Each pastor’s name card has his or her current salary listed, and each church also has their current salary listed. “Something that may give you pause is that you’ll notice half of the pastors in this appointment chain are stepping down in salary,” Bishop Schnase said. “It’s very challenging to deal with inequities in salary.”
And it keeps getting harder. The Conference has calculated how the total amount that Missouri Conference churches put into salaries of full-time appointments, and that number goes down by about $300,000 every year. In many appointment changes, pastors are either receiving the same salary or a reduction.
“It isn’t punitive, it’s just that is how many dollars there are,” Bishop Schnase said.
Each Bishop has his or her own style when it comes to making appointments. Some conferences have different processes in making appointments. Unlike the Missouri Conference process, other Conferences may be relational, in which case being in a close relationship with the district superintendent or bishop is important. The process may be driven by salary progression, tenure, pastor preference, conflict, keeping all parties satisfied, or other factors.
Whenever an appointment is made, Bishop Schnase and the cabinet consider the following sentence: “ I have appointed ___ to ____ so that ____.”
“We finish that sentence in such a way that it is a mission driven appointment,” Bishop Schnase said.
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