From Bishop Elaine J. W. Stanovsky
April 13, 2016

From Bishop Elaine Stanovsky: Some people in the Rocky Mountain Conference wonder why, if Yellowstone is struggling, Rocky Mountain would want to “take on” the struggling Conference. It’s not a matter of one conference taking on the other. From the beginning we have known that declining trends are similar in the two conferences. But creating a new conference isn’t so we can manage decline. It’s to create a strategic partnership  to cultivate a new season of Wesleyan vitality.

Take a look at the vital signs Rocky Mountain Statistician, Dennis Shaw prepared for the Mission Shaped Future Committees (below). Both Conferences need to think afresh about how we engage the people outside our churches in the life-giving ministry of Christian discipleship, and how we use resources to do so. Does it make sense to do this work together as a single conference? Could creation of a new conference be the occasion for revival of the Wesleyan Spirit?

A Few Shared Mountain Sky Area Numbers: Local Church Focus
Rev. Dr. C. Dennis Shaw, Rocky Mountain Conference Statistician

On March 15, Bishop Elaine wrote about conference financial numbers. I will lay out local church numbers from our two conferences. I hope these numbers and implications will sustain the change narrative leading to redesign and resourcing a new mission focus that rekindles the fire of a movement.

At the 2014 Rocky Mountain Annual Conference in Pueblo, Colorado, I spoke on unsustainability. I opened with Bertrand Russell, the English philosopher and mathematician. Russell wrote about the need to be “moved emotionally by statistics.” He called the capacity both “rare” and “important.” I offered then, and re-offer today, numbers moved Jesus emotionally to action. Otherwise, why would he have gone looking for the Lost Sheep if he were not moved? I am mindful not all are moved by numbers, it is rare after all. I invite all of us to be open to the potential to be moved emotionally by numbers: they support a return to the Wesleyan movement.

I believe worship attendance provides us a critical measure of vitality: I will linger first on attendance. Because it will be difficult, if not impossible, to transform the world without disciples, I will linger a little on disciple making.

If we use 2005 as a baseline, where was 2014 compared to that baseline for the two conferences? In terms of attendance the answer is: 87 percent and 78 percent, respectively. Said another way, over the past 10 years, Rocky Mountain lost 13 percent average Sunday attendance and Yellowstone lost 22 percent in the same metric.

If our decline in disciple making were comparable with the attendance decline, those declines would be in the range of 13 percent and 22 percent, respectively. It is not. It is, in fact, much worse. Our decline in attendance is modest compared to our decline in the making of new disciples, as the following chart shows:

Chart 1: 2014 as a Percentage of 2005 in Four Indicators of Vitality

Conclusion Number 1: Using time as our gauge, both conferences are struggling in disciple-making key vitality metrics.

We see the changes in terms of geography on chart 2.

Chart 2:  Change in Worship Attendance by District and Yellowstone – 2014 as a percentage of 2005

We see a north to south drop in attendance. Note that Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountain portion of Wyoming are “relatively” close to each other in changes. Peaks and Plains is the next southern district to Wyoming. If not for the impact of Hispanic Ministries in Metropolitan, drops there would have been sharper.

Conclusion Number 2: Our decline is not uniform across the two conferences.

Amidst that bad news I have some good news – but it is good news that is not sustainable indefinitely. If we use attendance as our “per capita” basis, our giving when compared within both conferences over time is quite positive. The people who are remaining are quite generous. We need to avoid the assumption that this increase in the sharing of local ministry expenses can be borne indefinitely; it cannot.

Table 1:  Percentages of Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain in Five Attendance Bands

Conclusion 4:  Churches in both Conferences are moving to viability levels that will make pastoral support difficult, if not impossible. 

Demographics are a factor here. Wyoming, Montana, Utah and Colorado have enormous areas with low population densities. The total populations of Montana and Wyoming are roughly equal. I believe it is in the long term interest of a new conference to protect and sustain isolated but low attendance churches in order to preserve a Methodist or Wesleyan presence. What was once a very modest, isolated church in Park City, Utah, is now one of the strongest churches in the conference: time worked to our advantage.

Bottom Line:  Do we really believe that what we are doing now will suddenly start working?  Do we really believe the way we are currently, jointly, configured that we have the resources to actually bring about the leadership development, lay and clergy that will effect change? 

Gil Rendle, who is helping the two conferences in our conversations about a potential shared Mission Shaped Future once said: “We don’t know what to do, so we do what we know.” That suggests to me an invitation to a “fresh expression” of how we do church, and a new conference might provide the climate for renewal that includes the confession we no longer think we know everything we need to know about this new world. For certain, there is need for an intentional consideration of past against a new future. On this Calob Rundell of Salida First suggests: “In a way, maybe this is a forced return to our Wesleyan roots of circuit riders covering vast distances and lay led congregations that see clergy once a month, if that. Maybe this is a time to set our laity free to go forth and be the church.”

I am mindful that the proposal for a new conference is potentially disturbing. Martin Linsky in Leadership on the Line writes “leadership requires disturbing people — but at a rate they can absorb.”

Let’s disturb a few people but not at a rate that causes them to say “no” but rather “tell me more.” Let’s disturb a few people at a pace that can maximize absorption and minimize anxiety.

I know some will see this analysis and recommendations, reflexively, as promoting anxiety. But who gets to define anxiety? Anxiety might be the reaction by the status quo to a call for urgency. MIT change expert John Kotter posits that urgency is required to bring about change.  Change by definition will make a difference, by altering the status quo. Anxiety is a possibility given the human condition to cling to what we think we know. If we don’t want to allow the most anxious presence to seize power, and we don’t, we also don’t wish to empower too few to define anxiety, at least without a conversation.

I wonder if on addressing the hard work of change, and at the same time trying to minimize the anxiety, some of us haven’t become numb to the numbers. Linsky writes: “The most difficult work of leadership involves learning to experience distress without numbing yourself. The virtue of a sacred heart lies in the courage to maintain your innocence and wonder, your doubt and curiosity, and your compassion and love even through your darkest, most difficult moments.” It is an observation that warrants us to linger, even if only briefly, in reflection and discernment.

Janet Forbes of St. Luke’s UMC in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, asks in the context of a new conference: “What if we actually stop doing some things in order to do the most important things?” Janet is right. There are many things that can and should be sacrificed so that we can get on with the most important things: deployment of competent and transformative lay and clergy leadership ready to lead churches that are focused on transformation through Jesus Christ.

I am not sure when the precise “tipping point” is on turning around our unsustainable trends.  I suspect it is in the next fifteen years or so. In my trip to and discussions with Nashville, it is my perception that the national church is moving to an idea that the best strategy is local, contextual, and more adaptive. I like that. We now have an opportunity to let go of values that are anachronisms and baggage that bogs us down. There are potentially some who might say, not now. I offer: If not now, when?

‘We are the ones we have been waiting for’ is, perhaps apocryphally, attributed to an unnamed Hopi elder. Apocryphal or not: I believe it falls to us, we here now, to rekindle the movement that once burned with so much intensity and power. I believe we can. I believe the numbers speak with a voice of urgency. I believe the numbers are a call, to us, ‘we are the ones,’ we few, for local, contextual and adaptive action. There are potentially some who might say, not us. I offer: If not us, who?

After reviewing a draft of this paper, Jeff Richards at Cheyenne Faith offered me the gift of an excellent bottom line that I share with us now. “The present cannot remain the present, but in the future is the God that calls us toward God’s self. Yes, we must move to a place of faithful anxiety, but, if the Gospel stories of the resurrection teach us anything, it is within that anxiety of something outlandishly new, is the movement of the Spirit. The recognitions and changes you invite require a leap of faith. We also need a proclamation of hope, a renewed trust that God is on the other end waiting to catch us in that leap of faith. With that kind of proclamation, we can turn to the future most faithfully.”  Amen.

From Bishop Elaine J. W. Stanovsky
March 15, 2016

As Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone Conferences consider coming together to create a new Mountain Sky Conference, I hear questions about the health of the two conferences. 
  
QUESTION: How is the Financial Health of the Two Conferences? What liabilities do the two conferences carry?

Recently I heard a scary rumor that if Rocky Mountain “took on” Yellowstone, it would have dire consequences for Rocky Mountain Conference. I went straight to Rocky Mountain Treasurer, Noreen Keleshian, and asked her if there is some danger that we’ve missed? Noreen and Yellowstone Treasurer, Anita Saas, got together to compare the financial health of the two conferences, as of the end of 2015. 
 
ANSWER 1: While one Conference is larger, they are both financially healthy.
Yellowstone’s annual general fund income is slightly less than 1/4 the size of Rocky Mountain’s. For shared area-wide expenses the rule of thumb is Rocky Mountain pays 3/4 of the expense and Yellowstone 1/4.
In 2016 Yellowstone’s budget is  $1,369,767. “Mission Share” apportionments to local churches are likely to generate about 90% of the total budget, or $1,232,790. Total income has remained remarkably flat at about $1.2 million for many years. Since 2013 the budget has been built on a realistic projection of anticipated income, rather than on the requests and needs submitted. This has reduced the amount apportioned to the churches, but increased the percentage paid, resulting in a budget that is closer to actual income and expenses than previously. Rocky Mountain’s budget for 2016 is $5,600,000. It has grown slowly from $5.35 million in 2011. Rather than an apportionment formula, Rocky Mountain Conference asks local churches to contribute 13% of their adjusted income each month to connectional giving, called “Tithe Plus Mission” giving. Over the past 5 years the budget has been funded each year between 98 and 102%.

             Yellowstone Annual Conference        Rocky Mountain Conference
Year      Budget         %     Income                      Budget          %      Income
                            
2011     1,439,635    82    1,177,928                  5,350,000    100    5,373,287
2012     1,459,988    80    1,170,351                  5,500,000    98      5,392,784
2013     1,497,984    87    1,303,246                  5,500,000    98      5,389,175
2014     1,360,716    90    1,224,644                  5,600,000    102    5,722,087
2015     1,356,660    89    1,210,107                  5,600,000    99      5,572,286
2016     1,369,767                                              5,600,000       

ANSWER 2: Both Conferences have shown strong commitment to apportioned general church funds.
Rocky Mountain Conference has improved its general fund contribution rate from 90% in 2010 to 100% for both 2014 and 2015, with a firm commitment to maintain 100% in the future.
When I arrived in 2008 Yellowstone Annual Conference was well on its way to paying 100% of its general church asking. At my recommendation, to help bring stability to the whole financial program of the Conference, it has settled at 90% since 2012, keeping slightly ahead of the denominational average. Commitment is high, however, to improving in the future.    
ANSWER 3: Neither Conference carries significant debt or liability. 
 
Pre-1982 Pension
A place some annual conferences have a large unfunded liability is in pre-1982 Pension obligations. A target funding level for this commitment is 130%. Both conferences are prudently well above 130%: Yellowstone at 154% and Rocky Mountain at 145%. Just as salaries are lower in Yellowstone than in Rocky Mountain, the 2016 past service rate for pre-1982 pension is $455 in Yellowstone, lower than the $558 in Rocky Mountain. When a merger of two conferences occurs, the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits does not insist that the past service rates for clergy coming from the two previous conferences be reconciled. Clergy who served in Yellowstone before 1982 could continue to receive pension based upon the Yellowstone past service rate.  Clergy who served in Rocky Mountain could continue to receive the Rocky Mountain past service rate.  Over time there will be fewer and fewer clergy affected by this portion of pension for service before 1982. 
 
Other Pension and Benefits funds
The two conferences subsidize for retiree healthcare in different ways and at different levels.  Yellowstone is funded at 73% with an unfunded liability of $597,271, or 27%. Rocky Mountain is funded at 30% with an unfunded liability of $6,578,287, or 70%. Both conferences have adopted Comprehensive Benefit Funding Plans and fund other pension and benefits at the rate required of all conferences.

RETIRED CLERGY HEALTH        Yellowstone     Rocky Mountain
Assets                                            1,648,021         2,826,757
Actuarial Liability                           2,245,292         9,405,044
Unfunded liability                         -597,271           -6,578,287
Funded liability                              73%                  30%

Arrearages for Insurance, Pension and Health
In Yellowstone Conference each local church is responsible for its own property and liability insurance, at levels established by the Conference Trustees. There is, therefore, no conference arrearage for property and liability insurance. However, there may be churches that are under-insured or un-insured for property and liability. Each local church is billed for its pastor’s pension and health insurance. There are no arrearages for these billings.

A few churches in the Rocky Mountain Conference fail to pay all their total costs for insurance, pension and health insurance. At the end of 2015 the total arrearages owed by local churches to the Conference totaled $296,870.

SUMMARY
Both conferences have robust and responsible volunteer and staff systems of financial management and accountability and are continuing to make concrete improvement in areas that are not functioning as well as they should.

As the two conferences get to know one another and consider a shared future, financial soundness is not an impediment. Both conferences have benefited from generous giving, prudent planning and sound management, standing them on solid financial ground.

So, when you hear me say that Yellowstone is facing viability concerns, it is not due to mismanagement, or poverty. It is about scale. Its size and numbers are not large enough to easily support the complex structure of an Annual Conference. But more about that later ...

From Bishop Elaine J. W. Stanovsky
March 1, 2016




America’s Changing Religious Landscape
Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to Grow
The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men.

SOME GOOD NEWS: there are vital ministries in the Mountain Sky Area!
There are amazing, vital, congregations in the Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain Conferences, where people encounter the empowering love of Jesus Christ, grow in their personal lives and reach out to engage and serve their communities. They come in all sizes, in large and small communities, on the plains, in cities, in the mountains. Some are more than 100 years old, some just began. Some vital congregations are growing, some are not. They can be found gathering in old buildings, new buildings, shared buildings, a pub, a coffee shop, on a piece of vacant land or in a City Park.
 
SOME NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS: fewer people are growing in faith through our ministries.
Vitality, by any measure, is not the trend among United Methodist churches in most communities across a four-state region. Our churches have been in decline for decades and there is no change in sight. We aren’t alone in this trend. We are in good company. It’s not like someone else is doing it right, and we aren’t. But it does call for those of us in leadership to sit up straight, pay attention and to try to lead into a new season of vital ministry. That’s our job.
 
SOME CHALLENGING NEWS: vital ministry for the future requires deep change now.
What we are learning, when we sit up straight, is that these trends are so big and so deeply rooted in what’s happening in the lives of people that they aren’t going to change by a new sign, a fresh coat of paint, or a better preacher. As a Church we are called into “adaptive change.” It’s the kind of change that is necessary when familiar patterns of life are no longer suited to the environment in which we live.  It’s like when our toddler rolled his bouncy chair down the basement stairs. We had to install one of those removable gates at the top of the stairs to keep him safe. Our habit of keeping the door open and sprinting up and down the stairs unimpeded did not support the survival of our son. Or, it’s like when my dad fell on another set of basement stairs and blew his knee joint all to pieces. His body was no longer suited to an environment of stairs. He had to adapt to survive. He had to move to a home without stairs.
 
What we are learning is that the forms of religious life we know how to offer are no longer attracting the people in our communities. They are no longer engaging the spiritual longings of the people. The pattern of Sunday morning worship and Sunday School structured for a nuclear family with one working parent who live within a 15 minute drive of the church building, has been on a steady decline since the 1970s, when women re-entered the work force. Church as an institution that defines and promotes social norms of behavior is no longer in high demand. Church where people sit in pews and look to the pastor to dispense pastoral wisdom and comfort does not connect with urgent yearnings of people. Alan Roxborough, of the Missional Leader Network, says the place for mission is at the intersection of the biblical story and the stories of our lives. That intersection is more and more likely to happen outside the walls of our churches or in the weekly order of worship.
 
More and more people are describing themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious.” They seem to know themselves as spiritual beings, seeking to grow in frank, intimate, spiritual community, but don’t look for it or find it in the traditional forms of church.
 
SOME REALLY HARD NEWS: change involves loss.
We can’t fix the decline by improving. It’s not about the pastor or the preaching, or the bible study, or the coffee. It’s not about the street appeal or the parking, or the hymnal. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about these things. We should. And we should always strive to improve. BUT, improvement is not adaptation. Adaptation requires that we let go of what we were raised on and learn how to behave in new ways. Adaptation requires that we quit doing what we know how to do that isn’t working, and try new things.
 
It is not easy to adapt. Nobody wants to let go of what we love. It’s like a camel fitting through the eye of a needle. It’s like entering your mother’s womb a second time to be born again. It might even be like death and resurrection. We’ve gotten used to things the way they are. It’s less disturbing to hold on to the forms we know, even as they decline, than it is to step out of those forms into a formless and uncertain future. Suffering loss is only worth it if your life depends on it.
 
So, Dad, you really need to move out of this house. We want you well and safe. You might not survive another fall like that.
 
THE REALLY GOOD NEWS: God has prepared us for difficult change.
Who better than the Christian community of faith to look up, see a pillar of fire, gird up our loins and march into the wilderness? This is what we are made for. This is what years of bible study, and prayer have prepared us for. John Cobb named us people of “self-transcending selfhood.” We are spiritually capable of being more than we are or have ever imagined ourselves to be capable of. And God leads the way. “Behold, I make all things new.” “Behold, I am doing a new thing, can you not perceive it?” “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”
 
If I were you, reading this, right about now I’d be thinking, “I see the need for change, but what’s to say that THIS CHANGE will lead us into a new season of vitality?” If you aren’t ready to let go of the Rocky Mountain Conference and the Yellowstone Conference to create a new conference, what are you willing to give up to open the possibility of new creation?   
 
Stay tuned. Join the conversation with your comments. There’s more to come ...

Elaine J. W. Stanovsky

From Bishop Elaine J. W. Stanovsky
February 8, 2016

This week Christians begin the annual 6-week Lenten journey with Jesus to Holy Week and Easter. It starts on Ash Wednesday when some of us will receive ashes on our foreheads as a sign that we aren't as great as we think we are and a reminder that life is short. And we might take on "practices" that help us reflect and put us back into right relationship with God.

In June the lay and clergy members of the Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone Annual Conferences will decide whether to ask for permission to create one Mountain Sky Annual Conference. My Lenten discipline will be to prepare you to make this decision with the best information available, and in a spirit of wisdom and courage. It is spiritual work because I will prayerfully listen to God's leading, remember the many steps that brought us to this decision point, peer into the future to imagine what possibilities and pitfalls might lie ahead, and then try to put it into words that will invite you into your own discernment and a holy conversation.

TO-GETHER or TO-PART?  
Years ago one of our young sons coined the term: TO - PART. It is the obvious alternative to to-gether. He would ask: To-gether? Or to-part?  Like, are the toy train cars to-gether or to-part? Or, will we drive to-gether in one car, or to-part in two cars?

Will the Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain Annual Conferences seek a future to-gether as one conference, or to-part, remaining separate? This question raises a lot of other questions about distances, staff, offices, liabilities, clergy salaries and benefits, representation in the general church. I'll try to respond to these in the weeks ahead.

I believe that the two conferences should become one Mountain Sky Annual Conference, to-gether. But it's not my decision. The two annual conferences, along with the Western Jurisdictional Conference will make the decision. My role is not to convince anyone of anything, but as your bishop to show you what I see as one who knows and watches over both conferences in love. I'll do all this through a series of Mountain Sky Outlooks that will be posted on my website along with other voices and perspectives.

I am at least the third bishop, following bishops Swenson and Brown, to encourage the two conferences to consider becoming one. Along with much of The United Methodist Church in the U.S.A., the Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone Annual Conferences have experienced steady decline in key vital signs for many years. In both conferences, each year fewer people give more money to support the ministries of the church locally and globally. These trends are not sustainable.

Bishop Brown’s 2001 reflections on the Yellowstone Conference

• There is some real concern for the life/health/future for the Yellowstone Conference. It comes up like fear and foreboding.
• I’m seeing a number of churches that don’t know if they’re going to be here next year.   
• Yellowstone has 135 churches. Of those, 85 are 100 or less in membership.  
• We’re at the bottom of the clergy pay scale in the US.

Rocky Mountain 2013 Statistician’s Report, by Rev. Dennis Shaw
The number of people who worship in the Rocky Mountain Conference has been on a steady decline. During 2013 worship attendance fell by over 800, which was the 2nd largest annual loss in a decade. Over that time more than 4,000 have left our pews. Much of the decline has flowed from a few of our larger churches. In 2013, twelve churches lost 600 worshippers.

Leaders of the Conferences have looked for strategies to turn things around. Both conferences have experimented with shifting staff configurations, changing district boundaries, new program initiatives. So far, we have not found our way out of decline.

I believe that God is still at work through the United Methodist Churches of the Mountain Sky Area. As disciple-leaders we are charged with noticing what God is up to, and doing the work. That’s what the conversation should be about:  joining God at a time when many people are finding their way to faith outside our churches.

God give us the courage to follow where you lead.

We can’t go on like this.  Both Conferences are on an unsustainable path of decline. Young people are not institutionally oriented the way their parents’ and grandparents’ were. They are spiritually alive and curious, but they do not expect to find the social diversity, the culture of grace and the spiritual engagement they seek in our churches. What we know how to do will not raise up a new generation of disciples of Jesus Christ to change the world.  

IS THERE NO HOPE? Never! But we must face the cold hard facts before we can begin to have the vision and courage we will need to follow Jesus where he is leading us.  

Stay tuned.
Bishop Elaine J. W. Stanovsky