The only thing worse than politics is church politics.  And yet, wherever two or more are gathered in Christ’s name, there are politics.  One of the beautiful and infuriating things about Methodism is how it attempts to take the best from other denominations and synthesize them together.  What worked in the late 1700s doesn’t necessarily make sense in today’s culture.  What works in America doesn’t necessarily work in Latin America.  General Conference meets every four years, and United Methodist delegates from around the world gather in committees to sort through countless petitions and make suggestions to the larger body for voting up or down.  The way we were piece-mealed together from the beginning, combined with a democratic process, guarantees that we will never have a systematic ecclesiology.

Well, I take that back: We are designed to make change slowly.  We are designed to make it difficult to let go of our history.  We are designed to have loads of “holy conversations” and “Christian conferencing” that do not bear what the world would call “results.”  This is itself a theology and a structure, one that attempts to value every voice, one that attempts to value our heritage.  It’s an imperfect machine, but it’s not totally crazy.

If you want a succinct explanation of the structure of General Conference, Rev. Jeremy Smith has a great entry on his website Hacking Christianity (click here).

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