Scott Jones' Support for Regionalization

The Dilemma

A book has been staring at me from the bookshelf in my office. I read it shortly after it was published, 15 years ago. Staying at the Table by then United Methodist Bishop (and my bishop) Scott Jones gave a strong defense of unity for the denomination even with our many disagreements. Much water has passed under the bridge since Jones wrote, but I recently read through it again and was reminded of why even today I yearn more for unity than separation, even as I acknowledge that separation is now unavoidable. 

One piece that Jones advocated for still has legs - what we now call regionalization.

Listen to Jones' case for regionalization from the portion of his book titled "Global Nature." At a time when the number of delegates to General Conference from outside the U.S. was half of what it is now, he said, "Delegates from outside the United States complain that too much time is spent on U.S. issues, and U.S. delegates complain that there is no forum where U.S. issues can be dealt with by U.S. representatives." The 2024 General Conference will be the last one where any country has a majority of the delegates, but we are still structured as a U.S.-centric church. This is a problem.

Jones gave us a solution: "I believe great progress can be made if the General Conference will create a Central Conference for the United Sates, and then determine the answers to two questions:
1. What paragraphs of our Book of Discipline...are global?
2. What paragraphs of our Book of Discipline ought to be...settled by Central Conferences?"

He goes on to note that many aspects of our polity would remain the same, including the powers of jurisdictions in the U.S., the function of our general agencies, our doctrine, and our Social Principles.

His solution is the right one. And in 2024 General Conference can make it happen. The regionalization legislation will replace the language of "Central Conference" with "Regional Conference," but otherwise what I have read is exactly what Jones suggested.

What Paragraphs are Global and Which Are Regional?

The draft legislation I've seen delineates this clearly. It retains the language of "The General Conference shall have full legislative power over all matters distinctively connectional," but adds language that allows General Conference to "legislate what is non-adaptable for regional conferences" with a supermajority vote. Legislation passed after Jones' book was published specifies paragraphs 1-166 as "not subject to change or adaptation except by action of the General Conference." These paragraphs contain all the core doctrine* of the church, the Constitution, and the Social Principles. Everything not in those paragraphs is adaptable, subject to the limitation noted above.

What is most important to see is that our doctrine really does become what holds us together. And despite the misinformation you may have heard, our doctrine really is staying the same. Instead of an 800+ page book that is fully binding to some people and minimally binding to others, we will all be bound by the principles in the first 120 pages (and less than that if the new Global Social Principles are adopted). Politically, this is a conservative proposal. It lets more governance happen closer to the people who are governed and less reliance on the larger bureaucracy. 

This is a good idea, regardless of the question of whether or how we become a more inclusive denomination. Frankly, I supported the last attempt at regionalization, which Jones himself led, even though that legislation would not have impacted our teaching on human sexuality. I agreed with Jones' statement in 2008: "I do not regard our teaching on homosexuality as an essential doctrine." I also agreed with his follow up statement, "We have seen how important diversity is to the body of Christ. Diversity includes spiritual gifts, ethnicities, cultures, languages, and theological persuasions within the bounds of our doctrine, discipline, and mission." Jones seems to have had a change of mind, as he left and led others out of the denomination. I have not. We are better with a global church, unified by core doctrine while allowing diversity in that which is not core.

*  I remember Jones making an argument on Facebook once that because doctrine is the official teaching of the Church our doctrine goes far beyond what is labeled doctrine in the Book of Discipline in paragraph 102, 103, and 104. That's OK. I've said silly things on Facebook, too. It's not that he's wrong. Technically, he's right. But that means the entire Book of Discipline is doctrine and I don't think anybody wants to make the case that having the correct number of people on a given church committee or holding all six Special Sunday offerings is equivalent teaching to our understanding of Baptism or the nature of Christ.

The Dunning-Kruger Hermeneutic

 I admit I was angry.

The post on Facebook said people who believe what I believe need to read the Bible. 

I do read the Bible. I may not read it the same way as others, I may be mistaken in my interpretation, but virtually every day for as long as I can remember I have read the Bible. I don't doubt that my debate opponent that day has also read the Bible. I do doubt that she knows it as well as she thinks she does.

Dunning-Kruger

The Dunning-Kruger Effect was coined by researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. It is sometimes accidentally referred to as the Dunder Mifflin Effect. This is because for fans of The Office, the best way of describing the Dunning-Kruger effect is to just point to the character of Michael Scott at the Dunder Mifflin paper company on the show.

In short, the Dunning-Kruger effect is the observation that the less a person knows about a given subject, the more they think they know. In the same way, the less competent a person is at a task, the more competent they think they are. Conversely, the more a person knows, the more they recognize how much they don't know.

About 15 years ago, I developed a genius method to see if the people at the church I served were growing in their discipleship. I developed a "Spiritual Health Inventory" of 60 statements. One Sunday each month we took just two minutes in worship for people to answer 5 questions, rating themselves on each measure from 1-5. One year later, the same 5 questions would be asked again. If the scores were higher then, we would have an objective measure of growth. The problem, I discovered, was the Dunning Kruger effect. Often, as we grow in our discipleship, we have a better understanding of just how far from Jesus we actually are. So if the question is, "I seek to live according to God's will every day," a relatively immature Christian might rate themselves a 4 ("Sure, I try to do what God wants me to do.") while a more mature Christian might rate themselves a 3 ("I try, and I fail more than I'd like to admit. Thank God for the grace that lets me try again."). For me, that means every day I am a prodigal seeking to come home. Fifteen years ago I don't think I would have said that. For my inventory, that means a higher score didn't necessarily correlate with spiritual growth and a lower score didn't necessarily correlate with spiritual decline. The Dunning-Kruger effect and its corollary would affect the way people answered the questions.

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is a fancy word for how you read the Bible. For example, if you read every part of the Bible as literal historical fact (e.g., six days after creating the universe, God created a literal first man and God literally removed a rib from that man to form the first woman) then you are using a literalist hermeneutic. If you read the Bible as a compilation of not just 66 different books, but a compilation of 66 books that in many instances were themselves compiled by multiple authors over, sometimes, hundreds of years (e.g. Genesis contains two different creation stories from two different traditions that both have something of value to teach us), then you are using a hermeneutic called "source criticism." 

Whether we realize it or not, most of use multiple hermeneutics depending on which part of the Bible we are reading and even what our mood is on that given day. Most of us also have one or two approaches that we most favor. I invite you to consider whether you might use a hermeneutic, an approach to reading the Bible, that I call the Dunning-Kruger Hermeneutic.

The Dunning-Kruger Hermeneutic

In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly corrects and chastises religious leaders with not knowing their own scriptures. A classic example is the story of Nicodemus in John 3. "'You are Israel's teacher,' said Jesus, 'and do you not understand these things?'" 

One day when I was in seminary studying to be a pastor, I told my Bible professor why his reading of a particular text was wrong. He replied, phrased infinitely kinder than my paraphrase here, "When you get a doctorate in Bible and Hebrew then you can teach. Until then, how about if I do the teaching and you do the learning." It sounds elitist, but he was right. Later in seminary, he also shared some of what he was still learning, even with those doctorates. His degrees didn't mean that he now knew it all. They meant he knew more and he knew there was far more to still learn. I thought I pretty much had it all down. 

The Dunning-Kruger Hermeneutic is when a person reads the Bible as though they already are Biblical experts - they already know what it says. As an illustration, let me take you back to that Facebook post. I never got that doctorate. I do have a masters degree. I have more than 25 years of experience as a pastor striving to preach Biblically informed sermons every Sunday. I have read at least a few verses of the Bible nearly every day, along with countless devotional and scholarly treatments of Scripture. None of that makes me an expert or a perfect interpreter. 

 "If you believe XYZ, you need to read the Bible," the 20-something who has taken a couple Bible classes and heard some fundamentalist sermons says to me. The truth is, Christians have argued about what we should believe based on our reading of the Bible for nearly 2,000 years. That's one reason we have hundreds of denominations. But the less a person knows about the Bible, the less a person knows about Christian history, the less a person knows about Biblical interpretation, the more certain that person is that they are right. To be clear, that means I could be wrong, too, and I need to be open to that possibility.

I don't remember exactly how I responded to that person's comment. I hope I said something like this: "I have, and still do, read the Bible. And I also believe XYZ. I understand that many people, including you, disagree with me. You could be right. I could be wrong. I hope as you read the Bible, you will also be open to the possibility that you could be right or wrong. I hope that as you read it you will ask questions, not so that your faith turns to doubt, but so that your faith continues to grow."

In short, don't read the Bible like Michael Scott. You may not understand as much as you think you do.