What is the primary work of bishops? That's one of the questions under consideration as the Global Methodist Church (GMC) prepares to make a decision about the nature and function of the episcopacy at its upcoming Convening Conference. One plan proposes fewer bishops that have responsibility for several annual conferences simultaneously. Under this plan, each conference would have a Conference Superintendent (either full or part-time) who would be responsible for leadership of the administrative processes of the annual conference. This proposal is known as the General Superintendency Plan, but we could also call it the Traveling Bishop Plan. The other plan proposes residential bishops in each annual conference who provide both spiritual leadership and administrative leadership. This one is often referred to as the Florida Plan or the Hybrid Model, but it could also be known as the Residential Bishop Plan.
A false dichotomy?
Proponents of the Residential Bishop Plan suggest that the distinction between spiritual leadership and administrative leadership is a false dichotomy. They argue that current Presidents Pro Tem (and future Conference Superintendents) lead both administratively and spiritually by necessity - that spiritual leadership cannot be separated from the administration of the annual conference. And there is a point to be made there. While the Presidents Pro Tem are primarily defined in terms of their administrative duties, they also offer implicit and explicit spiritual leadership. That's fine. Point granted. But, to my mind, that's not the crucial question. The question is whether bishops should be the primary persons tasked with both spiritual leadership and administrative leadership. There are good reasons to answer that question with a emphatic no.
United Methodist Baggage
In his chapter in Reconstructing Methodism, Bishop Scott Jones argued that we've picked up significant baggage from our past in the United Methodist church (UMC). Part of that baggage was saddling residential bishops with both spiritual and administrative leadership. Here's how he puts it in the book:
The GMC Transitional Leadership Council appointed a task force to propose a plan for the episcopacy. This proposed legislation calls for choosing a small number of bishops in 2024 for a two-year term and then electing a different group in 2026 for six-year terms. In this proposal, each bishop would be responsible for a small number of annual conferences and, together, the bishops would form an assembly of bishops to provide leadership to the church. This plan would maximize the spiritual leadership of the bishops and provide the kind of teamwork necessary to help the church thrive. Most of the administrative work and appointment-making would rest with the conferences’ presidents.
Whatever the Conference chooses, the bishops of the GMC must focus on spiritual leadership. The GMC must shape its culture to renew and revitalize the Wesleyan movement. As I wrote in Once and Future Wesleyan Movement, there is much in Methodism that is valuable and must be strengthened, but over the years we have accumulated some baggage that needs to be left behind. Part of the baggage is overloading the episcopacy with administrative tasks. Instead, GMC bishops need to focus on values based on our mission statement: To make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly (34-35).
The point is that bishops had so much work to do administering the annual conferences that they had little room left to cultivate healthy spiritual leadership. That's not to say some bishops didn't do a better job than others of balancing the work. It is to say that, in general, the bishops leaned in to the administrative work, and that requirement caused the spiritual health of the Church to suffer. We asked too much of our shepherds, and the flock as a whole suffered.
Is there a need to delegate?
One strategy for safeguarding the GMC from this problem is to delegate most of the administrative work of the annual conference to Conference Superintendents. That doesn't mean bishops do nothing administratively, neither is it to say that Conference Superintendents would do nothing in terms of spiritual leadership. It does mean that, in asking Conference Superintendents to lean in to the administrative role, we free bishops up to lean into the spiritual shepherding role.
There's an analogy to this in the life of the local church. When churches get to a certain size, they often opt to employ a church administrator or executive pastor. The idea is that the organization has become too administratively complex for the senior pastor to lead well both spiritually and administratively. So, churches opt to delegate some of the administrative work to another staff member in order to free the senior pastor to focus on preaching, teaching, leadership development, ministry strategy, and the like. There's a similar process in small to midsize churches where the Trustees pick up significant aspects of the administration of the local church so the pastor can focus on spiritual leadership.
My argument is that the GMC generally and the annual conferences particularly are large enough organizations that we need to relieve bishops from much of the administrative leadership of the annual conferences and delegate that work to Conference Superintendents. In order to maximize the spiritual leadership the bishops offer to the whole Church, we need to delegate most of the annual conference admin to Conference Superintendents. This will allow the bishops the necessary time to focus on their own formation as spiritual leaders and theological shepherds of the Church. They will still be available to advise and counsel the Conference Superintendents in matters of administration as needed, but they should be expected to focus the vast majority of their energy on guarding our doctrine and shepherding the spiritual life of the larger Church. The only plan on the table at the Convening Conference that provides for this is the General Superintendency Plan (or what I'm calling the Traveling Bishop Plan). That's the plan that needs to be perfected and passed.
The Florida/Residential Bishop Plan will overload the episcopacy with administrative tasks (as it did in the UMC) and so creates a danger that the bishops will not attend adequately to the spiritual leadership crucial to cultivating a healthy denomination. In contrast, the General Superintendency Plan frees bishops to maximize the fruitfulness of their spiritual leadership. That's what we need.
Dr. Matt O’Reilly (Ph.D., Gloucestershire) is Lead Pastor of Christ Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Director of Research at Wesley Biblical Seminary, and a fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians. A two-time recipient of the John Stott Award for Pastoral Engagement, he is the author of Paul and the Resurrected Body: Social Identity and Ethical Practice, The Letters to the Thessalonians, and Bless the Nations: A Devotional for Short-Term Missions. Follow @mporeilly on X and @mattoreillyauthor on Instagram.
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The problem with the UMC was their tyrannical bishops. I fundamentally do not see how the Superintendency Plan resolves this other then gutting the episcopacy and transferring it to an unelected administrator with no term limits. To me, calling a tyrant "superintendent" instead of "Bishop" solves nothing....
What am I not seeing and understanding about the TLC's plan?