Is the UMC set up to suffer from social loafing?

The UMC is a connectional Church which means a number of things.  So clergy are appointed by bishops and not hired by local congregations, each local church pays apportionments which fund global ministries, clergy benefits are grouped together in order to get a "group rate" and many other points of connection.  In many ways you might say the UMC is one big group working on the same mission.  Each church is a local 'franchise' of the larger Church so even if one local church closes the larger Church is not at huge risk of collapse.  Unlike say the Crystal Cathedral which when it closed so did that entire Church.

I love the connection of the UMC, it is in part why I am a UMC minister.  In light of a recent book, You are Not so Smart (of which I hope to blog about for a few posts in the coming days) has made me wonder if the thing that makes the UMC strong and global is in fact the very thing that is leading to the recent rise of the church freaking out about "metrics".

Some would say the rise of concern of counting the butts, baptisms and bucks is connected to the trend of a dying denomination.  Perhaps.  Some would say the rise of counting metrics is in response to a world that is driven by numbers and economics more than generations before. Perhaps.  Some might argue that we might not even care about these metrics if the church was blowin' and goin' and able to meet budgets across the board.  Perhaps.

I wonder if the metrics buzz is a result of the connectionalism.

In You are not so Smart, there is a chapter titled, "Social Loafing" in which argues that we have a misconception about group work.  That is we believe that when we are joined by others in a task, we work harder and become more accomplished, however in reality, once we are a part of a group, we tend put in less effort because we know our work will be pooled with others'.

Could it be the fact that the UMC has pooled our efforts together for so long that we who sit in the pews believe we do not have to work as hard or give as much because it will be pooled together and either be diluted or 'covered by' other people who are giving and working.

This overall thought that our individual slacking or lackluster work has then become the catalyst for a church in demise.  We all think someone else is going to cover the bill or pay the apportionments, but in reality no one is.

So our Church goes into decline.

We loose money and staff and members and then we have a negative feedback loop.

In a time when 1 in 4 Millennials do not associate with any religious tradition, if members of the UMC want the Church to survive then we ought to be aware that our social loafing is no longer going to cut it.

Where are the other nine?

There is a scripture that tells of a story in which Jesus encountered ten lepers who cried out to be healed.  Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests and, the story shares, the people were healed along the way.  One of these people who was healed along the way returns back to Jesus and thanks him.  Jesus asks where the other nine?  I do not know, but one could conjecture a few ideas on why these people did not thank Jesus.

Perhaps one person ran and told all the people she could.
Perhaps one person just plain forgot.
Perhaps one person could not find Jesus who was traveling across the land.
Perhaps one person one ran home to connect with his family.
Perhaps one person discovered a way to make money off the miracle.
Perhaps one person became a priest who felt a call after their mountain top experience.
Perhaps one person was just shocked and immobilized.
Perhaps one person just did not know how to thank Jesus.
Perhaps one person was so self-involved that he believed that he deserved to be healed and did not see a need to thank Jesus.

This text is often used to discuss that we ought to have an "attitude of gratitude" or how we ought to give thanks for our blessings.

And this is not a bad or wrong interpretation.

What I was considering the other day about this text is how the ones who did not return were all still convinced of the purity codes of their day.  That is to say, they go to their priests who are symbols of the religious authorities and ones who could declare people "clean" or not.  As such when those who went to the priests were ones who still affirmed the religious order of their day.

They still believed that there could be unclean people who ought to be separated from the clean people.  While they were now clean, they themselves still bought into the idea that society could declare some people inferior.  Perhaps they would even encounter another "unclean" person and stay away from them.

However, the one who returned to Jesus was the one who did may not have said thank you (the text says he only prostrated himself before Jesus).  We can be certain though, that the one who returned rejected the system of declaring people clean and unclean.  This one, did show himself to the Great Priest, and in doing so made a statement that he understands what Jesus understands - no one can declare another person subhuman.  No one is unclean in the sight of God.  No one is allowed to lord himself over others in such a way to perpetuate a discriminatory system.

Perhaps this is why Jesus asks where the other nine are?  Perhaps Jesus is disappointed to see that only one in ten got his message and rejected the powers that be.

All ten were healed, but only one was set free.  Only one broke away from the system that creates more unclean people.

Only one.

1in 3 Americans either poor or near poor

According to a NY Times over 50 million people are just above the poverty line.

We are talking 50 million in poverty and 50 million just above that line, and if the math is right, that is 100 million people in or dangerously near poverty.

1 in 3 people in the "land of plenty" are not in a land of plenty.

To put this into a different lens, the richest 400 Americans have the collective wealth of the bottom 50% of Americans.