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by Nick Strobel
In response to declining membership with increasing number of "decaying" churches (using Dan Dick's Vital Signs definition) and the need to fix a structure that worked well in the 1950s but not the 21st century, the California-Nevada Annual Conference will be changing the role and scope of the district superintendents. We will have 5 district superintendents sharing responsibility for 7 districts. A sixth district superintendent will work conference-wide ("Conference DS") assisting the Cabinet in the transition and will focus on leadership development and church vitalization. The Annual Conference's 340 churches will be organized into (approximately) 40 circuits with one of the local church pastors being the Circuit Leader for their local circuit. The rest of the district structures will remain as they are: each district will continue to have an administrative assistant (Fresno district's is Diana Marie) and the district committees will continue. Each district administrative assistant will relate to 2 or 3 district superintendents and our district superintendent (D.S.) will overlap into Delta or San Jose districts. Each D.S. will be working with approximately 8 Circuit Leaders.
These changes are NOT because of the national/state financial crisis—the changes would be happening even if we had millions upon millions of dollars. Too many of our churches are "decaying churches" and we need to change the structure so that it is impossible to do things the "old way"—ways that were not working. The recession means that we won't be able to do as much structural changes as are needed. The priorities of the D.S. for the local churches will be to figure out how to help them grow, how to help them be healthy and how to help them overcome what is paralyzing them.
The Circuit Leader will be one of the pastors (usually ordained elder) of one of the local churches in the circuit of local churches in their area. While the specifics of the job description are being worked out as of mid-March, here is what we know. Using the Wisconsin Annual Conference as a basis for this change, the Circuit Leader will meet with the other pastors to screen out what truly needs to be taken to the D.S. and what does not. The Circuit Leader will look for trouble spots that the D.S. needs to pay attention to and which ones the D.S. does not. The circuit and Circuit Leader will replace some of the things for which the pastors would go to the D.S.
Circuit Leaders will be identified by mid-April. The Circuit Leader will usually be an ordained elder but a local pastor (not ordained) could also be the Circuit Leader if he or she has those gifts needed for the job. The Circuit Leader will help the pastors of local churches in their circuit to empower the laity to take up more of the church's ministry (as the laity did when the Methodist church was growing over a century ago).
Circuits will be created by geographical regions at the start of this change and may change to groupings by some other characteristics later. Our circuit will very likely include the churches of Bakersfield, and Taft and also possibly one or more of: Tehachapi, Weldon, Kernville, Lake Isabella, and Wasco (those last 5 may be their own circuit or part of other circuits).
How will we know if it is working? The measurables that will be looked at are: 1) worship attendance and 2) number of people touched by that church's ministry. Other criteria/questions addressed will be: are pastors reporting what they are doing and do pastors feel supported by the circuit structure. We're going to live with this new structure until July 2010 before we evaluate how well it is working.
Bishop Brown also wrote an article about these changes (select the link to view it).
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