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The Wisconsin Conference will launch a series of conversations in the coming months intended to explore the role of the four regional associations in the future of the wider church.
In Wisconsin, the Northeast, Northwest, Southwest and Southeast associations face increasing challenges in recruiting volunteers to serve on committees and in funding association dues as church membership declines. Already, ecclesiastical functions formerly performed in the associations – support for Members in Discernment, clergy fitness reviews, guidelines for licensed lay ministers, and conflict transformation – have been consolidated, moves that ensure consistency across the Conference, said Conference Minister Franz Rigert.
The Conference board of directors earlier this fall directed the staff to facilitate discussions about ways of “associating” in both regional and nongeographical ways. Those discussions are expected to lay the groundwork for outreach to stakeholders across the Conference and, eventually, a strategy for moving forward.
Listening will be key to the process, which has built in time for deep, spacious conversations.
“We’re not in a rush. This is a process we want to do thoroughly,” Franz said. “We’ve put together an initial think tank of people from each association. The purpose of that group will be to take four or five months to organize these ideas, think about a timetable, hold listening sessions, and help us understand the technical changes we would have to make in bylaws and constitutions to allow this to happen.”
One expected result of further consolidation of services to the Conference would be to make better use of the time and talents of people in congregations across the Dairy State.
Current judicatory “structures were created at a time when our collective church membership was much, much larger than it is today,” Bret Bicoy, chair of the Conference board of directors, said by email. “Yet we shouldn't approach this work from a position of scarcity. Consolidating our organizational structures and streamlining our administrative responsibilities will free up volunteer energy that could be redirected toward our mission-focused work.
“Simplifying these organizational and administrative aspects of our church and shifting our focus (to) serving the larger community will rejuvenate existing congregations and encourage others to join us. If we are going to inspire more people to get involved in our churches, we need to focus on mission work that allows us to live our values.”
Besides, geography isn’t the barrier to collaborative ministries that it was in decades past. Franz noted that Conference justice ministries, for example, like those around creation care, racial healing and immigration, are fueled by “nongeographic affinity connections.”
“For a lot of things, it doesn’t matter where you live. The work can be done virtually,” he said. A hybrid approach is possible, too: A justice group, for example, might tap one or two individuals in each region of the state to support congregations in local justice ministries.
To affirm the identity and autonomy of local churches, Franz emphasized that “this is not a top-down decision.”
“This is not the board and staff telling people what to do,” he said. “If we make changes to association life, those decisions will have to be made at the association level.”
Bret said that the conversation around associations actually originated in the Northeast Association before the COVID-19 pandemic. He also serves on the executive committee of the Northeast Association.
“We were growing increasingly frustrated with our inability to recruit people to fill all the roles that are expected of an association,” Bret said in an email. “The NEA entered into a conversation with the Conference about merging the NEA grants program into the Conference's wider Catalyst Grant. We in the NEA wanted to ensure that our money remained dedicated to churches in the Northeast, but also needed to alleviate our regional burden of finding volunteers to staff this program.”
The result? The Northeast Association eventually moved its entire grants program under the Catalyst umbrella.
Similar conversations are underway elsewhere in the UCC and beyond. The four Pennsylvania conferences, for instance, are eyeing a merger that would result in a single Keystone Conference. Other conference mergers already have taken place. Outside the UCC, three Episcopal dioceses in Wisconsin recently agreed to merge into a single diocese.
The ultimate goal of any reorganization would be to strengthen the Conference’s mission: to support, equip and resource congregations and people. Said Franz: “There’s something to be said for lessening our burdens and increasing our blessings with deeper relationships, more collaborations, more justice work and more community service work.”
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