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A New Connection: Reforming The United Methodist Church
Langford and Willimon urge readers to critically examine the current structure of the United Methodist Church and pursue radical changes. They assert that "local decision making and contribution must be enhanced; bureaucracy must be reduced; episcopal leadership must be re-established; our organizational form must be fitted to our missional function." Some may judge the authors' analysis as candid and their remedies promising; others may take exception to what they see as intemperate claims and calls for precipitous changes in UM polity. Readers are invited to enter into the conversation and make choices that can reform the United Methodist Church and shape its future.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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April 28, 2026
The preliminary reaction is that this is the kind of book you get when the people who have never been ignored by the system write a book about how this handful of refocuses on entirely administrative concepts will change everything.
It surprises me not at all that no one is looking to this for suggestions in the middle of the current UMC dumpster fire. It has not aged well, has a myopically American viewpoint, and totally ignores any of the theological and social issues that the UMC has been facing for decades.
To its credit, it called the need for loosening the connectional structure to have actual connections (33). To its detriment, it gets hung up on how that's about money (43) and whines about (without directly naming) things like UMCOR and Africa University and how it shouldn't be "more missional" to send money abroad. It's not more missional. It's a recognition of a redistribution of wealth, especially since countries like the US stripped a lot of the African nations to begin with. It repeats elsewhere that money shouldn't leave the local community, which is just a church repackaging of isolationism's main points and we're a global denomination. The local church matters, but *your* local church is not the only (or even the best) version of the Body. Tell me all you like about how this isn't advocating congregationalism but economically, you really are.
Langford and Willimon point out that GC delegates are old (78) and that the GC proceedings are heavily by white American notions of business, which they are. Good point. But then they feed back into the idea that local churches blah blah blah without ever interrogating how we can widen the table or get creative with GC's invitations. It just says "go back to whatever the local church needs."
Not a fan. They make some notable observations, sure, but their drumbeat is "return to the congregation" while it's very clear they have a specific kind of congregation in mind. The UMC formed to their ideas would collapse in a different direction than the one we're in but it would decidedly collapse all the same.
It surprises me not at all that no one is looking to this for suggestions in the middle of the current UMC dumpster fire. It has not aged well, has a myopically American viewpoint, and totally ignores any of the theological and social issues that the UMC has been facing for decades.
To its credit, it called the need for loosening the connectional structure to have actual connections (33). To its detriment, it gets hung up on how that's about money (43) and whines about (without directly naming) things like UMCOR and Africa University and how it shouldn't be "more missional" to send money abroad. It's not more missional. It's a recognition of a redistribution of wealth, especially since countries like the US stripped a lot of the African nations to begin with. It repeats elsewhere that money shouldn't leave the local community, which is just a church repackaging of isolationism's main points and we're a global denomination. The local church matters, but *your* local church is not the only (or even the best) version of the Body. Tell me all you like about how this isn't advocating congregationalism but economically, you really are.
Langford and Willimon point out that GC delegates are old (78) and that the GC proceedings are heavily by white American notions of business, which they are. Good point. But then they feed back into the idea that local churches blah blah blah without ever interrogating how we can widen the table or get creative with GC's invitations. It just says "go back to whatever the local church needs."
Not a fan. They make some notable observations, sure, but their drumbeat is "return to the congregation" while it's very clear they have a specific kind of congregation in mind. The UMC formed to their ideas would collapse in a different direction than the one we're in but it would decidedly collapse all the same.
Displaying 1 of 1 review