aefenglommung (aefenglommung) wrote,
aefenglommung
aefenglommung

My $0.02 worth on Conference Scouting ministry

Curt Hurley has resigned as Indiana Conference Scouting Coordinator. He is tired of the responsibility, and wants to get on with his retirement. I can’t blame him. There comes a time when you need to pass on your tasks, a time for others to lead. Curt has been involved in Conference leadership and Scouting ministry for many years, and has done a good job; he’s earned a rest. Well, the Conference mills will grind, and eventually a new Scouting Coordinator will be named. There is no shortage of good Scouters among Indiana United Methodists to choose from.

Whether anybody likely to be chosen by the Conference will be able to get any ministry done is another thing. If the new Coordinator is a person who knows how to get things done, and has a good grasp of what needs to be done, then good things can happen; however, the first thing he or she will find is that the Conference is not structured as an organization serious about doing ministry would be. We have spent the last several years dis-inventing ourselves, ignoring our core processes, and concentrating all initiative in the Conference office – an office utterly subject to the whims and limited vision of people who think that their little sphere of activity IS the Annual Conference. The new Coordinator will receive no help from anybody at HQ, nor does the Conference maintain a committee for him to work with.

The easiest alternative for the Conference would be to simply punt the ball over to the guys at United Methodist Men. They have a lot of connections with the national Scouting Ministry leadership. There are some active Scouters in UMM. We could go back to the way we used to do things in the old North Conference before the merger and in the old South Conference prior to 1994, with the Conference Scouting Coordinator an appointee or appendage of the Conference UMM structure. Well, once again, if you’ve got a Coordinator who knows how to get things done, who has vision, and is not going to be restricted by bureaucracy, then good things can happen. But UM Men is the deadest corpse in the UM morgue. Despite all the flurry of reports and bustle of meetings, precious little ever gets done by these guys. Moving the Conference Scouting Coordinator back into UMM, formally or informally, is a recipe for doing nothing but sitting around and giving each other awards.

So, what does a successful Conference Scouting ministry look like?

A successful Conference Scouting ministry resources the congregations of the Annual Conference. This means teaching and promoting Scouting as ministry all over the Conference. It means connecting with clergy and their unique way of processing reality (one reason why so many earnest Scouters fail in moving the church is that they have no idea how to deal with clergy, without whom the org will not function). It means producing resources. It means using the Conference session and Conference events to promote our ministry and to network with church leaders.

A successful Conference Scouting ministry resources the Scouting ministry family across the Annual Conference. Scouts and their families, as well as registered leaders, form a large community of people who want their kids to have the best experience they can have. A church-sponsored scouting program should be qualitatively different from one based in some other community org. And a UM-sponsored scouting program should be the best church-sponsored program there is. Putting resources and opportunities in these people’s hands is critical.

Toward that end, connecting with volunteers is a key part of a successful Conference Scouting ministry. You can’t just run this out of the Conference structure. In the Indiana Conference, we have a booster organization – the Indiana UM Pathfinder – that helps connect volunteers with each other and with Conference leadership. The Pathfinder publishes a newsletter. It helps find volunteers that a Conference Coordinator is going to need. It solicits donations to help with funding things that the Conference doesn’t have the budget or attention span for.

Finally, a successful Conference Scouting ministry does ministry. Now, MOST of the ministry of the Annual Conference is done by local volunteers in their local settings, but there are occasionally some things that a local group would find difficult to do. We need someone to bring together people to do, as a Conference, what no one little group could do by itself. Over the years, we have done some fine retreats for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. We have published some excellent resources. We have pursued some worthy missions projects. We have organized the occasional mission trip or high adventure trip. We have done several Bishop’s Dinners for Scouting. We have conducted training sessions. Different leaders have different priorities, and the new Coordinator needs to decide what his or hers are. You can’t do it all, but unless you do SOMETHING, there is nothing for anybody else to grab onto and you might as well have spared yourself the trouble of going through the motions.
Subscribe

  • Taking one's own medicine

    Over a long and varied life in Scouting, I have somehow avoided taking Wood Badge, the top leadership course for Scouters. There are various reasons…

  • Your obscure English etymology of the day

    In the traditional English carol called "The Holy Well," the child Jesus attempts to play with some local children, who get all snooty about his low…

  • The Four Marks of the Church: Apostolicity

    We believe in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church --Nicene Creed, AD 325 In the Book of Acts, we see the apostles choosing a successor…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    When you submit the form an invisible reCAPTCHA check will be performed.
    You must follow the Privacy Policy and Google Terms of use.
  • 0 comments