VALLEY FORGE, Pa. (ABP) — Leaders of the American Baptist Churches USA are proposing changes to the denomination’s governing structure that aim to encourage greater missional empowerment and broader involvement of affiliated churches.
The ABC General Board considered the proposal during its June session, although details are still being worked out, according to ABC General Secretary Roy Medley. The proposal must be approved at the denomination’s biennial meeting in 2009 before the changes are adopted.
The proposal reduces the size of the General Board from its current 109 members to 31. It also allows the entity’s national and international mission boards to choose their members from outside the General Board.
Under its current structure, the General Board is composed of regional representatives, with each of the 33 ABC regions determining its own method for electing those delegates. Each mission board’s trustees are drawn from the General Board’s membership.
The new proposal would create a General Board of 18 regional representatives, the general secretary, the treasurer and the four denominational officers — president, vice president, budget-review officer and past president.
The remaining seats would remain open for individuals possessing specific passions and skills the board needs.
“The mission boards will have a process to choose from among American Baptist churches the people with the skills they need and still retain geographic diversity,” Medley explained.
The proposal calls for the General Board to be renamed the Board of General Ministries. Representatives from the regions would be chosen on a rotating basis. “Not every region would be represented but each would be guaranteed of representation within a cycle,” he said. “No region would succeed itself as long as a region remained unrepresented.”
“The Board of General Ministries would have the same purpose and goals as the General Board — the overview and over-care of the denomination as a whole,” Medley said.
The biennial meeting would become the ABC Mission Summit, with less focus on “public statements,” he said, and more emphasis on education related to missional response. “We want to find ways … to hear from our people” and the challenges their ministries face locally, nationally and internationally, he said.
If the proposal is adopted, a “Mission Table” meeting would be established to concentrate on those issues. “The Mission Table would meet after the Biennial and be a missional think-tank for the denomination,” Medley said.
The Mission Table would include representatives from ABC’s mission boards, seminaries, other affiliated agencies, local churches and ABC-USA staff. Members would consider how to assist local churches, how to coordinate and how to network around common concerns and issues, he added.
Mission Table members would end their session with recommendations and networking opportunities.
“We’re still thinking this through,” Medley said.
In addition, the proposal calls for gathering a central database of ABC individuals to collect names of potential leaders and board members. “We have not had a centralized system of holding on to names of people with leadership skills,” he noted.
The General Board will accept proposals for amendments to the plan for 60 days and will be able to suggest modifications. The denomination’s General Executive Committee will consider possible changes to the bylaws at its September meeting.
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