Simplified Procedures

SIMPLIFIED PROCEDURES for growing, inclusive, evangelistic, justice-seeking churches

Our vision: By 2030 most ministers, lay staff and voluntary officers will notice that Methodist procedures remain sufficiently robust but are noticeably simpler than other organisations they are involved in.

Key challenges will be:

• Reductions in numbers of churches and membership indicated by our demography, irrespective of future growth, may make circuits as currently understood an impractical governance framework.
• Some complexity is due to legislation or other factors beyond local control
• Many compliance obligations are reasonable in isolation but collectively impractical
• Procedural simplification may require accepting a higher level of compliance risk, or reduction in influence or data, or not including some people
• Procedural complexity is introduced by many different bodies having rights to demand information or actions from churches and circuits
• Administration can become a diversionary activity to put off tasks which are uncomfortable but more important
• Long term simplification often requires upfront time investment in remodelling and retraining

To enable this District will:

• Provide constructive but robust feedback and disruptive thinking to identify alternative processes
• Share learning between circuits as they experiment with ways to bring together myriad governance requirements into practical checklists etc
• Proactively seek out complexity/ areas of difficulty and enable simplification
• Model use of technology to reduce administrative tasks
• Each year reduce the overall time spent by churches and circuits on compliance tasks instructed by District
• If relevant, work with circuits to create a more efficient and sufficiently robust legal framework for larger-than-church governance which preserves locally contextual oversight of mission and ministry.
• Develop dialogue with local enabling ministries in other denominations, so we can share best practice, resources and insights where beneficial

Implementation of this vision will be overseen by our Simplifying Procedures Support Team