Stationing Committee Memories (Part 2)

C. Ray Miller
Bishop, 1973-1993

March 1993

In last month's column, I reminisced about how we assigned pastors to churches in the "Good Ol' Days" of my early ministry. Back then, ministers and laypersons weren't consulted about pastoral assignments; they were simply informed. It might be a terrible match, but the stationing committee's decision was final.

Ministers didn't have any choice about where they were sent, and laypersons didn't have any choice about who was assigned as their pastor. Often, neither side knew of changes until the bishop read the stationing committee report at the end of annual conference.

I remember when stationing committees shrouded their work in secrecy. I heard stories about committee members meeting in a car on a hot summer day and rolling up the windows, not wanting anyone to hear what they were talking about.

I'm glad we don't operate like that anymore. It just won't work in the 1990s. The assignment process has changed drastically over the years. Openness has replaced secrecy, and we consult all parties involved. Now, we often notify conference pastors of vacancies and give them the chance to express interest. We didn't allow that in the past. Somehow, we didn't think it was proper.

I remember when we began talking more with ministers about churches which needed a pastor, and whether or not they were ready to leave their present church. And when we began consulting lay delegates about the type of pastor who would fit their church. Now, we usually work with a church's entire Personnel Relations Commission.

Last summer during Pennsylvania Annual Conference, Barney Rotz of Blue Rock expressed his gratitude for how well the stationing committee worked with their Personnel Relations Committee in selecting a new pastor. They greatly appreciated the conference's sensitivity to their own vision, and they were very happy with their new pastor, Rev. Dick Thorp. It was a positive experience for all concerned.

The stationing committee is still the final authority, but now pastors and churches are a vital part of the process. Allowing such input does take much more time. Instead of completing its work in a three-day period, as it did 30 years ago, the stationing committee may spend months going back and forth between prospective ministers and an open church, trying to find the right match.

We even let ministers appear before the Personnel Relations Commission. This can be extremely valuable and enlightening. Congregation members have many questions for the prospective pastor--about his style of ministry, his priorities, his family, his background. And the pastor has just as many questions for the congregation--their expectations of a pastor, the freedom and authority they will allow him, their vision for the community, salary and housing arrangements, etc.

A Personnel Relations Commission can, in a way, reject a prospective pastor. If they feel that strongly that a person isn't right for their church, the stationing committee better take notice. We don't want to put a pastor in an impossible situation. During the last couple years, I've seen stationing committees reverse their decisions upon realizing an assignment wouldn't be a good idea.

There is plenty of opposition to this, since it conflicts so much with how we operated in the past. But I believe it helps prevent a lot of problems and mismatches.

It takes much more time for a stationing committee to go back and forth between a church and prospective pastor, I believe it's necessary today. It helps prevent a lot of problems and mismatches. And it also helps create some much more healthy pastor-church "marriages," because they've gotten to know each other in advance.

Today, stationing committees are also wrestling with whether or not to assign a pastor anywhere. Before, we felt obligated to give every conference pastor a church. When problems arose in one church, we simply moved the pastor to another church so he could get a fresh start. A pastor might go through a whole string of churches during the course of his ministry, and leave every church in worse shape than he found it.

No longer. We now feel free to tell a pastor, "We don't have a place for you," either because no church will agree to take him or because we didn't feel it would be responsible for us to continue assigning him. We've also left churches without a pastor for months at a time, waiting for the right match. If a pastor is available, but it's not a good match, we won't make the assignment just because it's convenient.

Today, annual conferences lack the high drama of the reading of the stationing committee report, because assignments are already known by that time--and are agreeable to the parties involved. This spares the superintendents and bishop from dealing with the residue of surprise changes and mismatched assignments.