Integrating new members into the church's ministry through organizational change

The problem addressed by the project at People's UMC is the organizational structure (Administrative Board) for ministry. The problem's essence was conflict, dissension and rivalry between members of the Administrative Board. The conflict exists between surviving members of two merged congregations that became People's United Methodist Church. The Administrative Board meetings were engulfed in conflict and competition over the church's power and politics. The Board became so closely associated with the congregation's problem it was identified as the presenting problem. Key church leaders and merger survivors wanted to end the conflicts and develop ministries expressing Christian faith.; Greenfield UMC and Westlawn UMC were predominately white Methodist churches in the City of Detroit during the sixties. The congregations were forced to merge as a result of the exodus of whites from the city to the suburbs during the late 60's and 70's. Approximately 75 black members from each church remained in their respective churches, until the merger in 1977.; The methodology used to address the problem began with selecting a Lay Ministry Team representative of the congregation. I researched the problem as a participant observer listening and interviewing merger survivors to understand the problem in context. The problem was addressed by changing the organizational structure from an administrative board to a Church Council and develop seven NOW groups consisting of seventy members by April 30, 1998. The Lay Ministry Team and I meet over a period of three months. The meetings produced a plan to address the problem through educational intervention, and re-organization of the congregation into a Church Council dividing its ministries under Nurture, Outreach, and Witness. The new structure reduced the number of church members participating in decision-making process from 32 to 11 members. The new structure would be inclusive of merger survivors and other leaders. Small groups would create portals for new members to be integrated into the congregation's ministries.; The project fell short of achieving the goal of developing small groups quantitatively. We developed three groups with a total of forty-five members. The educational intervention in a retreat setting, and the plan to change the organizational structure of the congregation from an Administrative Board to a Church Council was successful. As a result of the changes, the cycle of conflict was broken. The project's success supports the validity of the primary assumption that the organizational structure reinforced the cycle of conflict and rivalry thus crippling the church's efforts to resolve problems and engage in ministry. The methodology used to address the problem revealed another underlying problem more closely related to the conflict and rivalry addressed by organizational change. The conclusion addresses the new presenting problem.