Let's Play Fruit Basket Upset

There probably was a time in the history of Methodism that the frequent rotation of pastors in order to keep charges filled was necessary. But like so many instances of bureaucratic institutionalization burying practical origins beneath layers of self-serving hierarchy, the changing of pastoral appointments by bishops and their cabinets has become a tool for retaining power in the denomination’s current practices. While it did manage to pawn Don Smith off on an unsuspecting congregation in Bullhead City, Arizona, the replacement of the entire cast of players in the summer of 1997 accomplished little other than to foil any attempts to legitimately prosecute the multitude of infractions so insidiously woven into Trinity’s congregational fabric. Bishop William W. Dew, Jr. had assumed the unenviable task of following Bishop Elias G. Galvan as head of the Desert Southwest Annual Conference (Galvan had served an extraordinary 12 years since the inception of the Desert Southwest; most bishops serve two four-year terms). The Reverend Thomas G. Mattick replaced Nate as the North District Superintendent, and even though the plan at the local level had apparently been to replace Don with me, such a notion was just further evidence that the Trinity congregation didn’t have an inkling about UM polity. Nate apparently did inform Preston Howard that such a “promotion” was unthinkable, but being finally convinced that Don must go Nate agreed to arrange for a senior pastor that was better suited to Trinity’s temperament. I probably should have more seriously considered Nate’s offer to have me appointed to Las Vegas First UMC (a dying downtown church that is now a Manpower center), but I somehow fancied myself as owing something to Trinity as it faced a time of tumultuous change. So it was that I was introduced to my new “colleague”, the next senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church: The Reverend Michael R. Downing.