Pilgrimage Ponderings
What Should Really Happen to the Book of Resolutions
I have to hand it to my friend Steve. He really likes to stir the pot. I read his blog about the Book of Resolutions the other day, and it's been nagging at me ever since. You can read about it here: http://nitrorev.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-more-resolutions.html.
Steve suggests that we do away with the Book of Resolutions because no one ever uses it. I beg to differ. I have used it twice in the last quadrennium. The first time was when I worked in a local church. A seventh-grader and her mom came to see me. The young lady was very concerned about the church's lack of recycling. Her mom helped her connect with local recyling authorities. I connected her with resolutions about caring for the earth and recycling. These resolutions gave biblical and theological weight to her argument. It was a joy to see her make a presentation to the church council, teaching them about our Methodist, Christian calling, and to see the adults in the room take seriously her request.
Fast forward to last summer. Now I am on the connectional ministries staff and the annual conference has just passed a resolution that every local church implement a Safe Sanctuary policy by the end of the year. The resolution included that the annual conference provide resources and training for local churches. A week later, I received a phone call from a pastor who had learned that there was a convicted sex offender attending his church. He was very concerned about making sure the children were safe but also about treating this person with Christian compassion. Once again, I went to the Book of Resolutions and found an extremely helpful resolution about how to balance protection for the children and also extend grace.
So it's not that the Book of Resolutions is never used. But I would say it is used seldom. After trying unsuccessfully to use an electronic version to find the recycling resolutions, I ended up ordering a book for the church. I left it on the shelf when I came to connectional ministries, fully expecting it to sit there for the next 10 years. But it was their book after all. So last summer, I had to hunt for another copy. I did find one in a district office.
I personally think that the contents of the Book of Resolutions should be in the public domain. They should be posted in a user-friendly manner at UMC.org so that any United Methodist, or anyone else for that matter, might be able to explore the public witness of our faith. Otherwise, I fear these books are going to sit on shelves in church libraries, or worse yet, lie unpurchased in warehouses.
And that's what I think should really happen to the Book of Resolutions.
DogBlogger: Good thoughts here. I wish they'd go online, too (with a thorough search engine attached, of course). It would make them more readily accessible, and save a few trees while we're at it. (04/09/08)
Taylor Burton-Edwards: Kathy, I do not disagree with your insight that we may be better served if the Book of Resolutions were available in an online, free, and highly searchable format. However, without changing the Discipline, this is unlikely to happen. The Discipline currently identifies The United Methodist Publishing House as the publisher of all official documents of The United Methodist Church. Here's the deal. UMPH has to publish it. And it is by no means a cost-free venture. It takes many hours of painstaking editing and compiling to develop the final version every four years. Somehow, the costs for doing all of this work have to be accounted for. UMPH does not receive any World Service dollars-- they have to make money on sales to cover their expenses. And the best way to recoup those expenses, still at this point in the demographics of our denomination? Well, that's book publishing and sales. Even then, I don't know that the BOR actually recoups all its associated costs (You might want to ask someone at UMPH about that-- I just don't know). There's another issue as well. Since UMPH is designated as the official publisher for official UM documents, that means UMPH also holds the copyright for all of those publications de facto. Now, they could turn around and place it in the public domain, but it's not clear to me why that would necessarily be a good idea from the perspective of stewardship of intellectual property of the denomination, much less UMPH. So... if we or UMPH can find a business model that can allow them to publish the BOR online for free, and still maintain good business practices, great. Or if there might be a funding stream that could open up that possibility for the BOR (and perhaps the Discipline as well?), fabulous. But until then, it seems to me we need to respect the copyright we've given to UMPH as the publisher for this and all other official publications and we need to be ready to pay for it to use it-- in whatever format it appears. (04/09/08)
Ray Reavis: Kathy, I think the BOR and BOD should be available online. As for publishing online, that wouldn't necessarily mean placing it in public domain, but could be copyright protected. As for maintaining a revenue stream, the money for purchasing the publications comes from our churches, members, and clergy. So we're really just passing money from our left hand to our right. If we need a line-item in the budge for online publishing, let's create one. I think in the long run it will save money. For one thing you could jack up the cost of the printed version. There are enough people who would refuse to read the online version that they could subsidize the more environmentally friendly manner. Another aside is that I enjoy ebooks on my pocket PC. I have a version of the NIV that I purchased that stays on my smartphone. It certainly hasn't replaced the numerous "hard copies" of the word that I have, but it's nice to ALWAYS have a bible at the ready. Think about how cool it would be to have a Bible, BOW, BOD and BOR all in a small memory card. (04/14/08)