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By Jackie Campbell

Developing new leaders and adapting to reach new people in changing culture are key, he said in the keynote address of the gathering at Bethany College.  

 “In my work over the past 11 years as a district superintendent and now a bishop, I have become resigned to the fact that some local churches will make a conscious decision to die rather than to make the substantive changes necessary in order to grow,” he said.   “I pray that this will not be the case for us here in Appalachia.”

Bishop Bickerton, a native of West Virginia, chairs the Appalachian Ministry Network, which is struggling to meet the increasing challenges of ministry in the region. One of the greatest challenges to growth -- in the region, in the AMN and in churches--is developing new leaders, he said.

“Appalachia has a wonderful history of raising up excellent leaders who go somewhere else to lead,” he noted. “I believe it is critical for us to take the lead in providing opportunities for people within the region to think creatively, dream boldly and learn consistently.” Taking the creativity that abounds in Appalachia and using it to bring forth new leaders, he said, will demand a willingness to step outside the box.

“In the local church,” he explained, “we have a deep-seeded propensity to sit in the same pew, giving the same position of leadership to the same person at the expense of not training those who need to know what we know – and expecting new leaders to conform to our established methods. This is NOT leadership development!”

Leadership development requires a willingness to give away our positions of leadership to those who are behind us so that they can lead freely, the Bishop said. “It means getting out of our box long enough to recruit new leaders so they can be developed.”

Bishop Bickerton also cited a need to create new places for new people – to spend time in places where Christians don’t normally go to connect with people they may not be comfortable with.

There’s also a need, he said, to re-examine the traditional approach to alleviating poverty – to move from ministry TO the poor to ministry WITH the poor. “One of the practical crises facing The United Methodist Church in its effort to move from survival to ‘thrival’ is our inability to invite the poor into the fellowship of our churches,” he said.

“We are happy to extend a hand of assistance, but reluctant to welcome the poor to sit next to us in the pew and fellowship with us around our tables. IF the church is to once again grow, it will only do so with people who do not look like us and who have very transparent scars from the journey of life. I believe that if ministry in Appalachian will have any relevance in the 21st Century, we must seriously examine the method by which we engage in ministry WITH the poor.” 

Megan Shreve, a trainer with Move the Mountains Leadership Center, led a plenary on “Circles™., an innovative model program being piloted in several areas or Pennsylvania and other states. It’s designed to mobilize a community to end poverty. This initiative pulls in middle class families to offer brainstorming, networking, and emotional support to families or individuals trying to get out of poverty. It encourages human service agencies, faith-based groups, colleges and business to work together to look for innovative solutions. It creates a community environment that takes ownership of both the problem and need for a solution to end poverty.

This initiative began in Iowa since 1999. It is being piloted in a total of 10 states with the goal of getting 1000 families out of poverty over a five year period and providing those results to local, state and federal policy makers and legislators.

In his keynote address, Bishop Bickerton noted that it will take similar collaboration to give new life not only to the Appalachian Ministries Network, but to the entire Appalachian region. “A collaboration,” he said, “with one another as we seek and actively pray for a reason to keep our organization alive; a collaboration that will push us to develop new leaders, create new opportunities for new people to catch a vision AND share their own visions; a collaboration for and most especially with the poor. And a collaboration to restore the dignity of the land we love and call our home.”

Also on the agenda for the Assembly was a poverty simulation led by Glenna Wilson and the Western PA Conference Poverty Team, with help from clients of the local social service agencies.