Bishop Jonathan D. Keaton has been serving the Detroit Area and West Michigan Conferences as bishop since 2004. He has been actively involved in the United Methodist Church as a clergy member for 40 years and one of his primary goals is to enforce the UMC mission to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Editor RJ Walters recently sat down with Keaton to discuss the state of the church and the Michigan Area as 2010 gets underway.
Q: From your position as the bishop, what do you see as some of the strengths and weakness of the two Michigan conferences in particular?
A: There are so many different visions and dreams people have about the way they do church, so one of the challenges is always getting the conferences on the same page. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t have dreams; for example, if someone has the gift of working on social justice issues or being in Christian education or one church does a lot of work with camping, (that’s good). Both annual conferences have a real strength in mission — it’s mission, mission, mission. The United Methodists in Michigan do mission right, and they have for many, many years long before I was here —I’m not responsible for that. The Michigan Area has been one of the top areas in giving in the United Methodist Church….we have folks all over the world in Jamaica and Africa and a seminary there in Russia, so just mission. But I think we’ve had the great struggle in “How do we get ministries organized on the same page?” What helps that is we have two conferences and two connectional ministry leaders and they have primary responsibility for directing program areas. So I would say the greatest strengths of the Michigan Area are mission work and worship services, and if we would say what some of the weaknesses have been, you look at how the denomination has seen membership decline over the last 40 years, and secondly stewardship, which is why we need continuing education.
