As had Herald Monroe before him and Gaines Cook before that, Howard Ratcliff became the regional minister of the Ohio Region in 1980 having served for some years as an associate in the region.
This was part of what was already being called “the Ohio way.” This is where my own knowledge, and potentially biases or just perspective problems, can get in the way. But for what it’s worth, as I came into seminary at Christian Theological Seminary in 1985, I heard loudly, clearly, and repeatedly, that one place I’d never end up as a minister was Ohio. If you’re not from there, if you didn’t come up through their camp system, through their Commission on Ministry, if you didn’t know Herald Monroe (keep in mind he’d been out of office for years at this point), you would never be asked to interview for a church in Ohio. They may have been wrong – and I met other exceptions to this rule in the next few years – but the perception was strong up through 1989 that this was how things were in Ohio, and in fact I never considered even seeking a call there. So it didn’t bother me, but it did contribute to my not even thinking about heading east after graduation & ordination.
But something happened across that supposedly impermeable border. I got asked to interview for a full-time associate position by a senior minister in Ohio who had Indiana family connections to the minister I was serving with in seminary, and I apparently snuck in without clearance from Elyria (where the regional office was at the time). And I served in Newark for over four months before I was summoned there to be “oriented” to . . . “the Ohio way.”
Which is where I met Howard Ratcliff. He is remarkably hard to find online, having served just at the cusp of the internet era, so there’s little in the way of pictures out there.
Which is a shame, because this tiny image, blown up, doesn’t do the man justice. He was a regional minister right out of central casting, and his demeanor matched the avuncular appearance, which I hope you can see here. That January 1990 orientation was a good introduction to the regional staff, and Howard set both me and my wife (yes, my wife came, it was 1990) at ease very quickly.
I also picked up on the fact that there were cuts going on, or at least vacancies people were asking about, as to when they’d be filled, on the regional staff. There were five full-time professional positions, and as I kept hearing at district meetings and at that annual regional orientation and at the Ohio Pastor’s Convocation dinner, “there were supposed to be seven.” One spot got filled half-time, and the other never really was, and so the decade and the century continued.
As long as this narrative has become, the point is not to write an exhaustive history here, but to give some anchor points for a solid explanation of how the Ohio Region got to where we are now, and what we can do now that we’re here. So I’ll simply note two things. One is, as I’ve already said: Herald Monroe presided over four decades of unbroken growth for Disciples in Ohio, in giving, in churches, in staff for the region. And the other is to say out loud what still doesn’t seem to be common knowledge even among long-time Ohio leaders: Howard Ratcliff stepped into the pilot’s role just in time to feel the turbulence begin -- and like many, I believe Howard thought that the turbulence was just temporary. It was his job to steer the craft through the storms, back into smoother flying and blue skies again, but on the same general course.
It was not to be. The downward pressures on regional budgets began to go from “real” decline in buying power of dollars given, to “actual” numbers dropping. The programs and processes that had smoothly transitioned from Terminal Tower in Cleveland out to a suburban remodeled home in Elyria were not working the way they had as Herald and others had assembled them, and to say that Howard found it difficult to do repairs on the airframe while keeping it in flight is to do justice to how difficult his situation really was.
But in fairness, I have to say this about a man and minister I truly liked and respected. In general, Howard believed that a conflict avoided was a conflict resolved. His approach to conflict resolution was avoidance, which was not the Herald way. Howard’s way, though, became part of the Ohio way. We get into the period when I’ve read fairly comprehensively through the General Board, later Regional Church Council minutes, and the conflict avoidance is there on the page.
I had my own encounters with this tendency; in fact, I was asked to be part of it more than once, and willingly did so. Disciples Renewal meetings, fractious church elders, clergy misbehavior -- Howard tended to try to outwait a problem, or at least sidestep most of them. He had the spine to deal with them when he needed to, but that generally only happened when he was forced to. So some regional problems multiplied, and snowballed.
Howard served from 1980 until 2002, 22 years, and passed away in 2013 far too early. I wish I could bounce some of these questions and concerns I have now off of him. I suspect he might just agree with me about his own tendency to sidestep a confrontation. But some major confrontations were coming very soon for the Ohio Region.
His ashes, at his memorial service, were on the seat of his favorite motorcycle just outside the large window next to where I was sitting, and I suspect he liked the view better out there. Like his mentor Dr. Monroe, a portion of his ashes are scattered at Camp Christian.
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Now we come to where the history is being written, revised, edited, and disputed even as we speak. Again, this is one pastor’s perspective. I’ll try to keep my own limitations clear in this re-telling without getting in the way, while acknowledging that what I knew and know is always going to be less than the whole picture.
Howard Ratcliff retired in 2002, and I’ll double down on a previous statement: he largely left things to run on their own for most of his last decade in office, with traditions of program and schedule and sequence dictating the year to year activity of the region. I have very little to draw on for precise figures about regional operations, especially in what I’ve come to call the key metric: how much came in during a year, and how much did we spend in that same period.
“Touch Tomorrow” was a 1990 through 1993 capital campaign that swept across Ohio both in the wake of and somewhat, I would argue, to preempt a general church attempt in those same years to muster a churchwide capital campaign, one which included plans for a new general office building – offices for which I attended a groundbreaking ceremony at the 1989 General Assembly in Indianapolis, but which never moved beyond the shovelful stage. (This was “Embrace the Future,” which effectively began in 1991 and largely was quietly concluded in 1993 though it registered income through 1997, totaled about a third of the original intended goal.) Based on what I have been able to examine of the record keeping of the later “Keep the Fire Burning” capital campaign, and just oral tradition I picked up about how the earlier capital campaign ramped up and wrapped up, I suspect that “Touch Tomorrow” helped to mask the growing instability of regional finances. Were there net losses in regional funds during these years? I do not know for certain; I can say that it appears the reserves did not, at least, grow, and the staff continued to shrink.
Hal Watkins, president of the Board of Church Extension (BCE), in his “Continuity, Conservation, Cutting Edge” review of the history of Disciples of Christ fundraising and capital campaign efforts, notes that Ohio chose not to honor a churchwide distribution formula for the “Decade of Decision” in the 1960s, going directly against a “Council of Agencies” decision by the church as a whole. We also know after World War II, Herald Monroe had led Ohio into doing things our own way, “the Ohio way,” after the “Crusade for a Christian World” in 1947-1950 had been, in his opinion, mishandled. There’s a general level confirmation in the records from BCE that in the 1960s Ohio went its own way, and a strong suggestion by him that the failure of General Assembly to approve a general church capital campaign at the 1973 Cincinnati meeting was led in part by Ohio opposition.
And I have been led to understand from multiple eyewitnesses that there was a notable stand Howard took at a general church fiscal meeting in Bethany, WV in or around 1990 (? Ed. – the exact date is in doubt even after talking to people who were there in Bethany when it happened, but I’m settling on 1990 for now.). It’s hard not to suspect there had to be financial strains in Ohio visible to the regional leaders because of the stance Howard took in opposition to the entire church, on the question of Basic Mission Finance (BMF) percentages. In brief, there were formulas developed through our general office Church Finance Council (CFC) for large regions at one percentage of return and small regions another, and those percentages were determined by the whole body on behalf of the church as to what any individual region got “back” from their congregational mission giving. I may be off a bit, but I recall the percentage in question being something like 31% at the time. Ohio appealed through a process CFC had, asking for 33% to maintain current staff and programs.
The appeals body reviewed Ohio’s request, and denied it, to which Howard (I am told by people who were in the room) stood and said with his usual grace and courtesy that he regretted to inform them that, while Ohio appreciated the consideration, they would in fact “keep” 33%. Because, you see, Ohio was one of three regions at the time that could: due to Herald Monroe’s reaction against “Crusade for a Christian World” and his creation back in 1949 of the Ohio World Budget process, Ohio congregations almost without exception sent their BMF giving to the regional office in Elyria, from which Ohio passed along the general office share to CFC – rather than most of the rest of the regions, where CFC sent back to regions what congregations had sent to Indianapolis first.
And, I’m told, all heck broke loose. Except they didn’t say heck. But Howard and the Ohio contingent left the room, and afterwards it was said “covenant was broken” by the Ohio Region. BMF later became Disciples Mission Fund (DMF) and the envelopes evolved and the general church kept on trying to adjust to changing circumstances . . . but Ohio kept doing what was seen to be in the best interests of Ohio. And that suggests to me the income versus expenses numbers were starting to push back, hard, against the bottom line: else why provoke such a confrontation, one that many around the Disciples in general life and other regions still remember about the Ohio Region, and not in a good way?
Which brings me to the next tale which may illuminate the larger story.
It was determined by the regional board that after Dr. Ratcliff’s 22 years it would be prudent to call an interim regional minister, and Suzanne Webb was invited to come to Ohio. Note well: she came TO Ohio. The previous six regional ministers had been from Ohio, and on regional staff in an associate role before coming into the executive job. That’s a bigger precedent to break in some ways than being the first female to serve Ohio as chief executive, interim or no.
Suzanne had gifts in Appreciative Inquiry and other tools of the skilled interim toolbox, and I fear they were largely wasted in her almost two years in charge here. I say that because I was reminded of a story she had told quietly at the time, which when John Richardson was called to be interim regional minister she contacted him to tell again some fifteen years later. Hearing it from John, I asked Suzanne if I could retell it in this account, and she graciously gave me her consent.
It goes like this: senior members of the Ohio leadership welcomed her as the new regional leader by telling her three things. First, Ohio had the largest reserves of any region in the Disciples of Christ. In 2002, that was undoubtedly true. Second, Ohio paid their regional minister more than any other region. This appears to have been the case, though not so in recent years. Third, the region needed her to help four staff members find new jobs, soon.
There’s either a lack of irony or perspective or perhaps of comprehension there. Yes, some of the “need to move four staff along” had to do with trying to turn the page and make for some new approaches in ministry for “the Ohio way,” but much of it was because we could not afford all four as constituted, and while that was known, it simply wasn’t said. Not abroad, anyhow. If money was brought up, it was because we needed to improve camp, but not because we were falling behind in regional affairs and our basic budget. I’m fairly sure of that because I was at meetings where the question was asked, and it was firmly deflected. In retrospect, I don’t think it was ever quite denied, so much as it was attributed to the uncertainties around a leadership transition after almost a quarter-century, et cetera et cetera, and things would sort out.
Again, Howard had let things run largely on momentum for quite a while. New church establishment had largely stopped other than as an occasional “to do” item, and stewardship education was just one more update of the Ohio Disciple Outreach workbook. Staffing had settled into certain grooves, and the buffeting around income and outgo was attributed to passing factors which would soon right themselves . . . and in fact, even before the interim period ended, we launched into “Keep the Fire Burning,” a regional capital campaign which was even more closely tied to Camp Christian and the needs to shift more of the buildings and program across Maple Dell Road to the west side of camp.
Suzanne saw the decline in giving and uncertainty around the Order of Ministry, and I believe she was aware of the demographic challenges facing our existing congregations and their numbers, both in attendance and budgets, but she was kept busy on managing the staff departures (something that perhaps should have been a handled by the regional elected leadership), as well as brokering many congregational questions around a new capital campaign, even though the highly respected Nathan “Pete” Smith was placed in charge of it, and managed the tensions as well as could be expected in a period of internal conflict for the region. In other words (in my humble opinion), we did not use her skills well. She could diagnose the ills that were starting to become more visible in the Ohio Region, especially across the Order of Ministry, and she gave good guidance to the Visioning Task Force that spent a fruitful two years at work largely under her oversight, but she had neither the time nor the latitude given her to start the region on a course of effective treatment.