Bandits No More

August 26, 2010

Mission Field Appointments

Filed under: Ministry,Missions,Texas Annual Conference,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 2:48 am

The Texas Annual Conference is now implementing a policy of making “mission field appointments (document is a pdf).” Here’s a key part of the document:

In a series of conversations around the question “who is our
client,” the cabinet (center directors and superintendents) and bishop finally experienced one of those “a-ha” moments. We realized that our client was neither the pastor nor the congregation, but rather the mission field.

God was leading us to deploy pastors, not to make people
who were already living a life of faith happy, but rather to
reach persons living in our neighborhoods, communities and
cities that were not a part of a community of faith. God was
inviting us to appoint pastors who would lead congregations to reach out to people who had not yet heard the gospel, many of whom are young, of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, poor and/or underserved. Understanding the mission field as our primary client was a dramatic shift in our approach.

No one on the cabinet, including the bishop, knew how to make
appointments with the mission field as the primary client. The old mental frameworks in our heads and the expectations of pastors and congregations were major obstacles to change. We knew we needed to learn. Our reading, writing and conversation with outside people and groups intensified….

The mission field is understood as the overall context for ministry. It may be the setting within which a local church ministers. The mission field may be a population in and around
the local church’s community which is not being reached. It may be also be a population that does not have a United Methodist congregation in the vicinity. This perception challenges pastors and congregations to be outward focused, not inward. It encourages risktaking on behalf of mission.

Today an email from MissionInsite was forwarded to me (and to other church leaders around the district) from the district office. The Annual Conference signed up with this company that provides demographic research for churches last year. Today’s message told of their latest offerings. I’d gotten their basic demographic info for our area last year. One of the most potentially useful tools maps areas for lifestyle types (using Mosaic categories). Even more practically, they offered some ideas on how to use the Mosaic data.

So I ran a map of our county. No big surprises. Our area is considered primarily “Rugged Rural Style” and “Lower Income Essentials,” meaning most of the people in the county are counted in one of these two psychographic groups.

Curious how that compared with the rest of the Conference, I expanded the map view. Here’s a what a picture of most of the Conference (East Texas) looks like:

Perhaps you notice there is a lot of light blue areas. Those are where the “Rugged Rural Style” dominates. The yellow/gold color is also pretty common. That’s the “Hardy Rural Families.” From the description given by MissionInsite, these folks sound like a step up the economic ladder from the “Rugged Rural Style.” It’s in areas like this that “Cowboy Churches” seem to be thriving. “Simple Churches worshiping a mighty God in a simple way,” is the slogan of one of these churches in our area.

If we are doing Mission Field appointments within these fields, we face some challenges. First, it seems that a fair percentage of people now headed into ordained ministry are coming from other demographic groups. Many are coming out of the churches in larger cities and suburbia. Second, the normal route to ordination includes a pathway through academia the enculturates its inhabitants away from blue collar, rural living. Doing things rural style is real cross-cultural mission for many college educated, seminary educated pastors.

Are psychographics useful in shaping church ministry, leadership, and mission? Are they being taken into account in our identification of the mission field? Are pastors profiled along these lines?

July 20, 2010

Pursuing Holiness

Filed under: Discipleship,Spirituality,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 9:51 pm

One of the defining convictions of the Methodist movement is that it is possible to live a holy life, a life pleasing to God. Methodists have at least given lip service to this conviction since the days of John Wesley in the 18th century.

This conviction was no less popular in Wesley’s day than it is now. Three primary inclinations work against the conviction that holiness is possible. Some people have been badly burned by those who proclaim themselves to be holy. Through those actions, the “holy” life has been imagined to be the “stuffy,” “stilted,” “inauthentic,” “mean-spirited” or “narrow” life. As second inclination that stands against the conviction of possible holy living is that it is not, in fact possible. Try as we might, we will inevitably fail. While the first inclination is usually rooted in ones experience of others, this second inclination is more often rooted in ones experience of oneself. We’ve made the resolutions, we’ve tried to be perfect, yet we fail over and over again. A third inclination looks elsewhere. It sees that language of holiness – like some other words (righteousness, goodness, etc.) – divides people. These people are holy, those people are not. What we ought to say, according to this inclination, is that sure, people mess up sometimes, but deep down, all people are good, all people are already holy. And because the opposite of holy is marginalized, the emphasis on holiness is either muted or rejected.

United Methodists wouldn’t deny either of these kinds of experiences – we’d be foolish to try. But these experiences don’t tell us everything we need to know. Methodists have, however, historically recognized the reality and depth of human sin, that deep down all of us, even the best of us, are estranged from God, and profoundly fractured inside. In spite of this assessment of the human condition, and in spite of these experiences, Methodists remain hopeful about the possibility of holiness.

First, Methodists consider the commands of scripture. At the very least we run into God saying, “Be holy, because I am holy.” Then Jesus had to go and use the “P” word: “Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” While the counsel of despair might come on us at this point, Methodists have tended to draw the conclusion, “If God commands it, surely it must be possible.”

Second, Methodists consider that according to that same book of scripture, the life of holiness is not something we do on our own. My actions, my deed, my character, my performance, my resume – none of these will ever get me to the point where I am holy. Holiness, Wesley and his successors would say, is only possible through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in us. The good news for us is that God not only commands holiness, but also graciously gives us the resources we need to live it.

It would be nice if, having said that our holiness is something the Holy Spirit does in us, we could just sit back, relax, and wait for it to happen. For holiness to happen, the Spirit will need to (a) remove some things, and, (b) add some other things. Some of this removing and adding is done through our cooperation, our learning to say NO to some of our desires and YES to God’s invitations. Just as marriage requires that we take up a certain set of practices, the life with God that leads to holiness requires us to take up certain practices.

Methodists modify these convictions with one more. The life of holiness, the embodiment of a life of love, joy and peace that is fully pleasing to God, is not only something for which we need the Spirit. It is also something for which we need other people. I will never be holy in isolation from the people around me. I need their input in my life. Sometimes that input is painful. They rebuke me and correct me. They offend me and hurt me, giving me opportunity to practice turning the other cheek and extending forgiveness. Other people, even those far from holiness (or at least far from what we take to be holiness), deliver us from self-righteousness by helping us see ourselves more clearly. Will we listen to them? Can we admit that we might hear the voice of God through them? It’s difficult, but that’s the way the holy life seems to work.

We also refuse to believe that holiness requires dullness. The life most pleasing to God is a life of love, joy, danger and adventure. Those are surely the characteristics we see in Jesus, the one we take as our model for life.

Are you interested in living a holy life? While Methodists believe Jesus is essential to the holy life, we don’t believe we have a corner on the market. In fact, we think we as a church are more likely to be holy the more we partner with disciples in other churches. Just as individuals usually go astray and miss holiness when they go it alone, so it is with churches. If you want live a holy life, try these few ideas. Worship God – not just on your own, but with others. Learn to hear “Yes” and “No.” Those inclined to depression and melancholy have trouble hearing Yes, while those convinced of their own rightness have trouble hearing No. God gives us both, so we need to be able to hear both. Take up some spiritual disciplines – reading the Bible, prayer, service. Finally, find a friend who would like to go on the journey with you, someone to encourage, provoke and challenge you, someone you will let speak into your life. Don’t go it alone.

July 15, 2010

Latest from “Call to Action”

Filed under: United Methodism — rheyduck @ 9:59 pm

Tuesday, the United Methodist News Service put out its latest report on the work of the “Call to Action” Steering Team. They give the bad news first.

The United Methodist Church needs to change its operations denomination-wide to address financial challenges and be more relevant in its ministry around the globe.

True enough. We have plenty of financial challenges. But I’m not so sure about relevance. It seems the harder we pursue it the less we have it.

But there is also good news.

Despite these challenges, many churches of varied sizes and settings have found ways to grow and thrive.

In other words, while some churches seem locked in a death spiral of decline, some seem to be doing ok.

I’m not sure why we needed to fund two studies to discover this. Are there any surprises, anything unexpected here, anything that isn’t at the least verging on a truism?

They get more specific:

The study indicated some areas where improvement is needed:

  • More clarity and understanding about the denomination’s mission, culture and values
  • Less perceived organizational “distance” between and among the foundational units of the church
  • Better defined leadership roles, responsibilities, and accountability; and improvements in trust
  • More standardized management processes and reporting systems
  • Utilizing opportunities for improved affordability and effectiveness

It looks to me like the proposed solution is a more efficient and authoritative bureaucracy. Sounds like the usual solution those with power offer. Something along the lines of, “We have a great system, we just haven’t worked it purely enough, had the right people in the right positions, or, the people at the bottom (or congregations, in this case) just aren’t getting it.”

I have not heard enough to convince me that what we need is more power at the top, either of the denomination as a whole or of our annual conferences. More power for those in power is not a commonly successful strategy for working out trust issues – unless the trust we seek is something that can be commanded (as if by “trust” we mean people at the bottom “doing what we expect them to do”).

I see nothing here about theological or doctrinal clarity and unity. Of course, that might clash with what’s happening at Claremont School of Theology right now, so we’d better stay quiet about that.

June 10, 2010

NOT the meaning of life

Filed under: Texas Annual Conference,United Methodism,church growth — rheyduck @ 3:43 pm

Of my many experiences at the meeting of the Texas Annual Conference last week, perhaps that most striking was Bishop Huie’s mention that the West Ohio Annual Conference was losing 42 positions for Elders this year. She didn’t share anything of the context, so I don’t know how retirements, church closings, mergers, consolidations, etc., come into the picture. I know nothing how this compares with trends there over the past decade. But 42 – that’s huge!

When Bishop Huie arrived in our conference (about five years ago) she observed that fewer than 50% of our congregations showed a single profession of faith during the previous year. “Profession of Faith” is church-speak for “a person who was not a practicing Christian or a member of any church became one.” Yes, it’s hard to imagine, given Jesus’ attitude on the matter, that so many churches would not be winning a single person to faith in a year.

This year we learned that we have improved. Now something like 63% of our congregations have had at least one profession of faith. We cheered the good news. But it’s only a start. Nothing was said of the reality that so many of our churches are dominated by older generations. When over half of your active, dedicated members are over 70 years old, where does that put you in ten years – even if you manage to add a new person by profession of faith each year?

The Texas Conference is awesome! The Texas Conference is great! The Texas Conference is the largest in the country (not true, though I’ve heard it several times)! Bad things – like losing openings for Elders – might happen in places like Ohio, but never here. Or so we seem to believe. But demographics alone ought to lead us to action. I see three actions we need to take now.

First, we need to get on our faces before God and pray. We need to confess our apathy, complacency, our love for playing church games. We need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all our people, all our congregations.

Second, we need to regain evangelistic passion. This will be hard, because it will be easily confused – by us an others – as stemming from a fear of institutional survival. “Our ship is sinking – come join us as we bail!” Not veyr attractive is it? As Leonard Sweet & Frank Viola urge, this will mean dealing with our JDD – Jesus Deficit Disorder.

Third, we need to plant churches. Here in the TAC we’ve been better at that these past five years. We’re still not at the Bishop’s goal of 10 new plants a year. She identified the two major impediments as a lack of people equipped to plant and a lack of churches who will “mother” the plants. Our congregation gets to mother a plant beginning this year, and I’m excited to be able to contribute. The harder barrier of church planting will be beginning to plant churches where “new churches aren’t needed,” that is, in locales where we “already have a United Methodist Church.” Sure, that church may not be growing our reaching anyone – though they did have one profession of faith last year – but if we only pour more money into it they will turn around, they will become a powerhouse for evangelism. I wish.

May 25, 2010

The problem of technology

Filed under: Albert Borgmann,Max Weber,Ministry,United Methodism,church growth — rheyduck @ 8:21 pm

I read a fair number of books. When they grab me, I’ll apply myself and read them quickly. When they don’t,  I’ll work more slowly. Albert Borgman’s Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology is one of the latter. I received it as a Christmas gift in 2008 (don’t you wish your presents were as good as mine!), and am still reading it.

In chapter 4, “Contingency and Grace,” Borgmann talks about our perception that our culture is unfriendly to the Christian faith, though he takes what we perceive as “unfriendliness” (or outright hostility) is better described as indifference. The root of this indifference is a culture closed off to grace, and the root of that closure to grace is our rejection of contingency.  He says:

Grace is always undeserved and often unforethinkable, and a culture of transparency and control systematically reduces, if it does not occlude, the precinct of grace. A technical term for what lies beyond prediction and control is contingency. What we need is to recover then as a condition of receiving grace is the realm of significant contingency. (p. 65)

You can tell right away that Borgmann is one of those philosophers comfortable with neo-logisms – “unforethinkable.” At least I’ve never seen it before, though its meaning is fairly clear. We don’t like the unexpected. We want to be able to control and predict our world. We think we ought to be able to understand everything.

Christians are not immune to this attitude. In fact, I wonder if what we see in our broader culture isn’t a secularization of a Christian desire to eliminate contingency. The Christians who aspire to this may not look to science, technology and human control of all things, but they do look to God as the One who controls everything. If this is the way God operates then there is no contingency. Everything that happens has been determined by the active willing of God to so happen. There is nothing that happens that is not in accordance with God’s will. What our current society has done is take this desire for non-contingency and brought it fully into the human realm. We humans ought to know and understand everything. If we understand the initial conditions of the system, we ought to be able both to predict the future of the system and to bring about our desired state of affairs. A perfect Newtonian worldview.

Borgmann identifies this aversion to grace and contingency and its love of control with “modern technology.” (p. 66) I’m spurred by this to not think only of our common understanding of technology, that which deals with physics, chemistry and other physical sciences, but our social technology. My beef isn’t so much with computers, cell phones, and the like (at least not right now), but with Max Weber’s routinization of charisma and rationalization of social processes.

I agree with Borgmann: our culture’s infatuation with “transparency and control” has been an expression of closure to grace and the contingency that would make room for it. Inasmuch as I am an inhabitant of this culture, I share that concern. But my greater concern is that the church has completely bought into Weberian social technology, whether implicitly or explicitly, leading to the church disallowing contingency – and grace – in favor of command and control.

Some of our churches express our dedication to Weber with our command and control bureaucracies, our commitment to systems of rational administration, management and accountability. Other churches turn away from mid-twentieth century bureaucratic forms, embracing instead a pursuit of “leadership.” Books, videos, conferences and courses in this “leadership” have been multiplying over the past decade or so. Once upon a time pastors flocked to Evangelism or Prophecy conferences. Now we flock to Leadership conferences. We need to hear the latest digest of leadership “principles” that we can take home and apply to our churches. Once we master these principles, we will be able to assure the right results.

You may notice the problem with both these approaches, the bureaucratic (my own denomination’s favorite) and the cult of leadership. Who needs grace? Sure, we can look back on people who had charisma, the founders of our movements. They did awesome and amazing things. But now we have their “principles” and “systems” to go on. If we work the system, apply the principles, things will turn out right.

But I’m an anti-Weberian on this. I think our commitments to bureaucratic rationality and the cult of leadership are forms of institutional atheism. Who needs God, when we have the right methods, the right principles? I’d argue instead that the need in our churches is not a more efficient bureaucracy, a more effective system, or better crafted principles. While none of these are evil – or even bad – in themselves, they have become for us a substitute for the Holy Spirit. We will not be the church we want to be – or need to be – apart from a fresh filling and empowerment by the Spirit. I say this knowing full well that one of the problems of the Spirit is unpredictability. When the Spirit leads, we don’t know what will happen next. Our penchant for planning is marginalized. But I’d still rather have the Spirit.

Some will say, “That’s all very nice. But Weber was just describing the way things are. Organizations do start with charismatic leaders. When the next generation lacks the charisma of the founder, they rationalize and routinize what they see in the founder. That’s just the way it is.” Maybe so. Maybe what Weber says is an accurate description of the way organizations have worked. So what? Must they be that way? Must we reject grace in favor of a completely naturalized rationality? I’d rather not.

Changing the Covenant

Filed under: Ministry,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 5:18 pm

Some of the latest big news in the UMC is from the study committee that is suggesting that we do away with the “guaranteed appointment” for ordained Elders. It is “a promise the church can no longer keep.” For those who are not familiar with the current system, here’s how things are now (very much abbreviated).  First, you spend tens of thousands of dollars and at least seven years getting college and seminary degrees. Second, you go through rounds of paper work, interviews, and psychological tests to be approved for ordination. Third, when you are ordained you agree to go anywhere within the conference that the bishop might send you. There are no promises regarding housing (in many places you’ll likely have a parsonage, that may or may not be up to official standards) or location. Currently each conference sets a minimum salary for pastors, so you’ll be paid at least that much.  There is no guarantee that you’ll fit the place, that your family needs will be met (you’re better off not having a family if all you consider is the appointment system – just ask JW or FA). There’s no guarantee how long you’ll be there, though the standard appointment is for a year, and the trend is toward longer appointments. So as the “covenant” now stands, it’s something like, “Do what we tell you, and you’ll be guaranteed a job.” The alternative is something like, “Do what we tell you, and you might have a job.”

The commission has observed that some pastors are ineffective and mediocre. This is an accurate perception. (Of course, whether my definition and application of “ineffective” and “mediocre” matches any one else’s is where things start getting dicey.)

Some things that would clear the air before the “covenant” is changed:

  1. Increase trust in the church. As it is, there is deep distrust between pastors and the church hierarchy, congregations and the hierarchy, and pastors and churches. This fundamental pathology is part of what is dragging us down. As long as we are fundamentally a top-down authoritarian system – which the current proposal regarding elders exacerbates – trust will continue to be lacking.
  2. Find a shared vision for ministry and a shared theological vision. We have the Book of Discipline with our “official doctrine,” but this is “official” more than it is operational (to use George Lindbeck’s helpful terms), or “not to be taken literally and juridically” (in the Discipline’s language). We have Bishop Schnase’s 5 practices, but these are flexible and institutional enough that they can be interpreted so many ways that they allow too much wiggle room. We have our mission statement – “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” but lacking a shared understanding of who Jesus is and what transformation he seeks, “disciple” remains a fuzzy, feel-good term for many. We have our marketing mantra, “Open hearts, Open minds, Open doors,” but that is the gospel of inclusivism, not the gospel of Jesus.
  3. We need to address the theological and ecclesial vision being inculcated in our seminaries. Is what they teach our future elders compatible with our vision for reaching people? If not, are we willing to hold them accountable, or do we bow before the gods of “academic freedom,” “theological pluralism,” and “we’ve always done it this way?”
  4. Be open and honest about incentives and God-talk. When most pastors are responsible for raising families, they find themselves in a situation where it can be useful to have (a) salaries that enable them to care for their families, and (b) housing that fits their families. This sometimes happens. But sometimes it doesn’t. At least in some conferences there are some churches that pay larger salaries than others, and some that have different configurations of housing. Being appointed to a church with a larger salary (or a larger house) looks like an incentive to some people. Some people internalize the notion, “I have an incentive to do well in this appointment. If I do well (i.e., if I am effective) in this appointment this incentive will work for me.” Boy, that sounds pretty crass and materialistic, doesn’t it? That’s why we prefer to only talk about “God” and “calling” in this regard. Those things that look like incentives, really aren’t. In each and every case, whether you get huge raises with every move or move from small church to small church, you are pursuing the call of God. Doubtless. But the appearance of these “incentives” sure does skew perception and morale. Especially when the folks who run the system tend to consistently receive so many more “incentives” than those who don’t. If we could talk about these things openly, I think it’d help.

September 24, 2009

Kirbyjon Caldwell at the Gathering

Filed under: Texas Annual Conference,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 3:04 pm


This year’s Gathering (Texas Conference Pastors Retreat) began with a message from Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village UMC. Kirbyjon is always worth listening to. He began with a statistic about our current situation: The United Methodist Church is losing 73,000 worshipers each year. Considering a single institution in our church, one heavily weighted toward the older end of the age spectrum, he suggested in that in fourteen and a half years there would be no one left in UMW (United Methodist Women).

I don’t see how anyone could dispute this. Though my own congregation is doing better than some, when I see the high percentage of our highly committed and active folks are over 70, I’m forced to recognize that chances are against them being as active and committed in ten years.We have simply don an inadequate job reaching younger generations.

It’s time for United Methodists to wake up and change, he says. We’ve all heard it, “When you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got,” but we keep on doing what we’ve always done.

Our problem is that some of the things we’ve always done used to work. We keep doing them because they worked in our younger days. We grew attached to them. In many cases our actions declare that we’re more in love with our ways of following Jesus than we are with Jesus himself. In other cases we have identified key parts of our Christian identity as “things we’ve always done that no longer work” – preaching the bible, the doctrine of the Trinity, the resurrection of Jesus, evangelism, etc. While I understand the slogan, slogans do not make for well-finessed arguments.

Kirbyjon sees Bishop Huie’s leadership in the Texas Conference as one beacon of light in the denomination.

I agree with Kirbyjon, but I sometimes fear it might be too late. We have not yet broken the back of despair and resistance to change endemic to the system. The distrust that built up between pastors, churches and conference leadership over the years is still under the surface (ok, sometimes it’s under the surface, sometimes it’s way above the surface).

Kirbyjon turns to Jesus and John Wesley for some ideas for our future, seeing them as “masters at planting incremental changes in people which in turn lead to collective transformation.”

But they both used plenty of non-incremental change. When he cleansed the temple Jesus didn’t take out the pigeons one week, then after that change had been received come back for the lambs, and only later come back for the money changers. When Wesley began field preaching he didn’t make it there by inching away from the pulpit week by week.

From this beginning, Kirbyjon made two broad suggestions.

First, we need to change our Procedures and Practices to fit the needs of the community. John Wesley did this in the areas of education, health care and economic development. He noted that within our laity we have people who are experienced – more experienced than the clergy – in leading successful organizational transformation. We need to find ways to draw on their leadership, even, he suggested, find a way to bring them into episcopal leadership.

Our current system of guaranteed appointments – with their guaranteed pay checks encourage mediocrity.

The big question we need to ask: What changes must I make in my current ministry to turn things around?

We also need to work, secondly, on Preaching and Proclamation. Within this area of change we need to do a number of things.

First, someone needs to be accountable for the quality of our worship. When we’re accountable we will need to identify resistant leaders and “preach the hell out of them;” quit pitying their situations (Sure, church leadership in this age is tough. But it’s tough for everyone); and we need to “Set the table so that people want to come to church.”

Second, we need to be authentic. He told the story of Keith Kellow, one of the conference oldtimers who had hoped that the merger of the central conference in 1960 would have brought the energy and life of the black churches into the white churches. Instead he saw the black churches become too much like the often-dead white churches. He observed that while American culture will tolerate pornography, greed, lust, and the like, it won’t tolerate boring.

Third, we need to preach with authority. He quipped, “If you don’t preach well, then don’t preach long.” He also said we need to never preach a sermon with no Bible. John Wesley and Jesus were both scripture saturated – we must be also.

Fourth, we must cast a vision of the Christian life and the Gospel of Universal Redemption. We have tp preach hope to those with no hope.

May 5, 2009

“Let them eat cake”

Filed under: United Methodism,church growth — rheyduck @ 8:07 pm

The last couple of issues of the United Methodist Reporter have featured articles on GracePoint UMC, a recent church plant in Wichita, Kansas, that grew quickly, but let the denomination this spring. It’s depressing to invest so much money, energy and excitement only to lose the fruit. But it shouldn’t be surprising to people familiar with the way the UMC tends to operate. With few exceptions, we don’t know what to do with high energy innovate leaders. High energy leaders who excel at working within the system, yes, we have plenty of places for them. But people who push hard and are non-conformists? Our system pretty much pushes them elsewhere.

The Reporter spoke with Dan Dick, a UM leader (soon to be on staff at the Wisconsin Annual Conference):

He feels the denomination got off track in the 1990s “when we veered off and started pursuing the church-growth movement” so popular among nondenominational churches. He likens that model to a new business start: Select a location in a growth area, get a dynamic CEO-type leader and find “two or three very deep pockets to draw from, to be able to launch a really nice facility, good parking, good equipment and technology.”

While that formula may work in a congregational setting, he said, it’s not especially beneficial to a connectional system like the United Methodist Church, which seeks to create communities of faith that are accountable within a denominational structure.

Focusing on numerical growth and expansion isn’t really central to the Methodist identity, Dr. Dick argues. And while United Methodist churches want to reach as many people as possible, the Wesleyan focus is instead on building communities that equip people to live as Christian disciples.

“That’s a very different thing,” Dr. Dick said. “It’s one of the reasons why we are traditionally and still are fundamentally a small-membership denomination.”

Most successful United Methodist church starts, he said, tend to have three things in common: They are a satellite of an existing congregation, they have a committed core group of leaders and they are designed to meet a specific need, such as a different racial or ethnic demographic.

GracePoint was a fairly good model, but its expansion was “poorly executed,” Dr. Dick said. Though the church plant sought to launch satellite campuses to reach different audiences, he said “they operated congregationally in a vacuum” and weren’t as concerned about where other United Methodist congregations were present. “They were going into a head-to-head competition rather than seeking ways to be collaborative and connectional.”

I read this and hear that (1) we need to keep our churches mono-cultural and (2) work hard to make sure everyone is happy. If Dr. Dick’s theory is correct that would explain why our denominational membership and evangelistic efforts boomed through the 1970s and 1980s, only to crater in the 1990s when we started to pay attention to the Church Growth Movement. But if that’s the case, why have we had so many books and articles before the 1990s decrying our lack of evangelism and our failure to reach people and grow churches?

I am in a position of no authority in the denomination. I pastor a small church in a small town. I am not charismatic in any sense of the word. My gifts are more in teaching and academia than in growing organizations. But I do know a few things.

1. We need to repent of our compulsion to keep people happy. In our local churches we work so hard to keep the long time members happy that we’re unwilling to make changes that might reach new people – even if those “new people”are our own children and grand children.

2. We need to be more concerned about people becoming followers of Jesus than we are concerned about them becoming OUR followers of Jesus.

3. We need to not only say we want young people in our churches, but we need to stop making them act like retired folks before we allow them to have a say in what we do.

April 29, 2009

What’s Next?

Filed under: Bible,Discipline,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 2:22 pm

We humans are such odd creatures. We seem to oscillate between giving no thought to the consequences of our actions to being paralyzed with fear by imagined consequences of our actions.

Take one of the proposed constitutional changes in the United Methodist Church as an example. Here’s the proposed text for part of Article IV:

Inclusiveness of the Church — The United Methodist Church is a part of the church universal, which is one Body in Christ. The United Methodist Church acknowledges that all persons are of sacred worth and that we are in ministry to all. All persons shall be eligible to attend its worship services, participate in its programs, receive the sacraments, and upon baptism be admitted as baptized members. All persons, upon taking vows declaring the Christian faith and relationship in Jesus Christ, shall be eligible to become professing members in any local church in the connection. In the United Methodist Church no conference or other organizational unit of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member or any constituent body.

Doesn’t look very controversial on the face of it. One might naturally read the statement as saying something like, “We believe Jesus came, died, and rose for all people. Since Jesus came to bring all people back to God and to invite them to take up his kingdom agenda, we his followers aim to do likewise. There is no category of humans that we seek to exclude from this ministry.” For one who reads the New Testament and takes it as authoritative, I don’t see how they could be other than affirming of such an inclusive mission. So what’s the problem?

All UMs who have been following debates within the church for the past thirty years know what the problem is. Our greatest outward schism these days is over homosexuality. Some are convinced that the practice of homosexuality is perfectly acceptable from a Christian point of view. Others are convinced otherwise. The current disciplinary language affirms homosexuals as people of “sacred worth,” and thus a category of people not to be excluded from our ministry work. At the same time, the Discipline teaches that the practice of homosexuality is “not compatible with Christian teaching,” that we do not recognize or perform homosexual unions (whether “marriages” or another other kind), and do not accept “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” into ministry. These statements, however, are in parts of the Discipline other than the constitution. Thus, opponents reason, if the amendment is passed, the new form of the constitution will trump these exclusions, making them null and void. Since we say that “no conference or other organizational unit of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member or any constituent body,” that means that any member is eligible for participation in any body of the church. Currently this article has specific non-exclusions: “race, color, national origin, status or economic condition” do not exclude one from membership and participation in the UMC. It is possible that some see the switch from particular non-exclusionary language to complete inclusionary language as a less controversial (opponents may say “devious”) way to bring currently excluded groups into the areas from which they are current excluded.

If this constitutional amendment is adopted, surely some will seek to rule out the current disciplinary restrictions regarding homosexuality. But because some might – or even surely will  – pursue this course of action, is the language of the amendment any less true to our Christian convictions, regardless of our position on the acceptability of homosexual practice?

United Methodists often pride themselves on not being literalists. Such pride is mistaken. We, like most other collections of humans, are selective literalists. While some may push the literal language of an amended constitution at this point (along the lines of the “all means all” campaign) to turn the UMC toward official acceptance of homosexual practice, a literal reading of this text, as in purely literal readings of pretty much any text, be pushed to what seems absurd. Let’s consider other forms of exclusion we currently practice. When it comes to age, we have disciplinary language on mandatory retirement. Can’t do that – that’s exclusionary. Though I’m not aware of any specific disciplinary language on this point, I’ve never heard of a child (under the age of 16) being ordained in the UMC. Sounds exclusionary to me. What about the current educational requirements for ordination? Some people lack the capacity for such education – and we heartlessly exclude them from ordained ministry.

Surely such reasoning is silly. No one is out pushing for ordination of children or the uneducated. No one wants bishops and pastors to keep going until they drop dead or become totally senile. But a plain literal reading of the text of the proposed amendment could surely lead in such directions. Since people might use the text in this way, we need to refrain from tinkering with it at all, lest bad things happen.

If we argue this way, maybe we should take up Stanley Hauerwas’s idea of keeping the bible away from people also. There are passages in the bible that if read and applied literally might be used to justify and promote what we take to be murder. Yet while I strongly believe many unintended consequences have come out of the way some people have handled the bible – the word of God (not just the word of the General Conference of the UMC) – I still believe the bible in the hands of people to be a good thing. Dangerous? Certainly. Ought we to teach people to handle it rightly? Absolutely. But that goes for the Discipline as well.

Knowing then, that consequences I thing wrong might flow from passing this amendment, I’m still inclined to vote for it. I’m not basing this on my confidence on the maturity of discourse and argumentation in the UMC. I’m afraid my confidence in that is very low. I’m also not basing my position on a commitment to the gospel of inclusion. While I think there is a proper biblical concept of inclusion, I cannot see that what goes by that name in most discussions today has much connection with such an account. Rather, the gospel of inclusion, as I hear it preached, sounds much more like a version of modern individualism than the gospel of Jesus. I also have no confidence that debates over “sexuality” (I doubt the helpfulness of abstractions in this case) end soon or reach a conclusion satisfactory to all. We UMs mirror our culture (as we have since the beginning) in being pretty messed up in this area. Whether we identify as heterosexual or homosexual we tend to be (mis)ruled by our desires, thinking (with Alexander Pope) that “whatever is, is right.” Our desires are, so since God made us and everything good, our desires must be good also. Surely we ought not to thwart that which is good? (My position on this is that while we shouldn’t thwart that which is good, we need to (a) sometimes say “no,” (b) sometimes say, “not yet,” and sometimes (c) recognize that we might be mistaken in our identification of a good.

Instead, my inclination to vote for it is that as far as I can tell from my submission to the authority of the bible and orthodox Christian theology it is simply true. We United Methodist Christians do believe that Jesus died for all. We do believe that God calls all people to die to sin and live to holiness.

Enough rambling for today. If you’d like to argue with me, go for it! I’m amenable to correction or persuasion.

March 2, 2009

Discipleship Goals #3

Filed under: Five Practices,Local church,Ministry,Texas Annual Conference,United Methodism — rheyduck @ 8:14 pm

The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations movement, as exemplified in our Texas Annual Conference, speaks of the practice of “Faith Forming Relationships.” I served on the conference committee tasked with this area after the reorganization. As far as I could tell, all the name meant in that context was “all the things we used to call Christian education and spiritual formation.” Since I’d heard conference leaders say that our reorganization was aiming at real change, I figured I must be missing something. Surely the purpose in reorganizing was more than just re-arranging deck chairs, more than merely shrinking a committee, cutting funding, and continuing to do what we’d done before.

In the first post I focused on elements of discipleship that, broadly speaking, refer to our relationship with God. My take on “faith forming relationships” is that here we’re working on our relationships with each other in the Body. In salvation God seeks to heal four dimensions of broken relationship: Our relation with God, with other people, with ourselves and with creation. All these elements are necessary parts of the biblical picture of salvation. If all I do is get right with God, I’m doing a good thing, but I’m missing out on important aspects of salvation. If all I do is join a church and get friendly with other church people,  I’m doing a good thing, but I’m missing out on important aspects of salvation. If all I do is receive inner healing, well, you get the idea.

The process of making disciples includes brining people into relation with the church. By “church” I mean more than simply getting their name on a roll. Church for us, here and now, always entails a particular group of people in a particular place and time. That’s why when I receive people into membership I speak of their loyalty to and support for this congregation of the United Methodist Church, not just the United Methodist Church. Only a few will ever relate to the abstraction we call the UMC. All ought to relate to this particular set of people that instantiate that abstraction.

Here are the characteristics I look for as I work to build a disciple’s relationship  with the church:

  1. Disciples understand clearly the basic convictions of the church. Being a Christian entails having a certain set of convictions. It is more than having convictions, but it is not less. It’s the same with being a United Methodist – and with being a member of a particular congregations. Disciples grow in their understanding of the basic convictions that differentiate our community from others. Understanding these convictions makes us neither ethnocentric, triumphalistic not exclusivistic. Some of the convictions we claim are at the heart of the faith. Some we recognize merely as “our” way of doing things.
  2. Disciples can articulate the basic convictions of the church. We understand things better when we articulate them, when we put them into words. These convictions are not our private possessions, but the shared property of the church, of the community of followers of Jesus.
  3. Disciples identify, support, and live the vision and mission of the church. The mission of the church is not just for the pastors and leaders. The mission of the church is too large for the whole body not to be involved. Part of being a Christian is recognizing Jesus as Lord over the whole of life, of taking up his agenda as our agenda.
  4. Disciples understand their membership in the biblical sense, with people as parts of the body of Christ. When I am a member of a church it means more than having my name on a roll, more than receiving a set of privileges. I am a part of the Body – connected with these particular folks through the shared gift of the Holy Spirit. While we share a common faith, that faith is not the ultimate source of our unity. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate source of unity.
  5. Disciples let love rule in all relationships within the church. We often find it easier to love people outside the church than people inside the church. We find that we know them too well. We’ve been hurt by them too many times. But if we’re going to be disciples, we’ll increasingly give in to love and let love have the last word.
  6. Disciples are learning and growing in their ability to be open with each other. Openness requires great trust. Great trust takes spending time with people. When we’re open we’re more able to receive grace from others. When we’re open, the work of God in our lives is more visible and accessible to the people around us.
  7. Disciples desire that forgiveness be real and abiding. We know we’re supposed to forgive each other. But 490 times? No – I don’t think Jesus meant his math to be taken literally (even if we take the reading that has 77). He meant don’t count – don’t keep a record of wrongs. That’s tough. Nearly impossible. In fact it is impossible without the grace of God.
  8. Disciples have a passion to see relationships restored and healed. We already have passionate worship. We’re also passionate about seeing relationships healed and restored. It matters to us. It bothers us to see people in the church who hate each other, who go to different services so they won’t have to see each other. That’s not what Jesus intends.
  9. Disciples make themselves available to God to use in the work of healing relationships. Sometimes God just strikes us with relational healing. More often God seems to work through other people. As we grow in Christ, we will increasingly allow God to use us in that healing work.
  10. Disciples are involved in a small group structure where they can be open and honest with each other and provoke one another to growth in relationship with Jesus. Many of our Sunday school classes settle for head knowledge or for fellowship (meant as drinking coffee, eating donuts, and talking friendly). Nothing wrong with that. But what we desperately need is face to face relationships where we can be open with each other, speaking – and hearing – the truth in love.
Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress