Bandits No More

April 30, 2009

Reading Tribal Church

Filed under: Books,Evangelism,Spirituality,church growth — rheyduck @ 9:09 pm

I just finished reading Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation by Carol Howard Merritt, the book we’re supposed to be reading for our next monthly district clergy gathering.

The book’s points can be summed up fairly briefly:

  • Young people are crunched from many directions today. They desperately need people to love them, accept them, and encourage them.
  • Most young people reject traditional sexual morality, if not for themselves, then for their friends. If we want to void alienating them, we will have to find ways to accommodate this rejection.
  • Most young people tend to be religious pluralists and soteriological universalists. We’ll need to respect and encourage diversity on all levels if we want to reach them. If we’re narrow-minded and preach/teach that Jesus is the only way, we won’t have younger people in our churches.
  • The church tends not to be very friendly or accessible to younger generations. We need to find ways to not only include people from younger generations in what we do, but actually give them power within our churches.

As one who would, in many settings, be labeled conservative, I find the first and last points more congenial to my convictions and approach to ministry. As one who used to be young, I know what it is to feel economic distress. I’ve been unemployed. I’ve had to move every few years. I do not own my own home and even with declining real estate prices see them as beyond my reach. In that context I know the pressure to have my wife and me both work full time “real” jobs so we can provide for our children and our future, and yet make the sacrifice to not do so for the sake of our children (one of whom has autism and needs and will always need special care).

I know how difficult the church can be for younger people. I’ve served churches where I get stern lectures for not kowtowing to racist attitudes and where I have the district superintendent called in to complain about my bringing in too many neighborhood kids. My wife and I have worked intensively with young couples to bring them into the church only to have them run off on their first visit to worship.

I know what it is to have church leaders consider “traditional” worship the only real (“reverent” is the commonly used word) worship, while folks from younger generations (including my own children!) yearn for a newer, livelier style. My own children are still a captive audience, but for how long?

The first generations of Christians were considered odd balls. They stood out in their communities. One characteristic that differentiated them was that they loved each other. This love was not merely in terms of kinship or blood relation. Well, it was blood relation – not their blood, however, but participation in a common redemption by the blood of Jesus. That kind of love across social boundaries attracted outsiders.

Christians in the ancient world were also considered odd for their exclusivism. When persecution arose, the authorities would have been happy to release their Christian prisoners – if only they’d add Caesar to their pantheon. It wasn’t like they’d have to actively worship Caesar or the gods of the state. Just a pinch of incense, just enough to fit in as good citizens. Those wacky Christians would rather suffer than honor any god other than the One incarnate in Jesus.

I suppose a difference between my position and the authors is that I see a need for Christians to be distinct from the broader culture. We need to be distinct from the broader “conservative” elements of culture (notorious for an emphasis on wealth, prosperity and economic freedom) and from the broader “liberal” elements of culture (notorious for an emphasis on sexual expression and freedom). The Christianity pictured in the New Testament was extremely diverse – but not diverse in every way. It wasn’t the diversity of say, having a pitcher, a goalie, a quarterback, and a forward on each team. Rather it was more like the diversity of having a pitcher, a catcher, outfielders and infielders on a team, playing a common game. The diversity of the church was also a transformative diversity – more than “let’s be friends and each pursue our individual projects and feel good together.” All were invited to Jesus. All were challenged to – and needed to! – repent. Some needed to change in their economic practices. Some needed to change in their sexual practices. Some needed to change in their relational practices.

I read this book as one yearning to reach the younger generation. But my call is to reach them specifically for the sake of Jesus, so they might become his followers. I know not all will initially be attracted. I’ll have to lovingly pursue them. I’ll have to befriend even people I don’t agree with. I’ll have to pray like crazy. But they’re worth it.

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.

April 28, 2009

Memories

Filed under: Bible,Discipline — rheyduck @ 2:32 am

A Happy Memory: One Sunday about 14 years ago my son did the children’s message for the church service. Well, it was sort of a reverse children’s message. In a normal children’s message an adult gets up and tells the children a story. In this case it was a child – five year old – telling the story. He got up and told the story of the book of Jonah. He did a great job. I was really proud of him.

A Sad Memory: After the service that Sunday the church members were telling me what a great job my son did. One of them told me, “He knows the bible so well. He knows it even better than I do!”

I was happy that my five year old son knew the bible well. I was sad that someone who had been in church for at least five decades didn’t know as much as a five year old. What have we been teaching all these years? How have we been teaching our people?

April 14, 2009

Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals

Filed under: Bible,Books,Evangelicalism,Inerrancy — rheyduck @ 4:20 pm

bookIn his book by this title, Carlos R. Blovell argues that institutional commitments to a doctrine of biblical inerrancy like that found in the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society are not conducive to the spiritual formation of younger evangelicals. He notes,

“It has been my experience that younger evangelicals feel the tension most when they are left with an authoritative Bible whose authority has been practically all but voided by philosophical and exegetical details that regularly keep popping up. What ends up being authoritative in the end is the evangelical tradition and this tradition  has to be taken on faith to the effect that it best represents what is ‘in’ the Bible.”

As younger evangelicals face the demand that inerrancy is the doctrine on which evangelicalism, or, more personally, their true faith, stands or falls, along with the multitude of qualifications, challenges and even incoherencies in that doctrine, Blovell sees the tension leading them away from the Christian faith altogether. If inerrancy is strictly essential to real Christianity, and inerrancy falls apart under what they take to be rigorous examination, then they are left with no choice but to leave.

Blovell wishes to remain both a Christian and an evangelical. He challenges the current generation of evangelical teachers to discover ways to have a high view of the Bible and its authority that are (a) truer to Scripture, (b) truer to the history of the way Scripture has been used by the faithful through out the ages, and (c) sensitive to the spiritual needs of their students. While he says that he wishes to contribute to such an account in the future, this book serves to identify the need rather than to offer the right way forward.

Evangelicals, especially those in positions of authority in evangelical institutions, are faced with the constant challenge of “going liberal,” or appearing to “go liberal.” Since maintaining the centrality of inerrancy is perceived as the main bulwark against going liberal, I’m not optimistic that many will listen to Blovell any longer than it takes to write him out of evangelicalism. One might think that Wesleyan evangelicals, given the fact of less of an interest in inerrancy in their own tradition might be able to take this step. Since Wesleyans are already suspect in an era when evangelicalism is primarily defined by Calvinists, it will likely be hard for them to take this step, however.

April 3, 2009

Cult of Accountability

Filed under: Economics,Epistemology,Texas Annual Conference,church growth — rheyduck @ 4:39 pm

In his essay on the epistemological problems underlying the current economic crisis, Jerry Z. Miller refers to the “cult of accountability:”

The cult of “accountability” was linked to key innovations that turned out to have unanticipated undersides. One was the shibboleth of linking pay to performance, which put a premium on schemes that purported to measure performance. This tended to produce “hard” numbers that seemed reliable but were not. It created tremendous incentives for CEOs, executives, and traders to devote their creative energies to gaming the metrics, i.e. into coming up with schemes that purported to demonstrate productivity or profit by massaging the data, or by underinvesting in maintenance and human capital formation to boost quarterly earnings or their equivalents.

Accountability has been all the rage for the past decade, especially since the failure of Enron, Worldcom and their ilk. The thought is that if we can gain objectivity and accuracy by means of stricter and clearer accountability, we will avoid those problems of the past.

Business is not the only enterprise facing higher accountability. In at least my Annual Conference (of the United Methodist Church), we have had a greater emphasis on accountability over the past few years. As with Enron et al., the need (I admit that it is a need) for accountability arose from perceived failure. Our conference leadership saw that the churches of the conference were failing. While the population of the region was growing, the churches at best (and there were few at this level) were keeping even. Most of the churches in the conference were declining while the population grew. This failure was further evidenced by the lack of professions of faith in congregations. Half the churches in the conference were showing not a single profession of faith in a year. Speaking plainly, that means that as far as the official statistics show, not a single person had become a Christian through the ministry of that church that year. A key response to this crisis has been increased accountability, effected by weekly reporting of key statistics: Worship Attendance, Professions of Faith, People in “hands on ministry.”

All of these are good things. Having people come to worship, come to faith in Jesus, and join in Kingdom work – all of these are essential to church health. But are we missing something? Is it possible that just as the “cult of accountability” reflected faulty epistemological assumptions on the part of business and the economy, our own adaptation of that cult could reflect faulty assumptions as well?

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