Polity is Popular?

I find it fascinating that some of my more active posts in terms of comments come when I make statements or raise questions about committees and/or administrative concerns. Remember the transfer letter post? There are still people who make comments over at the Catching Meddlers site on that one.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this.

I will say this. There are times when my desire to reach folks who are not in the church comes into conflict with my personal comfort within our particular system or way of doing church.

This reminds me of Wesley’s comments on field preaching. He reached a point where his personal preferences came into conflict with his passion for sharing the gospel. In his journal, Wesley wrote,

I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; I had been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.

What is that for us? When do we reach the point, like Wesley, that we “submit to be more vile” in order to share the gospel? Is our polity (and practice) framed by our mission or is it sometimes the other way around?

Update: Here are some interesting practical questions along the same lines from Andrew over at Thoughts of Resurrection. He’s busy thinking about issues with a virtual campus as it relates to the Book of Discipline. This is a great example of how to begin wrestling with polity and mission without denying either.

Smaller Committees and Life-Changing Discipleship

For some strange reason, I have been paying closer attention to some of the United Methodist megachurches. I just ran across this article on Emergent Village by Michael Slaughter. It’s an excerpt from the new edition of his book UnLearning Church.

Two things in this article stood out in my mind. First, some folks might assume big church = many meetings. Apparently this isn’t true at Ginghamsburg,

Older-mindset churches usually require a lot of committees and meetings. Ginghamsburg finds that its people have neither the time nor the patience for multiple committee activities, so we are down to one committee of nine people called the Leadership Board. No more staff-parish, missions, or finance committees. Major businesses operate with one board, but too often tiny churches become immobilized by layers of committees. They spend hours debating about what color carpeting to put in the church narthex, or about the precise wording of the congregation’s statement of beliefs.

Imagine a leadership board of nine people. There are congregations in United Methodism who average fifty people in worship and have 25 people serving on boards and committees. Imagine Ginghamsburg, who averages 4,000 in weekly attendance, with a Leadership Board of nine people. Interesting.

Another thing that stood out is his comment about “listen and learn” meetings,

Fifteen years ago, we would have emphasized getting people to show up for church programs and listen-and-learn meetings. We would have sponsored a seminar and gauged its success by how many attended. Now we measure success by asking “How are people finding life change and purpose through the experience?” People are not looking for church meetings so much as for life meaning.

This is something that really interests me, and it may be something I try to explore more in my D.Min. project and dissertation. Are there alternative ways for people to find life meaning through the local church that we aren’t taking advantage of? I think Web 2.0 and its emphasis on participation, rather than simply receiving information, might be one of those ways. Have any of your churches developed participatory Advent or Lenten studies using some of the newer technology (Twitter, Blogging, etc.)?

I know some of my purist friends will think I’ve lost my mind, and they’re probably right. I simply think we’re going to have to get more creative in our approach to making disciples. It’s too important to ignore. As United Methodists, I believe we have a tradition and commitment to offering in-depth discipleship. I’m not saying we need to “jazz things up” to get people interested. I’m just saying we need to work our tails off to think of creative ways to encourage discipleship via the means people are comfortable with and excited about using.

As always, there will be the argument that this will leave a certain segment of our people behind. That’s the great thing about a world where we can embrace “both/and” thinking. We don’t have to quit doing traditional bible studies, devotionals, and the like. There will be a segment of people who will continue to be powerfully transformed in those environments. We simply need to be mindful of the people that those setups won’t reach or transform. It’s not choosing one or the other. It’s about doing both with excellence.

Wright On…the Bible

During the recent Lambeth Conference, Bishop Tom Wright presented this piece, The Bible and Tomorrow’s World. It is a really helpful look at, you guessed it, the Bible!

I’m reading through it, and I had to stop to write down some thoughts midway through. I find it incredibly interesting that Bishop Wright sees the “left” and “right” making the same mistakes, because they both begin with the assumption of some form of Deism. He writes,

The real problem with the Deism that infected so much of the western world in the eighteenth century and dominates it still – thank God for our brothers and sisters from elsewhere who didn’t have that problem! – is that it lives by serious reaction against the whole notion of God’s kingdom coming ‘on earth as in heaven’.

Then, he goes on to say,

That is why the Left, which prefers a detached Deism so it can get on and do its own thing, disregarding instructions that seem to come from a distant God or a distant past, gets it wrong, and why the Right, which wants an authoritarian command from on high, doesn’t get it.

In other words, both the left and right hold ot a form of Deism. For the left, the God of deism is disconnected spatially and chronologically, thus making God somehow in need of updating or at least in need of some serious help to get things done in the world. On the other side of things, the gap between God’s spatial distance is filled by Scripture. The problem there is that Scripture isnt’ God’s incarnation, Jesus is. It’s amazing that both scriptural idolatry and idolatry of human effort both are attempts at bridging the gap between a Deistic God and the distanced world.

Wright, instead, sees things in this way:

The God of scripture is with us in the world, his world, the world in which he lived and died and rose again in the person of his Son, in which he breathes new life through the person of his Spirit. Scripture is the vehicle of the kingdom-bringing ‘authority’, in that sense, of this God.

He does go on to simplify what he’s trying to say:

Basically, I believe that scripture is the book through which the church is enabled to be the church, to be the people of God anticipating his sovereign rule on earth as in heaven

I’ve just started reading this article, and I’m very interested in seeing where he goes next. I’m impressed with the way God’s incarnation in Jesus is central, the Spirit’s ongoing work isn’t diminished, and there is a strong place for the Church in the purposes of Scripture.

Where are the Top UMC Church Websites?

I came across a post over at churchrelevance on the top 90 church websites. A quick search shows only one United Methodist Church on this list: Church of the Resurrection. Hey, maybe we can claim our Free Methodist cousins at NorthGate Free Methodist Church! Maybe there are some on there without Methodist in the title that I missed. But even if we have one or two others listed, I still would like to have more!

Of course I don’t know what kind of criteria they used, but I still wish we had a little better representation. Maybe in our push to reach younger people as a denomination, we leaders can look through a few of these sites and see what the good folks at churchrelevance see as a top website. I noticed that many of the sites have an Apple-ish feel, none of these are cookie-cutter sites, most are fairly simple, and most assume that people who have never attended their congregation will be looking for information about visiting for the first time.

I hope they’ve just overlooked some of our best examples as a denomination. Anyone out there want to point us to some great United Methodist Church websites that churchrelevance missed?

Update: Thanks to Kent over at churchrelevance for pointing out Granger. Told you I’d miss one!

Resonant Preaching

Seth Godin’s blog is one that I really enjoy reading. Today, in a discussion about politics, he makes a statement that I believe is a good conversation starter for thinking about preaching. He writes,

Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. That’s your story. When you overreach, you always fail. Not today, but sooner or later, the truth wins out. Negative or positive, the challenge isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to tell truth that resonates.

Does this sound like preaching you’ve heard (or done) lately?

Leadership in a Flattened World

Sally Morgenthaler has an intriguing article over at Catalyst. Check out “Leadership in a Flattened World.”

Morgenthaler looks around at the world we live in and wonders what leadership looks like in a world where information is easily accessible to anyone, where authority is constantly questioned, and people are connected in more ways than ever. She argues that this is a world that is foreign to top-down, authoritarian leadership.

Further, she sees the countless forms of new connectedness, electronic and otherwise (Facebook, gaming events, chat rooms, village-concept malls, fantasy sports, etc.), as a sign that people have an unprecedented desire for community. In her words people appear to want, “to be noticed, to make a difference.”

Significance, influence, interaction, collective intelligence – all of these values describe an essential shift from passivity to reflexivity. We are no longer content to travel in lock-step fashion through life like faceless, isolated unites performing our one little job in an assembly line. It is a new day. We want to help solve the problems of the world.

You would think this would be a time of great rejoicing for the Church, right? This is a time when pastors can begin equipping lay-people for ministry in unprecedented ways, right? Morgenthaler doesn’t see this. Instead she argues, “we continue to vision, staff, and build for passivity. In the warp and woof of change, we adopt yet another campaign…” Instead of being open to true life-changing collaboration, she sees many church leaders who tend to function as top-down leaders. Her solution is to, “release our strangle-hold on ministry.” She uses metaphors like catalyst, midwives, guides, and ship-rudders.

Without a doubt, we live in a participatory world. So why don’t we see more people getting involved in ministry? I have found that some people are hesitant to suggest ministry ideas, because they’ve been told why they won’t work. I understand the idea, because sometimes they don’t. However, I don’t understand discouraging folks from getting out there and trying.

When I first got really fired up about serving in the Church, I remember reading a book that inspired me to set up a time to pray in the sanctuary for the following week’s worship service. I worked hard to set up a time for people to come and join in this (at least I thought I did at the time!), and there were only two people who showed up (thanks David Mingus!). It felt like a failure, and I didn’t schedule a second time. However, if someone came to me today asking to organize a prayer time for the morning worship service, I wouldn’t say, “Oh, I tried that once and it was a little disappointing…”

As Christian leaders, we need to be secure enough in our own gifts to help people find their point of connectedness and service. We need to be confident enough in their gifts to give them space to make a difference. We need to be secure enough in God’s grace to let people fail and learn from it. In the end, I don’t think people will quit. I think somehow, in the midst of trying to serve God wholeheartedly, they will find community and discern their particular place to make a difference.

Morgenthaler is right. We live in a different world, and it’s time to help people connect and serve. Our congregations should be fertile ground for community formation. They should be places known for making a real difference. What do we need to do as leaders to empower and equip others? What do we need to do to inspire people to new heights of interconnected service? It’s too important to ignore.

New Appointment

United Methodist elders are itinerant. Even though wikipedia lists itinerant alongside words such as vagabond, hobo, and vagrant, we United Methodist elders generally use it to describe the way we are called upon from time to time to move within the denomination from one place of service to another. This generally happens at Annual Conference, but this isn’t always the case.

Over the last few weeks, my life has been a whirlwind after learning that I am receiving a new pastoral assignment. In mid-October, I will become the Minister of Discipleship at Church of the Servant United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City. This is our first pastoral move as a family, so in a way we’re new to the actual experience of itinerancy. Even though we’ve always known that United Methodist elders eventually move, it’s still strange to feel the excitement of new opportunities for service, ministry and relationships while at the same time feeling sadness over leaving wonderful relationships, ministries, and places of service. All in all, I am just happy that we are now able to talk openly about this big change in our lives.

This shift, and the question of what awaits ahead, reminds me of a story I heard many times growing up. A long time ago, a man rode into a small town on horseback. He came up to the first person he saw, an old man sitting on his porch, and asked, “What are the people like here in this town?” The old man leaned back on his chair, looked off into the distance, and said, “Well stranger, what were they like where you lived before?” The traveler said, “Those folks were the meanest, angriest, lying, cheating folks you’d ever want to meet. Why do you think I packed up and left?” “That’s pretty much what you’ll find here too,” said the old man, “ya’ might want to keep ridin’.”

The first rider left, and not ten minutes later another man rode up and asked the same question, “What are the people like here in this town?” Again, the man leaned back in his chair, looked out from under his hat, and said, “Well stranger, what were they like where you lived before?” The traveler said, “Well, they were about as good as you’d ever expect to find anywhere, kind-hearted, good-natured, friendly, and generous. To tell you the truth, I hated to leave.” The old man smiled and said, “You’ll love it here! The people are just the same as where you lived before.”

I really believe there’s a lot of truth to that story. So even though I’ll miss the wonderful, incredibly talented, generous, and grace-filled people I currently serve, I look forward to meeting another group of wonderful incredibly talented, generous, and grace-filled folks in my new place of service.

Greatest Hits

Every now and then I like to go back and look at the views for particular posts. It reminds me of some of my favorites from the blog, and it helps me figure out how I want to focus my posts in the next few months. So in the spirit of those musical one-hit wonders that release Greatest Hit albums far too early, here are five of my favorite posts of my blogging career.

Sunday Sermon: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

As usual, a sermon never quite reads the way it “preaches” for a variety of reasons. With that in mind, here is my general manuscript for the message I preached this morning.

In 1962, a recording company executive heard about a new band coming on the British scene. He had serious doubts at the possibility of their success and said, “We don’t think the Beatles will do anything in their market. Guitar groups are on their way out.” Thomas G. Watson was the chairman of the board of IBM in 1943. With all the confidence in the world he once said, “I think there is a world market for about five computers.” A man named Lee DeForest invented the cathode ray tube in 1926, and when asked about the possibilities for that invention he remarked, “Theoretically, television may be feasible, but I consider it an impossibility – a development which we should waste little time dreaming about.”

Each one of these men looked at their current situation and assumed that was pretty much the end of the story. In a way, I can’t blame them. Their read of the data, their read of the situation, simply didn’t seem to suggest any other possibilities. World history is full of dreamers and scoffers. We know stories of countless optimists who dream about an unknown future and see possibility when the situation seems to call for skepticism, and we know countless pessimists who feel that we shouldn’t waste our time with dreams, visions, or thoughts about the future. To make matters even more complicated most of us are not fully one or the other! Most of us have no difficulty moving from one extreme to the other!

The story we find in Genesis 37 is one of the most important parts of the story of Joseph, one of the greatest dreamers of all time. Joseph’s history is enough to make a good soap opera. His father Jacob worked for his future father-in-law for seven years to win the hand of Rachel in marriage. After all that time, he was tricked into marrying her older sister Leah. And even though he ended up married to both Leah and Rachel, Leah was the wife who gave birth to six sons before Rachel ever became pregnant. Joseph was the firstborn of the beloved wife Rachel. Eventually, Jacob fathered twelve sons in all, and as you might imagine there was just a little bit of sibling rivalry between Joseph and his brothers. After all, Jacob doted on him. The coat of many colors we’ve heard about over the years was a symbolic mark of distinction and favoritism that generated all kinds of jealousy.

It certainly didn’t help matters that Joseph was a dreamer who couldn’t keep his dreams quiet. In between the verses we’ve heard read this morning, Joseph tells of a dream he has in which he and the family are out in the wheat fields. His wheat sheath stands up and all the others gather around and bow down to it. Of course, they are all a little outraged. “Do you mean to tell us we’re all going to end up bowing down to YOU?” Not understanding diplomacy or tact, Joseph says, “Well I had another dream too. In that one, the sun, moon, and eleven stars are all bowing down to me.” At this point, they’d all had enough and went off into the sheep pasture, probably to get away from Joseph and all of his annoying dreams.

Jacob, who may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, sent his youngest out check on his eleven brothers wearing his fancy “I’m-better-than-all-of-you” coat. Well when they see him off in the distance, they are not happy. You can almost see the brothers seething with jealously and hatred as they see him coming off in the distance. So, they plot to kill him. By God’s grace, somewhat more reasonable minds prevailed and Reuben the oldest brother says, “Maybe we shouldn’t kill him outright, let’s just throw him in this pit here,” thinking he might rescue him later on. So they strip off his coat to trick their father, and throw him into the pit. But like any good angry mob, things kept spiraling and they decided on a different plan. They ended up selling Joseph to a foreign caravan of traders on camels heading to Egypt. And the last thing we see in this passage is Joseph heading off to Egypt.

Now this is the point where I hope you’re thinking, “OK, so Joseph is an annoying little brother with big dreams and he gets thrown into a pit and sold to foreign traders and hauled off into Egypt. How inspiring!!” I hope you just might be wondering why that is where the story stops this Sunday. I believe that it’s an important place to stop reading because it shows us something profound. Even the most optimistic, hope-filled, forward-thinking dreamers sometimes end up in a pit. It doesn’t matter who you are or how bright and cheery you are, there are simply times in your life when everything seems to crash in on you. I know this happens to you, because it happens to me! You lose loved ones, things get complicated in your family or in relationships, things change at work or at church, financial problems develop, you deal with unexpected losses, someone swerves into a parking space in front of you at Wal-Mart (ok, maybe that’s not so bad), but there are a hundred things that can begin to test even the most optimistic hope-filled people in the world. These things happen to the pessimists among us too! The only difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the pessimist assumes the worst before the fact so they don’t have to face risking disappointment! Trust me, I come from a long line of pessimists and the pessimists’ motto is, “If I assume the worst, anything positive is icing on the cake.” No matter if you’re an optimist or a pessimist, there are simply times when you think the pit, the struggle, and the bad news is the end of the story. I imagine Joseph felt that way as he was tied to the back of a camel and led down into Egypt.

In 1993, the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League were in a pit. They were playing the Houston Oilers in the AFC wildcard game. Midway through the 3^rd quarter, they were down 35-3. They were in the pit. It would have been easy for them to give up. They could have looked up at the scoreboard and looked around at the long faces and said, “Well, this is the end of the story. We’re bound to lose.” But that wasn’t what they did. They realized that the end of the story hadn’t happened yet. They were just in the middle of the story. Frank Reich, the backup quarterback who was playing in place of their injured starter had been in tight spots before. He had led the Maryland Terrapins to one of the greatest comebacks in college football against the Miami Hurricane, so he knew that it wasn’t over until it was over. He confidently led the Buffalo Bills up and down the field never giving up. At the end of overtime, the scoreboard read 41-38 as the Bills upset the Oilers in one of the greatest upsets in NFL history.

Joseph could have looked at the scoreboard and seen brothers 35, Joseph 0. He could have thought about his ripped up coat and the long trek to Egypt and said, “It’s over.” But he didn’t. He was a dreamer. He knew that by God’s grace, this was just the middle of the story. Those of you who know the story realize what ended up happening. Even though things got even worse in Egypt, Joseph eventually became the right hand man of the Pharoah in Egypt, overseeing all the grain production in the entire land. Using his gifts for dreaming and vision, he stored up grain before a long famine and eventually even ended up saving his own brothers and family. By God’s grace, Joseph’s story was transformed from despair to victory.

An interesting map is on display in the British Museum in London. It’s an old mariner’s chart, drawn in 1525, outlining the North American coastline and adjacent waters. The cartographer made some intriguing notations on areas of the map that represented regions not yet explored. He wrote: “Here be giants,” “Here be fiery scorpions,” and “Here be dragons.” Eventually, the map came into the possession of Sir John Franklin, a British explorer in the early 1800s. Scratching out the fearful inscriptions, he wrote these words across the map: “Here is God.”

Like Joseph in the pit, we don’t know what the future holds. But like Joseph we do know the one who holds the future. We know the Giver of all good dreams, we know the One who provides our vision, and we know that in whatever future we all move into, God is already there. As Corrie Ten Boom once said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” No matter where you are or what you’re facing, you’re just in the middle of your story. You may look into the unknown future and say, “there be giants,” “there be dragons,” or “there be pits,” but by trusting in the One who holds that future you can look straight into the unknown and say, “There is God.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Life After Death

During our week at the Good Neighbor Settlement House down in Brownsville, I was involved in everything from stocking groceries to playing basketball with volunteers and a couple of homeless guys. One day, I even helped paint flowers on the hallway in front of Good Neighbor’s main office.

These flowers weren’t anything special by any stretch of the imagination. They had a nice little brown center and several looping brush strokes of red paint composing the petals. In spite of the relative absence of art critics, I stopped when I heard a man’s voice behind me saying, “Not bad for an amateur.”

I turned around and laughed when he continued, “It looks a little like a bullet hole with the blood coming out.” That kind of comment is usually enough to draw me into a conversation, so I took the bait. We went back and forth talking for a minute, when he began to ask me about our team. In no time, the conversation turned to God.

He looked at me and said, “I don’t believe in that stuff. I tried praying to God, I tried going to Church, and none of that worked. God didn’t respond, and I’m still the same guy.” When I pressed a little bit, he went on to explain that he had attended worship a couple of Sundays and had expected an immediate transformation that simply didn’t happen. He told me about the bad things that continued to happen in his life.

Usually I don’t preach to people off the street, but maybe spending a month in an intensive class studying Job affected my thinking a little bit. So, I began to talk a little bit about suffering. I said a few things about Christian faith not being an exemption from suffering or struggle. I talked a little about the process of growing in the faith and persistence when God didn’t seem present. The man nodded and acted really interested, so I continued by saying, “You know, not even Jesus was exempt from suffering. He was nailed to a cross and died.” He nodded in agreement, so I went on. “The good news is this. God didn’t abandon Jesus, but raised him from the dead. God can bring good from any evil. God is with you no matter what you’re going through, and even if you don’t realize it. That’s what the gospel is all about, life after death.”

At that moment, he looked shocked. I thought maybe I had said too much. He said, “I have to show you something,” and proceeded to turn around and lift up his shirt, “I just got this.” On his right shoulder, he had a tattoo that said life after death.

I had chill bumps in spite of the 95 degree heat. I felt compelled to say more. “Maybe this conversation is God’s way of telling you he’s listening. Do you think this is a coincidence?” He shook his head, “No.” I said, “That’s the reason we came all the way from Oklahoma – to let people know that God loves them and cares about them. I’ll bet that’s why God let us have this conversation too. God’s telling you he’s listening.” He looked down at his feet and said, “You’re saying I need to just keep trying? I need to keep going to Church and praying?” I said, “That’s right. Stick with it. God’s with you no matter what, even when you don’t feel him there. He can bring something good out of whatever you’ve been through.”

I don’t know what effect this conversation will have on that man. I don’t even know his name. What I do know is this: God is incredible, and I really feel privileged to get to stumble into conversations where I see the Spirit at work in someone’s life.