Tag Archives: General Conference

May 13, 2013 · 1:07 pm

Heart-breaking Schism or Healthy Division?

day-lily-smI am choosing to participate in a synchblog by DreamUMC on the topic of Schism in the United Methodist Church.

Last fall, I wrote a post about the now-impossibility of actually reforming death-giving structure of the UMC.  My frustration emerged after the Judicial Council, doing exactly what they are supposed to do, put the final nail in the coffin by overturning all significant votes taken at the last General Conference.

Now, the big challenge, besides our structure, are the multiple theologies held by varying United Methodists. One of the UMC’s great strengths is its wide umbrella gathering many under its shelter.  That wide umbrella now threatens to self-destruct.

Give Up and Split Up?

So, the questions appears again and again:  should we just give up and split up?

My answer is both no and yes.  We must not give up.  To do so denies the transforming power of the Gospel that all of us seek to uphold.

To say to one another, “Our disagreements are so great that I no longer wish to be in connection with you,” says to the world (already prepared to condemn the church for its poor ability to create anything approaching heavenly harmony), “Yep, pretty well everything we say to you is a lie.”

If we need to split like this, we just need to give up.

The Healthy Division

But as a gardener as well as pastor, I also think there is a healthy division.  This is a division that brings lots of new life.

As are many gardens, my flower and vegetable beds are a mixture of annuals and perennials.

Annuals must be planted each year.  Ideally, and if we are not using hybrids, the plants produce well for a year, and then set some seeds so they can be resown and rebirthed the following year.  Life to death and back to life again, that beautiful cycle.

Part of church life consist of “annuals.”  There should be short-term efforts that produce fruit and then die and then have the seeds resown as necessary.

But the larger church functions more like perennial plants, which come back year after year without the necessity of resowing seed. Eventually they get so stuck together that only the act of dividing them gives them opportunity of new life.

Most gardeners I know take immense pleasure in dividing their perennials and giving them away.  The flower beds at the church I serve are almost entirely populated with donated perennials.  Those plants are a testament to the life-giving process of division and separation.

The image at the top of this post shows a daylily bloom just about ready to offer its beauty with flowers that live just one day.  That particular daylily plant is the third or even fourth division of the original daylily plant.  One plant has turned into at least 20 more.  All are related to each other.

The divisions may have been painful for the plants. There is some evidence that plants do feel pain.  Each plant to be divided had to be forcibly removed from its spot, pried apart and replanted some distance away.  There was loss in the process.  Some of the divisions didn’t carry enough roots to be able to rebuild themselves.  Most did, and continue to do so.

The ones I don’t divide eventually quit offering blooms.  The are just too tightly wound around each other to offer beauty any longer.

elephant-ears-sm

These elephant ears are now four years old.  I had planted seven bulbs originally.  At least sixty to seventy have now come up where the original seven first took root.

At some point, but not nearly as soon as the daylilies, they, too, will have to be divided. Otherwise they will end up killing each other because of inadequate space to grow and find light and water.

Lessons from the Garden

So what do lessons from the garden say to the church?

I think they teach us exactly what we need to know:  if we are going to stay alive for generations to come, and continue to be able to offer the beauty of grace, we must engage in healthy division practices WHILE staying connected by our DNA.

Right now, we appear to be functioning like a perennial that refuses to be dug up and broken apart.  Our roots are so intertwined and stuck together that they can no longer receive water or fertilizer.  The core had become hard, tight, and unable to bring forth blooms.  Slowly, but with great surety, the entire plant will die without separation.

This is the pattern of the early church.  They fought and argued and disagreed and separated and still stayed as one united by Jesus.

Doctrinal Purity/Missional Relevance

But how do we do this?  I so appreciate what Jeremy Smith has said here: Schism seeks to end the tension between doctrinal purity and missional relevance, but fails. There can be space in the UMC for both those who place doctrine above the human condition and those who place the human condition above doctrine.

We must not break into different denominations over these issues.  We must find a way to strengthen that umbrella so there is room for both to be covered by grace underneath it.

Certainly, there is not going to be unified thinking or universal agreement in our connection.  Thanks be to God for that.  A place with unified thinking and universal agreement is a place where terror and mind-control rule.  

Our rule is to be love.  That is how others will know we are Christians.  They will see us love WHILE we disagree and fight and argue and make some healthy divisions so we can continue to grow and bloom and give life.

Those on the side of missional relevance need those who value doctrinal purity.  Doctrine matters hugely.  We are to be distinctively Christian.  We are not an “anything goes” church.

Those who value doctrinal purity must learn to find their humility in the mystery of God and grace and recognize that doctrinal purity at its core leads to practices like the Inquisition.  When the need for purity is not balanced with deep humility and awareness that all human decisions about the nature of God are deeply limited and always flawed, that need brings death without hope of resurrection.

So, yes, we must divide. No, we must not split or let schism rule.

We need to stay United Methodists.  United in love, in the core of our Wesleyan understanding, and held together by the bonds of grace that remind us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  That proves God’s love for us.  In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.  Glory to God.  Amen.

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December 4, 2012 · 3:42 pm

The Consumer-Driven Church Model, Part Three

Note: this is part three of a three part series. Part One is here; Part Two is here.

Three Things to Keep in Mind

First: not all growth is good growth.  When effectiveness is measured only by numerical growth, we make the fatal mistake of assuming that just because something grows rapidly, it is doing so under the blessing of God.  All gardeners and physicians know this:  rapid growth doesn’t necessarily mean good, healthy or desired growth.

Second:  the process of making disciples is a long, slow, and often painful one.  A disciple is one who is actually willing to walk the path of the Teacher, in this case, Jesus.  That path leads to the cross, a place of utter aloneness and excruciating pain.

It is at the cross that the question must be asked and answered:  Will I be a person of forgiveness and reconciliation, no matter what the cost, so I can go all the way to the resurrection?

Most will say no.  It’s not fun anymore at that point.  It’s no longer bells and whistles and loud music and video screens and constant movement and distraction.

Discipleship takes place in those moments when we are called to be still, to know that God is God, and to be able to say with the great man of old, that poor, beat up Job, “Even though He slay me, yet I will praise Him.”

Third, unless we address the deep and expensive structure of The United Methodist Church, we are doomed to follow the consumerist model.  But the cost to maintain our current structure leads us to think we have no choice.  And a place of no choice opens the door to the sin-compromised state where the ends are worth the means.

If we are going to go forth and do what we are called to do, then it is time to completely re-examine what holds us together.

When I entered into this church, I was drawn to two primary areas:  the expansive, inclusive, wide grace-infused theology and the power of being a connectional church.  Our theology turns us toward God and showers us with grace. Our connection turns us toward one another in covenant relationship.  In covenant, we may pass that grace around, support one another as necessary and together live out the daily challenges of being disciples of Jesus.

A consumer-driven model is rarely grace-filled and is fundamentally competitive, not covenant or connectional, in nature. Others must fall for us to stand.

Consumerism means that those who know little of grace, little of deep sacrifice, little of the challenges of picking up our crosses daily, call the shots.

I look at the money that was spent to pull off the show we call “General Conference” this past year and weep.  Every need had to be catered to.  It appeared on occasion that the least gracious hijacked the floor and engineered the direction of the Conference.  The displeased consumers, i.e., delegates, kept threatening in one way or another to take their business elsewhere.

The administrative arm of the church, which should be there to enhance the work of the local discipling community, instead pulls giant amounts of money out of the offering plates each week and month.  It loads upon local clergy and congregations, that place where the work of discipleship takes place, impossible-to-decipher forms and strangling requirements for minutely detailed reports that are never looked at except to determine how much money to squeeze from them the next year.

The world laughs and says, “You have nothing useful to say.”

But we do.  Yes, we do.  We have the Gospel.

And yes, we must address the crisis.  But it is much deeper than numbers and noses.

Let us answer the primary question first:  “What IS a disciple of Jesus Christ?”

Then we can ask: “How can our forms of worship, gathering, instruction, connection and structure actually aid in the process of shaping those disciples?”

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· 3:42 pm

The Consumer-Driven Church Model, Part Two

Note: this is the second of a three-part series.  Part one is here; part three is here.
 

The Church is In Crisis

I suspect everyone agrees that The United Methodist Church, as a world-wide organization, is in crisis.  Our membership grows older and the death tsunami looms. Few churches see a vital future. People in the US church, who have been the principle financial support of the worldwide church, are moving away from denominational religious structures.

The crisis leads to pressure to have numbers that look good. We’re no different in that sense from any business that must please its stockholders and keep itself solvent for the sake of the economy and for the employment of the people involved.

One of our solutions has been greater accountability as we seek to push those numbers into the plus column and reverse the trend of losing members.

In response, denominational leadership, i.e., our Bishops (like worried Boards of Directors of corporations) cry loudly for public dashboards where pastors  (their underlings) will be required each week to post attendance, offerings, the number of those joining, being baptized, and making professions of faith the Sunday before.

“Metrics” have become the rallying cry to ensure survivability.

Those metrics will define pastoral effectiveness.  The pastor with the best numbers gets the most accolades, “attaboys,” glory and promotions.  Nickels and noses are all that count.

Sounds pretty consumerist/corporate so far.

A recent article in the United Methodist Reporter exemplified this trend.  A megachurch with an organ that alone probably cost more than the entire church building where I serve, is investing $2.1 million dollars to seek to attract new, young worshippers.

They’ve completely revamped a meeting space so that it has every bell and whistle anyone could want in order to present a high-tech, visually stimulating, professionally planned and choreographed worship time.  The musicians and technicians are all highly trained, and all paid.

According to the article, the young pastor, a gifted man for whom I have much respect, will be fully funded for nearly three years.

This is the best of all business—or church—start up strategies.   Everyone knows that it is easier to start large than to start small.  Any business walking into a new area wants immediately to gain a huge footprint and lots and lots of name recognition.

Get the people in the door, make sure they have a great experience, and send them back out hoping they’ll tell others about it.

I hope this works.  I hope the metrics do look good.  I hope this becomes a vital congregation, full of life and growth.  I hope that so many people come and so much giving takes place that people will stop bemoaning the fate of The United Methodist Church.

But I do wonder if it will make—or shape—disciples of Jesus Christ.

Note: this is the second of a three-part series.  Part one is here; part three is here.

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· 3:41 pm

The Consumer-Driven Church Model, Part One

Bizarro Comic Strip, November 14, 2012

Bizarro Comic Strip, November 14, 2012

I recently walked out of a local electronics store in some frustration.  I have an older inkjet printer that needed new ink cartridges.  Now, ink cartridges are some of the biggest consumer rip-offs ever devised, so I wasn’t in a great mood when I walked in.  My irritation grew when I realized that my aged printer does not have its exact model number indicated on any of the multitudes of printer cartridges available.

Two different sales staff tried to help; each came up with a different solutions.  Both admitted that if I bought a cartridge, put it in the printer and it didn’t work, that I could not bring it back—possibly wasting a lot of money.  Only solution: go back to the office, open the printer case, hope the exact model number of the cartridges I need were there, and then come back and buy the exact match.

Result? First, I have resolved to purchase a different printer, and never, ever again touch one made by that particular manufacturer. Enough is enough.  Second, I probably will give it two or three thoughts before I go back into that particular consumer electronics store again.  It really isn’t their fault—but I am disenchanted.

I find it easy to decide to change both printer brands AND store preferences.  Printers and stores abound, all competing mightily for my business.  I can and will freely hop from place to place, brand to brand, price to price.  All it takes is one bad experience and I’m out of there.

That’s a lot of pressure to please.  Retailers know it.  Manufacturers know it.  Designers know it.  And everyone hops frantically like so many adrenaline-fed bunnies trying to please us increasingly fickle consumers so we’ll stay loyal to their brand.

As the Bizarro cartoon above says, “they are huge now, but I’ve been a fan since Monday.”  And next Monday, someone else will be huge, someone else will be pleasing the fickle crowds.

This is why a consumer-led church builds on a problematic foundation.  The church is not called to please.  We are called to make, or I prefer, “shape” disciples of Jesus Christ.

The moment we buy into the consumer-led model of church growth, using business success as our model, we have inevitably left that mission of shaping disciples behind.

Why? Because the moment we displease someone by . . .

  • offering a worship service that is not quite perfect or as good as the one down the street
  • presenting a nursery that doesn’t have the latest in child check-in/check-out procedures
  • stepping on someone’s toes theologically
  • insisting that people work through their conflicts with each other in the name of a higher calling
  • asking people to follow Jesus to the cross and forgive their enemies and do good to them so they might really experience the resurrection

. . . we run a huge chance of  losing our “customers.”

At its essence, Christianity is anything but a consumer-pleasing religion.

Jesus did not please very many people.  The larger crowds hung around hoping for a feeding or healing miracle.  When Jesus disappointed, they quickly dispersed.  They were the first century equivalents of our consumer religious folks.   Even the closest of Jesus’s disciples were in it for themselves—they did want those most powerful right and left hand seats in the kingdom, after all.

 
Note:  This is part of a three part series.  Part two is here; part three is here.

 

 

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May 16, 2012 · 4:17 am

The Human Tendency: We Murder One Another Over the Details

Most of us can agree on major goals.  For the church, it is “Love God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul and love your neighbor as yourself” and “Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” We can rally around those things with unity and purpose.

BUT . . . the moment we seek to determine the details in the “how” of doing those acts of love and the work of being and making disciples, our unity often dissolves into interminable, soul-destroying squabbling and even death.

So, we make rules.  We do it as a nation with our Constitutions, our national, state, and local regulations.  We do it as a church with our Book of Discipline, with our committee and votes, with Robert and his Rules of Order.

We need them.  We need guidelines and structure.  We need what I have often called “the boundaries to our playground” so we can find creativity within that space as well as safety.

Ideally, the older and more mature we grow, the larger our playground becomes.

Ideally, we ourselves become more and more trustworthy and we use our own trustworthiness to trust others.

Ideally, we gain greater and greater freedoms to explore, to learn, to grow as confidence in one another grows and we can lessen the number of rules that govern our lives.

Reality:  we layer law upon law, rule upon rule, restriction upon restriction because much of our experience of life has been littered with betrayal, broken trust, power plays, unchecked aggression, and the wanton disregard of others in our efforts to expand our own little fiefdoms.

In politics, business and the mafia, betrayals, power grabs, and aggression are winning plays.  But in the church, we really are expected to live by different rules.

And yet, as much as we try to do so, we find ourselves following the same path  Then we do what people have done from the beginning: look to the legal code to find the answers.  The more we look to the code, the more that code has to expand to answer every contingency, thwart every possible power play, provide in advance for every betrayal, and, if cleverly enough written, offer special privileges to a certain elite.

This is human history.  This is what we do.  This is what we are doing today.  This is, among other things, The United Methodist Church.  This is the Roman Catholic Church.  This is Sharia, Islamic religious law. This is the holiness code of Orthodox Judaism.  This is the world of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots.

This is the world that says, “My reality and opinion is the only reality that counts.  If yours is different from mine, then I must legislate yours out of existence. If that doesn’t work, then I must expel you from my community.”

This is the world I think Jesus broke into and said, “Whoa!!!!  You’ve missed the boat.  Again!”

I believe that God’s world is an extremely open place–but that is MY world.  Others completely disagree with me.  Years ago, I would have violently disagreed with me if I had known then what I am thinking now about theology, sexuality, the nature of God, the nature of the Holy Scriptures and the nature of the church. My internal world has changed radically over the years.

Forty years ago, I would have called the present “me” a heretic and demanded that the present “me” recant or be expelled.

Forty years ago, I would have burned the present “me” at the stake.

Forty years ago, I would have gone to holy war over those details because I just knew that I was right.

I still think I am right.  But my “rightness” is not the same as it was.  It is not the same as that of many of our African brothers and sisters in the faith.  It is not the same of my beloved husband, whom I love dearly and respect highly but with whom I disagree seriously over some major issues.  And we are both profoundly Christian, both United Methodist clergy and both have given our lives over to God.

At its best, that disagreement is held, nurtured, honored and covered by grace.  The wide umbrella of The United Methodist Church is our genius and our hope to actually live and offer that same grace to a world in desperate need of it.

At its worst, that disagreement leaves only room for one of us to live. The other must die.

At its worst, that disagreement says that those who recognize a spectrum of sexuality to be expressed within the bounds of holy covenant must be labeled as “non-biblical” or “heretics” or even “beastial” as I understood one delegate to General Conference affirmed.

At its worst, that disagreement means we write a book of rules so large, so thick, so indecipherable to the majority of the church that only the elite of the elite can decode it and make binding pronouncements about it.

At its worst, it means there will be only one person left standing when this fight is over:  the one with the biggest gun.

The song says, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”  Can we, and those with whom I so hugely disagree and who so hugely disagree with me, find peace without insisting the other change?  Can we possibly trust the redemptive movement of the Holy Spirit both in our lives and in the lives of others to bring us to perfection while, in our moving on to perfection state, we work side by side WITH our disagreements to do the will of God on earth as it is in heaven?

Can we?  I think so.  This does not mean we stop saying, writing, blogging, or tweeting what we think is true.  It does means we recognize that others just don’t think the same way.

It doesn’t mean we don’t have a rule book or organizational structure.  It does mean we work to raise trust and lower the amount of minutiae so we are freed for creativity and exploration and the explosion of grace that we need.

Let’s keep the conversations going and the doors open.  Let’s lay down our swords.  Seriously.  Everyone.  Put them down.  Quit demonizing the “other.”  Respect each other’s worlds and opinions.  Create a holy structure big enough for us all where we can live in holy connection.  Let us speak our truths freely.  Let us disagree with respect and honor.

I will say this one thing:  the church that refuses to “agree to disagree” over issues that are not central to our faith but where a significant minority disagrees with the majority position (like sexuality) is in serious danger of ringing its death bell. For some are clearly saying, “my way or the highway” and are sure they are speaking for God.  That is the big difference in my forty-year ago self and my current self:  I no longer say I speak for God with absolute certainty.  I still speak for God, for I am called to preach, but with great trepidation and humility because I have learned this well:  I just might very possibly be wrong.

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May 5, 2012 · 9:04 am

Final Reflections on General Conference

I’ve read all I can find about the final, inconclusive, disturbing and yet almost liberating end to General Conference.  I wish I could have been there, but this way from the distance I was free to spend many hours in prayer for the situation.

The badly need restructuring just didn’t happen.  Huge, scary trust issues, or lack of trust issues, surfaced. Nearly half the delegates walked away saddened and defeated by the church’s continued focus on sexuality as the root of evil and sin rather than far more significant issues that permeate and hurt the witness of The United Methodiist Church.  Bishops gained power, rank and file clergy are learning that whille we still must honor our vows to go where ever we are sent, and while we must continue to offer prophetic voice and courageous leadership, there is no longer a reciprocal vow on the other end that our Bishops will ensure that we have places to serve.

Yet, there is liberation here.  This is the liberation of speaking truth and finding freedom in that truth.  After this GC, everyone knows that something must change.  The main, foundational item that must be addressed:  the issue of trust.  If we, as a group of people committed to the work of God cannot learn to trust one another with our huge differences, then we have lost our way and our voice.

I end these musings with a parable I wrote several months ago when I saw then the tendency to hide behind our procedures rather than to step boldly into Holy Truth.

May God have mercy upon us all.

A Modern Day Parable

Jesus had just experienced a really busy day.  He’d healed some guy who had been unable to speak, freeing that dear person from being chained to silence by evil.  When the newly freed one began to speak, the crowds turned on Jesus, accusing him of being the Evil One himself!

Jesus explained to them that the very kingdom of God had come into their presence and invited people to be with him, to gather others as well.  He reminded them that God brings signs of grace through the strangest people, like the cowardly Jonah and even a very rich queen.

He insisted people examine themselves so they would really know if they were walking in the light or not. Sometimes what people think is light is really darkness.

While he was wrapping up his speech, a really, really important person in the religious community asked Jesus to dinner.  Jesus happily came, but then was immediately criticized for not following the exact letter of the law in The Book of Religious Institution Rules before sitting down to eat.

Jesus let him have it.  He said, “You follow all the requirements of The Book of  Religious Institution Rules. You make sure you stay inside all the lines so no one can come after you. Yes, you look perfect from the outside. That Book protects you completely.

But inside is a different story.  Yes, you toe the legal line, but forget that you are called to sacrificial love and to make a stand for justice, even if it costs you. You love to have the primary seat at meetings, and have everyone address you by your exalted title, but inside you are dead.”

More people stood up—particularly the lawyers.  “Jesus,” they said.  “You just insulted us.  How dare you!  Don’t you understand how important we are?”

Jesus responded, “Yep, I know that you do all you can to make life difficult for the people below you in your earthly ranking systems, and you do nothing to make it easier for them.  You give them rules about what they can say and cannot say, and then threaten them with expulsion and impoverishment when they even think about crossing them.  You are so busy killing the truth-tellers, those unlikely prophets God sends, that you may as well carry the cost of murdering all those who have come before me, seeking to bring the place of grace, holiness, redemption and justice.  Anyone trying to come in, you kept out.”

A bunch of very angry, very powerful people who ran the local religious establishment started meeting in smoke-filled back rooms after that night, determined to take Jesus down.

Note:  a more original version of this story can be found in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 11.

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May 3, 2012 · 1:41 pm

The Streets of NYC and Thoughts on General Conference

I am now in New York City, staying with my youngest son and his wife on the Upper West Side and will be spending much time with my middle son and his wife and their three children, one a newborn, on the Upper East Side.  But today is more a day of rest and continued healing as I’m having trouble with being still enough to let the stitches heal properly from my surgery, nearly three weeks ago.

So, I spent a few hours this morning reading blogs again and trying to figure out what on earth had happened at GC.  Twitter, which I as a rule quite thoroughly dislike, did exactly today what it is supposed to do:  gave enough information for me to get a handle on the early dismissal of the morning session, the demonstrations that took place there and the quandary of the Bishops about how to handle  the afternoon session.

And then I went to walk and pray.  I love walking in NYC.  We’re less than 100 yards from Central Park here, so I headed over that way to wander very slowly in the cool air and early spring greenery.

However, I soon left the park behind and headed to the streets instead.  Just a block away, a TV crew was setting up to film a scene for the show, “White Collar.”  Another block West, and I’m on Columbus Ave, full of shops and banks and places to eat.  I walk and looked at the people.  None of them care, of course,  what is happening in Tampa as a group of people have gathered to seek to discern the will of God and found themselves torn by dissension.  Had anyone even known about it, their response would probably be, “Oh yeah, that’s that religious people do. Argue about silly stuff and tell everyone that doesn’t think the same way that they are going to hell.  Pretty ridiculous.”

We United Methodists are dealing with holy challenges and trying to deal with them in a holy manner.  I very much disagree with what has happened there this week, yet I know that these are my brothers and sister, my friends and co-laborers, who really all love God and want to love each other BUT each of us sees the world, God, and the Holy Scriptures through different life and interpretative lenses and the challenge to stay connected is hugely complicated.

For all the disappointments to many about the outcome of the legislative actions of this GC, I was reminded again today that while few really care what happens there, all are objects of eternal worth in God’s eyes, and everyone deserves to hear about and experience in person words of grace and interaction with people whose lives are infused with that grace

This is the tightrope upon which we walk:  to disagree vehemently with one another, and yet be united by the common understanding that, on some level, everyone one of us is wrong and is received into the Kingdom of Heaven despite our unrighteousness.

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May 2, 2012 · 2:53 pm

Lean and Mean or Deep and Wide?

I’m sitting on an airplane to NYC to begin my Sabbatical, which will include much thinking and writing about the nature of a healthy church culture.

I am both pastor and gardener.  The first by occupation, the second by avocation.  I love both venues.  I also often say that there is no place like the church, and the garden, to break my heart.

In the garden, weather, insects, weeds and pestilence often combine to destroy hours, weeks, months of hard work.  In the church, we break hearts routinely by our breaking of covenant with God and with each other.

Covenant is so different from contract.  Less legally binding and far, far more morally binding, we who operate in covenant connection intentionally make ourselves vulnerable enough to be hurt.

God, who has offered full access into that Holy Heart, must also experience great grief by those who said we wanted to participate in kingdom of heaveNn living in communion with God and then choose to break that promise.  Basic rule:  passionate, pure and powerful love of God and of others, in just the same way we love ourselves.

Because that is the underlying rule, expectations of behavior in this God-breathed place are surely different than in the places ruled by contract.  The practice of loving God and others must be learned slowly, much as an artist or musician learns their skills.  First, we master the basics, and then once those basics are thoroughly integrated, glorious creativity has room to flourish.

Corporations, run by contracts, have reason to run lean and mean.  Profit is the bottom line, and profit does not lend itself to love of God and others being the first rule of behavior.  But the church should not be lean and mean, it should be deep and wide, where it reflects compassion, kindness, sacrificial love, nurture to growth, and holds itself together by the divine and human acts of forgiveness and reconciliation.
When the church takes its playing rules from the corporation, and makes “lean and mean” the primary structuring rule, it has lost both the heart of God and moral authority.

I chose The United Methodist Church because I found both its theology and its practice deep and wide.  People of all stripes were welcome and the theological tent spread over a huge spectrum of Christian thought and scholarship.  I also chose it because it is E, giving both clergy and churches a larger structure in which to operate and thrive.  Having spent much of my life in the stand-alone church, I know too well the weaknesses of that system, the tendency to cultism, and the awful church splits that take place routinely because there is no larger system to help with crises and clergy issues.

This is the best system around.  Period.

Yes, it has problems.  Yes, we do have a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy. Yes, it is slow and sloggy to make changes.  Yes, we’re losing members and very much need renewal from within.  Yes, we are aging and MUST listen to the voices of the young and passionate to find again the strong prophetic call to righteousness and sacrifice that have been lost while we skated on the history of an easier past.

Yes, the system needs work, cleaning up, clearing out and renewal of vision, voice and structure.

Renewals always lead to the breaking of old structures and no longer useful strictures. It must.  The old wineskins have burst now.  They will no longer suffice.
The clergy have been and are going to take the hits here.  That is OK.  We were called to this profession because we did want to follow Jesus with our entire beings.  And Jesus did land at the cross.  We have no right to ask for a nicer fate.  Others might, we can’t.

But the creation of what is now a class of clergy elite (Bishops and their hand-selected “yes-men/women” cabinets and favored big church pastors) and the demonization of the rest of the clergy (they can’t possibly be effective since they don’t have growing churches which keep raising their apportionment giving) is seriously non-biblical and almost a full buy-in of corporation ethics.  Those ethics have no place in a God-breathed, kingdom of heaven-based, organization.

I continue to weep with sadness, but I will also continue to serve with sacrifice God, who has loved me first and receives my love in response to that.  Does that mean I will stay as clergy with a “missional” appointment?  Only time, and the whims of the Bishop will tell.  Goodness knows I’ve been outspoken enough to cause myself some problems in a system where I am on the outside of the power circles.

Am I an effective clergy person?  Yes, and I even have the metrics to support that statement.  But I am not effective because I have the metrics.  I am effective because I chose to live from my call, being fully employed to the work of the Lord, preaching, teaching, mentoring, nurturing, leading, offering the Sacraments with grace and gratefulness, and doing all to the glory of God.

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May 1, 2012 · 11:30 am

Questions of Sexuality and Righteousness

First, if you do nothing else, read this blog by Dan Dick.  It is a passionate and eloquent call to discipleship, not this watered-down stuff that can be measured on public shaming boards (i.e., electronic dashboards that will measure nickels and noses).

Second, after getting some interesting responses to this post about biblical ignorance and the delegates to General Conference, a few more thoughts popped up today.

I ask:  those who adamantly oppose full inclusion of our GLBT brothers and sisters in the life of the church seem quite focused on the genital activities of that group of people.  What if we turned the focus on the genital activities of our straight people with an equally penetrating and condemning eye?

Now, I join the righteous outcry against the so-called “homosexual lifestyle,” that of indiscriminate sex with anyone and everyone.  That  kind of behavior reduces others to objects of sexual gratification, and destroys both soul and body.

So, why aren’t we working hard at the indiscriminate sexuality of our heterosexual contingent?

For example:

  • How many of our delegates had a lustful thought today or oogled some man or woman on the beach during their free day on Sunday?
  • How many just took a quick peek at some pornography or lustful romance media last night to help them relax?
  • How many of our men spilled their seed outside of a procreative act last night?
  • How many have engaged in polygamous activities (i.e., serial monogamy)?
  • How many were virgins on their wedding nights?
  • How many sowed a wild seed or two or three during their adolescent lives–and especially after being confirmed in the church?

It just seems to me that if we are going to investigate the sex lives of the GLBT crowd that we show the world what hypocrites we are by not doing the same for our so-called “straight” ones.

How about instead of being so focused on the uses of our genitalia, we start focusing on real sexual righteousness?

How about asking questions like these with regard to sexuality:

  • Do you respect your body as the Temple of the Holy Spirit? If so, how does that respect dictate your actions, particularly of a sexual nature?
  • Do you respect all of humanity as made in the image of God?  If so, what steps have you taken to fight the dehumanizing actions of those who produce and distribute pornography?  What actions have you taken against those who buy or seduce young boys and girls and then rent them out for the sexual gratification of others?
  • Do you recognize that thought precedes actions?  If so, how do you discipline your thought life so that you learn to think upon the things that are pure and holy, rather than the debased and titillating?
  • Do you wish to protect the sexual innocence of children?  If so, what steps have you taken to push back on the increasing forces to sexualize even the youngest children by fashion designers, public media and the ubiquitousness of personal media?

Just my morning musings as I stay deep in prayer for all those who are at General Conference.

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April 27, 2012 · 11:42 am

Thursday: A Day of Contrasts

Early morning:  fearful.  Bleeding heavily.  Should not be.

Mid morning: relief:  Yes, it was a huge tumor (baseball sized), and yes embedded in the wall of the uterus, but definitely contained and benign in nature and now I am forever free of it.  Also relieving:  I’ve torn a stitch, but have not (yet) put a hole where there should not be one.

Mid morning:  warned:  I listened to stern words:  activity level must decrease immediately and stay that way for several more weeks or I risk needing repair surgery–while I am in London without the usual medical support from this community.

Mid afternoon:  willful:  I still had to go to Dallas for an important meeting with a banker and then to the memorial service for a high-school classmate who had died unexpectedly last week.  So much for extremely limited activity.

Late afternoon:  grief-ful:  It was confirmed at the memorial that this classmate, an incredibly talented musician, architect artist and friend, had intentionally shot himself.  In beautiful eulogies to this gifted and troubled man, we were given an inside look at the twin demons of depression and alcoholism that plagued him from early adulthood to his death.  Tears flowed freely.  Our high school class (Woodrow Wilson in Dallas, class of ’67) are an extraordinarily tight-knit group who still care for and support one another after all these years.  Deep corporate sadness here.

Early evening: emptiness:  Following the service, my husband (and patient chauffeur for the day), took me on another necessary errand and then, seeing my gray face, stopped for dinner.  I knew by then that I had again loosened that stitch, and the mixed news and emotional extremes of the day, coupled with renewed pain, had just about put me under.  A very nice meal with conversation about human nature and the tendency of each of us to be utterly blind to the some of the ways we mistreat ourselves and each other, freed my spirit.  Once more, I found gratefulness that God loves me, even me.

Late evening: sadness.  I came home and began reading blogs about what is happening at General Conference in Tampa.  These thoughts about my beloved connection will have to wait until later.

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