emergingumc

What Discipling Communities Can Do...

2012-01-23T12:40:00.000-06:00

This post is a companion to the previous one-- The 4 Core Competencies of Christian Congregations (Plus 1 More for Methodist/Missional Congregations. It is meant to be read and used as a tool for assessment and planning alongside it. The connecting links between the two are Competency 5 for Methodist/Missional Congregations and Competency 4 here-- as one of the "nodes" discipling communities seek to connect persons with is a local congregation.

Why separate "competency charts" for congregations and Discipling Communities? Because these two different kinds of Christian community are exactly that-- two different kinds of Christian community designed to accomplish different things. And we need them both-- and more besides-- to experience and express the fulness of what it means to "be for the world the body of Christ redeemed by his blood." Congregations provide a platform for discipleship. Discipling communities, such as the Methodist Societies with their class meetings, bands, society meetings and other forms of community action and connection, give people the hands-on experience with discipleship to Jesus that truly helps them grow in holiness of heart and life.

This chart is not a "neat" as the previous one, I admit. I was able to develop color coding and even acronyms for the 4+1 competencies of congregations. So far, at least, I've not been able to come up with pnemonics that work quite that way for Discipling Communities.

But that may not be such a bad thing. What I do have is at least some attempt to clarify what each of the competencies is, and what it means (as well as has meant historically, with early Methodists as a primary guide). My sense is we may have become so unfamiliar with or in some cases suspicious of Discipling Communities as separate from congregations that perhaps the best first work we can do is be clear about what these are, and aren't.

I present neither of these outlines as a final product, but rather as a work in progress to help Methodist and other self-identifying Missional congregations and existing or newly created Discipling communities find each other, claim their own strengths and capacities, and help each other perform them accountably with each other.

Church in the Methodist/Missional way is ultimately network, not hub and spokes. Congregations and Discipling Communities make up the two perhaps most significant hubs of this network, with a whole variety of other kinds of Christian ministry and missional communities also in the wider network.

So... try this set of descriptions on. See how they fit. And where they don't.

And by all means share your suggestions for ways to make these tools more accurate and useful as you seek to embody the fullness of "church as network" where you are.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

The 4 Core Competencies of Discipling Communities

1. Discipling All Serious Inquirers in the Way of Jesus

Discipling: The relationships in Discipling Communities involve intimate and "in your business" mutual challenge and support as persons with differing levels of experience listen to one another about what they are doing and learning as they seek to follow Jesus in every area of their lives.

All Serious Inquirers: All are welcome to begin and continue the journey, provided that it is clear they are part of the Discipling Community in order to grow in faithful discipleship to Jesus, or as Wesley put it, to "attain unto that holiness without which no one shall see the Lord"

In the Way of Jesus: The baptismal covenant provides the principles for Christian discipleship and commonlife. Other documents, such as the General Rules, provide practices that help members of Discipling Communities incarnate it.

2. Teaching the Way of Salvation in Word and Deed

Teaching: Discipling Communities have an active teaching ministry.

The Way of Salvation: While congregations teach basic Christian doctrine (the Trinity, the role of Scripture, basic teachings of Jesus, and the like), Discipling Communities place the doctrine of salvation in all its fullness as the focus of everything they teach. For Methodists, this includes specific teaching on prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace.

In Word: Discipling Communities regularly confess the doctrine of salvation in worship together, help their participants articulate this for themselves, friends and strangers in their own words, and actively evangelize both as groups and as individuals.

And Deed: What Discipling Communities confess with their lips they teach and actively help their members to credible with their lives.

3. Engaging the Mission of God Accountably

Engaging: The purpose and work of Discipling Communities is "to spur one another on to love and good works.

The Mission of God: The mission is God's. Discipling Communities constantly send inquirers and members into God's mission already in progress, sometimes to plant, sometimes, to harvest, sometimes to distribute, and sometimes to wait.

Accountably: Discipling Communities provide regular-- at least weekly-- means for persons to report what they learned as they engaged or failed to engage God's mission and to support, challenge, and encourage each other to become more faithful in their work in God's fields.

4. Connecting People and Social Networks for Mission and Ministry

Connecting People: Discipling Communities, like leaders in Methodist/Missional congregations (see Congregational Competency 5) are constantly "on the lookout" to identify people who are ready for next steps in discipleship and to connect them with appropriate face to face communities of people seeking the same ends-- discipleship to Jesus, holiness of heart and life, and perfection in love in this life.

And Social Networks: Discipling Communities make, sustain and extend the social networks of each participant in each place, helping them cross social boundaires and find ways to connect with people in all social boundaries present.

For Mission and Ministry: Discipling Communities seek to ensure that witness to the good news of God's kingdom is happening and the gospel is being incarnated in action in every social location in their local geographical area and beyond.

So What CAN Congregations Do?

2012-01-20T14:59:00.000-06:00

The 4 Core Competencies of Christian Congregations (+1 More for Methodists/Missionals!)

Without going into all of the historical background I might present to justify this here, I suggest there are four key things Christian congregations have organized themselves to do, and do well, since the late fourth century.

I also include a fifth competency for Methodist and other intentionally Missional Congregations-- or at least one we Methodists SHOULD include to embody our heritage fully: Inviting and Connecting People to Discipling Communities. I have another chart to post at another time detailing the Core Competencies of Discipling Communities.

What I am presenting here is the "outline version" of the 4 Core Competencies, which I've actually reduced to a single page .pdf (downloadable here) to give a fairly broad yet comprehensive picture of the competencies themselves, the elements that make them up, and perhaps some indications of ways you might be able to measure your progress on each.

Core Competency 1: Offering Public Worship

Public— open and inviting to everyone in a particular place

Excellent— meets or exceeds local public standards for speaking, musical performance, and engaging the bodies and minds of participants

Accessible— to persons of varying levels of knowledge and ability

Recognizable— as being worship in the Christian tradition

Locally adapted— uses the wide variety of gifts and reflects the cultures of participants

Core Competency 2: Teaching Basic Doctrine

Confessing the faith— worship regularly confesses core elements of the faith that are remembered by participants

Living the faith— worshipers’ lives resemble what is taught and confessed in worship and other teaching venues

Articulating the faith— participants can accurately describe the core elements of the faith in their own words

Sharing the faith— participants share what they have learned with people outside the congregation

Passing on the faith— multiple systems ensure that the congregation forms newcomers and new generations in the basic teaching of the faith

Core Competency 3: Caring for Members and Participants

Physical Care— support for the physical needs of participants (financial, food, health, accessibility, transportation)

Ongoing Communities of Care— every participant is quickly and effectively connected with others who provide a community of basic caring and prayer

Emergency Care— systems of communication ensure that persons in emergency situations receive appropriate and timely care

Transitional Care— intensive communities of caring for persons walking through significant transitions

Core Competency 4: Being a Reliable Institutional Player in the Local Community

Fiscal accountability — the congregation manages financial resources transparently and responsibly

Active — the congregation has or creates a history of forming effective partnerships that release the missional capacity of the local community

Capacity — the congregation acts based on its programmatic, leadership and relational strengths

Trusted — the congregation has a good reputation among persons and other institutions in the local community

Core Competency 5 (Methodists/Missional Congregations): Inviting and Connecting People to Discipling Communities

Looks for signs ("bright eyes") that people are ready for deeper discipleship to Jesus

Invites people to consider and take next steps in discipleship to Jesus

Networks with accountable discipling communities, inside and outside the congregation, and regularly refers people to them.

Key leaders, including the pastor(s), are actively involved in accountable discipling communities themselves

Differences Congregations Don't Make... and What to Do about It

2012-01-18T13:15:00.000-06:00

Congregations Make Little if Any Difference in People's Lives

Image: Public Domain.

The Barna Group recently released the findings of their study called "What People Experience in Churches." A primary criterion they used to decide who could give them valid information in their otherwise random sample was whether people were "practicing Christians." They defined practicing Christians as "adults who describe themselves as Christians, attend a worship service at least once a month, and say their religious faith is very important in their life." Since attending worship was one of these criteria, I've also written a post about this study on the United Methodist Worship blog.

There, I was looking more specifically at worship practices that do or don't make differences and the kinds of differences people say worship (which is the primary common activity of congregations) actually makes.

Here, I want to look at the same data with a slightly different lens-- one that explores a significant limitation of congregations this study reveals across the board, no matter their size, tradition, or the generation (age) of the persons interviewed.

In every case, the Barna data shows, the percentage of people saying "Attending church affected my life greatly" turns out to be fairly small, and always less than 50%. The highest reported positive response rate to this was 43% from non-Mainline Protestants. The positive response rates based on age and size, however, show results in the 20%- mid 30% range. Indeed, as Barna reports, 46% of persons attending regularly reported participating in a congregation did not affect their lives at all!

Let me try to summarize this bluntly. The vast majority of church attenders, 2/3 or more, report that congregations either do not or only marginally affect their lives.

Even more to the point, perhaps: Congregations make little or no difference in the lives of most people who attend them.

Shock and Horror? Or Wake-Up Call?

Barna's reporting of this finding doesn't make much of this, apart from reporting it. There is no mention of ways to address this reality in their concluding summary, apart from noting that "Millions of active participants find their church experiences to be lacking." They go on to recommend that congregations work at finding ways to enhance people's participation in congregations, apparently on the theory that enhanced participation would equate with higher levels of transformation.

But they provide no evidence at all for that theory. Indeed, as we know from Willow Creek's Reveal study (http://www.revealnow.org) from a few years ago, the reality is that higher levels of participation in congregations do not correlate at all with higher levels of personal transformation or discipleship to Jesus. Not at all.

That doesn't mean congregations are useless in transformation or discipleship. It does mean they're simply not very good at it-- or at least not good at helping people actually go very far with it.

What Reveal shows is that the congregations can be pretty good at helping people have an initial encounter with Christ, and even at fostering a "falling in love experience." But they generally don't do a good job at all-- no matter how amazing their worship is and no matter how many small groups they have inside them-- at moving many people very far in terms of maturing, much less maturity.

As the Wesleys might have put it, congregations can help people encounter Christ and maybe even begin to believe they want to follow him (prevenient and justifying grace). Congregations may provide that kind of foundation for people-- and people do value that. We can see this in Barna's data, too-- as fairly sizable percentages in every size, generation, and tradition reported that congregations help them have a feeling of connection with God, even if they also report those feelings are infrequent.

But congregations across the board do little to help people learn actually how to follow Christ or come to "have the mind of Christ" (sanctification, moving on to perfection/maturity). That's because congregations are not, at their core, discipling communities. That's what discipling communities are for!

And that's why Methodism came to exist in the 18th century-- to provide a venue and formats of Christian community, in addition to (and not in competition with!) congregations, where people could far more regularly experience and grow in sanctifying grace, by attending to all the ordinances of God, making use of all the ordinary means of grace, living out the vows of the baptismal covenant by following the General Rules, and watching over one another in supportive and challenging love as they did so.

This is also at the heartbeat of the emerging missional movements and many organic church movements today. It's also at the heart of what a lot of campus ministries and some Emmaus 4th Day groups (to name just two among many others!) have done brilliantly for decades.

Congregations alone aren't doing this work effectively, haven't done this work effectively, -- and generally speaking, for most people, it appears, just plain can't.

Perhaps the wake up call here is to tell us it's time to quit expecting congregations (and their pastors!) to do things they so clearly don't do and maybe can't do well!

Perhaps it's time instead to remember our own roots as missional Methodists.

As United Methodists, we are calling each other to invest in increasing the number of vital congregations. This is a fine thing to do. GBOD is here to help with that-- and we do it every day. But also, perhaps it's time to start investing just as heavily in leaders who will generate forms of Christian community like Methodist Societies across the US, at least-- even as they already are and have been for decades in places like Zimbabwe! And yes, GBOD is here to help you with that, too-- whenever you are ready.

Shock and Horror? No. Panic moves to "kick-start" congregations into discipling? Not likely to do much but damage a lot of congregations.

Sobriety is what these data point us to. Congregations are invited to look in the mirror, and realize what they are and are not, what they can do well, and what others can do better. Congregations are invited not to think of themselves more highly than they ought, but rather to regard other forms of Christian community that can do some tasks better than they can as their equal partners in fulfilling Christ's commission.

And maybe, just maybe, some congregational leaders, lay or clergy, are being invited to form or partner with missional discipling groups that do what early Methodist Societies (with their class meetings, bands, trial class meetings, select societies, field preaching and society meetings) did so well-- to reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness across the land.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

What Brings People to Church? The Survey Says...

2011-12-14T13:02:00.000-06:00

"Personal invitation from someone you know" is by far the most cited reason people first heard about and then started attending a United Methodist Church, according to findings about the United Methodist Sample in the latest US Congregational Life Survey. **

Here are two charts, courtesy of GCFA, that tell the story about what does, and does not so much, influence the decisions people make to start attending one of our congregations.

How did you learn about this congregation?

Look especially at the top two reasons, comprising over half of all responses (55.9%). The two biggest factors, by far, included someone the person already knew telling them about the church and noticing the building as they passed by. "Cold calling" is not that effective, or maybe just not that frequently done-- only 1.6%. Now look at the role of advertising. If you don't count the phone book (most churches only list rather than advertise there) it's a grand total of 1.4% who first heard about the church through an ad-- of any sort. Oh-- and the Internet? Hardly a factor at all in terms of "first impressions."

What brought you here the first time?

It's one thing to hear about an congregation, and another actually to start attending it. But the results are still strikingly similar to what we see above. Nearly 30% of those who start attending do so because someone they know asked them. That number could be higher, closer to 40%, assuming the 10.7% who say they were invited by a member did not also check the first response. Another 23% start attending because they could get to the building easily.

Now, look at the role of advertising. All forms, including internet websites, accounted for only 1.7% of those who began attending worship in one of our congregations.

Oh, and just for fun, look at the rates of response to clergy invitations-- just under 5%.

So what do we learn from this?

Let me suggest at least four things.

1. As my colleague at GCFA puts it, the UMC does not have a marketing problem; we have a sales problem! By far, the most important and effective way both for informing others about your congregation and for others actually to show up is for you to talk about your congregation with people you know and then personally invite them to come. Talking about and inviting people you know to your congregation are at least 23 TIMES more effective than "cold calling" or advertising to generate a "first awareness" of your congregation. Personal invitations from laity are at least 6 TIMES more effective than clergy invitations, and at least 17 TIMES more effective than all forms of advertising (including Internet!). So-- Laity: Go tell your friends about your congregation and invite them! Clergy: don't hesitate to invite, but be sure to help the laity remember each of their invitations is at least 6 TIMES more effective than yours!

2. Really a corollary of #1, but an important one. Constantly work at increasing the number of people you know! Build your social networks. I don't mean add more Facebook friends. I mean be diligent about getting to know more people in each place you find yourself during the week than you do now. Maybe even plan to start going to places you haven't gone before from time to time to begin to build relationships there.

Why do I say this? Some years ago, C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Marler did some research on the "unchurched" that revealed that, for the most part, churched people know churched people and unchurched people know unchurched people. And the longer people are churched, the fewer unchurched people they know. Since we know from the US Congregational Life Survey just how important personal relationships are in moving people to attend the first time, it is essential that we be intentional about constantly increasing our social networks, especially to include unchurched people, else chances are good our social networks will contract and so will our church attendance!

3. Location and visibility of your building matter. A lot! Just over 18% get their first impression of your congregation from seeing your building, and nearly another 23% start attending because the location is convenient. You cannot count on this traffic if your building isn't where many people are or isn't easily visible by some means. Smart signage (and probably not "cute billboard sayings!") plus good outside appearance will make a difference.

4. Realistically, the more effective audience for your advertising and internet presence may be your own congregation. This doesn't mean you don't communicate your events through advertising and stories in the media (including social media!). It also doesn't mean you don't invest in having a working website that doesn't look like it was created in 1996 (you know what I mean!). Of course you do advertising and get yourself an attractive website. But it does mean that you should focus your energies and expectations about advertising and internet presence primarily on being effective and useful for your existing constituency, while also accessible (and attractively so!) for first time receivers of your ads or visitors to your sites.

The top two takeaways here are not rocket science. They're not even sophisticated sociology. And they don't require your congregation to hire a consultant to develop a "growth strategy." Go talk to people and make new friends. And make sure your building is visible and somewhere folks can easily find it. If you're doing these things, you're doing the most important things by far to increase the likelihood that you may see more first time visitors over time.

**TheGCFA Office of Analysis & Research asked churches to distribute a survey questionnaire to each worshipper inthe pews on April 26 or May 3, 2009. Participatingchurches were randomly selected from a list of congregational leaders whoindicated an interested in the project on their 2008 Congregational LeadershipSurvey. Additionalracial/ethnicchurches were recruited with the help of several UM caucus leaders. Nearly200 churchesregistered to participate in the survey, with over 70% returning theircompleted materials. Thefinal data represents141 churches with individual 8,622 worshippers.

#OCCUPYCONSUMERISM

2011-12-01T10:08:00.001-06:00

Companions,

It's time to #OCCUPYCONSUMERISM.

I know that this is not original to me.

But in continuing to ponder some of Elaine Heath's comments at the Wesleyan Leadership Conference (which sort of doubled as an emerginumc gathering, 2.5 perhaps, this year) about the ways our bodies and souls get colonized and we need to be delivered from that colonization, plus whole OCCUPY movement thing going on, plus years of being really annoyed by having my humanity and citizenship reduced to being a cog in the culture's feeding machine by the word "consumer" have left me, now, to issue a call for #OCCUPYCONSUMERISM.

Now, there is a blog by that name out there. It's sort of against buying things. In using this hashtag or issuing this call, I'm not endorsing that blog or its views. It probably has some good things to offer, too.

But this call is different. It's against allowing ourselves to be called consumers instead of people by anyone else-- government, business, economists, you name it.

We are not consumers.

Refuse that label, and all the ways it can colonize us.

We are all humans, created in the image of God.

And we Christians, disciples of Jesus, most of all, are not consumers. We are the baptized. We are new creatures in Christ. We are the generous stewards of all God's gifts. We feed the hungry-- not gorge ourselves. We clothe the naked-- not make ourselves into fashionistas. We visit the sick and imprisoned and others whose condition makes them unable to consume like we could, and others tell us we all should.

For freedom, we have been made free! So let us no longer submit ourselves to this yoke of slavery, and its name for us: consumer.

And let us seek Christ's power and the Spirit's cunning to help others be freed from this yoke, too!

Peace in Christ,

Taylor

Can We Still Talk about... Salvation? (Part 4 of the Series)

2011-10-25T14:34:00.001-05:00

Salvation.

Estonian Salvation Committee, 1918. Public Domain.

If you were to ask Wikimedia Commons or the people of Estonia for an image of "salvation," the one to the right, or something very like it, is what each would return first.

In the case of Estonia in February 1918, "salvation" meant these three men declaring the independence of their nation at a time when the Russians had just left and the Germans were on the way to try to make it their own (which they subsequently did for a time). Salvation for the people of Estonia, as short-lived as it would turn out to be then, meant no longer being under the thumb of any other European or Eurasian super-power.

This use of the terms salvation may seem odd to North American Christians. To be fair, the next dozen or so images returned in Wikimedia Commons all relate to the Salvation Army in some way. That may seem to be a bit more "on target" for many of us who may tend to understand "salvation" primarily in spiritual terms. After all, as Marcus Borg points out in his book, Speaking Christian, "common US Christianity" tends to use the term "salvation" to refer almost exclusively to achieving some spiritual status through some set of beliefs about Jesus (and/or in some combination with works) that guarantees us a place in "heaven" in the afterlife.

If we were more familiar with the biblical languages, and the ways the Bible primarily speaks of salvation, the Estonian example might not seem so odd at all.

At their roots and in their most frequent usage, in both Hebrew and Greek, the words we translate as "salvation" and its cognates mean deliverance or rescue from an oppressive power of some kind. Most often in the Hebrew Bible, that deliverance is explicitly political. God "saved" the descendents of Abraham from Egypt, and again from the pursuing Egyptian army. God "saved" the people time and again in battle after battle that would come, first in occupying the promised land, and then in expanding and maintaining its borders. God "saved" the exiles in Babylon from exile, allowing them to return to their land. And the prophets, especially Micah and Isaiah, looked to the day when God would save not only these people but all peoples from war, and all would live in peace.

Salvation in the Bible is certainly not only political, but it is always about real deliverance from a real threat faced by real people here and now. The Bible also uses the same words to describe God's acts to deliver us from disease, demons, death (typically related to political oppression), evil (in the Lord's prayer) and sin.

One of these usages may be surprising-- deliverance from disease. New Testament Greek uses three different verbs often translated into English as "heal." Two are "therapeuein" (origin of our word, "therapy") and "iatrein" (if you're a science or medical geek, you might recognize the word "iatrogenic," a term applied to illnesses caused by treatments for other illnesses). The third is "sozein"-- the verb most commonly translated "to save." When this verb is used of an instance of healing, it tends to imply that the illness "healed" was overwhelming or threatening the life of its victim, so that healing was nothing less than getting one's life back, or perhaps even getting to have a life for the first time freed from the named disease, disorder, or defect.

Of all of these uses, "salvation" from sin is about the least prevalent in the Bible. That doesn't mean it is any less important or real. But it might give us pause, both about how we think about salvation, and how we think about sin.

During the "great soteriological truncation" that happened in Western liturgies and theologies beginning in the sixth century, Christian praying about the scope of God's salvation in Jesus Christ narrowed dramatically from a wide field (that included extended thanksgiving for salvation in all the senses listed above, including for creation as an act of salvation from primordial chaos!) almost solely to "the forgiveness of sins and all other benefits of Christ's passion" (Book of Common Prayer, 1662). What Jesus saved us from became deeply narrowed as well, to the point that Jesus was Savior primary as the one whose death meant we could experience forgiveness of sins and entrance into heaven-- and that was about all.

In more recent times, as of the late 19th century at least, there has been a kind of counter movement to the "great soteriological truncation" that has sought to help Western Christians let go of a sin-and-heaven-fixated vision and return to something like the wider vision earlier held, prayed and taught. Unfortunately, this "counter-truncation" has often pursued its path with an agenda whose effect, and sometimes even intent, has been to eliminate the idea that salvation has anything much to do with sin, or that sin is even a real problem from which most of us need any significant measure of deliverance. (Marcus Borg is a participant in this, as well!). The effect of the "counter-truncation" on our praying has been, among other things, the elimination of prayers of confession, or if not elimination, the attenuation of those prayers to the point that they are more about confessing our "humanness" and asking God to be "okay" with us or help us feel "okay" about it rather than deliver us from it in any real way.

What the counter-truncation ignores then is that sin is real, truly powerful, and always destructive. While its biblical terms mean "missing the mark" (amartia in Greek), "stumbling" (paraptoma in Greek), or "walking astray" (chata in Hebrew), none of these was met either in Judaism, early Christianity or early Methodism as if they were relatively minor defects we might simply get over in time. In every case, sin was understood as something from whose power we all need to be, and by God's grace, our diligent practice and with the help of a community "watching over one another in love" can be set free. (For more on this, see "Can We Still Talk about... Sin?" on this blog).

In short, both the "great soteriological truncation" and the "counter-truncation" have done significant damage to our capacity to appreciate the breadth, height and depth of God's saving love in our lives, corporately and individually.

So perhaps it's time for a true "soteriological reclamation"-- a movement that seeks, embraces, struggles with and rejoices in salvation "in all its parts," neither excluding nor becoming fixated on any one of them, and recognizing that we are all in need of every one of them.

We need nothing less than salvation from systemic oppression, in every form it presents itself-- political, military, economic, and all forms of slavery we have invented or ever may invent.

We need nothing less than salvation from disease that continues to ravage human populations, to keep many of us in poverty in the developing world and to drive some of us into poverty because of health care debt-- the number one driver of bankrupties in the US in recent years.

We need nothing less that salvation from demons-- those forces that trespass into and colonize the bodies and minds of people. The escalation in human trafficking, especially sex trafficking of children, is sign that even the most developed cultures have not entirely "outgrown" the demonic.

We need nothing less than salvation from death, not to escape the fact of our mortality, but rather to free us from the power of fear and anxiety for lives of perfect love and service to God and neighbor in this age and in the new creation to come.

We need salvation from evil itself, with the confidence and capacity to renounce its reign and power in our lives, individually and systemically.

And we need nothing less than salvation from sin so we may walk aright, learning mercy, wisdom and justice as we do.

We need full salvation.

In Christ, we are offered nothing less.

And in Christ, we are being into living witnesses of nothing less.

So may we live, and so may we speak, as those being truly and fully saved.

And so may we pledge to speak of salvation, speak of it often, and speak of it in all its parts.

And more than speak, so may we seek the Spirit's wisdom to be trained and train others to live out the salvation offered in Christ in its fullness.

The soteriological reclamation we need will not come from a few theologicans, bloggers or authors writing about it.

It will come from our speaking of it with the people we know and communicate with regularly.

It will come as we pray, confessing our need for deliverance, including from sin, and interceding boldly for such deliverance to come in our personal and corporate prayers.

It will come as we lean into all that salvation involves, and learn and train others how to live it faithfully.

And it will come as we-- you and I-- speak not simply of salvation as a "thing" or a "process" we need, but rather as the great gift offered by God through Jesus, Savior of the World.

How will you speak of salvation and live the way of the Savior?

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Event Announcement-- Third Annual Wesleyan Theological Forum: “Preaching Christ”

2011-08-30T16:12:00.000-05:00

The Third Annual Wesleyan Theological Forum will be offered Tuesday, November 15^th, at 9:00 a.m. at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana. Professor Mike Pasquarello of Asbury Seminary and Dr. Derek Weber of Aldersgate UMC will lead the Forum focusing on the theme “Preaching Christ in the Wesleyan Tradition.” This continuing education event is open to clergy and laity in and beyond the Indiana Conference. Cost is $40.00, which includes lunch.

Dr. Pasquarello is the Granger E. and Anna A. Fisher Professor of Preaching and Biblical Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary. He received his B.A. from The Master’s College and his M.Div. from the Duke Divinity School. His Ph. D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Pasquarello has published many books on preaching and pastoral ministry, including a forthcoming book entitled John Wesley: Homiletic Theologian (Abingdon). He and he wife, Patti, have two children.

Derek Weber received his undergraduate degree in Speech and Theatre from the University of Indianapolis. His Ph. D. is in Practical Theology with a concentration on Homiletics and Media/Communication from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). Derek has taught preaching in the Course of Study in Indiana, and for fourteen years served the Dean of the Academy of Preaching in the former North Conference.

Following lunch Mike and Derek will be sharing in a preaching practicum to help participants hone their skills in preaching Christ in the Wesleyan tradition.

For more information about the Wesleyan Connexion Project, click here or contact Andy Kinsey via email andy.kinsey@inumc.org.

To register for the event, click here.

UPDATED October 26, 2011: Learning from the HP TouchPad Fire Sale

2011-08-22T15:34:00.002-05:00

Used by permission. CC 2.0.

Companions,

I'm thinking there may be lessons to be learned from the HP TouchPad fire sale fiasco a few months back and its HPs announcement at that time that it was likely to be exiting the consumer market almost entirely.

The fire sale itself went badly enough. Yes, HP liquidated their inventory of their soon-to-be-orphaned tablet device in record time. But in the process, the crashes of its own servers and websites and the failures of its call centers to be able to process the traffic of their own fire sale raised real doubts about whether HP could even hold its own in enterprise IT systems.

Well, that was August. And that was under HP's previous CEO, Leo Apotheker. Now we have word that HP's new CEO, Meg Whitman of eBay fame, has announced that HP will definitely continue its PC business.

Why the turnaround on this point?

Well, it turns out the PC business, despite its relatively low margins in the current markets, remains one of the most profitable divisions of HP. It also turns out that costs to spin it off would be rather steep ($1.5 billion was the estimate) with little guarantee that the newly formed company would be successful against the likes of the already resurgent Lenovo and Dell. That, and having a PC division internal to HP meant HP was in a better position to maintain favorable contracts for their supply chain in their enterprise server business (which they intended all along to continue).

Oh, and one more thing-- that "profitable" PC business was losing market share (to Lenovo and Dell!) every passing day that its future seemed grim or undetermined.

Low margins, yes... but solid benefits to the company overall, and threats to the company if it were not decisively maintained.

Whoever has ears...

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

When Everything Suddenly Goes "Captcha"

2011-07-18T11:55:00.003-05:00

Regular readers of this blog will know that my posts are generally more topical than personal in nature. I tend to reflect primarily on issues related to missional Christianity, early Methodism and our life as United Methodists seeking to embody both, and hardly at all on personal matters.

This post will be a bit different.

Three weeks ago, on two consecutive days, my field of vision suddenly, with no warning, began to "go Captcha." Things were distorted. Text appeared to have parts blocked out. And I was much more sensitive to light than usual. It was sort of like trying to look at the world after looking at the sun or a bright light, and having a blind spot interfere with interpreting what I was seeing. Only this blind spot wasn't a spot-- it was more like a jagged line in my right eye. But since the brain interprets inputs from both eyes, all the time, closing my right eye didn't fix the disturbance of my visual field.

When this didn't go away after 10 minutes, I called my eye doctor and got an appointment. I had no other symptoms (numbness, tingling sensations, headache, loss of motor coordination, etc.), just this new "Captcha vision." Within 30 minutes, it was better. After an hour or so, things were mostly back to normal, though it seemed I now had more "floaters" than usual in my right eye.

Testing at the eye doctor's office showed no damage to the retina and no sign of stroke. The diagnosis: ocular migraine. Treatment: none. Prognosis: this can happen again. If other symptoms start to accompany it, especially any motor disturbance or significant numbness or pain, go to the ER. Otherwise, learn to deal with it.

It did happen again the next night. Once again, no warning. Well, actually, this time I did notice an increase in photo-sensitivity (perhaps because it was dark and so the contrasts were clearer) about a minute or two before "Captcha world" re-appeared. But otherwise, again, it just happened. I was at home, safe, not needing to drive anywhere or read anything, so I just turned out all the lights and waited the 30 minutes or so for the most pronounced symptom ("Captcha vision") to pass.

So far, this hasn't happened again. I hope it doesn't. Based on what my eye doctor told me, however, I would not be surprised if it does. I'm glad I know what to do should it return.

But it's gotten me to thinking about how we see the world in the weeks since.

How do we make sense of things that come with such distortions built into them?

Our brains are apparently built to be extraordinarily powerful and rapid image processors. Neuroscientists would remind us that we do not process text as text per se (as a computer typically would, via the zeros and ones that make it up), but as images. Every letter is its own image. When we "read," our brains compare the image of each letter to other images like it so we can decode what we see into some kind of meaning (one hopes that intended by the original author!) When the images are all fairly similar in size and form to each other (all the same font, for example), we can learn to decode meaning fairly rapidly. But when the images vary widely in size, color and shape (aS In tHis PhraSe), the whole process slows down considerably. Words dissolve into mere letters, each of which has to be compared with every other image we have of that letter to recognize what the letter is in relationship to the others around it. Only then can they be reassembled into words and given meaning. Add distortion of the letters to the mix, as Captcha does, and things slow down even more.

That's exactly what the makers and users of Captcha technologies want to happen, of course. Captcha is all about slowing us down, taxing our brains. The makers and users of Captcha technologies want to create a means to ensure that computers aren't responding (most would take far longer to respond that we would, since they're not nearly as good at image processing as our brains are). They also want us to be sure we really want to say and include the content we have, and are serious enough about sending it on that we'll take the time to decode and correctly reproduce the distorted words, some of which aren't even words.

But Captcha gives us two things the world at large does not necessarily give us-- immediate feedback and a second chance. If you enter the letters and number wrong, you know it right away. It tells you. You can then try again. Or you can even request another Captcha image or even an audio Captcha (though it is often garbled as well) if you don't think you can make out the one before you.

While trying and retrying to decode the Captcha may be frustrating, it truly will not let you proceed until you do decode it correctly. Though you may be completely sure that your reading of a particular letter or number is correct, you do not get the luxury of imposing your system of interpretation, however helpful it may have been for you in the past. Captcha knows what it has distorted. You may or may not.

What if We always Live in Captcha World?

What if the world is not what it seems to our usual means of perception, the usual stories we tell about ourselves, our default assumptions about reality? What if what we see and respond to truly is distorted reality that should cause us to pause and reconsider rather than plow ahead based on our received assumptions and meta-narratives?

It seems to me that we have ample warning and invitation from Jesus to consider that the world as we see it, even in the church, is just such a set of distorted images.

Consider his usual teaching method-- parables.

Last week we were reminded in the gospel reading from Mark that Jesus taught in parables precisely to make it hard for people to see, hard for people to understand, hard for people to decode what he was saying if they tried to apply their usual ways of thinking and seeing and loving God and neighbor to his words. He taught in Captcha, we might say, presenting a "slant" view of reality that causes any with ears to hear and eyes to see to have to stop, think, and try again and again if they expect to align the world to what Jesus presented them.

Many of Jesus's parables were almost insanely distorted. A sower gaining a miraculous harvest, though apparently wasting seed on all sorts of soils where it "obviously" could not possibly grow? Someone intentionally planting mustard weed (something as crazy as intentionally planting kudzu in most places in the American South these days!). A gardener telling a land owner to wait another year for a harvest while he invests even more time on caring for a fig tree that has yet to bear fruit?

If the kingdom of God is ultimate reality, and if the kingdom of God seems as weird as this-- "Captcha weird"-- what are the implications for us as denizens and citizens of that kingdom?

And what are the implications for how we interpret the world around us? Can some of our usual meta-narratives (such as, "the measure of success for the church is how many people attend worship or participate in its programs or give money through it" or "The UMC is in decline in the US so must act right now to fix it or we'll die") help us?

If there were something like a "kingdom of God Captcha" in place that wouldn't let us proceed with our plans to propagate either a teaching, a program, or a church-wide initiative, would that Captcha let us interpret the distorted signs of our times according to such dominant meta-narratives?

Or might it say, "Try again"?

Or might it even refer us to a kind of "audio Captcha"-- the Word of God-- the old-school Captcha of Jesus, and particularly his parables-- for cues about how to look at things? Might we then be captured by the Captcha-weird kingdom of God that seems to value tiny mustard seeds, small bits of starter, and a single pearl above the mythos of "bigger is always better and more is always needed?"

And what might we learn, specifically about the prospects of "denominational death," from what was just about the only parable recorded in John's gospel-- "Unless the seed of grain, having fallen to the earth, actually dies, it abides alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit"?

Perhaps we do live in a Captcha world-- and a world captured by all sorts of distortions of the image of God and the transforming love and power of God's kingdom.

Perhaps it is time we let Captcha do its work among us ecclesially-- slowing us down, making us think and rethink, even stopping us where we're not on track.

Perhaps the one thing most needful for us to move forward is not to rush headlong getting busy about the fixes for the problems we think we have based on our usual meta-narratives... but to stop, captured by the "Captcha wisdom" of Jesus whose crazy-making parables and bizarre pattern of life, driven by the Spirit whose comings and goings we cannot begin to know, may just be the key we need to hear, see, decode and then live reality aright.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Can We Still Talk about... Sin? (Part 3 of the series)

2011-07-01T15:41:00.001-05:00

Sin.

To the immediate right is image 37 that appears in Wikimedia Commons when you do a search on the word "sin." It's from a late 19th century Bible teaching postcard, and is entitled "Solomon's Sin." It's the first image that clearly relates to sin as English speaking persons have used that term-- with the exception of a death metal artist and porn star (fully clothed!) who include Sin as part of their stage names. So I'd say they don't count. Image 38 is relevant as well, a photo of a fresco in Ravenna (I think, it doesn't say) depicting Ham's sin. (Both are in the public domain). After these, though, it's not until Image 219 that anything related to the word "sin" as we usually use it shows up. This is a photo of a 16th century painting portraying the original sin (Adam and Eve at the "Apple" Tree). Because it portrays nudity (of Adam and Eve), it seemed wiser to me not to post it.

Why would "sin" as we use it be so infrequent a topic on Wikimedia Commons? In part, of course, it's because "sin" means "without" in a good number of the "romance" languages, and so shows up frequently in the titles of other images. In part, too, it's because "Sin" is the name of a letter of several Semitic alphabets-- including Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and old Phoenician. Then there's the whole panoply of images related to "sin" as in the mathematical "sine" function (the sine wave). Given all of these uses, worldwide, the English theological term "sin" is simply not all that significant. At least not on Wikimedia Commons.

So what about Google-- using "Strict Safe Search" guidelines? A couple more very old Adam and Eve paintings show up in the first row of results, but mostly it's references to the graphic novel "Sin City" and a variety of other cultural images that probably point toward one form or another of sexual temptation, with a few Spanish language references here and there as well. Sin City related images alone outnumber Christian imagery over the first 5 pages of results by a factor of at least 8 to 1 (48 Sin City, 6 Christian related-- 5 if you don't think William Blake was "orthodox" enough to count). The last of these appears on the last row of results on page 5-- the only depiction of Christ anywhere in the first 10 pages of results.

From this brief, non-scientific survey, it appears "sin," as English-speaking Christians use it as a theological term, does not appear to have much currency in the "safe" imagery of the online world, and where it does, it is associated almost exclusively with paintings more than two centuries old. Is this just "search engine bias," or might it have something important to tell us about the relevance of our usage of this term among Internet users?

Is it the case that Christians are no longer producing visual representations of sin that gain cultural currency in an English speaking world, and perhaps have not done so for a very long time?

And if we have indeed ceded the visual playing field, or allowed it to become truncated to what perhaps the majority in the current English speaking world would describe as ancient mythical imagery, is this a symptom as well, and now perhaps even a cause to some degree, of our weakened capacity to have any serious cultural conversation, or even any serious theological conversation among ourselves, about sin?

Is it possible that our issues with "sin" may have gotten even more daunting than that. Could it be we're not even sure what we mean when we use the term "sin" anymore.

So What Is Sin, Anyway?
It's a good question. The roots of the English word are different and actually not related, at all, to the Hebrew, Greek and Latin terms in which the Bible has lived for most of its history.

The English word comes from the Old English, "synn," and in turn from a variety of Germanic roots, which go back through other Middle eastern languages (including Hittite!) to words related to the verb of being-- in Latin, "sum" (I am). Etymologists believe this traces to practices common in many court settings of multiple cultures over time that required a person found guilty, by whatever means, also to confess before the accusers, "I truly am [guilty]." Once that declaration of guilt is made, the accused could be immediately punished. Our English word, sin, then, comes packaged with all of these stories of persons accused and found to be guilty of committing some harm against another or the community more broadly and summarily punished in part to repay the debt created by the actions now established to have been taken (the word guilt itself connects with a "debt" etymologically). The accused is thus also, always, a debtor requiring punishment.

From Greek (and thus both the New Testament and the Septuagint of the Old Testament) we have two different and entirely unrelated words-- [h]amartia, and paraptoma. Hamartia is primarily an archery term, meaning, "missing the target." We don't quite have an English equivalent for this, and so most often translate it simply as "sin." Paraptoma refers to a mis-step, or a stumble. This is the origin, via Latin, of our English word, "trespass"-- to cross up the feet while walking (trans-- across/cross-- plus pes/pedis, foot or step). Neither implies a judicial proceeding, or any finding of guilt, or any punishment beyond the fact of the failure to do what was intended-- either to hit the mark one was aiming at, or to walk without stumbling.

In Hebrew, the most related root, and the root most frequently translated "sin" in English is "Chata." This root does also have some connotations of judicially established guilt-- proof of harmful action that requires a debt to be paid. But its primary meanings have more to do with those found in the Greek words used to translate it, above-- missing the mark, or stumbling, whether intentionally or otherwise. If the "miss" were intentional, a "sin of the high hand" as Number 15:30 put it, the consequences could be dire indeed (being "cut off," whether killed or banished from the community at least for a time). But the ritual life of these people as described in the Old Testament, perhaps most clearly regarding the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur, Leviticus 16), makes it clear that for them "sins of the high hand" were the more exception. Most of our sinning results from trying to do good and failing, or perhaps not having yet gained the skill or the habits to do better.

To be sure, as we see at Yom Kippur, even our unintended sins bring about a measure of guilt toward God, each other, and even the wider creation. Our relationships get fouled up by this "spiritual gunk," and we need ways to restore what has been broken or fouled, "by what we have done and by what we have left undone," as one Christian prayer of confession puts it. This guilt, however, is more an observable sign of our frailty and failure, in Wesley's terms, to avoid all the harm we could or do all the good we might have. This guilt is not specifically assigned by others to me or to us as a result of a particular action breaking a particular rule and causing particular harms. It is no less real, no less damaging, but it is more the product of our failed attempts to do good than our discovered (or self-admitted!) attempts to do harm.

The Rise of Sin and Its Retribution and the Fall of Stumbling and Our Restoration

While what follows here is the stuff of doctoral dissertations and historical theology texts, I'll try to make this simple without, I hope, overly simplifying and badly distorting.

Essentially, one can say that Judaism bequeathed Christianity, both in its languages and its texts, a robust yet nuanced understanding of "sin." In this Jewish and early Christian vision, while sin is sometimes viewed as a rebellious and harmful act that requires a "just" God (or "just" legal system) to impose severe penalties, more often it is the product of failings that requires mercy from God and the community, a mercy combined with teaching and other forms of empowerment until people no longer act as they had done, or failing that, until the harms they unintentionally continue to cause can be lived with. God's desire and ongoing work toward us is always to show mercy and continue to prompt us through each other and through the work of the Holy Spirit to amend our ways, until our ways and God's ways are one.

In short, the dominant Jewish, early Christian, Orthodox and Western Christian (via the confessional) understanding of the way to deal with "sin" has been restorative, about helping persons end harmful behaviors, break free of them, and learn to take up helpful ones more effectively.

Now, note that this was no lenience or laissez-faire approach to sin. You harmed people. You were hurting yourself. Your relationship was God and others was damaged. Mercy did not and does not within this tradition mean acting as is none of that mattered. What it means is that by God's grace there are real ways forward from here that not only repair the damage done, but can bring about greater health and good for you and for all in the days ahead... if we all follow through. The Western confessional, then, for example, was intended as no crutch, but a positive means both to acknowledge what was awry and for confessor and the confessing to find ways to walk with less stumbling going forward.

This work of mercy and restorative love in response to sin in its most normal form-- human failings-- was and remains seriously grace-filled work on all sides. There were exceptions all along the way, of course, but this had been, for centuries, the Christian norm.

Calvinism, Methodism, and Reviving the Old Norm

But it was a norm fading fast in an increasingly industrializing, depersonalized, and Calvinized/Puritanized England by the time Methodism came about in the 18th century. Protestant efforts to overthrow the confessional with its "overly-merciful" or "unnecessary intermediator" priest and impose instead the Pastor as absolute lawgiver and standard of truth for church and culture corresponded with a decided tilt in the English understanding of sin, away from "trespass" and toward "rebellion deserving of exile or capital punishment" as the new norm. Total depravity meant we were not only entirely incapable of doing anything good, we could not even desire to do good, and so could only be worthy of eternal punishment unless God chose to overlook such, through Christ, for the elect (limited atonement and unconditional grace). These few, only, would be won by God toward the good by an irresistible grace, and they, and they only, would persevere.

Such a frame of reference had become the dominant model of sin and conversations about sin within the Puritan wing of Anglicanism beginning in the 16th century, and has remained there long since the demise of the Puritan Commonwealth and the Restoration of the Monarchy (and a more mainstream version of Anglican doctrine) in 1662. It remains also the dominant frame of reference in many, if not all, forms of Protestantism still largely influenced by "Calvinistic" (note, I do not say Calvin's!) doctrines, worldwide.

And this frame of reference, as we see, depends deeply on an account of "sin" more akin to the Germanic and Hittite origins of that word than on the biblical, early Christian, earlier mainstream Western and continuing Orthodox interpretations.

And I would add, an account at odds with a Wesleyan and early Methodist understanding and praxis as well.

Yes, Methodists were known for their hellfire preaching at times. And yes, we have always believed there is a hell, that it will be populated by some people, that there is a judgment coming for all flesh, and those found wanting will not enter the fullness of the new creation in the age to come.

But at the heart of our movement was an effective recovery of the earlier, biblical, Jewish and Christian view of sin, and the means by which the work of restoration could be enacted within the community of believers as the primary response to sin as we usually encounter it. The phrase Wesley and the early Methodists most frequently used to describe the heart of their meetings-- whether in bands, class meetings or society meetings-- was, "watching over one another in love."

Watching over one another in love was precisely about an understanding that what mucks up our relationships with God and our neighbors is very likely less about our willful intention to harm others ("sins of the high hand," for which the punishment is exile or death), and far more about not yet having let the Spirit do all its work to free us from walking in harmful ways. We do try to walk aright, fail, and with the help of others both redress that failure and learn to walk better. We do try to hit the mark, miss it, and then with the help of the Spirit and others both deal with what happened because we missed and learn how to "shoot more true" in all kinds of circumstances. God isn't out to save some few by fiat, but all who desire it, not to elect a few but to lead all who will follow more and more toward perfection in love, loving as God loves, in and with our frailties. Wesley was clear about this: We will still make mistakes as we progress in this way. What we may and should expect to do less, over time, is to sin knowingly-- to do and want to do what we know can only cause harm to ourselves, God, or our neighbors.

To be a Methodist meant meeting at least twice a week for over an hour each time to watch over one another in love (three times or more if you were also a leader or involved in a band!), in addition to attending worship in a congregation weekly somewhere. This was no laissez-faire approach to the sins that most frequently beset us-- the sins of our failings. Mercy for such offers no verdict, summary judgment, and immediate, final sentence. Like Roman Catholics through the confessional, when it worked aright, early Methodists took sin quite seriously, recognizing that it takes time and great love to learn to walk without stumbling, to aim without missing the mark.

Losing the Way, and the Cultural Conversation
These practices of watching over one another with such love, such mercy, and such an intention to help one another walk and aim aright were almost entirely abandoned by dominant culture Methodists in the US by the 1840s. Without Methodists practicing this distinctive way of overcoming the power of sin in their lives, it is no accident that the wider cultural conversation in the US became dominated by a more Calvinistic vision, represented particularly among the variety of Baptist churches in the South, who grew to outnumber and "outcompete" Methodists not only in the South, but nationwide.

But let me suggest we may have also harmed our own heritage in this country, and with it the mainstream Christian conversation about sin, by abandoning the class meeting as norm as well. The various "holiness" traditions that separated from Methodism beginning in the early decades of the 19th century, and then from each other over time, were right that "mainline Methodists" were becoming too laissez-faire to some degree, especially the more they made optional or neglected their class meeting and its intended purposes. However, too often the response of the new holiness churches to our "laissez faire" accountability was becoming a version of accountability and sin that placed the Calvinistic narrative as norm. This meant that for them, holiness could easily become more synonymous with doing specific actions and abstaining from others rather than with learning to walk and aim aright toward entire sanctification, "perfection in love in this life."

Thus, the failure of Methodism to maintain its means of watching over one another in love not only allowed another meta-narrative of sin to dominate the cultural conversation, it may well have also partly caused that to happen as holiness movements and their descendents, including Pentecostalism, multiplied and split and multiplied again through the next two centuries.

What this has meant for the American cultural conversation about sin, at least, is that it has been dominated almost entirely by a Calvinistic vision of sin-- and perhaps most prominently of sexual sin. (It is no wonder at all that the current "culture war" issues associated with Christianity in the US have primarily to do with abortion, marriage and homosexuality).

Which brings us to where we began-- the observation that sin, as Christians historically have used that term-- appears fairly rarely in image US-based search engines, and there largely in very old paintings that reflect the argument and approaches to sin far more consonant with Calvinistic than biblical, early Christian, earlier Roman Catholic, ongoing Orthodox views and early Methodist practices and teaching.

So, Can We Still Talk About Sin?

Certainly, but seriously, is anyone not already part of a deeply Christianized culture still listening? Or perhaps more to the point, listening to us?

If image search engines are any indicator, almost no one is listening to a truly Methodist meta-narrative of sin-- perhaps ourselves included.

How do we change that?

It seems to me there may be two ways forward-- each, equally important.

One is the creation of new art-- lots of it-- and well-tagged-- that depicts a more comprehensive Jewish/Christian and Methodist vision of sin and how to live freed from its power and influence in our lives and our communities.

Sometimes, great art can inspire great action.

So go, artists, go!

The second way-- we must live this vision again, even as we had in our earliest days. Laissez-faire does not address the damage sin does. A juridical and ultimately punitive set of responses for any "infractions" sets the norm where the Bible does not set it-- on those relatively few instances where persons truly, actively cooperate with evil on purpose. We need to live in ways that do enable us to watch over one another in love. For that, we may need again a common rule whose point is not to keep all articles of the rule perfectly-- and so enact the Calvinistic vision-- but rather to love and live better aligned with the way we pledged at our baptism. So to love and live with each other, forgiving and learning from our mis-steps and our poor aim, until we love perfectly as God loves us.

Does this mean we would never remove ("cut off" as in Numbers 15:30) anyone from some parts of our fellowship? Hardly. Mr Wesley and the early Methodists were clear how essential removing persons who clearly did not wish to keep our rules was for the good of all. This does not mean we remove them from the church, or even, necessarily, from "professing membership." But if the way we most concretely watch over one another is in something like a covenant discipleship group, or a class meeting, and someone persistently fails to make progress, and seems willfully to refuse to do so, it's time to admit to such persons and to the group that this group is no longer a good place for such persons. "Cutting off" for such persons may be, in such rare instances, the best mercy we might offer.

If we can talk about sin primarily as the Bible does, as missing the mark and stumbling in our walk, then, yes, we can still talk about sin. We Methodists of all people, if we live a Methodist way, can not only talk about sin in this way, but actively watch over one another in love until more of us aim and walk aright.

So let's not only talk about sin-- let's deal with it, bibically, Christianly-- as disciples of Jesus, as missional Methodists!

And then let's see what artistry new seekers begin to find when they go searching online!

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Ordination, Orders and Rule of Life

2011-06-24T12:05:00.003-05:00

United Church of Canada ordination. (CC 2.0)

Though the denomination and the country is different, the scene at the right may be a familiar one for many United Methodists. It is from an ordination service in the Maritime Conference of The United Church of Canada, just a few weeks ago.

Beginning in 1996, United Methodists added an element to the whole process of ordination and life as ordained persons when it created "orders" of deacon and elder through which persons in the respective offices were to relate to and support one another.

It seemed a very new idea at the time.

But for Methodists in particular, this 1996 "innovation" was really a kind of "double recovery" within both the Methodist and the larger Christian tradition.

A Methodist Recovery
The Methodist side of the recovery was that to a certain degree, the annual conference itself had originally been a kind of "order" for elders. Elders were the only ones who were full members of those earliest conferences after 1784, and so the only ones with full voice and vote. But more importantly, especially early on, these conferences were really like a gathering of a chapter of a religious order to a large degree-- times for the elders to get together to discuss with one another how it was with their souls and how they could support one another in their common ministry.

Certainly, it has been a good thing for Methodists since that time that Annual Conference is no longer an "elders only" club, that we now regularly have more laypersons present than clergy, and that we also treat both deacons and local pastors as clergy, even if the latter may not yet have the same voice and vote in the clergy session that persons in full connection may have. We didn't and don't need to go back to a less representative Annual Conference!

Yet, what that has meant is that in effect the only time all the clergy are together, much less all the clergy of a particular kind of ministry, may be the few hours of a clergy session spent largely on dealing with issues brought by the Board of Ordained Ministry, or perhaps a "pastor's school" where, once a year, those who can afford it may come for fellowship or learning. While it's good we still do these things-- we do need to!-- that the clergy session itself may have become our most regular contact with each other was not ideal, to say the least.

So we began to correct that in 1996, creating through the orders and fellowship of local pastors a structure and leadership intended to help deacons, elders, and local pastors support each other in the forms of ministry they share, thus recovering in spirit, if not exactly in form, something of what the earlier Methodist annual conferences themselves had provided for those who attended them.

A Christian Recovery
The creation of the orders was more than a Methodist recovery. It has had at least the potential for to be a more deeply historical Christian recovery in our denomination, restoring a practice of gathering and set of relationships much older than Methodism, Anglicanism, Protestantism or even the Roman Catholic Church.

Generally speaking, at least the Western Christian tradition has typically understood that persons ordained to an office were thus also ordered into a relationship with all others in their diocese or region sharing that office. Ordination was "ordering"-- not only of the life of the church, by providing Spirit-empowered leaders, but also of the life of those who would lead and their life as a community of leaders in our midst.

We see examples of this throughout Syria, North Africa (including Egypt), and Turkey, at least, in the early centuries of the church. A composite of these practices looks something like this. A bishop or presiding elder (there were a variety of titles and roles this person might have) would regularly gather all the elders in a particular region for a spiritual strengthening, study, and strategic support about how best to lead in the situations they faced in the particular contexts they had been sent to serve.

In the earlier periods, when the dioceses (regions watched over by a given leader) were smaller, and the number of presbyters involved was fewer, it may be these gatherings, while intentional, were a bit more grounded in the bonds of mutual affection each had for each than any clearly formal agenda. (I suggest this on the basis that we don't have evidence from earliest periods what sort of agenda, if any, there may have been). But as the church expanded rapidly, beginning in the fourth century and especially after becoming the legal religion of the Roman Empire in 375, so did the size of dioceses and the number of presbyters per bishop in many areas. And as that happened, we do know that the nature of these gatherings shifted from a focus on face to face relationships (which were now harder to sustain) and more on a renewal of living out the vows-- the Rule of Life-- of their office.

That practice continues in Anglican, Roman Catholic, and some Protestant bodies to this day-- at least ritually-- through annual services of renewal of ordination vows, often held on Maundy Thursday in the Roman and Anglican traditions, and through "Ember Days" in the Anglican tradition in particular-- times when all clergy and all clergy candidates (for all orders) are to check in with their bishop, in writing or in person, to discuss how they're fulfilling their vows of office and where they may need additional guidance or support to do so better. This practice is, to be sure, in many ways vestigial. And it could be much more. But at least the vestiges remain.

How "Recovered" Are Our Orders?

From my angle and experience, it seems to me United Methodists haven't quite figured out what to do with our "recovered" structure of ministry orders. We may use them for gathering folks in the orders for continuing education, or retreats. We may use them to seek to know each other better. We may use them to commiserate.

But to be honest, in talking with clergy colleagues from around the connection, many are not really sure why we're doing this, or what difference it is making in our lives or ministries. Since we're unclear about the purpose, while some time away from the parish or other settings with colleagues may be welcome, sometimes it may feel more like one more meeting we're supposed to show up for. Or worse, it may feel like a division among our body as clergy based more on status than necessarily on who we are or what we do or the life we have vowed and been empowered to live.

And so I offer this as a modest, but serious proposal.

Ordination Vows as a Rule of Life for the Ordained and Template for the Work of the Orders and Fellowship

What if we take the step many of our colleagues and spiritual ancestors in other traditions have done, and order the work of our orders (and our association of local pastors!) explicitly around the vows of office we take?

What would it look like for deacons, elders, and local pastors every year, to gather with the agenda of helping each other live out these vows, common to both orders and the fellowship of local pastors?

Imagine, if you will, a two-day quarterly gathering of all clergy leaders in a conference. The first day might involve conversations and equipping for all present around these vows, common to both orders and, in effect, to the fellowship as well:

As ordained ministers,

you are to be coworkers with the laity, bishops,

deacons, diaconal ministers, deaconesses, home missioners,

commissioned ministers, local pastors and elders.

Remember that you are called

to serve rather than to be served,

to proclaim the faith of the church and no other,

to look after the concerns of God above all.

So that we may know that you believe yourselves

to be called by God

and that you profess the Christian faith,

we ask you:

Do you believe that God has called you

to the life and work of ordained ministry?

I do so believe.

Do you believe in the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

and confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?

I do so believe and confess.

Are you persuaded

that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments

contain all things necessary for salvation

through faith in Jesus Christ

and are the unique and authoritative standard

for the church’s faith and life?

I am so persuaded, by God’s grace.

Will you be faithful in prayer,

in the study of the Holy Scriptures,

and with the help of the Holy Spirit

continually rekindle the gift of God that is in you?

I will, with the help of God.

Will you do your best to pattern your life

in accordance with the teachings of Christ?

I will, with the help of God.

Will you, in the exercise of your ministry,

lead the people of God

to faith in Jesus Christ,

to participate in the life and work of the community, and

to seek peace, justice, and freedom for all people?

I will, with the help of God.

Will you be loyal to The United Methodist Church,

accepting its order, liturgy, doctrine, and discipline,

defending it against all doctrines contrary to God’s Holy Word,

and committing yourself to be accountable with those serving with you,

and to the bishop and those who are appointed to supervise your ministry?

Now, for Day 2 of the quarterly meeting, the orders and fellowship divide into their separate groups to report, support, and learn better how to live out the vows of their particular order.

For the deacons in their particular gatherings, this:

A deacon

is called to share in Christ’s ministry of servanthood,

to relate the life of the community to its service in the world,

to lead others into Christian discipleship,

to nurture disciples for witness and service,

Here a large Bible may be lifted by an assistant.

to lead in worship,

to teach and proclaim God’s Word,

to assist elders at Holy Baptism and Holy Communion,

Here a towel and basin with pitcher may be lifted by an assistant.

to interpret to the church the world’s hurts and hopes,

to serve all people, particularly the poor, the sick, and the oppressed,

and to lead Christ’s people in ministries of compassion and justice,

liberation and reconciliation,

even in the face of hardship and personal sacrifice.

These are the duties of a deacon.

Do you believe that God has called you

to the life and work of a deacon?

I do so believe.

The bishop asks all candidates for ordination or recognition as deacon:

Will you, for the sake of the church’s life and mission

covenant to participate in the order of deacons?

Will you give yourself to God through the order of deacons

in order to sustain and build each other up

in prayer, study, worship, and service?

I will, with the help of God,

and with the help of my sisters and brothers in the order of deacons.

And then what is it like to help each other live out the prayer over them as the Spirit makes them deacons:

We thank you, Living God,

that in your great love

you sent Jesus Christ

to take the form of a servant,

becoming obedient even to death on the cross,

and now resurrected and exalted in the heavens.

You have taught us, by his word and example,

that whoever would be great among us must be servant of all.

Give these servants grace to be faithful to their promises,

constant in their discipleship,

and always ready for works of loving service.

Make them modest and humble, gentle and strong,

rooted and grounded in love.

Give them a share in the ministry of Jesus Christ,

who came not to be served but to serve.

Likewise for elders and the fellowship, what is it like to help each other live out these vows:

An elder

is called to share in the ministry of Christ

and of the whole church:

to preach and teach the Word of God

Here a large Bible may be lifted by an assistant.

and faithfully administer

the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion;

Here a paten and chalice may be lifted.

to lead the people of God in worship and prayer;

to lead persons to faith in Jesus Christ;

to exercise pastoral supervision,

order the life of the congregation,

counsel the troubled,

and declare the forgiveness of sin;

to lead the people of God

in obedience to Christ’s mission in the world;

to seek justice, peace, and freedom for all people;

and to take a responsible place in the government of the Church

and in service in and to the community.

These are the duties of an elder.

Do you believe that God has called you

to the life and work of an elder?

I do so believe.

Will you, for the sake of the church’s life and mission,

covenant to participate in the order of elders?

Will you give yourself to God through the order of elders

in order to sustain and build each other up

in prayer, study, worship, and service?

I will, with the help of God,

and the help of my sisters and brothers in the order of elders.

And what it is like for elders and the fellowship to help each other be a living Yes to this prayer:

We praise you, eternal God,

because you have called us to be a priestly people,

offering to you acceptable worship through Jesus Christ, our Lord,

Apostle and High Priest, Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.

We thank you that, by dying, Christ has overcome death

and, having ascended into heaven,

has poured forth gifts abundantly on your people,

making some apostles, some prophets,

some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,

to equip the saints for the work of ministry,

to build up Christ’s body,

and to fulfill your gracious purpose in the world.

Give to these your servants the grace and power they need

to serve you in this ministry.

Make them faithful pastors, patient teachers, and wise counselors.

Enable them to serve without reproach,

to proclaim the gospel of salvation,

to administer the sacraments of the new covenant,

and to offer with all your people

spiritual sacrifices acceptable to you;

through Jesus Christ our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and forever. Amen.

Might an agenda for quarterly gatherings built around concrete ways we can help each other, in our orders or fellowship, live the life we vowed to live be a source of wisdom, courage and strength, as well as accountability, now and for the foreseeable future?

Not that I have any particular authority to ask this, but as a member of the Order of Elders in this church, and as the Convener of the Ordinal Task Force, I do have a genuine passion and interest for this:

Perhaps it's time for a few of our orders or fellowships to order their orders and fellowship around our actual vows-- for at least a few years-- and see what you discover about the nature of your life as an order and the strength of your vocation within your order when you do.

Peace in Christ,

The Rev. Taylor Burton-Edwards

Director of Worship Resources, GBOD and

Convener, The Ordinal Revision Task Force of

The United Methodist Church

ReThink Annual Conference

2011-06-13T12:44:00.003-05:00

Sangamon Auditorium, Springfield IL. (CC-2.0)

What if Annual Conference were a verb-- something we actually did-- rather than a noun describing an event where we're seated in one place for most of the day and evening in theaters or behind tables? What if we ReThink Annual Conference?

Companions,

I just got back from Annual Conference in Muncie, Indiana this past weekend. Worship at the plenaries was great-- designed and led by the ever-amazing Marcia McFee. But the session itself... could have been better.

This was a delegate election year, of course... and that was part of what meant it "could have been better." We were in a massive auditorium, with moderate lighting (at best) and all in theater seats with long rows hard to move in or out of. We were using Scantron cards with 400 (or maybe more) tiny little lines to be filled in by pencil. These were all diligently hand-collected, then taken back to a room somewhere where they were run through a Scantron reader and tallied. Then the results were projected-- maybe 30 minutes later-- on a big screen, but unfortunately with print too small for many people in the space to see. Add up the dim-ish lighting, tiny numbers and lines on Scantron cards and projection screens, and a median age in the room well above 60, and we got the predictable: lots of invalid ballots and a voting process that seemed to take a very long time while we all waited in our seats.

Now, I know using the technologies and the people we had at hand, we actually got remarkably good results. Kudos to everyone who made it as smooth as it was!

But I have to ask: Why do we still do conferencing and elections this way? At nearly any other conference I go to these days (General Conference being another exception), the venue (more often a convention center than a theater) functions pretty much as open space. If there's voting or there are surveys to be done, it's all handled either through kiosks (plenty of them all over the space) or onsite online voting via text or smartphone (each person issued a unique voter id on entry to ensure no one outside the venue can vote) --with instant tallying and results of voting so far available at the touch of a large, on-screen button. Screens or text messages or emails announce results and new voting periods.

The voting or surveys are NOT the main event. Nor are "reports." Not even in plenaries for these conferences. The main event is comprised primarily of presentations, workshops and conversations in multiple venues throughout the space. Each of these is offered several times, so you can go when it works best for you. You choose where to go and when. If the venue is a convention center (as it often is), the space is created with movable walls (or pipe and drape) and chairs are moved in or out to accommodate the number that actually show up. When there are plenaries in Christian conventions these days, those might be for worship or large format conversations (holy conferencing), or keynote addresses (and here, think Ted Talks, not 60 minute lectures) but hardly ever for "reports" from working groups/committees unless that report has something to do with what's happening in the event overall, here and now-- like, instructions or updates-- and almost never exceeding 5 minutes.

So how would this work? You'd create a mix of workshop and plenary periods, with voting periods interspersed. If you provided one kiosk per ten attendees, and distributed them well through the space, people could easily move between workshop/plenary periods and vote during the breaks between them. 20 minute breaks could easily suffice. So workshop/conversation periods might be 40 minutes starting at 10 past and ending at 10 before the hour. You'd create 50 minute blocks for plenaries and worship, perhaps 2 hours for a concluding ordination service, by which time all voting would be completed anyway. You might hear some brief reports in plenaries, but only what was needed for things requiring a plenary vote or conversation and not already provided by other means.

So here's a day laid out this way.

8:00 a.m. Morning Worship/Plenary Presentation

8:50 a.m. Voting period 1

9:10 a.m. Workshop/Conversation 1

9:50 a.m. Voting period 2

10:10 a.m. Workshop/Conversation 2

10:50 a.m. Voting Period 3

11:10 a.m. Workshop/Conversation 3

11:50 a.m. Voting Period 4

Lunch

2 p.m. Afternoon Worship/Plenary Conversation 1

2:50 p.m. Voting Period 5

3:10 p.m. Workshop/Conversation4

3:50 p.m. Voting Period 6

4:10 p.m. Workshop/Conversation5

4:50 p.m. Voting Period 7

Dinner

7 p.m. Evening Plenary Conversation 2

8 p.m. Evening Worship

So, what do you think? How might such a ReThinking of Annual Conference help? What might we gain? What might we lose?

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Can We Still Talk about... Judgment?

2011-05-25T18:56:00.007-05:00

It's getting harder, isn't it?

With the hoopla over what became the "Rapture Fail" this past weekend, it may be difficult even to confess words Christians have repeated in worship for at least sixteen centuries:

"We believe that you will come and be our Judge" (Te Deum, ancient Christian hymn).

"He will come again to judge the living and the dead" (Apostles Creed).

"He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end" (Nicene Creed).

Wait. Isn't all of that a lot like what Harold Camping said?

Yes. It is. And Camping himself is convinced that Judgment Day still did begin, though spiritually, on May 21, 2011. It's just that none of the other things he believed would happen that day-- like earthquakes worldwide releasing long dead bodies from tombs and living Christians being lifted off of the planet to meet Christ a mile or two up in the sky-- accompanied it. Camping still claims the earth will come to a complete end on October 21, 2011. What won't happen is any sort of "tribulation" between now and then. Instead, the earth itself will be dissolved on October 21, making way for a new earth to be created and inhabited by the redeemed.

As October 21 nears, and then passes, I suppose we can expect another media frenzy.

But where does that leave those of us who also confess that Christ will come again to be our Judge?

Or do we even still believe that?

John Wesley on the Effects of the Judgment of Christ

John Wesley originally preached a sermon entitled "The Great Assize" at the Assizes for the opening of a day of trials in Bedford, England in 1758. It's one of the Standard Sermons that comprises part of the doctrinal standards of The United Methodist Church.

There, Wesley boldly proclaimed that as "awful" (which then didn't mean "really bad" but more like "awe-inspiring") as the solemnity of the proceedings of that court on that day would be, even more awful would be the day when all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

There, too, Wesley offered a list of the things that would happen before, during and after the Judgment. Leading up to it, terrible earthquakes all over the earth will occur, the dead will be raised from their graves, the seas will give up their dead, and the angels of the Lord will gather up the elect, placing them to one side (sheep) and leaving the others to the other side (goats) for the final judgment by and before Christ. Wesley has multiple citations from scripture backing every claim he makes here. (Sound familiar?)

So wait. Harold Camping wasn't just drawing on late 19th century evangelical, fundamentalist pre-millennialism or his own flights of fancy with the Bible? No. Many of the specifics of what he predicted-- save for the date-- can be found right here in this sermon by John Wesley-- a sermon we claim as bedrock for our doctrine.

So what do we do with that?

Perhaps what Wesley did rather than what Harold Camping has done.

Camping's prophecy appears to have been simply bad news for everyone but "the elect." Judgment Day was coming on May 21. You couldn't do anything about that. You couldn't even really prepare for it. Anyone not already in the elect was simply doomed. Too bad for them. (I'll admit this gets a bit confusing-- I don't think Camping presented this consistently-- at other times he seems to allow a lot of different people, including people of different religions who followed Jesus without knowing his name to be in that group-- but it's one theme he did present in the lead-up to May 21).

Wesley's approach was different. He was just as confident as Camping that the Judgment would come, though he certainly agreed with Jesus (instead of Camping) that no one did or could know exactly when. But the news of this judgment for Wesley was really good news-- and not just for the "elect" by and by, but for everyone, here and now.

As Wesley put it:

Had all men a deep sense of this, how effectually would it secure the interests of society! For what more forcible motive can be conceived to the practice of genuine morality? To a steady pursuit of solid virtue? An uniform walking in justice, mercy, and truth? What could strengthen our hands in all that is good, and deter us from all evil, like a strong conviction of this, "The Judge standeth at the door;" and we are shortly to stand before him?...

"Wherefore, beloved, seeing ye look for these things," seeing ye know he will come and will not tarry, "be diligent, that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless." Why should ye not? Why should one of you be found on the left hand at his appearing? He willeth not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; by repentance, to faith in a bleeding Lord; by faith, to spotless love, to the full image of God renewed in the heart, and producing all holiness of conversation.

Perhaps one might say that Camping had or seemed to proclaim a "deadly hope," while Wesley had a "living hope," a hope for the restraint of societal evils generally, and a hope for the full salvation of all who would receive it by faith and continue to grow into a "spotless love, the full image of God renewed in the heart."

Contemporary Challenges to "The Judgment"

Though Wesley's view of the Judgment is surely more life-giving than Camping's appears to be, let's be honest: Nearly any notion of such a thing is nearly unthinkable in contemporary US and Western culture, and increasingly unthinkable in many US and Western churches.

First, there's the whole notion of there being any actual, historical "Second Coming" in the first place. That belief itself has been under heavy assault first by skeptics (such as Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson) in the early years of the Enlightenment, but increasingly within significant parts of the academy, clergy and people of the churches themselves since the late 19th century. If these haven't simply scoffed at the idea, they've at least reduced it to a metaphor, much as some scholars and clergy in the 20th century have sought to evacuate any notion of an actual bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Second, there's the more specific assault of process theologies and philosophies, which posit no "end" either to God or to history, per se, but rather an eternally evolving "process" of give and take in which humans are both co-creators and co-evolvers, if you will, with God, whatever we understand God to be.

Third, there's the challenge of notions of "emergence" itself-- closely related to but not always directly associated with process theologies per se. If Whitehead and Cobb are the pioneers of "process," Henri Bergson might be the philosophical pioneer of emergence, of everything being in more or less constant flux and change.

Fourth, there's science and scientism. Science itself cannot speak about such things as an "end" of the universe, much less a God. It is necessarily atheistic in its methodology. That's not a fault, but a feature. Scientism is a description either of science over-reaching into making proclamation about things beyond its actual, self-limited capacity to speak (if it's following its own methods), or other non-scientists committing scientism (the claim that the only things that are real at all are those that can be proven or demonstrated by scientific methods) in other disciplines.

So, here's the deal. Science deals with process and emergence all the time. These are very helpful models for trying to describe what scientists observe about the physical universe. And as scientific ideas have become more widely taught and propagated to everyone-- face it, your or your neighbor's fifth grader may well know more and regularly use more of the findings of science than Isaac Newton did!-- thinking scientifically about most things, including religious claims, tends to follow. That's not a bad thing! It can be quite a good thing!

Except for scientism. Because here we have a serious problem. Until the advent of quantum physics, and to a large degree despite it since then, science operated by thinking in either/or ways. Either X is the case OR Y is the case. If X is the case, and Y is fundamentally different, then Y cannot be the case at the same time. This led to a serious war and often divorce between scientism (if not science) and religion beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to this day. The scientism that pervades Western thinking must admit that if the universe is infinite and non-ending, as far as science can tell, then there's no way Christ or any person or being could end and start it over again. Science (scientism!) is right, religion (Christianity) just plain wrong-- if not ridiculous or even dangerous (a la Hitchens and Dawkins).

Quantum physics didn't alter this condition. It only added another layer of difficulty. Because now the "uncertainty principle" that leads to only probabilistic outcomes at the very small and very large scale in physics and cosmology gets applied quite frequently (and illegitimately-- in a "scientism-istic" rather than a truly scientific way) to relativize all truth claims in all realms. or at least to limit the possibility of truth in any claim to a very specific cultural, demographic, historical or temporal context. This means in the end there can be no Judge at all, much less the Judgment Seat of Christ.

I raise these challenges to our doctrinal standard (Wesley's sermon) not in any defensive way.

Nor do I raise them to reject our doctrinal standard. (I embrace it!).

I raise them for the real challenges they are, challenges that appear pervasively in our own thinking, even within my thinking about these things.

And so I ask, honestly...

Can we still talk about Judgment?

And if so, how?

Can We Still Talk about... ? Part 1: The Wrath to Come

2011-05-17T18:49:00.001-05:00

Luca Signorelli, The Wrath to Come. Public Domain.

This is part 1 of a series of entries that will invite conversation around theological issues critical to Methodism, as least as John Wesley presented it, that seem to be increasingly challenged by a variety of forces and sources in our churches and in wider theological conversation.

Upcoming topics in this series will include Sin, Judgment, Justification, the New Birth, Sanctification, Perfection, Accountability and others our blog authors may choose to add.

And if you'd like to add to the series, but aren't yet a blog author, just contact me (worship at gbod dot org) and I'll be glad to add you.

Can we 21st Century United Methodists still talk about "the wrath to come"?

Early Methodism

John Wesley assumed one both could and must talk about the wrath to come during the Methodist movement he led in the 18th century.

Indeed, believing in and responding to the reality of "the wrath to come" was foundational to being a Methodist in the first place!

This may seem a strange thing to say about Wesley or the Methodists. While their preaching did refer to the wrath to come on many occasions, their primary emphasis was on the grace of God-- prevenient grace, justifying grace, sanctifying grace, and both responding to and cooperating with God's grace.

Where Wesley and the Methodists wanted people to head was precisely in response to and toward that grace.

But responding and moving toward that grace was and is also a matter of moving away from something else.

And included in that "something else" was "the wrath to come."

So significant was a sincere desire to flee the wrath to come that the Wesleys set it as one of the prerequisites for joining a trial class meeting. The journals of John Wesley and the sermons of the Wesley brothers speak of "fleeing the wrath to come" no less than 39 times. It mattered to them. They and other early Methodists pressed the point with people, on many occasions. As we still have in our Discipline in the section describing the General Rules, "There is only one condition previously required of those who desire admission into these societies: "a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins."(More on sin in part 2!).

This desire was not simply a one-time experience. This wasn't about scaring people about the coming wrath through a preaching service and getting them to say they wanted to flee on that day. There were many so moved, John Wesley reminds in Sermon 9, "The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption," but being moved once was not enough.

They feel the burden of sin, and earnestly desire to flee from the wrath to come. But not long: They seldom suffer the arrows of conviction to go deep into their souls; but quickly stifle the grace of God, and return to their wallowing in the mire.

What the Wesleys and the Methodists intended was that people would continue to desire to flee the wrath to come throughout their lives and show it by how they lived-- growing in holiness of heart and life as they lived out the General Rules along with others watching over them, and each other, in love.

In other words, one could not even start to journey to becoming Methodist, much less continue it, unless one both believed the wrath of God was a reality and was ready to act on that reality-- not just once, but for a lifetime.

The Wrath to Come Recedes

Methodism in the what would become the US was known, widely known, for its energetic preaching, including but not limited to its preaching about the wrath to come.

But, as Scott Kisker has documented in Mainline or Methodist, as Methodists overall began to move more and more in the direction of respectability through the 19th century, their preaching tended to focus less and less on doctrinal matters, and in particular "the wrath to come." By the late 19th century in the US, those who were still teaching or preaching this doctrine with any intensity tended to be "lumped in" with the increasingly negative aspersions that "popular" or "respectable" US culture regularly cast upon the rising fundamentalist and pre-millenialist movements within US evangelicalism.

Even in the Wesleys' own day, preaching the wrath to come was not associated with respectability or popularity. John commented on this in Sermon 28, "Discourse on the Sermon on the Mount, 8"

O who shall warn this generation of vipers to flee from the wrath to come! Not those who lie at their gate, or cringe at their feet, desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fall from their tables. Not those who court their favour, or fear their frown; none of those who mind earthly things.

But if there be a Christian upon earth, if there be a man who hath overcome the world, who desires nothing but God, and fears none but Him that is able to destroy both body and soul in hell; thou, O man of God, speak, and spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet! Cry aloud, and show these honourable sinners the desperate condition wherein they stand! It may be, one in a thousand may have ears to hear; may arise and shake himself from the dust; may break loose from these chains that bind him to the earth, and at length lay up treasures in heaven.

The Wrath to Come Loses All Its Loveliness
If the 19th century saw the beginning of the recession of the wrath to come from Methodist preaching, by the mid-twentieth century such proclamation was more than absent: It was nearly anathema. We were to focus instead on the infinite value of each person and the love of God for all. To raise the spectre of coming wrath was to damage self-esteem, or do psychological violence to people. In some theological circles, notions of any final end or conflagration generating a new creation were dismissed as primitive mythology, fairy tales at the best and dangerous at the worst, and to be taught as such if at all.

The early 21st century has brought its own challenges. There is the post modern and "emergent" pushback against theologies that include hell or any punitive understandings of atonement, particularly within some of the more rigorously Calvinist and fundamentalist groups that made up the New Religious Right in the 1980s and 1990s. The pushback against talk of any wrath to come extends beyond the church as well, as Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman showed in their book, unChristian, documenting the profoundly negative attitudes of non-Christian young adults and even many evangelical Christian young adults toward such notions. Love Wins, the clever, captivating and controversial 2011 release from Rob Bell, perhaps placed the grave marker for any further talk of wrath to come as a definitively final outcome for anyone for a whole generation of younger evangelicals in the US.

How do we United Methodists in the US, whose doctrinal standards affirm "the resurrection of the dead; the righteous to life eternal and the wicked to endless condemnation" (Confession of Faith, Article XII) as well as repeatedly warn of "the wrath to come" (Sermons 3, 4, 9,16, and 28, all part of our doctrinal standards as well), reconcile our teaching with the disfavor and even outright opposition to this doctrine?

Can we even still talk about "the wrath to come" in this environment?

If so, how?

Real Methodism Lives!

2011-04-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

And here is the evidence:

Click up and read!

--Taylor Burton-Edwards

Dashboards Everywhere: What's a Missional Methodist to Do?

2011-03-30T13:37:00.004-05:00

One conference's overall dashboard.

They're coming.

And in some places, they're already here.

Dashboards.

Dashboards have been used in industry and some time-critical service businesses for a decade or so now to provide an at-a-glance graphical assessment of what the company in question believes are the key performance metrics they need to track and act on to improve.

Several Annual Conferences of The United Methodist Church have adopted these to create a graphical display of how each congregation, district, and the conference as a whole is performing on specific metrics placed into the system each week by local congregations. It is believed that these metrics, in a graphical format, provide a snapshot of the vitality and effectiveness (or lack thereof) of those congregations and their pastors.

What we measure matters. The dashboard pictured above captures and portrays weekly and cumulative data from every reporting congregation on membership, worship attendance, baptisms, professions of faith, the number of people serving in outreach, the number of people served in outreach, and apportionments paid. It also calculates a figure called AVM-- attendance as a percentage of (or versus) membership.

In that conference, performance as measured by this dashboard system becomes a key factor in determining pastoral appointments.

All of these metrics are important for congregations as institutions. The four core functions of congregations since the late fourth century have been the public worship of God (attendance may be an indicator of how well or poorly that is going), teaching basic doctrine (baptisms and professions of faith might be an indicator of this), caring for one another (may not have an indicator here), and being a reliable institutional player in the local community (# of people served, # of people serving and apportionments may be indicators of this). So in at least three of the four core functions that congregations have designed themselves to do for 16 centuries, these metrics seem to capture at least some relevant data.

But as I've frequently noted on this blog and in my work around the connection, those four core functions don't include any serious process for discipling people in the way of Jesus Christ. That function had been a core part of congregations prior to 375, when the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the legal religion of the Roman Empire. It was carried out through what was known as the catechumenate, a three year process of building close communities around newcomers to the faith so they could learn and begin to practice the way of Jesus in their daily lives. After that period (which could be shorter or longer, depending on individual progress of lack thereof), persons would be baptized and then given further instruction in the theology of the church (a process called "mystagogy").

The result was that persons who were in the church, by and large, had been well and deeply formed in living the Christian faith and in the basic habits and "tempers" of discipleship. To be a member was to be incorporated into the body of Christ as a disciple of Jesus, and indeed, a disciple who was actively prepared to carry out the world-changing mission of Jesus wherever she or he may be or be led by the Spirit to go.

The catechumenate had been the primary means for discipling people in the way of Jesus as a pre-requisite for entering the full life of the congregation. It had even been affirmed and strengthened at the Council of Nicea in 325. But after 375, it very rapidly degraded nearly everywhere except the far fringes of the empire. It was all but gone by the sixth century.

In its place for most people? Attendance at worship, participation in other prayer services,memorizing answers to doctrinal questions (called "a catechesis"!), showing up at the confessional and performing the assigned penances. Of course, those things were also already in place to some degree prior to 375. But when catechesis was an intensive journey of learning to follow the way of Jesus, these other things were there as more of a maintenance system after the catechumenal process. They weren't relied on or designed to be the primary delivery channel for discipling people!

What one was left with for most people then was at most a kind of "maintenance discipleship."

So how could you have access to something like what the catechumenate used to do? Two paths were available-- preparation for ordained ministry or entering a monastic community. Either of those could put you into a similarly rigorous formation process that everyone used to have. But both of them also took you out of the community in significant ways, while catechesis had taught you how to live as a disciple of Jesus squarely in it!

John and Charles Wesley had set up a similar process for forming people to live out the baptismal covenant in 18th century England-- the trial class meetings. Here, anyone who had a sincere desire to flee the wrath to come and to be saved from their sins could be part of a group for three to six months to begin to learn how to live into the General Rules of the United Societies, sets of concrete practices and means of grace that corresponded with the baptismal vows of the Church of England (and many churches, including the UMC today, as well!). They met weekly to watch over one another in love until these in whom new birth was gestating or about to be realized attained "normal Christian body temperature," both willingness and ability to live this way. Then, they could be recommended for admission to the Methodist Society, as well as a "regular" class meeting where they would continue to be supported and challenged to grow in holiness of heart and life toward "entire sanctification," perfection in love in this life.

The General Rules were for these early Methodists a significant way to measure progress in actual discipleship to Jesus. Were people avoiding harm? Were they getting extricated from addictions? Were they ridding themselves of slaves and working to end the slave trade? Were they visiting the sick, the poor, and the prisoners? Were they zealous to do good to those near and far? Were they attending upon all the ordinances of God-- including those, such as the sacraments and the ministry of the word publicly expounded, that required they also participate in congregations? Were they manifesting more holy tempers, and getting free from the power of unholy tempers?

These are questions about discipleship to Jesus. Metrics or stories showing progress on these issues would report actual progress toward our stated mission of "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."

Steve Manskar and I in 2008 proposed some additional questions for charge conference forms, all based directly on the Book of Discipline. These questions would help congregations describe and measure ways they were providing more than the "maintenance discipleship" most of the metrics on the current forms, as well as those captured in many dashboards, provide. The forms committee thought they were too hard, in part because they would make the form too long. One question about the number of Covenant Discipleship groups was added. That was all.

The more I've thought about it, the more I've thought perhaps the forms committee was right, or at least partly so. Congregations still aren't set up to engage discipleship well. But they can be places that connect people to other groups, like those trial class meetings, or class meetings, or Covenant Discipleship Groups that may be composed of people from several different congregations (I am in one of these), or Emmaus 4th Day groups, or campus ministry groups, or OSL chapters, or United Methodist Men's mentoring groups, that are explicitly designed for this purpose.

So what's a missional Methodist to do with what appears to be the inevitability that many, if not all, of our pastors and congregations will soon be expected to complete and be evaluated, perhaps weekly, on the current "maintenance discipleship" dashboard metrics, instead of progress in actual discipleship, scriptural holiness, and perfection in love in this life? We know, after all, that the standard we have in Christ, not to mention Wesley, calls us to rely on and work for more than improvements in the maintenance metrics, and we also know that those maintenance metrics don't necessarily equate with discipleship to Jesus much at all! (For a major study confirming that very finding, see Willow Creek's "Reveal" study and my entry on it on this blog).

Some advice.

Give our leaders what they want.

Fill out the dashboards as often as you have to, faithfully, honestly, and with the best cheer you can muster. The questions aren't illegitimate for indicating some of your congregation's effectiveness in its core functions. They have some value. Recognize that and go with it.

But don't stop there. Give them more, too. Give them more and better data about those areas of the four core competencies of congregations not covered well (if at all) in the dashboard.

But also give them something like your answers to the questions Steve and I proposed.

Or give them answers to the questions I suggested above.

Or find another way to communicate regularly about the progress or lack of progress in discipleship, in holiness in heart and life, you observe among the people where you are. These will be stories, most likely, observational evidence of growth and struggle in people's lives. You might be able to send that in to your DS only once a month or so.

But do it.

What we measure matters.

So don't settle for measuring only "maintenance discipleship."

Measure and regularly report on "the more excellent way," too.

After all, that's what we Methodists are all about!

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Lent and wilderness...

2011-03-16T21:13:00.002-05:00

Companions,

This is the wilderness in Judea. Or at least part of it.

It's a barren wasteland. Survival out here depends on discipline. One has to find safe sources of water. One has to find some way protect oneself from the sun during the day and the dramatically cooler temperatures at night. And because there is little in the way of camouflage, one has to protect oneself from predators-- especially since those predators don't have an abundance of prey choices in such a barren environment.

From what we know of it, it wasn't that much different in the time of Jesus than it is today.

This is not a place to go wandering. It is not a place for confusion. It is instead a place to test one's will and wit to survive. You don't go here, much less spend 40 days here, and even less do that while fasting unless you are either confident of your survival skills or driven there by someone or something.

The gospels tell us Jesus was driven there-- indeed Mark uses the most graphic language of all-- he was "cast out" there, thrown out (ekbalein is the verb) just like demons are thrown out of people. And he was cast out there right after his baptism by the Holy Spirit.

Why? To get ready. To prepare. To get started on his mission on the right foot. To be sure that he wouldn't fail. To build his survival skills-- both physical and spiritual.

To get ready for what? To be tempted-- a temptation that, according to Matthew and Luke, at least, didn't happen in the wilderness at all, but after he had left the wilderness, after his 40 days of fasting were complete.

So Christians from at least the second century have taken at least some time before Easter-- initially perhaps three or four weeks, but by the fifth century a full forty days (not counting Sundays), to fast and pray, but above all to join newcomers to the faith on their final intense stretch of preparation for baptism.

Jesus was cast out into the desert by the Holy Spirit after his baptism. Christians called each other to join those preparing to live the way of Jesus in such a desert time-- not emptiness, but hard core training, stretching every physical and spiritual "muscle" they (and we) have. In some places, the very final stretch (the last two weeks before Easter) involved exorcism every single day. Cleansing. Purgation. Endurance testing. All of that. And of course, fasting, too.

Contrast all of these well-documented biblical and early Christian practices of Lent with what we see today-- across the board-- from the most traditionalist to the most "emergent" or "liberal" one might find. Where's the real, hardcore physical and spiritual challenge? Where's the disorientation? Where's the palpable danger?

Perhaps most tellingly, where's the desert?

I fear we've substituted lesser things for the raw facts of the Judean desert where Jesus spent 40 days fasting. Lesser things that have little chance of accomplishing in us or those preparing for baptism what they did for Jesus.

One of them is to confuse the raw facts of this desert, this wilderness, with what most Americans think of when we use the word wilderness-- something more like a wild place teeming with wild life, vegetation, and fairly accessible supplies of water. We think wilderness and we think something like a disorganized forest. One might wander there-- on purpose. There's something intrinsically desirable about it, even if a bit (but perhaps only a bit) risky.

The other is to metaphorize the desert. It is to speak of it as a place of silence (real deserts can be quite noisy, especially at night!), a place of retreat. A bit better is to picture it as place that's primarily about getting back to basics. But deserts of our own metaphorical making aren't likely to get us to the real basics given that many of us, especially in wealthy places, have a list of basics that look and feel like obscene luxuries to the 2/3 world.

Will we ever go to the real desert-- one that can actually challenge us enough to be ready to face and then face down Satan-- unless someone forces us to? Unless someone, or the Spirit, throws us out there?

Will we go to such a desert this Lent-- or any Lent-- or ever?

Or will we-- and I-- continue to content ourselves with wandering, dabbling, experimenting, giving up a thing or two or taking on a thing or two of our own choosing, and calling it good?

Do we mean business as the Spirit meant business for Jesus?

Or are we just vagabonds finding one more way to justify the post-modern pointlessness of a life not fed by the Word of God, carried by the Spirit of God, and directed by the kingdom of God with the people of God and our King, Jesus?

Strong Son of God who endured forty days of desert and then faced down Satan, deliver me, deliver us, from one more Lent of dabbling.

Mighty Spirit of God, who drove Jesus into the desert to prepare, drive me, drive us, to a desert, overwhelming our resistances.

Abba, who announced how well-beloved your Son was to you and then immediately unleashed the Spirit to drive Jesus to the desert, turn your severe mercy upon me, upon us, that we may know your love through your discipline and chastisement.

Amen.

Image Credit: Judean Desert. Used by permission under a Creative Common License.

Change the World... 2011

2011-02-23T13:46:00.002-06:00

Companions,

There is value in Change the World, this kind of coordinated "Day of Good" for The United Methodist Church, and I'm glad United Methodist Communications is working to organize it again this year.

We did this sort of thing every year when I was on staff at United Way in Madison County, Indiana. We, like many other United Ways across the country, called it, The Day of Caring. It was a day, usually a Saturday, when we'd organize volunteers across the entire county to be part of projects that could make a difference in the lives of individuals and local organizations. The work varied widely, and included such things as building ramps, painting indoors or out, weatherizing homes, cleaning up and beautifying neighborhoods, building new playgrounds and helping food pantries reorganize their stockroom to make their distributions more friendly and efficient, to name a few. None of these things changed the world. But all of them made it better for those we were able to reach on that day every year, and in turn for those who came to them as friends, or in the case of agencies, for help.

It was good work, and good fun. It was something that united the whole county, and something we always looked forward to doing each year, in spite of the massive amount of work necessary to organize and coordinate it all.

There was strength in numbers on these Days of Caring.

But we also knew that our real strength at United Way lay not simply in organizing these one day events, but in organizing and inspiring the leaders across the community-- in every sector-- to work together every day for things that WOULD change our county for the better. Things like reducing the infant mortality rate, increasing school performance for our children, and doing all the things needed to move our county's economy from a dependence on one auto manufacturer toward a more diverse and sustainable future. Here, the strength isn't just in numbers-- but in sustained effort, long term relationships, and leadership to "address" not just the "root causes" of community problems but to tap into the root strengths for positive community change.

So let's be about doing both. Re-thinking church does mean remembering that we have a lot of United Methodist partners in the US and globally with whom we can coordinate to get some good things done on a local basis one weekend per year. And we should do that.

But actually re-BE-ing church means we do at least what United Way does-- remembering that while the one-off projects are fun, helpful and build good will, our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ means we have to be out there all the time, building relationships and bridges across our communities-- working with every sector-- and bearing witness to God's reign which is the real power that changes the world.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

The Heart of Methodism...

2011-01-17T01:51:00.001-06:00

Sawasdee from Chiang Mai, Thailand! And Sabaidee from sisters and brothers in Christ here from United Methodist mission churches in Laos. I'm here from GBOD as part of a multi-agency training partnership spearheaded by GBGM and also including GCFA.

For those of you unfamiliar with the United Methodist alphabet soup, GBOD is The General Board of Discipleship (where I work). GBGM is the General Board of Global Mission. GCFA is the General Council on Finance and Accountability.

A great blessing here is to teach the heart of Methodism with no compromises such as we often make in the US and elsewhere where United Methodists have more presence and where Christianity is still a more dominant religious influence. By stark contrast, in Thailand, just about 0.7% of the country is Christian, a bit over 4% are Muslim, and nearly everyone else is Buddhist. The metrics are similar in Laos.

A great blessing for the laity and clergy we are working with over these two weeks is that they really are in an apostolic situation. Christianity has NOT become an establishment religion here, ever, even in places where Christians have been around for several centuries. Being a Christian here is thus a distinctive choice. And since Methodist work in both countries is so new (about 4 years in Thailand and 10 years in Laos), being a Methodist Christian is an even more distinctive choice, and neither an easy nor an obvious one.

What I am seeing and blessed to share here, as part of this multi-agency partnership, is just how distinctive the Methodist vision is. It is nothing less than that all persons have the opportunity to grow in holiness of heart and life toward perfection in love in this life. All persons-- not just an elect few or some elites and leaders, but all. This full and entire salvation is possible for us, all of us, because this is what the grace of God offers. We have not been invited to settle for attending worship and having a relationship with God only at the margins of our lives. We have been invited, all of us, to nothing less than a complete transfiguration, a complete restoration of the image of God in us, a complete salvation that redeems every part of us and uses all of our capacities and continuously redirects them toward the love and reign of God, a love and reign that transform not only each of us, but the whole world in and through and beyond us.

What has become so obvious here, and what has become so much easier to say here, is that while other Christian traditions have offered much of the WHAT of the faith, Methodism has very much offered a practical, realistic and highly functional set of HOWS. The practices of the faith-- corporate worship including the sacraments, holy conferencing in class meetings/covenant discipleship groups, field preaching that directly addresses and awakens the surrounding culture, fasting or abstinence, searching the scriptures, personal and family and group prayer... these and more we know how to practice and teach. We are not left just hoping that we get our hearts warmed in a worship service and encounter with God and then sent out to try to live that individually-- which, alas, is what so many others in the larger evangelical and Protestant missionary tradition have left folks with-- we know how and can show others how to become more and more rooted and grounded in the love of Christ-- in real time and for all time.

Perfection in love in this life sounds odd and maybe even like too much demand or bad news so often in our US context. Why? I believe it is because we have exchanged our Methodist heritage for the pottage called "bigger and more successful congregations."

Methodism may or may not be a way to make congregations larger. But it is always a way of making the people who are Methodist bigger-spirited, more profound in their love of God and neighbor.

If we believe Priority 1 is to make our congregations bigger or even the roll of professing members bigger, per se, as well as to become more financially wealthy and even able to give more money than we did before, we may be foolish to pursue the Methodist way very far, the way of holiness of heart and life, the way of entire discipleship to Jesus in all things.

Why?

Because if those numbers and that kind of financial success are our real goal, offering and driving toward perfection in love in this life is not appealing, because there are far easier ways to generate those metrics than this more excellent way.

And then there's the problem we may have with the word "perfection." We equate that perhaps too much with some sort of finality, stillness, unchangeability, rigidity, and even lack of joy. We look at perfection in a Platonic and Stoic way-- a way that speaks more of deprivation than fullness of life, more about getting everything in its place than what it truly is-- getting the fullness of the life and love of God, whose perfection is love, into every place in every way possible.

We have been captivated perhaps, then, not simply by an idolatrous attention to size and financial flow, as if getting people into the congregations and keeping them and their money there were the final goal of Creation and Salvation, but also by a set of philosophical and theological assumptions utterly foreign to and subverted by our truly incarnational faith in a God who never stops pursuing us in love.

Here I can see clearly in the faces of people whose language I can neither understand nor read, at all, the fulfillment of Jesus' words in John's gospel, "I have come that you may have joy and that your joy may be full."

And so it is.

And it is a joy that only becomes the fuller as we are perfected in love-- as we cooperate with the work of the Spirit in each of us and among those who closely watch over us in love (class meetings), who gather to encourage such growth (society meetings), and who gather with many, even those whose desire to follow the way of Jesus may be minimal at this point, to offer glory to God, teach the basics of the faith, and share at the Table of Grace (congregations).

Such a blessing, so many blessings, to be here, among these people. Such a blessing to see and know and feel and be part of God's desire to redeem us all to the uttermost, a desire God earnestly and constantly works to realize in and through us. Such a blessing to be being made perfect in love in this life!

May more of us in the US and Global North churches quit settling for less than God desires to make of us. And may we Methodists, in particular, pick up again our truest birthright-- as way-showers and co-laborers in love that all who come near us may know and desire the joy of being made perfect in love in this life.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Image Credit: Old Town Chiang Mai, Thailand. Used by permission under a Creative Commons License.

Motivating Missional Performance...

2010-12-09T16:11:00.005-06:00

Companions,

Just watched this video-- recommended by @pastopher on Twitter. Watch this first, then let's talk.

Okay... now let's think of the key principles here in terms of discipleship to Jesus and actually engaging in God's mission that is transforming the world.

First things first... what within discipleship and mission turns out to be menial, non-cognitive tasks that require escalating monetary rewards to generate escalating performance? What about things like providing physical care for children or the sick or anyone needing direct physical attention? What about things like house-keeping, cooking, cleaning and yard work?

Question: how much do we pay people to do these things in our congregations? How much does our society pay people for these things? What kinds of results should we expect when we pay nothing or very little for such tasks?

Remember that for the next three, money is off the table. The assumption here is that people are being paid enough by some means that they're not having to worry about how they'll pay their bills.

So next-- autonomy. Autonomy here doesn't mean a lack of accountability, if you notice the examples given. You are accountable for what you produce, but you can produce whatever you want to that meets the basic purposes of the organization. And in this example, too, you're doing that WITH other people in the organization. You're not off just doing your own thing. Instead, you're working in a "liquid network" with anyone else who's interested in working with you to accomplish something that YOU and they want to see accomplished-- not something that your upper level management is requiring of you.

Where does that happen in whatever ways you are inviting people to discipleship to Jesus and helping them get engaged in his mission and ministry in the world?

And next-- mastery. Practice, practice, practice. What are those things about discipleship and being engaged in God's mission that you have to really get down, get into your bones and muscles, your breath and your blood? How do you make room and open the way for more people to get great practice in these things on a regular basis?

A starting place those of us in the Wesleyan tradition can talk about-- practicing the means of grace: prayer, searching the scriptures, attending upon the public reading and teaching of scripture, participating in the sacraments, fasting or abstinence, and holy conferencing. Those are some-- but not all the possible practices we might name here-- things that require us to devote daily or, in the case of Holy Communion, at least weekly attention.

And then-- purpose. The United Methodist Church has been critiqued by some of its own at times (including me!) for adding the words "for the transformation of the world" to its mission statement in 2008. My critique has been that it seems to make discipleship to Jesus a means to some other end, so that ultimately the Lordship of Christ is subordinated to some account of whether the world is better or not. In other words, at least as I've heard and seen this phrase used a few too many times, "for the transformation of the world" seems really to mean "some big change we can measure and maybe even take credit for," as if, at the end of the day, it wasn't our discipleship to Jesus that mattered, but our effectiveness at making the world turn out right. I still hold that out as a caveat.

At the same time, what was the purpose of Jesus? If we take the sort of "sermon title" or "sermon summary" in Matthew and Mark as a pretty good indicator of that, it might be to announce and embody the good news that God's reign has drawn near and call people to align their lives to this new, present reality. ("The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent, and believe this good news!"). Discipleship to Jesus ends up being about learning to see and live into this new reality of God's reign in every way we can, and then doing all we can to call and invite others to do the same.

Why? Because history has snapped, and it's still snapping, as God's reign continues to break in. Reality isn't what the nations or the marketers or the world's most powerful institutions say it is. It is what God makes it. And the way God is making reality looks very different from the reality the powerful claim they've made.

The purpose isn't about getting other people to agree with our theories of atonement, or improve their lives, or be nicer or more moral, or join our worshiping communities. The purpose is being part of the ferment-- getting people to see and celebrate and take their place in God's kingdom which is, as we speak, still transforming the world-- and sometimes we get to help!

That's a purpose that can get me up in the morning even more than Steve Jobs' purpose to "put a ding in the universe." (To me, that sounds a bit arrogant-- though I have to say his company makes beautiful products that work really well!).

With all the talk of motivating pastoral and congregational performance by dashboard metrics and paying and appointing (or getting rid of!) pastors accordingly these days in some circles, any maybe in circles moving into an ever-widening gyre... well, maybe what we're learning from the science here is there's a better way.

Though I might add-- it's what Jesus was teaching all along!

Be great at the "small stuff" where you are, and reward your janitors and cooks and care providers with great salaries for great work. The least of these get the lion's share!

And for the rest of your folks whose work requires more cognitive engagement-- those on the congregation's payroll and those who are not-- make sure they don't have to worry about money, but don't use money as a motivator. It won't generate better results-- probably worse ones! Instead, fanatically encourage autonomy and mastery and keep folks connected with the purpose in all of this-- the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand-- how much more Advent can you get!-- and see what happens when you do.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

A Missional Methodist Covenant from Lockerbie Central UMC, Indianpollis

2010-12-06T16:46:00.001-06:00

Companions,

Lockerbie Central UMC in Indianapolis was incredibly gracious host to the 2009 emergingumc2 gathering. But they're more than gracious hosts. They're also living examples of a congregation that lives at the fringe on purpose, and so that seeks, as a body, to hold its participants accountable-- as a body-- to engage and encounter the ministry of Jesus Christ in their daily lives and their neighborhoods. Below is the covenant they've developed as a living document for doing this. Thanks to Jordan Updike (musician extraordinaire, Earth House instigator, and more!) for sharing it.

Note all of the "we" language here. The questions aren't about whether each individual is doing all this perfectly. They're about discerning whether and then how God is doing these things in their midst and then how they can help each other see more of that through individual and collective vision and action.

What do you see here?

Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church Rule of Life: God, Self, Church, World

Presence

We will be present to God, chasing after God’s heart with authenticity and vulnerability.
We will be present to ourselves, seeking wellness for our minds, hearts, souls, and bodies.
We will be present to our faith community, engaging in worship, fellowship and mission.
We will be present to our neighbors and creation, paying attention to their needs.

Prayers

We will be in conversation with God through prayer.
We will pray privately utilizing diverse spiritual disciplines (reflective reading of Scripture and other spiritual texts, fasting, journaling and contemplation etc.).
We will pray with our faith community for God’s church (confession, in worship, intercession, song etc.)
We will pray for our neighbors and for creation.

Witness

We will embrace the creative, redeeming, and sustaining God, inviting others to share in God’s transforming love.
We will seek to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God.
We will study our ancient scriptures, church history, and Wesleyan tradition, seeking to understand their historical, political, and cultural context so that we may live more fully as the prophetic voice of Jesus the Christ.
We will seek to resist evil and injustice, pursuing peace and justice with our neighbors and creation and practicing radical hospitality and reconciliation (racial, gender, cultural, faith, etc.).

Gifts

We will recognize that all gifts come from God, giving thanks appropriately.
We will honor and care for the gift of our bodies, developing practices that support and sustain our wellness.
We will share our gifts with our faith community, practicing generosity with our material resources, spiritual gifts, talents and abilities, and valuing the gift of each voice within the community as we seek to discern God’s will.
We will honor the gifts of our neighbors and creation, practicing ecologically responsible living, striving for simplicity, and sharing our resources.

Service

We will partner in building God's dream of justice, mercy, and discipleship, striving for a world filled with peace, love, and laughter.
We will practice regular Sabbath, renewing ourselves to live more fully.
We will set aside selfish ambition and individualism to care for one another, taking responsibility for the health of the faith community and practicing mutual accountability within a covenant group.
We will care for our neighbors and creation.

I commit to this rule of life and to the well-being of this faith community, out of gratitude to God who forgives, heals, and makes all things new. May my life be a blessing within and beyond God’s church, for the transformation of the world.

_____________________________________ ___________________________________
Name/Date Witness

End Spiritual Infant Mortality

2010-11-16T22:11:00.002-06:00

Pictured at the right is an incubator. If it looks like it's made of car parts, that's because it is. It was designed by a company that specializes in appropriate and sustainable technologies for developing countries, many of which have access to a steady stream of reliable car parts (such as the headlights that provide the heat and the car battery that powers it) and almost zero access to the specialized parts that most other companies use for such devices.

Result: more incubators that work longer and are easy to repair means a greatly reduced rate of infant mortality. Indeed, estimates are that incubators alone could cut infant mortality in many of these countries in half.

John Wesley was noted for his exceptional passion and commitment to proclaiming and leading people to experience the new birth, the dawning of justifying grace in their lives.

But he was even more interested in ensuring that those newly born in Christ had everything necessary to get out of spiritual infancy alive! He was witness in his own day to too many others also preaching the new birth and stopping there, with the result that there was a very high rate of those being "converted" either becoming frozen at a level of spiritual infancy or, more frightening, regressing to spiritual death once again.

Wesley resolved to have no part in contributing to the rise of "spiritual infant mortality" in his day. So he would not do field preaching where there was not an active Methodist society and a trial class meeting to refer those who responded. The trial class meetings were like spiritual incubators, constructed of others who were similarly responding to the gospel and leaders who would make sure they were actually growing rather than, as babies left to their own devices in adverse circumstances, failing to thrive.

This is why for Wesleyan Christians it is not enough that we try to increase attendance in services of worship or even have more "professing members" or even more small groups in our congregations. There are too many ways to do all of those things that have nothing to do with the new birth or actual growth in holiness of heart and life-- and they are being tried successfully-- if your metrics of success are increases in attendance, membership and the number of small groups.

But our earnest passion and the striving of our souls and bodies is not simply for significant spiritual encounters or pledges of institutional allegiance or places of belonging. All of these may be related in some way to the new birth, but none of them necessarily so. We, too, live in a hostile environment where there are way too many cases of infant spiritual mortality. Witness the "churn" noted in Willow Creek's Reveal study a few years ago, and found to be commonplace in many "growing" congregations in the US in the past several decades.

Congregations today as in Wesley's day are not equipped to prevent those newly born from failing to thrive. The "black box" we call congregations with their internal systems do NOT generate the outcome of discipleship at anything like an acceptable rate. Indeed, they tend to generate the opposite result-- at least if you follow the findings of Willow Creek.

It's time to end spiritual infant mortality in our own day.

It's time to start building more incubators-- lots of them.

These incubators aren't black boxes. We know what's inside them. And we know how and why they work. And we know they do work-- at a far higher rate of success than congregations do.

The parts are all around you-- but you may need to look beyond folks just in your congregation to find them and assemble them into a working incubator.

Covenant Discipleship groups can be such incubators. So can others. But I mention Covenant Discipleship here because I know what it's doing for me. Through it the Spirit is truly working. I am growing and being challenged and supported to grow further in holiness of heart and life. I'm more aware of my own failings to do so, but also more aware of the grace of God empowering me to do so. And that seems to be the experience of all of us in the group I'm part of.

Parts needed-- 5-7 people willing to covenant together to watch over one another in love to live the way of Jesus by supporting and holding each other accountable for the ways they will engage in acts of mercy (personal compassion and social justice) and acts of piety (personal devotion and public worship).

Get in one of these yourself-- or a group like it-- if you aren't already.

Then go invite others to do the same.

And then watch as fewer infants in Christ fail to thrive, and more of them grow into the full stature of Christ because they have the support systems they need to live as his disciples on his mission in the world.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

For more about this incubator and how it is also a great example of how innovation normally works-- by using what's already available and connecting it in a new way-- watch Steven Johnson's TED Talk, "Where Good Ideas Come From."

One Cause of the Inefficacy of Christianity

2010-11-13T08:38:00.004-06:00

John Meunier has some wonderful words in a recent blog post, Wesley's Call to Action, about the Methodist tradition of examining ourselves and exploring how to become more effective. It was a topic that Wesley frequently raised for discussion, and we still do this.

My favorite: I remember Wesley lamenting the future of Methodism should the 5 am preaching ever be abandoned.

In my garage I have a portable power saw and other tools that I bought to do home repairs years ago and which I haven't used for over 15 years. Well made, I suspect they would work fine if I decided to use them for the purpose for which they were made.

Our Wesleyan system is also a well made, well designed method of making excellent disciples. It was crafted for the purpose of evangelism, for maturing new Christians through stages of growth to likewise learn how to partner in evangelism and maturing new disciples. Indeed, we "have nothing to do but to save souls..."

In the 5 am preaching, the circuit rider would position his horse on the road men took to the mines, sing a hymn to draw a crowd, and then preach. Methodist laymen would stop and those with whom they had influence would stand with them and hear a sermon; in the following days the laity would, through conversation with those friends, expand the influence of that brief message. In the centuries since, the role of the preacher in that process has been emphasized while the action of the early Methodist laity as disciple makers has been neglected or even ignored.

I have a great tool in my garage, a Craftsman power saw, and Methodism has a great tool for making disciples. You can examine the tool all day long, oil it, improve it and expound upon its value. It is right to say "This is a great tool!" The problem is not with the tool at all; the problem is that the tool needs to be applied to wood to do its work. The tool of Methodist disciple making needs to be applied to the wood of people who need faith. And the way the tool of disciple making works is through many small conversations that build a relationship with a person who is not-yet-fully-Christian and how those conversations eventually become conversations about faith.

You can no longer stand on a street, sing a hymn and draw a crowd; preaching to the lost doesn't work in our culture as it did in Wesley's culture. But the work God does through the conversations laity have is still as effective as it ever was.

It's good to emphasize Wesley's system of sanctifying grace, keeping God's laws and emphasizing holiness. It's a great system, a great tool for making good disciples into better disciples.

The problem to me, however, is that it is a command of Jesus Christ to each Christian to go, make disciples, baptize them, and teach/train them to obey all the commands of Christ, including the command for them to go, make disciples, baptize them, and teach/train them to obey all the commands of Christ ... and on and on. Our 2008 Book of Discipline, P. 126, now understands working at the Great Commission clearly as a ministry of the laity.

We ask "Why is there so much wickedness abroad?" and consider soberly the causes of the inefficacy of Christianity. It is a good answer to say that the lack of spiritual discipline and self-denial within us is the problem, but that is the saw sitting on the shelf, ready to work, but not cutting wood.

When I consider the focus of holiness over the past three centuries and its current revival through a new understanding of the General Rules, I believe we continue to miss the point - the idea that we are pursuing is that what is needed are disciplined Christians more able to achieve a definition of holiness which omits obedience to the Great Commission. We focus on making better and better disciples who somehow never become disciple makers.

Look over all the exhortations to holiness over the recent centuries - what sin have we not addressed that would account for the growing inefficacy of Christianity?

The understanding of holiness that is needed for the church to be effective is that, if it is a sin to disobey a command of Christ, then it is a sin for a person to not make disciples (Mt 28:19) and it is a sin to not teach those new disciples to become disciple makers (Mt 28:20), and it is a sin for a church not to teach the laity how to fulfill the Great Commission.

The Sporulation of Bacillus Subtilis: A Parable

2010-10-27T16:51:00.004-05:00

The state of much Christianity in North America, to what shall we compare it, or with what parable shall we describe it.

It is like a certain bacterium called Bacillus subtilis, one of the most common bacteria on our planet...

This bacterium belongs to a special type of bacteria that has formed a special way to preserve itself for the future should adverse environmental circumstances come along. It sporulates. That is, it changes its physical form and how it functions dramatically, from a "normal" state where it reproduces by normal cell division to a "spore" state where it sort of "circles the wagons," creates a hard shell around itself, and essentially goes dormant until it receives a chemical signal from the environment indicating it's safe to "wake up," dissolve the outer shell, and resume its "normal" state. A "spore" can stay in this state, depending on the circumstances and the type of bacterium, for weeks, months, years-- some even decades, centuries or more!

Now most bacteria of this type, when they enter the spore state, "sporify" the entire cell. That is, the entire cell turns into a spore. But Bacillus subtilis does something a bit different. It divides its genetic material in half, reproduces a copy of the other half, and then moves half of that material to one end of the cell. Then it forms a septum (a dividing wall) to close off that end of the cell. Then it sort of pulls that end of the cell back into itself, and hardens a wall around it, creating a spore on the inside of the cell, as in this photograph.You could say it becomes "pregnant."

But before it actually begins this process it does something else, something that only a very few other bacteria do. It engages in chemical warfare. It projects from itself two chemicals. One of them stops other bacteria of its type from starting the sporulation process. The other one dissolves (lyses) the outer cell wall.

So in this photograph, you see the results. The green bacteria are all alive. But the red ones were killed by the lethal chemical warfare mix.

But there's something even more peculiar about this bacillus, one of the most subtle the Lord our God has made. After it kills off the other bacteria around it, including many others of its own kind, it moves over to them and begins to eat them. Yes, Bacillus subtilis is not only a sporulating bacterium. It is also a cannibal. The bacterium on the right in this photo is in the process of devouring the one on the left, able to do so because its outer cell wall has been compromised thanks to the chemical warfare of efforts of the first one.

It does this so the "mother cell" can "bulk up" and have the energy it needs to produce its "baby" spore and protect it for a while. Then the mother cell itself "lyses" (dissolves) and the "baby spore" lies dormant for as long as it needs to-- up to many years.

Whoever has ears, let them hear...

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

(And, if you want to see a video about the sporulation process of this clever bacterium, here's one from one of the world's experts on it!).

Who Wants to Be an emergingumc Mission-aire?

2010-10-26T07:40:00.000-05:00

So here we are, last question... the one that will determine whether you become the next emergingumc Mission-aire!

You've phoned a friend, checked with the audience, and taken the 50-50. You do still have one recourse, though-- you can check the Bible. But you only have a limited time.

So, here's the question.

Which of the following congregations was primarily responsible for "making" the disciples of Jesus?

A. The synagogue in Capernaum

B. The temple in Jerusalem

C. The synagogue in Nazareth

D. None of the above.

You've got 30 seconds on the clock, starting... now!

Picture Credit: Original Studio Schema for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Used by permission under a Creative Commons License.

Dr Suess Waxes Missional: A Pew Forum Report in Rhyme

2010-10-11T12:44:00.004-05:00

In the days when the scholars
of the Forum of Pew,
had studied “Millennials”
(though not all, quite a few)

they found not just for them,
or their parents, but theirs,
that of those not in church,
but at home in their chairs,

why for sixty-five years now,
of those who don’t come,
four percent is the most
who will get off their bum

and decide, Yes I think
that religion’s the thing;
I’ll get off of my couch now,
and come out and sing!

Four percent, that is all,
no matter what happened;
while those leaving went up,
those arriving stayed flattened.

Not the big tent revivals
nor the TV crusades,
nor the activist Christians
who marched in parades

Not the new church growth movement
with its principle “homogeneous’
nor the crafty new marketers
with all of their genius,

Neither lifting our hands,
nor swaying our hips,
nor being quite sensitive
to the words on our lips

Has made any change
in the new ones who come;
four percent is the figure,
the number, the sum.

While back in the forties,
those leaving were seven,
today’s figure is more
by ten or eleven.

With four coming in,
and eighteen going out,
it seems like religion
has opened a spout.

And while most are religious,
or at least so they say,
their numbers are clearly
now fading away.

So maybe, just maybe,
there’s no “next big thing”
that will actually lead
more to join us and sing.

And maybe, perhaps,
our whole focus was wrong.
It’s not about bigness,
or the size of the throng,

It’s not about buildings,
or credentials professional,
its not about praise bands
or costumed processional,

It’s not about what
we can do in our “show.”
It’s much more about
if we’re willing to go

Where we are, and there find
in the people we meet,
in our houses, our neighborhoods,
out on the street,

In the faces of people,
the ones who are real,
not in programs or slogans,
or any big deal,

but God’s reign, though it seem
like a small mustard seed,
that sprouts, and then spreads
like a fast-growing weed.

Just to live where we are,
just as if we’ve been sent
to be witnesses, signs,
of God’s kingdom that’s bent

On saving us all,
from the most to the least,
and inviting us all
to sit down at God’s feast

And here, at that banquet,
to give and to share
the Water of Life,
the Breath of pure air

The touch that brings healing,
the listening ear,
the voice for the voiceless,
each day, and each year

To pour out our lives,
in real time, here and now,
as Christ pours in us,
as our hearts may allow.

We can’t make disciples
like a widget or car;
we disciple, as Jesus did,
right where we are.

Discipling doesn’t
require big dollars,
or pastors in polos
or ties or in collars

It doesn’t require
that we spend on our selves
to build family life centers
for our own “little elves.”

Discipling is free
but costs all that we have.
Will you pour out your life?
Will you be healing salve

Among those who are with you,
and those far away
as God’s kingdom still comes
on this earth, here, today?

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Our Bodies Matter...

2010-10-07T11:26:00.004-05:00

Companions,

The president of the seminary where I completed an M.Div. (he was not president when I was there!) has apparently come out with an attack on yoga and encouraged Christians not to participate in it.

You can read an article about that here.

Now, I'm fully aware of ways the press can misconstrue and misrepresent what church leaders say. For the most part I think it's not a question of malice on the part of the press, but actually an inability to translate the "insider speak" of the churches and our fairly intricate polity and theological distinctions to a wider audience. We know what we're saying to each other "inside," but others who overhear us may have few clues what we're really talking about.

I say all of that to make the point that what I'm about to say may or may not be an accurate reflection of or response to what Dr. Mohler actually said as reported in the above-cited article. All I can actually respond to is the article itself.

So what I'm about to say should not be heard in any way as directed to Dr. Mohler per se. I just don't know what he actually said, fully, in any sort of context.

But the article says he said this:

Mohler said he objects to "the idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine."

"That's just not Christianity," Mohler told The Associated Press.

Then later in the article there's another statement.

He said his view is "not an eccentric Christian position."

You see the problem here. We have three statements, but no clear assessment about their context relative to each other.

So here's my reply to the statements as they stand. They're correct. This is not an eccentric Christian position. It's not a Christian position at all.

The statements as they stand can be read as heresy.

They're heresy in part because they are fundamentally gnostic. As stated, they posit that our bodies cannot be a channel by which we connect with God. Some gnostics believed that, and taught it widely. The body/flesh is evil and irredeemably corrupt. Only the "spirit" is capable of connecting with God.

Christianity, however, rejected that. We embrace the doctrine of the Incarnation. God became flesh in Jesus, who was fully human, and fully divine. Christian leaders spent centuries working out ways to talk about that-- ways embodied in the Creeds, especially the Nicene and Athanasian creeds. The body matters. Indeed, the body is precisely the means God chose to encounter us, because it is the only means we actually have to encounter God.

In rejecting gnosticism (and really, gnosticisms-- plural-- over the ages), Christians have continued to assert in our Trinitarian theology that just as God is One, so human beings are one-- body, mind, spirit, soul (whatever terms one uses), all of this is continuous, deeply interrelated, and so one. Christians reject gnostic dualism of spirit/body. We call that a false, wrong view of humanity.

But being wrong about something wouldn't be enough to convict of heresy in much of early Christianity. You could be wrong and even state wrong ideas, but it wasn't until you then sought to teach others the same and then break them away from the teaching of the Church by doing so, that you would have crossed the line into actual heresy.

Heresy is error plus schismatic intent.

As a significant teacher and leader of a teaching institution in his own denomination, unless the Southern Baptist Convention has now embraced a dualistic understanding of humanity and thereby rejected the doctrine of the Incarnation, this statement calling for persons to reject yoga on these grounds at least participates in teaching error and seeking to break others from the established teaching of the whole church.

And so as represented in this article, the statements can easily be read as heresy.

But more than that, they're also bad science. To be sure, science can make no speculations about the Divine, and in fact, in its own methodologies, rules out anything like "divine intervention" as a first principle. So to describe how this is bad science, we also have to get rid of the word "Divine," since the Divine is simply not subject to scientific investigation.

The basic premise in the the alleged objection to the notion that "the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine" isn't actually harmed in this way. The core of the premise is that "the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness"-- with whatever! That would be simply obvious in science-- and easy to test and confirm, again and again.

Consciousness is precisely a product of bodies and occasionally among bodies and can even, as can be shown, incorporate inanimate objects. (Experiments such as those where the body responds to tactile stimulation of a rubber hand not actually connected to the body, but mapped by the brain as if it were so connected, are cases in point).

So a rejection of this idea leaves one wondering-- assuming the Divine should exist in some way, by what possible other means than the body would one be able to reach consciousness with it?

Heresy and bad science. Sort of a "double-play" for you baseball fans out there. (Go Reds!).

But again-- only if what this article asserts, and as it seems to assert it, actually reflects what Dr. Mohler himself said and intends. That we do not know.

And in fairness, I tend to think he didn't. Or at least I'd like to think so.

I would like to think that he was trying to point out something more factual than philosophical or theological-- namely, that the practice of yoga is in fact a practice that is embedded in Hindu philosophy and religious beliefs, and that even in America yoga actually also comes "packaged" that way. Trying to sever the practices from the philosophies could do violence to both.

So yes, it would be the case that if one is practicing more or less genuine yoga, one is simultaneously being taught a variety of religious and philosophical principles that are not grounded in Christian faith. Indeed they couldn't be grounded in Christian faith because yoga predates Christianity.

The final sentence of the article may suggest that this is what Dr. Mohler was driving at.

Mohler said many people have written him to say they're simply doing exercises and forgoing yoga's eastern mysticism and meditation.

"My response to that would be simple and straightforward: You're just not doing yoga,' Mohler said.

Here, I'd argue he may be right on every count.

But then a larger question-- and perhaps a different rationale for pushback-- comes into play. Are yogic teachings about the body as a vehicle for consciousness with the Divine so completely averse to Christian understandings of the Incarnation and discipleship to Jesus that one should be warned against yoga altogether, utterly reject it and teach others to do likewise?

Is there something more helpful than harmful that we Christians-- especially in the still at least semi-Gnostic, profoundly Platonic West, thanks to the Enlightenment-- could learn from yogic understandings of the connections between body and consciousness that may. Is it possible that such learnings may, as several in the article report, actually enhance our discipleship to Jesus?

Yogic instruction rarely posits itself in opposition to other religious teachings. Might we learn from Jesus here that "whoever is not against us is for us?"

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Used by permission under a Creative Commons License.

Network Schmetwork.... or Not Everything You See Is a Nail

2010-10-01T13:06:00.002-05:00

Kudos to Malcolm Gladwell.

Or as we'd say in my home church, "Say it, Brother, say it! Come on, now, preach it!"

In a New Yorker article published today (dated October 4), Gladwell blows the lid of the myth that Twitter and Facebook have created a true social revolution, and more than this, have become engines for significant social change.

They haven't, because they can't.

"Facebook activism," Gladwell writes, " succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice."

Real social change requires massive commitment. All that Twitter and Facebook can actually generate (and they generate it quite well!) is massive participation.

Commitment requires discipline-- and discipline requires very close personal relationships-- relationships you're ready to lay down your life for.

And discipline that generates a scaling up effect to actual social change requires an actual leader.

Social networks are generally leaderless, and notoriously undisciplined. That is, unless they're led by people with a fairly iron hand to get things done in them, and are able to get rid of or not be hindered by participants who won't follow that lead.

That doesn't make social networks bad. It just makes them fairly unhelpful by themselves if what you're trying to generate is social change. "Fanboys/fangirls" you can get. Lots and lots of them. And they can generate some "one-offs" that seem significant at the time.

But one-offs do not actual "transformation of the world" make.

That takes folks who will go with you to the front lines.

Folks who will pick up their cross daily and follow... as someone once said.

Social networks per se don't generate people like that.

Communitas, as Alan Hirsch describes it, does.

Social networks can become a channel for those disciplined in communitas -- deeply committed, strong-tie community, as Gladwell terms it-- to travel and communicate their ideas across all sectors of society.

In that way, social networks can be vital parts of transformation.

But they can't start it. And they can't sustain it.

Through social networks a meme can spread rapidly, even "virally."

But without the commitment-- and leadership-- generated by "strong-ties," spread is all you get. The meme comes and goes, and few, if any lives, are impacted, much less transformed.

Gladwell's article is a must-read for any who are in leadership or trying to "rethink" leadership or ecclesiology in The United Methodist Church today. We hear (and see!) much talk (and action!) of "replacing committees with networks," at multiple levels of our corporate life these days, all the while telling ourselves that these two very different kinds of social structures can get the same kinds of work done with equal reliability, or maybe even better.

Gladwell notes that it would be unthinkable for a car company to try to design a car by using social networks. (Heck, even the "committee design" processes of British Leyland in the 1970s were an unmitigated disaster, for consumers and manufacturers alike!).

The counter argument usually made is "But look at Open Source Software! That's designed using social networking tools, and anyone can participate!"

So say those who know nothing about what it takes to run an open source project. I lead one-- The Open Source Liturgy Project. It isn't self-organizing-- and few such projects are-- not if the desired end-product is the timely release of high-quality resources. Go read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which remains sort of the "bible" for this kind of work. Or actually join such a project. Then let's talk.

No. Getting things done, and done well, things that will change lives in a positive way, requires high standards and high commitment-- and networks alone do not produce that. Never have. Probably never will.

We need networks-- for the value that networks provide in reducing the bar to participation and thus increasing participation. All social ties are good-- whether the weak ones social networking can provide, or the really strong ones that can lead us to truly life-changing commitments.

But we also need, and critically need strong leaders and excellent managers of well-organized, disciplined systems AND well-organized, disciplined persons committed to achieving a common vision.

The right tools for the right jobs.

As popular as "social networks" have become, they can't and don't replace the commitment, discipline and hard work necessary to change our world.

Network schmetwork? Maybe not quite that-- but if we're at all serious about being disciples of Jesus Christ "for the transformation of the world"-- or at least if that last phrase is to have any real, palpable, historical significance, we need far more discipline and accountability than any networks we have in place or even could build can possibly deliver.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Image Credit: Kris Krüg. Used by permission under a Creative Commons License.

United Methodist Metrics for Discipleship and Mission

2010-10-01T09:49:00.002-05:00

Companions,

In 2008, Steve Manskar and I developed some new questions to be added to charge conference forms based on our United Methodist statements about membership found in Paragraphs 216-221 of the Book of Discipline and the three General Rules. We submitted these questions to the committee responsible for editing and presenting the charge conference forms (and lots of other forms) for the 2009-2012 quadrennium.

A colleague at GCFA was delighted with these questions-- real, palpable and measurable ways both to describe and to account for how local congregations are (and are not yet!) fulfilling the stated mission of the United Methodist Church in the ways the Book of Discipline already calls for us to do so.

When the committee met, it decided not to include any of these questions on the charge conference forms for this quadrennium. Committee members agreed that these questions do measure discipleship. But a concern was whether making the form any longer than one page would make pastors less likely to complete it. One comment was "These questions are too hard for most of our local congregations to answer."

That may be true.

But here they are. Look over them. See what you think.

The numbers in parentheses are the related paragraphs in the 2008 Book of Discipline.

And specifically-- since we plan to do this again in 2012 if given the opportunity-- share what you see that could make them (or questions like them) more likely to get taken seriously and actually incorporated next time around.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Membership and Discipleship

1. How is your congregation making possible “a comprehensive and life-long process of growing in grace?” (216)

2. How many children and infants (with their families) have been instructed and nurtured in the meaning of faith, the rights and responsibilities of their baptisms, and spiritual formation using materials approved by The United Methodist Church? (216.1.a)

3. How many youth have committed themselves to discipleship and been confirmed using the services of the Baptismal Covenant? How has the pastor been specifically involved in this process? (216.1.b, 216.2.a)

a) How has the congregation, with the support of the pastor, instructed youth and adults not yet baptized in the meaning of the Christian faith and the history, organization and teachings of the United Methodist Church using materials approved by the United Methodist Church?

b) How many of these who have received such instruction by the congregation have been baptized, confirmed, and received into the Church during the past year?

5. How has the congregation formed all its members in the baptismal covenant and the call to ministry in daily life? (216.2.a)

6. How has the congregation provided for the preparation of all people, including adults, for profession of faith and confirmation?

7. Specifically, how does your congregation

a) Help all professing members live out each of the seven vows of the baptismal covenant? (217.1-7).

b) Support those who are baptized but not yet professing members, and their sponsors, to lead persons to live into the seven vows of the baptismal covenant?

8. How has the congregation ensured that its professing members are participating in all the means of grace, including private and public prayer, worship, the sacraments, study, Christian action, systematic giving, and holy discipline? (218, also General Rule 3, Par. 103.2)

9. How has your congregation equipped its members to watch over one another in love and to confront conflict with a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation? (219)

10. How has your congregation ensured that all members fulfill their obligation to participate in disciplined groups that help them live out God’s mission in every context in which they find themselves on a daily basis? (220)

11. How are the Social Principles used as an essential resource to guide every member in being a servant of Christ on mission? (220)

12. How are all members (baptized and professing) being held accountable to the covenant of baptism? (221.1)

13. How many members have been restored to accountable living of the covenant of baptism through the means described in Paragraph 221.2-5?

The General Rules and Missional Impact

1) What measures are in place to show that persons who participate in spiritual formation activities are growing in holiness by overcoming evil, loving God and neighbor and experiencing the transformation of natural tempers into holy tempers? (General Rule 1-- Par 103.2-- and Sermon 92, On Zeal)

2) How is your community noticeably different because people in your congregation and your congregation as a community are doing good to all, and especially to the poor, the marginalized, and persons in prison? (General Rule 2-- Par. 103.2)

3) How is your congregation doing good to the earth and all of God’s creatures by the way it functions corporately? How is the congregation helping people to live as faithful stewards of the earth and its resources individually? (160)

4) How does your congregation ensure that all its members observe all the ordinances of God regularly and joyfully?(General Rule 3-- Par 103.2)

Agnostics and Atheists Know More about Religion than Christians...

2010-09-29T18:54:00.004-05:00

Companions,

Yesterday, the Pew Forum on Religion in America released the results of its study of religious knowledge in the United States.

And the findings are... interesting.

You can see them, and links to a test you can take yourself, here.

In essence, they findings in this study support what Alan Roxburgh notes in his book, Missional Mapmaking. Christians who actually attend our congregations are generally biblically and religiously illiterate, even on very basic questions such as "Which Bible figure is most closely with remaining obedient to God despite suffering?" (Only 34% of white, mainline Protestants in the survey could answer that one correctly-- and it was a multiple choice question!).

Slightly less than half (49%) of white, mainline Protestants could distinguish the golden rule from the Ten Commandments. That was 6 percentage points worse than the overall population, and only three percentage points higher than people who said they had no religious connections. Atheists and agnostics got that one right 62% of the time.

Maybe if we still taught the Ten Commandments, or used them in worship as part of a penitential order, those numbers might have been better?

And that wasn't the lowest score. There were two others lower than that-- one of them about Christianity, the other about Buddhism.

It also reaffirms the findings of Kenda Creasy Dean and the other researchers involved in the National Study of Youth and Religion in Almost Christian.

Neither youth nor adults are learning even the basic stories of our faith-- or much about those of other faith traditions.

In this study, the best overall scorers were Atheists, Agnostics and Jewish people.

The first two, I suppose, are clear about what they don't believe. Judaism-- at least in its closer to Orthodox forms, still has a powerful teaching tradition.

But mainline Christians? Not so much.

Evangelicals and Mormons-- somewhat better, but only about Christian faith.

So what does this all mean for us seeking to be missional Christians in a mainline and mostly white denomination?

We have a charge to keep.

Part of that charge is to teach the faith, in season and out of season.

Certainly we teach it in actions.

But we also must teach it in words-- the stories, the people, and yes, the doctrine. Regardless of the cultural contexts in which we find ourselves, we United Methodists have doctrinal standards to teach and live out-- the Standard Sermons of John Wesley, his Notes upon the New Testament, the Articles of Religion and the Confession of Faith.

Related to all of of these, the doctrine and way of life described in the baptismal covenant.

And of course, first of all, the Bible itself. (I think you know where to find one of these!).

One of the accusations often lobbed at those of us seeking the missional way is that we're all action, no doctrine.

If that is true, it's time for us to repent.

If it's not true, it's time for us to prove the fruit of our efforts to teach-- by our deeds and our words.

There's work to do. Folks in our congregations know our stories less well than atheists and agnostics who despise them or do not find them compelling.

What will you do where you are?

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

2010-09-28T07:35:00.002-05:00

As a person with a fascination for disciple making and evangelism, I tend to see methods of church growth in everything, even in unexpected places. For example, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck would begin every FCE community building workshop by reading the following parable known as The Rabbi's Gift:

The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. "The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again " they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, "the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?"

"No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well what did the rabbi say?" "He couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving --it was something cryptic-- was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant."

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

The question I'd like to pose for discussion is simple: Why does this work as a strategy for church growth?

It took me a while to come up with my own answer, again from an unexpected source, so I'll post that in a few days. But I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.