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God Rock: Ichthus 2008
Our daughter Ali and her best friend Brooke are swimming (laying out on swim rafts) in the horse tank. Yes, we just cleaned it out for the summer and soon it will have too many calf slobbers and moss for a pleasurable swimming experience! As I walked back to the house from the horse tank, my husband needed some help hitching up one of the plows, as we are preparing for harvest and the work to follow.
I feel so fortunate to live on a farm, to have the opportunities to be outdoors, and to enjoy God’s wonderful creation. I love the farm and I love the church. Both have good times and bad and both involve work that is less desirable—and yes, one is cleaning out that tank!
It takes more than a power washer and water for sure. We need shovels to do the scraping and pitching out of the “old nasty.” The other less desirable is plowing. It’s fun at first, and then it just takes forever.
Reflecting for just one moment, I thought about General Conference once again and how my life in the church parallels with life on the farm. I am not for a moment—well, maybe just for a second—seeing General Conference as a job less desirable, but it could be compared to that horse tank experience as well as plowing.
Preparing for General Conference not only takes a shovel to move all the material there is to process, it takes hours of prep time and serious, prayerful consideration, conversation, and organization. So is the end result a day in the pool? I would have to say yes, but there is still some moss floating in the water. The United Methodist Church is a connection and this awesome reality takes place when you sit next to, and vote on the same issues that our brothers and sisters from around the world are voting on. Our denomination reflects inclusion in so many ways and then a piece of moss sticks to me as someone declares we have “sinned” by our action taken on the issue of homosexuality.
Can we not move past the idea that homosexuality determines our future? I guess not. I think the church would split if homosexuality were ever to be declared as “compatible” with Christian teaching. I hope we never split, but as much as I want our stance on homosexuality to stay the same, I want to share in a spirit of kindness and respect with those who disagree.
Some may not believe this, but the decision on human sexuality is not fun for either side, and it hurts even more to endure a protest. I remember being instructed by our peers at General Conference that it’s not about winning or losing. So then, how are we playing the game? Isn’t this the most important aspect—how we play the game? At least we are playing a full game!
General Conference, like plowing in the fields, starts out as fun and then turns into a long process we can’t wait to finish. If we did not plow, or turn the ground over, we would fight more weeds, and the opportunity for greater production could be limited because rotated soil is more fertile. Our farm could use the disks instead of plows, and be finished in half the time. Great things take time and our work at General Conference is so very important as we are meeting to make decisions that will reflect our mission and improve our witness for Jesus Christ.
John Wesley writes, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” Time was an issue at General Conference, and because we spent so much time this year on how to get along with each other, we hardly had time to get our work done. We need to stay focused on God’s word, pray without ceasing, and straighten up so that we can be nice, respectable Christians as we go about doing the work of the church.
Administrators of the General Conference should not have to tell us how to get along, or need to update us on whether or not we have been “inclusive” in our conversations. What have we done? When will forgiveness and redemption finally be a part of our radical hospitality, and when as United Methodists will we respect one another in ways that “keeping track” will not have to be a “monitoring” report at General Conference. This report was not uplifting. The extremes on both sides must reach a point where it can be possible to actually have a Holy Conference. I look forward to General Conference 2012 and hope that both sides will examine ways to get-r-done in a spirit of kindness and respect; no protests, and our day in the pool will be moss free!
Dixie Brewster serves as Kansas West United Methodist Conference Lay Leader. She and her husband Dean are wheat farmers and live in rural Milton, Kansas, where they attend the Milton United Methodist Church.
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