by Steve | Mar 5, 2013 | Mar-Apr 2013
By Blossom Matthews
It was my first theology class, and I was a bit surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Having been raised non-denominational, dipping my toes in the waters of the religion department at a Southern Baptist university made for a life-changing experience. I was vaguely familiar with Calvinism and knew it wasn’t for me, but as we studied Calvinism, we also studied its counterpoint: Arminianism. Though the professor didn’t intend to affirm Arminianism, I realized I had finally put a name to my theological perspective.
As the Holy Spirit nudged me to embrace my call to ministry, it was only a hop, skip, and jump until I found my theological and spiritual home: United Methodism. With family members who had been Nazarene pastors, Methodist pastors, and even circuit riders, Wesleyanism was in my blood. As I settled into my new home, a few qualities of United Methodism stood out above the rest:
Women in Ministry
One aspect of United Methodism that I believe most warms the heart of God is our support of women in ministry. Consider the generations of women who were never allowed to live out their call to pastoral ministry. In God’s name, churches have accused and judged these women as misguided, at best, and rebellious, at worst.
Growing up non-denominational, I got a lot of mixed signals regarding women in ministry. Even churches that didn’t outright stand against women in ministry seemed to have the view that, “Yes, God can call women to preach and teach, and maybe pastor – depending on who you are and how famous you are. And as long as you are under the headship of a man.” Unless I married into ministry, it wasn’t going to happen.
Coming into a denomination in which women are respected and treated as equals was a breath of fresh air. In fact, it was more than that. The United Methodist Church became a liberating place to live out my faith and call. While it will take time to fully cultivate a church culture in which women are as eagerly received as men into the local church pastorate, clergywomen know that we are supported by bishops, district superintendents, and fellow clergymen who support us in answering God’s call. I give thanks for this safe place, The United Methodist Church, in which I can simply be the woman God has called me to be.
We are Open
One’s greatest strength can also be their greatest weakness; this is certainly true for The United Methodist Church. Those of us who support orthodox faith and practice are deeply concerned about the loss of theological clarity within our denomination. Being “open minded,” as our denominational slogan claims, has the potential of leading us down a path that contradicts the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We remember the warning found in Ephesians 4:14, that “we must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine.” While the growing lack of conviction regarding foundational matters may concern us, let us not forget that our openness is also one of our greatest strengths.
Coming from a near-fundamentalist background, I appreciate the open nature of our denomination. Our willingness to think about new ideas, to embrace scholarship, to respect those with whom we disagree, and to open wide our doors and hearts to all who are spiritually hungry gives me hope that God can use our denomination to reach the least, the last, and the lost. While we are fully aware of the dangers and pitfalls of our surrounding culture, we have the ability to live in the world without being of it, to love the world without being formed by it. We can love our neighbor who thinks and acts differently than we do without compromising our faith and conscience. Our openness need not reflect moral weakness or theological confusion, but rather, the open heart of our risen Lord.
The best of Christendom
I love the fact that The United Methodist Church is a place where both Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists can feel somewhat comfortable. In our congregation, we may profess the Apostle’s Creed on the same Sunday that we have an altar call. United Methodists have the ability to bring liturgical, revival, and contemporary traditions together in celebration of God’s work through the Universal Church.
We also bring together doctrines that some would consider mutually exclusive. Do we believe we are saved by grace through faith? You bet! But what about good works? We believe in those, too! Well, do United Methodists believe in free will or in providence? Yes and yes. Our theology is rich and nuanced. We affirm and bring together seemingly contradictory beliefs to present a balanced, biblical view of God and life.
John Wesley taught the importance of both personal holiness and social holiness. As United Methodists, we have the potential of ministering to the whole person: spirit, soul, and body. Our evangelical experience of the heart strangely warmed calls us forward to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We are not an either/or church, but a both/and church, pulling together and holding in tension the great doctrines of the Universal Church.
From our open hearts and inclusive spirit to our rich theology, the United Methodist Church provides good soil in which God may raise up new disciples for Jesus Christ.
Blossom Matthews is the pastor of First United Methodist Church of Pampa, Texas, where she co-pastors with her husband, Nick Matthews. She is the proud mother of Ruth, Josiah, and Malachi.
by Steve | Mar 5, 2013 | In the News
By John Southwick
After 14 years in the Research Office of the General Board of Global Ministries, I have come to look at churches through evaluative eyes. I look for fruitfulness and whether a church’s branches are barren or bearing fruit. It is in that light that I look back on the church where I got my call to ministry more than three decades ago. This was a spectacular church led by a remarkable senior pastor, but I was clueless to those things, having just come to a true faith in Christ and being oblivious to church distinctions. As I reflect back after many decades, I can identify several characteristics which may have contributed to the greatness of this church.
Park Avenue United Methodist Church had been a comfortable, white church in Minneapolis in the early 1950s and then experienced “white flight.” The members who moved to the suburbs drove back to church and wanted it to stay as it had been. The pastor had a more missional view, though that word was yet to be defined as such. He believed the church should minister to the community it was a part of. Lots of church battles ensued, but the pastor prevailed. During my time there, it had become one of the most diverse UM congregations to be found.
Dr. C. Philip Hinerman served there for 36 years until mandatory retirement. When he retired, Park Avenue had the highest worship attendance in the Minnesota Annual Conference. Most other mainline churches in the neighborhood had either closed or dwindled significantly. Also, while statistics are not available, it is likely that Park was in the upper echelon of UM churches with calls to ministry per member. Many of these were to the ordained ministry, such as myself, while many others were to missions or para-church work.
Park’s outreach to the community was central to its mission. Its summer program was legendary, with such offerings as sports teams, typing lessons, and summer camp experiences. Also, an annual summer event was the Soul Liberation Festival. In the parking lot of this essentially inner-city church, a stage was set up and national caliber Christian recording artists performed nightly, along with top-notch speakers. While many in the church and community turned out, this event had a metro-wide draw and reputation, bringing large outdoor crowds.
Phil Hinerman, a founding board member of Good News, was an exceptional leader in many respects. Though he was not a student of leadership techniques, he was a highly motivated, deeply spiritual man. Aware of his limitations, but trusting in a mighty God, he was a man of prayer. Those close to him knew that he rose early in the morning to pray. From his afternoon schedule, he carved out time to pray – and did again in the evenings. These prayer times could easily be an hour or more in length. In this respect, he sounds a great deal like John Wesley.
Dr. Hinerman was a fine pastor, but he was also an evangelist and yearned deeply for people to come to a saving faith in Christ. Furthermore he frequently called people to totally surrender their lives to the Lord Jesus. I still have a list he wrote on the back of an envelope of areas of one’s life that need to be surrendered, which he wrote for me in one of my times with him. He once told me that he shared the surrender message at a pastors’ assembly and that many responded at the altar.
Dr. Hinerman’s meetings with me at his favorite restaurant hangout were not unusual. He met multitudes of people there. These were times of fellowship, counseling, and mentoring. No wonder so many went into the ministry. He genuinely cared for his flock, as well as the community he served.
Much more could be said about Park Avenue and “Doc,” as he was affectionately called by most who knew him. At its core, the strength of Park Avenue was due to the mighty hand of God. God loves to use surrendered leaders who spend time on their knees, with a passion for souls, and a love of the people and community. If more churches had pastors with these qualities, the church vitality we talk so much about might be much more prevalent.
John Southwick is the Director of Research, Networking, and Resources for Good News. Dr. Southwick brings with him a background in research and pastoral ministry that will enhance his work in helping to foster renewal in United Methodist congregations.
by Steve | Mar 5, 2013 | Magazine Articles
By Stephen Rankin
The United Methodist Church, after significant collective soul-searching, has developed a list of markers for vital congregations.
1. People engaging in energetic, Spirit-filled worship
2. People professing faith in Christ
3. People growing in their faith (usually through small groups)
4. People engaged in mission
5. People supporting this mission financially.
This list captures essential practices, but it also makes me think of perhaps the deepest, most pressing, concern that haunted John Wesley: formal, conventional, outward religion. Every one of these markers can be quantified. They’re good markers, but the temptation to focus on what we can easily observe always lurks close by. If we see growing numbers, for example, we quickly assume that all the necessary inward work is happening and we can feel satisfaction. If we succumb, we will have missed the point.
In Discourse II on the Sermon on the Mount, Mr. Wesley offers this characteristic observation about conventional versus vital religion: “The religion of the world implies three things: (1.) The doing no harm, the abstaining from outward sin…(2.) The doing good, the relieving the poor; the being charitable, as it is called: (3.) The using the means of grace; at least the going to church and to the Lord’s Supper. He [sic] in whom these three marks are found is termed by the world a religious [read Christian] man. But will this satisfy him who hungers after God? No: It is not food for the soul.”
Study that list. It’s kind of scary isn’t it? Every one of our vital congregations markers can fit nicely within Wesley’s worry.
They don’t have to, of course. But unless we ask probing questions about what is happening in the lives of people through the practices associated with these markers, we will not achieve our goals.
Along with the markers for vital congregations, we need markers for vital Christians. In addition to people attending energetic, Spirit-filled worship, what do we think God is doing through the worship in the worshippers? It’s great to have a bunch of people in small groups, but what is happening in them through this experience?
We need to develop some markers for vital Christians as well as vital congregations.
All this makes me think about another of our goals: reaching younger and more diverse people. Young people typically don’t care much for formal religion. It is one of the reasons “spiritual, but not religious” has caught on among them, why an increasing percentage (by some estimates as many as 1/3) claim no religious identity.
It has become almost a parlor game to blame the church for this situation. I think too much has been made of the hypocritical, ignorant Christian portrait to explain fully what is going on in our world. But I do believe that we still pay insufficient attention to the quality of Christian discipleship that our congregations demonstrate.
What if, then, in addition to the markers for vital congregations, leaders began asking what vital Christians look like within those United Methodist congregations? What kind of Christian do we expect to become as God works graciously in us?
These questions drive us back to sources that describe – to steal the title of a Watchman Nee book – the normal Christian life. Precisely here, Mr. Wesley has something to offer. I commend pastoral and denominational leaders prayerfully, reflectively to work through once again the Discourses on the Sermon on the Mount. We could do far worse.
Stephen Rankin is the chaplain at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the author of Aiming at Maturity: The Goal of the Christian Life (Wipf and Stock).
by Steve | Mar 5, 2013 | Mar-Apr 2013
By Jessica LaGrone
A young woman was sitting around one evening with a group of friends when the conversation turned to religion. While politics and religion are known to be dangerous subjects among even the closest friends, the way things have gone in the political sphere lately, religion may have been the safer topic!
As her friends went around discussing their convictions, it was clear that most of these young adults weren’t really sure what they believed. They spoke in vague generalities, and some of them weren’t able to articulate what they believed at all.
Finally, she realized everyone was looking at her. Somebody said: “Well, you’re quiet, what do you believe?”
She opened her mouth without even knowing how she would answer. She started out: “I believe… I believe in God.” Then out of nowhere heard herself say:
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord.” Almost unable to stop herself she continued: “He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried….”
She proceeded to recite the entire Apostles Creed from beginning to end. When she looked up her friends were wide-eyed, and no one was more shocked than her. She had grown up in the church reciting the Apostles Creed – and even though she didn’t even know she had it memorized, when asked what she believed, it just came out.
Millions of Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed on a regular basis. Others may not say it aloud, but look to it as a template for the most basic beliefs of the Christian faith. For many, the words of the Apostles’ Creed have formed the backbone of their faith.
Many churches have drifted away from using repetitive liturgy like creeds in worship. They say that we do better to speak straight from the heart each time we articulate our beliefs and feelings about God, since anything we repeat often enough will become rote, more about habit than genuine conviction.
One of the first weddings I ever performed taught me a valuable lesson about speaking from the heart. I was just out of seminary, young and naïve, and when the couple said to me in premarital counseling, “Pastor, we’ve written our own vows,” I had no good reason to object, so I said yes.
When we reached that point in the service, however, I realized the wisdom of using traditional vows, as the couple’s words spoken “from the heart” ranged from cliché to cringe-worthy.
“I vow to be more in love with you each day than I was the day before.” “I vow that I will always rub your feet at the end of a long day.” “I vow that you will always be my Pookie Bear.”
That’s when I realized that you just can’t improve on the traditional words that couples have spoken at weddings for centuries. “I promise to love you, comfort you, honor and keep you, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to you as long as we both shall live.”
You really can’t do better than to promise those things. They are the heart of every strong marriage.
The same thing is true about the Apostles’ Creed. You really can’t improve on these promises, these vows. Sometimes words that are scripted for you can express the convictions of your heart better than anything you could make up yourself.
When we try to express what we believe about God, our words will always fall short. But the words of this creed have stood the test of almost 2000 years of Christians saying what we believe together.
While it wasn’t written (as some legends have surmised) by the apostles themselves, the basic form of the Apostles’ Creed can be traced back to the earliest centuries of the Christian faith.
It served three basic purposes for the early Christians:
1. To catechize – to teach new believers what the Church stood for.
2. To defend – to guard the faith against heresies and false doctrines.
3. To evangelize – to tell the world the core of what the Church believed.
Catechize
The Apostles Creed was used as an outline of the faith for baptism preparation for new believers.
During what we now call the season of Lent, those who wished to be baptized into the faith would spend time studying the beliefs of the Christian faith as outlined in the words of the Creed. Then, at dawn on Easter Sunday, they would line up and affirm their faith by responding to the Creed as a set of questions.
Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? And they would answer, in chorus: “Yes, I believe!”
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only son our Lord? “Yes, I believe!”
This would continue until they had answered in the affirmative to all twelve declarations of the Creed. Only then would the new believers line up, and one by one, step into the baptismal pool and be immersed in the water, baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Creed itself is Trinitarian in shape, with a section affirming the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, followed by a handful of short but important pronouncements at the end – the holy catholic (universal) church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the life everlasting.
Defend
It can seem unfair that, while the Father is given just a couple of lines, and the Holy Spirit a meager six words, the lengthy core of the Creed is dedicated to declarations about Jesus.
The explanation for this seeming inequity lies in the Creed’s objective to defend the faith against false doctrines. In the early days of Christianity heresies about Jesus were rampant. Rumors that Jesus was not truly human, or that he was not divine, or that his crucifixion or resurrection were a sham quickly turned into doctrines for splinter groups of Christians. The Apostles’ Creed was a way of summing up, in very few words, what Christians do believe in order to stop speculations.
Centuries later, there are still more misconceptions about Jesus than any other person in history. We need the affirmations of this Creed more than ever to remind us of the core truths about Jesus Christ.
It’s interesting that the only person named in the creed besides God is Pontius Pilate. Since Pilate was a recognized historical figure, the statement “suffered under Pontius Pilate” served to place Jesus at an exact moment in history, refuting any claims that his story was a fairy tale existing outside of historical record.
Pilate goes down in history in the Apostles’ Creed as the one under whom Jesus suffered, even though he never physically struck Jesus, never convicted, or sentenced him. All Pilate did was wash his hands of the situation. His public censure everywhere the Apostles’ Creed is spoken reminds us that there is no neutral stance where Jesus Christ is concerned. When faced with the question of Jesus, Pilate’s attempt not to decide where he stood was a clear and condemning decision. Our words affirming belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God whenever we say the Creed marks our choice.
Evangelize
The content of the Creed follows a basic explanation of what Christians believe, simple enough for anyone to share with a friend who wonders what this faith is all about.
I often hear from new believers who have been regular church attenders in the past but have only recently embraced the faith for themselves. They sometimes say things like: “You know, I’ve been in church all my life, but until now I never heard the Gospel.” I’m never sure exactly how to respond to that. I usually say, simply, “That’s a shame.”
It is a shame. It’s a shame that there are churches out there that have lost sight of telling people that God wants a
relationship with them, that he wants that so much that he died for their sins and that their lives and eternal life can be changed forever if they understand and accept that. It’s a shame that there are churches that aren’t preaching the Gospel.
But there’s something else that’s a shame. It’s a shame they weren’t listening.
If you ask most people who say they’ve been in church their whole lives without really hearing the Gospel: “Did your church ever say the Apostles’ Creed?” Many would answer, “Yes.” Some would even say: “We said it every Sunday.”
If that’s the case, then it’s a shame they weren’t listening. Because not only did they hear the Gospel, they actually said it with their own mouth.
Here’s the gift of this Creed to the Church: No matter what kind of church you are in, no matter who is preaching or what they say or what they don’t say, if you are in a church that is at least faithful enough to say the Apostles Creed, you hear the Gospel.
Sadly, there are some churches that have even strayed beyond these basic bonds of belief.
A friend of mine moved to New England several years ago and found a church that she felt was the right fit for her. She like it that it was a church that labeled itself “progressive,” valuing tolerance and openness to all beliefs instead of proclaiming one set of beliefs in particular.
The church had few members and wasn’t growing, so they decided to put together a brochure to put the word out about who they were. The committee tasked with writing the brochure agreed that the cover should say who they were. So they began by writing:
“We are a church that believes that…” And that’s where they stopped. They couldn’t agree on what to say next. They thought about putting the name Jesus on there, but they knew that might offend some people. They thought about saying something more generic about God, but they were concerned that might turn some people off.
“We are a church that believes that…” Wait, someone said, we can’t really say that we all believe the same thing. So they backed up: “We are a church that…”
Wait a minute, someone else said – should we even use the word church in there? Someone might have had a bad experience with church, and be put off by that word.
“We are a…”
They had to disband the committee. They couldn’t even agree on what to call themselves.
My friend left that church. As progressive as she was, she knew there was no life in a church that cannot even express what it believes.
Where the Church is letting go of its ties of belief to Christians through the centuries it is slowly withering, cut off from its power source. But where the words of the Apostles’ Creed are believed with sincerity, proclaimed with feeling, lived out with fervor, there is where the Church is thriving. Answering again and again to the question of faith with the response: “I believe… I believe… Yes, I believe.”
Jessica LaGrone is the Pastor of Worship at The Woodlands United Methodist Church near Houston, Texas. She is a guest speaker at churches and events around the country, and her new Bible Study, Namesake, was recently released by Abingdon Press. Her blog, Reverend Mother, covers the daily life of balancing pastoring and mothering, at www.jessicalagrone.com.
