by Steve | Dec 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: Letting Jesus build his Church
By Elizabeth Glass-Turner
Whether on the property of a declining, derelict United Methodist church, or in an old Winn-Dixie, Jorge Acevedo is haunted by the red letter words of Jesus’ great commission to go. Pastor of a church that has sprung from one location to three in the past thirteen years, Acevedo insists that having multiple locations was not part of the original plan. But as he and his congregation searched for ways to reach their community, what resulted was a unique series of opportunities between Grace Church and their target community: “the people nobody else wants.”
The phenomenon of big churches becoming small is a familiar one. Systemic congregational decline has been a problem for years. What is unfamiliar? A big church deliberately becoming small. And in adopting a struggling congregation, that’s exactly what Grace Church did. By taking on a shrinking location, the vision of the leadership was to turn decline into mission.
“When I first walked into the Ft. Myers Shores fellowship hall, it was filled with yard sale stuff,” Acevedo recalls. “The Sunday school classrooms were packed to the ceilings with it, because they needed to sell it to keep the church doors open. They had to do fish fries. So even though yes, we’re a big church, because we have three campuses, our second campus was a typical United Methodist church. In fact, it was smaller than the typical: we averaged about 40-50 in worship attendance when we got there.”
Acevedo acknowledges that small churches often have bad self-esteem. By adopting an existing, struggling church, Grace Church was able both to reach into a growing community and to encourage the folks who had been watching their congregation decline. With 25 people from Grace Church joining, the new site was energized, and after a work day, the church had been repainted, fixed up, cleaned, and was ready to be renamed as a part of the Grace Church community.
What were the results? That location now averages 400 people in worship on Sunday mornings, with a thriving Upward sports ministry that has introduced “the working poor” in the community to the lively congregation. As Acevedo insists, “the church was always supposed to be an irresistible force, a movement. It was the Jesus movement, it wasn’t anything other than the move of the kingdom of God into the world.”
With the flourishing results of the adoption of that congregation, Grace Church began to feel compelled to find other ways of expanding its reach into the surrounding communities. Having taken on decline in a nearby local church, Grace Church found itself taking on decline in its community when the opportunity came to purchase an empty Winn-Dixie. The new location provided a wealth of practical ministry to the surrounding area, increasing contact yet again with “the people nobody else wants.”
“The unique thing about Grace Church,” Acevedo describes, “is that our church reaches huge numbers of addicted, broken people. Last weekend, in our three Celebrate Recovery’s, we had 650 people. So, our church is filled with Harley Davidson people; the tattooed, the pierced; exotic dancers; folks who were drug dealers. Our vision and goal is to lower the crime rate in our city. And we know that by the grace of God we’re doing that, because we’re seeing felons—lifelong felons—experience the transforming work of Jesus in their lives.”
Acevedo acknowledges that the ministry gets messy. “We get taken. These guys who were doing well go back out and use, go back out and get arrested. We’ve done funerals for our addicts who decided to go out and use again, and the addiction killed them.”
But this is how Jorge Acevedo and his congregation feel led to serve. Rather than a program of growth in a relatively easy, white suburban neighborhood, he fervently believes that much of ministry is “letting Jesus build his church”—however that may look. In particular, the pastoral leadership experiences a blue-collar burden: the distinct call to reach the working poor. The average income at Grace Church is $42,000 a year, per household. The community has the highest foreclosure rate in America.
Acevedo is passionate about urging other churches to feel the compelling call to reach out to blue-collar folks. As he puts it, “carpet is cheap; people are precious.” The facilities at all three Grace Church sites are meant to be used and dirtied. This gritty, flesh-and-blood, hands-on outreach comes from a long season of reflection and discernment.
“I’m a good Wesleyan, and I believe in prevenient grace. I was completely unchurched. I was a pagan, alcoholic drug addict that Jesus found. I landed in the United Methodist church in Orlando. I believe the hand of God led me into the United Methodist Church, where I learned, but I didn’t apply to my life, that beautiful Wesleyan commitment to both personal piety and social holiness.”
Throughout the beginning of his ministry, Acevedo felt the tension between ministries of the soul and ministries of the body. “As I read and reread Wesley, there was no divide,” he realized. “It was something that we had just kind of drifted to, to this great divide.” It sunk into Acevedo that offering one or the other was offering only half of the gospel. “We’d see God clean up the insides of people, but the outsides were still damaged, broken, tattered, and torn. Addiction and sin had robbed their capacity to have a job, to get their education, to have food, to have medical care.”
“The gospel is about the full restoration of our lives,” he affirms. “It’s not just souls going to heaven. We want to help rescue people not only from the hell they’re heading to, but the hell they’re living in.”
It was a visit to Wesley’s famous New Rooms in Bristol, England, that broke Jorge Acevedo. While touring the site where Wesley had trained lay preachers, a fellow traveler asked the guide whether the old-fashioned, boxed-in pews had always been there. Acevedo recalls the response: “They said ‘no, when he was here, there were no pews. There were simply chairs and benches for morning services. And then afterwards, they would be moved out of the way, to either feed hungry children, or have a hospital clinic, etc.’ And I just began to sob, because I grew up in the Wesleyan/holiness tradition, where it was about saving souls, and I was passionate about that. But I realized that I wasn’t being true to my tradition, and more importantly, true to Scripture, if we weren’t holistic in our ministry.”
The resulting, robust ministry of meeting both physical and spiritual needs had another effect, as well. “I knew there were a bunch of people sitting in my church for whom the best expression of the love of Jesus was to hand out a bag of food. And we didn’t have that opportunity for them to do that, in our church. We weren’t helping those people grow to full devotion in Jesus, because we didn’t have any place for them to do that.” What Acevedo discovered was that the ministry of filling stomachs also filled souls—and not just of the recipients, but of those participating in the practical ministries.
As Grace Church continues to look for ways to let Jesus build his church, Acevedo still hears the haunting words of Scripture: “we didn’t only give you Jesus, but we gave you ourselves.”
“As a big church that averages 2,600-2,700 on three campuses, it’d be real easy to say, ‘Okay, we’re big enough. There are enough people that we’ve reached.’ But in my city, there are more lost, addicted, broken, hurting people that still haven’t heard the gospel. And I think we need to let Jesus build his church.”
Elizabeth Glass-Turner is a freelance writer, and a gardener with more enthusiasm than skill. Passionate about robust, sacramental faith and an avid reader of murder mysteries, she resides in central Kentucky with her husband and two dogs.
by Steve | Dec 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: “Lord, send us the people nobody else wants”
By Elizabeth Glass Turner
Jorge Acevedo never pictured himself as the lead pastor of a multi-site congregation. A self-described “pagan” before his conversion, Acevedo came from an unchurched background before landing in the United Methodist Church. For 13 years, he’s been pastor of Grace Church in Cape Coral, Florida. Shortly after this interview with Elizabeth Glass-Turner, he was recognized as the 2009 Distinguished Evangelist of the United Methodist Church by The Foundation for Evangelism. As much as ever, he feels the compelling push of the Great Commission.
What sparked you to plant multiple campuses?
The whole multi-site strategy for us was really birthed out of a practical necessity. When I came in 1996, there was plenty of space and room to do everything. There weren’t a lot of people, and things weren’t going real well. On my first Sunday, we totaled 330 people in one service. Last weekend, we had somewhere between 2,600-2,700 people in 10 weekly services on three campuses. So things have changed quite a bit.
We came to realize that if we were going to grow, we had to grow on multiple campuses. At the time, I hadn’t seen any United Methodist churches that had done it, but I had seen other churches that had. I really wondered whether there was enough liberty and stretch in our United Methodist polity to do that, and found out that there was.
How did the transition get started?
In late 2003, I was having some conversations with my district superintendent about a dying, declining congregation in a nearby community that was starting to really explode in growth. There was a serious conversation about closing it. I asked the superintendent and bishop if we could adopt that campus. To my surprise, I got a full go-ahead. Then we went to work.
We had 25 people who were attending Cape Coral, who were driving 17 miles to come to our church. We had become a regional church. I asked those 25 people if they would prayerfully go back to their community to partner with this church, which would be a campus of Grace Church. It would have the same DNA, a different preacher, but the same kind of preaching. By the grace of God, that thing just started to grow. We’re now finishing our 5th year. We’re now running over 400 at that campus.
So honestly, at the time, it wasn’t the plan to be a multi-site church. It just seemed like the right thing to do. We started seeing things happen. We became multi-site by accident. That was really our first campus.
By 2005-2006, we started saying, “Hey, this multi-site thing will really work!” At the campus I was appointed to— Cape Coral—we were out of space. We could put about 1,500-1,800 in three services on Sunday morning; then we added a fourth service on Sunday morning. But that was about all we could do.
We had tried to buy property around us, and we couldn’t. Our leaders agreed that there was no way we could shove many more people into the campus and that the only way to expand was to become multi-site. That’s how it was a practical necessity for us. We seemed to be kind of stuck. We now believe that that was kind of a divine thing, and that God was really setting us up to be multi-site.
In 2006, we felt the leading of the Holy Spirit to buy a vacated Winn Dixie grocery store that was on 8 1/2 acres: 57,000 square feet under one roof.
Six and a half days a week, the resulting Grace Community Center is basically a holistic ministry center. On Sundays, because we had no more space a half-mile down the road, we asked about 150 leaders to come and start the new worship service there. We’re running between 250 and 300 at that service right now on Sunday mornings.
Why do you think many growing churches think primarily in terms of building programs?
I heard a guy one time at a multi-site conference say the only people who like big church buildings are pastors and architects!
What we discovered is that congregational diversity was a good thing; if we could keep the vision and the DNA the same, but put it in new wineskins, in different parts of the community—it would look a little different, but beneath the surface, it’s the same stuff. And that looks different at each of our campuses. We discovered that you can reach more people by using multiple sites.
There’s a church next door to us that has the same amount of acreage that we do. For years, we’d been trying to buy that property. Our hope was, we could build a 1,500 to 2,000 seat auditorium and park people. But as we began to do the math—what it would cost us to buy the property and build the sanctuary—it was two to three times more than it would cost us to buy an existing building that’s bigger than we could have ever built. So in terms of a stewardship issue, it seemed obvious.
But here is where the pastor’s ego has to be put aside. The pastor has to realize that he or she isn’t going to be standing in front of 1,500 to 2,000 people. And we’re not doing a video venue; we have live preaching at all our sites right now. We’re a real blue-collar congregation and we’re simple. We don’t have million dollar plasma screens. We all preach the same basic message—same Scripture, same points. We now teach as a teaching team, and our church is healthier because it’s not personality-driven. There’s an efficiency that happens with these multi-sites.
You’ve had people who are committed enough to the vision of the church that they’ve been willing to help launch the other campuses. There are a lot of great people who would be willing to do that kind of thing—but a lot of other people wouldn’t.
We still bump into that. For every one that went, there were 10, 15 who stayed. There are some brave, apostolic souls out there. Notice I said we sent 150, not 500, to start the new campus. I wish we had, frankly. It would open up space here, and it would really jump start the other one.
There are—and I think they’re in every church, by the way—those men and women who feel that calling. I think there are always those frontier, pioneer kind of people in every congregation. When I was in seminary, I was a youth pastor at a relatively new church. When the district started talking about starting a new congregation, a number of people who helped start my church were pretty excited to start going back to a high school and starting all over again. There are those people who have that kind of anointing in their life.
As the denomination talks more openly about church planting, what advice would you give?
First off, we need to figure out a way to engage the blue collar and the poor. I think we’ve got to go to places where nobody else is going. We’ve got to figure out a way to reach the urban areas and the rural areas where the church is not prevailing.
And then I think there’s something to be said about our strategy—for our United Methodist churches that have strong DNA, to do what we’ve done and adopt some of these dying, declining churches and help new life come again. Is it hard? It’s very hard. It’s a whole lot easier just to go out there and start a new thing in an upper/middle income white neighborhood and we’ll grow a whole bunch of big churches. We need to figure out a way to multiply our efforts with these large churches and go to other places that typically the church isn’t going to and, interestingly enough, our Muslim friends are. They’re going to the inner city.
What do you want to say to United Methodists who want to see denominational renewal, reform, and revival?
I have a guarded optimism about our denomination. My guardedness is birthed out of a concern that we tend to put all our renewal hopes in the general church. I’ve been to General Conference three times, and frankly I’m not convinced that renewal in our church is primarily going to come from there. I appreciate the crystal clear mission of the United Methodist Church. I believe the four focus areas are right on, but I also think that renewal is going to begin for our denomination in the local church. We’re going to have to have vibrant, vital, reproducible congregations of all sizes and in all places, led by God-honoring men and women who are passionately committed to personal piety and social holiness if renewal is going to come to the United Methodist Church.
I am hearing this kind of talk among the leaders of our church and this is a good thing! But we need to ask ourselves what we are personally doing in our local congregation that is significantly making an impact for the turn-around of the United Methodist Church. We can fight about church issues at annual conference and general conference, but we need to really ask ourselves what our local churches are doing to reverse the decline.
A number of years ago, I heard Bishop Peter Storey of Johannesburg, South Africa, talk about the hellish season of Apartheid in his country. One of the things he said was, “You can either shout at the darkness, or you can light a candle.” What I fear is that as United Methodists if all we do is shout at the darkness then nothing will change. Instead we need to light some candles. Vital, vibrant, healthy, and holy local churches will attract the lost and broken of our world. People will beat the doors down to be in a place where Kingdom life is being experienced. It’s the fire of early Methodists. It’s the fire of Pentecost.
Shouting at the darkness seems like such an alluring temptation. Do you see this same kind of challenge at the local level?
I have to deal with this every week. Some of my best friends in the church work in one of our ministries where they refill the pockets in the sanctuary chairs. One of the things we do is let people eat and drink in our sanctuary. We just don’t feel it’s a big deal for there to be coffee stains. And my friend emailed me and said, “Don’t you think that maybe we don’t have to have coffee in the sanctuary?” And I said, “It pains me to even disagree with you, but I have to lovingly disagree. Because it would be inconsistent for us to say that we’re a church for people that nobody else wants and nobody else sees, and then not do everything to be hospitable to them.”
We don’t have coffee in the sanctuary because we’re trying to be cool. We have coffee in the sanctuary because people who are barbarians, who are pagans, who are barely saved, if saved at all, we want them to be comfortable, to feel safe so that we can give them the dangerous message of Jesus.
How do you stay fresh and inspired?
Well, for me, there’s my personal devotional life, prayer time, and commitment to Christian community. I’ve been in a pastors group for about 16 years. We keep each other from taking long walks off short docks. We remind each other that we need to stay in the game, and that God and our city are depending on us to be faithful. I’m in two men’s groups here in my church. So for me, community is a big part of that, staying community-connected.
I don’t like the term, but on the “professional” side of my career, I am most concerned about giving the ministry away and not caring who gets the credit. I do believe that a lot of ministries are dwarfed by leaders who are afraid to give the ministry away. All the trails end up sneaking back to their desk. I’ve worked very hard and very diligently at trying to empower our staff and our leaders to own their ministry and to manage the problems that come with owning their ministry. If we don’t do that, it’s going to kill us. I struggle with that. Perfectionism and control are two areas of recovery for me right now. But I’ve just discovered by sheer exhaustion that I can’t juggle that many balls in the air.
So, I’m still a work in progress. I struggle every day with not allowing my clock to rob my time with God. I’d love to tell you I hit it seven days a week. It’s probably more like five days a week I get my devotions in, reading Scripture. And then I end up losing, and if I get too many strings of those days hooked up together, then I’m not of much use to God.
Elizabeth Glass-Turner is a freelance writer, and a gardener with more enthusiasm than skill. Passionate about robust, sacramental faith and an avid reader of murder mysteries, she resides in central Kentucky with her husband and two dogs.
by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: Evangelicals respond to Mississippi controversy
Mississippi United Methodists are still reeling from the controversial testimony of a lesbian couple during a planned worship service at the June 12 Annual Conference session. The presentation by the two women was reported in both newspaper and television reports. It has been widely viewed on the Annual Conference website, as well as YouTube.
“We have no doubt that God embraces who we are and blesses our relationship,” the women told the Annual Conference worship service, “that God’s doors are open even when the churches’ doors sometimes aren’t.”
In the wake of the controversy, Bishop Hope Morgan Ward has held meetings with concerned clergy, stating that she would uphold the Book of Discipline’s stance on homosexuality, and pledged that a same-sex witness in a worship service would not be repeated. In the flurry of statements being issued and meetings being convened, many evangelicals find themselves frustrated and disappointed that an apology has still not been issued.
Shortly after the Annual Conference, the Mississippi Fellowship of United Methodist Evangelicals (MSFUME) issued a statement pointing out that the presentation “during the worship service appeared to condone and even commend a sexual activity that the UM Book of Discipline deems ‘incompatible with Christian teaching.’” They believe that “great harm” was done at the event because “many people were blindsided by this disregard for the Bible and our Discipline.” The group also expressed regret that the two women who testified “and others in the gay and lesbian community could mistake as condemnation the vigorous call to our leaders to uphold church teachings.”
In their statement, MSFUME protested that the “witness” was presented in the context of a worship service—allowing “no recourse to those who strongly object to this unbiblical witness.” Although the evangelicals welcomed Bishop Ward’s pledge to uphold the Discipline, they point out that “she did not explain how the lesbians’ testimony during worship could be interpreted as support for the position of the Discipline.” In response by some to abandon the denomination over the controversy, the evangelical renewal group urged church members to remain in the UM Church and called for a Day of Prayer and Fasting on July 29.
On July 21, retired Bishop Clay Lee convened a meeting between Bishop Ward and the Mississippi delegation to General Conference. That group issued a statement acknowledging that Bishop Ward “was not involved in the planning of this worship service. There was no conspiracy to change or attempt to change the United Methodist Church’s position or influence the vote on the Constitutional Amendments.”
The delegates testified that the “worship service was planned by a worship committee of the Annual Conference as is our tradition” and that the “placement of these witnesses was not appropriate in the worship service.” The statement concluded by affirming both the bishop and the United Methodist stance on homosexuality.
For her part, Bishop Ward issued a second pastoral letter. “In our most recent time together, I received with you the gifts of the planning teams for each of the worship services at Annual Conference,” she wrote. “On Friday night, I heard personal stories when you heard them. They were not pre-read or approved. The intent was not to challenge or defy the Discipline. The intent was to lift up the conference theme of Biblical doors and to expand our desire and energy to reach out to persons God loves who are often beyond our churches. The expansiveness of the gathered assembly and the reality of the internet increased the potential for controversy. I deeply regret the chaos that has arisen among us.”
This was not what the evangelical renewal group was hoping for or expecting.
Three of the members of the evangelical renewal group also signed the General Conference delegate statement with the understanding that Bishop Ward “would issue a letter taking responsibility for the testimony that was presented.” That is an action they believe she has yet to accomplish. The Revs. Ginger Holland and Mike Childs, as well as layperson Anne Harrington found the bishop’s statement inadequate and described themselves as “deeply saddened when Bishop Ward’s only expressed regret…was over ‘the chaos that has arisen among us.’”
By Steve Beard, editor of Good News.
by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: Speaking the truth in love
By Rob Renfroe
The Apostle John introduces us to the beautiful life of Jesus with words that are at the same time simple and profound: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Later in chapter one, he writes: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Not one instead of the other; not one more than the other; but both together. That’s what we see in the beautiful life of Jesus and that’s what he expects to see in us.
Our United Methodist Church has always excelled at grace. “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors.” That’s our motto and it’s all about grace. And that’s a good thing—unless we forget that just as much as they need grace, people also need truth. That’s what the life and the ministry and the words of Jesus tell us. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
If we fail to give people both grace and truth, we will fail to be like Jesus, and we will fail to be the church.
Jesus said that we need the truth to be “set free” of the lies and the misconceptions and the sins that entangle us. When I look back on my life, I am grateful for the people who graciously showed me grace and acceptance. But I am just as grateful for the persons who had the courage to speak truth into my life when it was not easy for them to speak it or pleasant for me to hear it.
And in the name of grace, the church must never fail to proclaim the truth that people need to hear—even when it’s easier not to speak it. Why? Because Jesus said it’s the truth that sets us free to experience abundant life in this world and eternal life in the world to come.
There are ways of truth-telling that do not set people free, bring life, or allow for the Spirit’s blessing. We have all seen harmful examples. That kind of truth-telling is not what we see in Jesus. And it’s not what people should see in us.
Still, we need the grace of truth. We need the truth about our sin and our desperate condition without Christ. And we need the truth that Jesus is the Savior and that his blood can make us whole.
In other words, people need what Wesley would call scriptural Christianity. Proclaim it and live it, and the church will prosper. Change it, make it acceptable to the spirit of the age, take away the “offense” of the gospel that all have sinned and that Jesus Christ is the name by which we must be saved, and the church will lose its power and fail to thrive.
For over a century now, this is what liberal theology has been doing to the United Methodist Church—in the name of grace, removing the “offense of the gospel”—and the results have been disastrous.
By liberal, I don’t mean people who see things a little differently than I do. I don’t mean people who have a slightly different understanding of the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.
I’m referring to views that are unorthodox on matters that John Wesley would say “strike at the root”: The Trinity, the uniqueness of Christ, the physical resurrection, salvation by grace alone, the need for and the possibility of sanctifying grace transforming our lives, and the continuing validity of the witness of the Scriptures for matters of faith and practice.
When radical liberal theology comes to dominate a denomination or a geographical region within a denomination, it is destructive. How could it not be?
Failure to reproduce
What makes us effective as the church of Jesus Christ is not how clever we are, or how sincere we are, or even how hard we work. What makes us effective is the power and the anointing of God. And how can God grant his power or his anointing to those who proclaim a gospel “which is no gospel at all” (Galatians 1:7)?
I know correlation does not imply causation, but I’m not naïve either. There is no doubt that as United Methodism drifted further from orthodoxy, we lost the power to have an impact upon our culture and to make disciples for Jesus Christ. Nearly half of our United Methodist churches in any given year do not receive a single member by profession of faith. Since our merger in 1968 we have lost the numerical equivalent of the entire Evangelical United Brethren Church.
In 38 of the 50 United States, United Methodism has seen a decline in membership during the past 40 years. During this time the country’s population has increased by 100 million. That’s a 56 percent increase, but our membership has suffered a 21 percent decrease.
In 1940, the average Methodist was 30 years old. Today, the average member is almost 60 years old. Since 1985, the number of elders under the age of 35 has dropped from 3,219 to less than 1,000. Today, less than seven percent of our elders are under 35.
Is it any wonder that we cannot attract young people to the ministry? What young person wants to spend his or her life trying to save a church on life support when they know that the church is supposed to save the world?
The premise of Children of Men, P.D. James’s novel that was adapted into a film by the same name, was that the human race has lost the power to reproduce itself. As the human race grew older and watched itself perish, people became cynical and hopeless—and they cherished their memories of how things had once been. We as a church are approaching that reality. We have lost the ability to reproduce ourselves at a healthy rate.
Our denominational DNA has become defective and we are not reproducing ourselves in the form of converts or young leaders who see something in the United Methodist Church that speaks to their passionate hearts and says, “Give up lucrative careers and exciting futures, and join us because we are about things that really matter. We are changing the world in ways that business and government and even education cannot.”
And the statistics clearly show that our decline in attendance, our inability to add new members, and our failure to cultivate young leaders is worst where the church is most liberal.
Divided and disturbed
“I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America,” wrote Wesley. “But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power.”
While knowing full well there is such a thing as dead orthodoxy—being right in your beliefs but wrong in your spirit—it is still necessary to ask what will happen to the UM Church if we fail to keep the church orthodox and true to the grace God has given to us to impart to the world.
We could easily become a dying sect as the United Church of Christ is and the Episcopalians are fast becoming, where the ministers still dress up and play church on Sundays, but where the Spirit of God is absent, and the power to transform lives, much less a society, is gone. The church—its health, its witness, its ability to make disciples: that’s part of what is at stake here.
There is one other element that is at stake if we fail to speak the truth in love: our own spiritual integrity. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy,” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said.
Contending for the apostolic faith within United Methodism these days is not for the faint of heart. We are stewards of this most magnificent treasure that we call Wesleyan orthodoxy. God gave us this gift of grace and you and I are its trustees. If we fail to fight for it, we have failed our trust.
Our response
Although there are many different ways to work for the renewal and reform of the UM Church, we all must do our part. If you believe in the faith once and for all delivered to the saints and believe it is the hope of the world, you must be willing to stand up and fight for it.
We need to ask what will make the United Methodist family whole, and what we can do.
First, we must be connected and engaged. When the opportunity arises within our denomination, listen to opposing opinions with sincerity and with a desire to learn. Dialogue with openness and honesty. But be sure to listen for the issues beneath the issues and dialogue about the matters that matter—the deeper issues that truly divide us.
For example, there is a widely-held misconception that homosexuality is the issue that divides our denomination. If it were, that would be enough of a challenge. However, it is only the presenting issue. As I pointed out in the last issue of Good News, the deeper issues deal with the nature of moral truth, the authority of the Scriptures, the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit, and the uniqueness of Christ. These are not small matters that can be ignored or denied for the sake of unity. They must be addressed or true unity will be impossible.
In the midst of dialogue, some United Methodists have been told that they take the Bible too seriously to be considered Wesleyan. How could this be? Wesley said he was “a man of one book.” After all, it was Wesley who said “the people called Methodists…have but one point in view: to be altogether Christians, scriptural, rational Christians, for which we well know, not only the world, but the almost Christians, will never forgive us.”
Of course, people can disagree with us and not be “almost” Christians or nonchristians. But Wesley was attacked by those outside of the church and inside the church when he promoted and defended scriptural Christianity. He came to expect it. And so should we.
In the midst of denominational dialogue sessions, some United Methodists have been told that their position was mean-spirited. Let me be very clear about this. Those of us in the renewal movements do not believe in speaking ill of anyone because of ethnicity or gender or sexual practice. We do not believe that any one sin is worse than any other. We stand firm on the belief that all persons are of sacred worth because each one is created in the image of God and Christ died for all.
In the midst of dialogue, some United Methodists have been told their perspective was radical, right-wing, or part of the fringe. But since when is it right-wing to believe that the Bible is God’s Word? When was it declared radical to affirm the United Methodist Book of Discipline? When did it become extreme to want our covenant to be honored and upheld? When did fidelity and faithfulness to the Scriptures become anything but mainstream Wesleyan?
Second, pray. This is a wonderful moment in the United Methodist Church.
There is a new breeze of the Holy Spirit blowing. There are new bishops who display moral courage and are open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Pray that they will continue to change what it means to be a bishop in the United Methodist Church, and that being a bishop in the United Methodist Church will not change them.
Pray for the members of the Judicial Council, that they will continue to interpret the Discipline fairly.
Pray for faithful souls to be encouraged. Pray that God will not let them walk away or give up.
Pray that those who lead renewal and reform movements will be worthy of those who look to us for leadership.
Most importantly, pray that God will revive and unite the Body of Christ.
Third, we must proclaim the truth. In what you say, in what you do, and in how you say and do it, proclaim the truth. There is power in the grace of the truth. There is power to convert the lost. And there is power to change the minds of those who deny the clear teaching of the Scriptures and the uniqueness of Christ. So proclaim the truth humbly but confidently, winsomely but boldly.
In his book Jesus Rediscovered, Malcolm Muggeridge states that with every great book even while you are learning something new, your heart is telling you that you already knew this to be true.
There are people dying to learn that God is who they always suspected he was—a God of love and acceptance and a God of power and transformation. Tell them the truth. Show them the truth. Be not ashamed, “it is the power of God unto salvation.”
Fourth, we must be part of the change. I know politics (secular and ecclesiastical) can be a dirty business, but it shouldn’t be, and it doesn’t have to be. Politics can be just the process by which people organize themselves and agree upon their priorities. General Conferences are critically important in determining the direction of our denomination. And we elect a Judicial Council that will interpret and enforce what we have agreed upon. We must get involved, learn how the system works, and use it to make a difference for the cause of the gospel.
Finally, we must be willing to pay a price. During the era of apartheid, one noted South African clergyman wrote that the final judgment will be different than we imagine. He wrote that when we stand before God, he will ask us, “Where are your scars?” And we will look at ourselves and then back at God, and we will tell him, “We have no scars.” And God will ask us, “Was there nothing worth fighting for?”
It’s not our place to scar others. But we must be willing to be scarred.
We’re not concerned with trivialities, but about the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. It is our time to be faithful and, if necessary, to pay a price. Our Lord Jesus could not fulfill his mission without being scarred. In fact, after his resurrection, the only part of himself he insisted that others view were his scars.
When Methodism began in the New World, it began with heroes who were willing to be scarred. Of the first 700 Methodists to die in the colonies and then in the newly formed United States—facing pestilence and disease, the elements, the rigors of the open road, and physical attacks—nearly one-half of them died before the age of 30 and nearly two-thirds died before they had served 12 years.
Every year they would gather at Annual Conference and sing the words we take for granted, “And are we yet alive and see each other’s face….” And they would look around the room to see who was yet alive and who that year had given their lives in the service of God. They were heroes. And they expected to pay a price and to be wounded and scarred in their service to Christ.
In the last century as the church drifted further from its biblical core and Wesleyan heritage, there were those such as Chuck Keyser, David Jessup, Ed Robb, Diane Knippers, and Bill Hinson who joined the ranks of departed heroes, faithful in getting the ship back on course. And now it’s our turn.
Although the Holy Spirit does not need us to do his work, for some reason God has chosen to work through people like us—if only we are willing. And if you are faithful and if you are scarred, be grateful and count it your greatest privilege. This is how the work of grace and truth has always been served and we can expect nothing else in our time.
Rob Renfroe is the new president and publisher of Good News. He is the pastor of adult discipleship at The Woodlands United Methodist Church in The Woodlands, Texas, and is the former president of The Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church.
by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: The Garden of His Delight
By Liza Kittle
One doesn’t often think of lush, colorful gardens when thinking of Africa. Most people think of barren lands with little vegetation, intense heat, and roaming wildlife. I think of the beautiful dresses I have seen on the African women I have met. They remind me of a beautiful garden—bursting with patterns and colors reflective of the richness and diversity of this massive continent. I have thought many times over the past several months about our fellow Methodists in the African church in light of the constitutional amendments being voted on at annual conferences that would have separated the American church from these faithful witnesses. A devotion I was reading the other day again brought them to mind in a powerful way.
The song of the vineyard written in Isaiah 5 describes the pleasure God has in his people, described as “the garden of his delight,” and his expectation that they follow his law and bear fruit for his kingdom. The devotion described how God has given the law to his people as a revelation of his character and a blueprint for a lifestyle that is pleasing to him. Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, is 22 stanzas and 176 verses written as a hymn of praise for the law of God and the joy we receive when we choose to obey his Word.
Many find the law of God burdensome and restrictive, without grasping its intended loving purpose of providing freedom and joy to all who choose to receive it. This is so true in America where many, even Christians, possess a worldview that sees any encroachment on their “rights,” particularly religious interference, as an assault on their freedom. One doesn’t have to look very far to see the name of God being wiped out of our institutions, traditions, and way of life.
As Christianity—including United Methodism—explodes in Africa, one can see that the hearts and minds of these believers truly grasp the divine purpose God intended through the revelation of his Word. They believe what the Word of God says, they are passionate about their freedom in Christ, and they exhibit a supernatural joy that can only come from him.
I have seen it at General Conference as African delegates stand up boldly proclaiming the truth of Scripture in face of the endless time spent debating the acceptance of homosexual behavior. One delegate testified that many Africans ceased the practice of polygamy when our missionaries brought them the gospel and expressed dismay that, with all the challenges facing the world and the church, we were spending so much time “talking about sin.”
I have seen it through the words of the Rev. Jerry Kulah, the Monrovian district superintendent of the Liberian Annual Conference, who presented an “African Declaration” before General Conference 2008, calling for the church to return to scriptural faithfulness.
I saw this joy passionately displayed at the North Georgia Annual Conference this past June in Athens, Georgia, and at the 2008 General Conference in Ft. Worth by the Hope for Africa Children’s Choir. These children are the epitome of a garden of God’s delight! The joyful exuberance and praise coming from these 23 children was such a testimony to the love of God and the freedom we receive when we allow Jesus into our hearts.
The story behind these children is remarkable. The children were rescued by the United Methodist Church of the East Africa Annual Conference under the leadership of Bishop Daniel Wandabula from horrific displacement camps established by the Ugandan government during the country’s 20-year civil war. Many of the children in the camps have lost their parents, are infected with HIV/AIDS, have been traumatized and maimed by war, and live under deplorable conditions where sickness, hunger, and despair are a part of everyday life.
Once selected, the children go and live at the United Methodist Hope for Africa Academy in Nasuti, Uganda, where they receive care, love, and education. Eleven adults work with them, daily teaching them how to pray and sharing Bible stories.
The choir was started in 1984 by Ray Barnett and has gained international acclaim, performing all over the world. The current director, Tonny Mbowa, was himself a child who suffered under the brutal regime of Idi Amin, the “Butcher of Uganda” who ruled the country during the 1970s. At nine years old, Tonny witnessed the murder of his unarmed father, a pastor who begged to say the Lord’s Prayer before he was shot to death in front of his family.
Left to care for his four siblings after his mother died of cancer, Mbowa learned at an early age the importance of prayer. He was later selected for the children’s choir, which he said saved his life and gave him a new hope for the future. Now Mbowa shares the same hope and love with the children under his charge as he had received. He composes, sings, and plays the piano and drums for the choir and is never short of inspiration for material. With a life touched by so many stories of God’s love for him, he says it is “easy to come up with a wonderful song.”
Mbowa says the children “have gained a desire to do what is right and pleasing to our Lord Jesus Christ. They have been so good in picking up values of Christianity, and they all want to walk in the perfect ways of God.” What a delightful offering to the Lord, a psalm of praise for their Savior and King. What a garden of delight for our God.
We as a people of faith have much to learn about being filled with joyful praise and humble obedience to “the perfect ways of God.” Let us look to our African brothers and sisters as examples, join them in ministering to their people, and tend this beautiful garden of God’s delight.
Liza Kittle is the President of the Renew Network. In addition to visiting their website (www.renewnetwork.org ), you can write to the Renew Network at P.O. Box 16055, Augusta, GA 30919, or call them at 706-364-0166.
