by Steve | Jan 7, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
Photo: Shutterstock
By Joe Henderson –
Melissa Stevens, inmate number G30701 to the Florida Department of Corrections, didn’t know anything about the Rev. Kris Schonewolf the first time they met. Until that point, it had been just another day at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, Florida. Stevens was nearing the end of her sentence for grand theft auto by then. She was also turning to God to deal with the inner demons that had spent a lifetime trying to ruin her.
“In prison is where I really found God,” she said. “That’s when I began praying to him.”
She grew up Catholic on the south side of Chicago but admitted, “It was more for show. There was no substance to it all, and it was just something we did every Sunday. I had no concept who Jesus is.”
But when you ask Jesus into your life, as Stevens said she did in 1999, he takes you seriously. You can run from him, but as the line in the contemporary worship song “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury proclaims, “He chases me down, fights ‘til I’m found …”
Jesus found her in Lowell, and Stevens prayed for someone who could nurture her new-found faith through prayer, the Bible, groups discussions, and so on. That’s when Schonewolf walked by, and Stevens recalled distinctly what happened next.
“A voice inside me said, literally, ‘That’s her,’” Stevens said. “Kris had a light in her; I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Schonewolf was at Lowell to run the Oasis, a prison outreach ministry of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. The program began in 2019 with the support of North Central District Superintendent Rev. June P. Edwards and Bishop Ken Carter. It is designed to shine the light of God into the darkness of incarceration.
“There were some unexpected roadblocks in the beginning — both with the Department of Corrections and then COVID-19. Yet, again, Kris never gave up,” the Rev. Edwards said.
“Now, she has the confidence of the staff and has developed both name recognition and acceptance among the women. Even though there are difficulties faced every day and unexpected changes in schedule, the women come for all of the offerings provided — worship, Bible studies, guitar lessons, crochet lessons, and the mentoring through the volunteers that write letters. Their lives are impacted in so many ways.”
Schonewolf said her approach is simple. “I just love them with the love of God,” she said. “They’re wounded, hurt, abandoned, and abused. But they are God’s daughters and deserve to be treated with respect.”
An abusive upbringing. Melissa Stevens’ life had been a nightmare until that point. Growing up, she had family members connected with the Chicago Mafia.
“It was nothing for me to walk outside with my mother and see feds taking pictures of us,” she said. She was molested and assaulted starting at age 6. By 14, she joined the Latin Kings gang and a year later had her first child.
“I had one failed marriage, and then another failed marriage. There were a lot of issues, adultery, assaults,” she said.
She went to jail in Illinois for selling drugs, and then it got worse. “I had nothing,” she said.
Not true. She had Jesus, even if she didn’t understand it at the time.
Jesus kept chasing her down.
She was in jail in Florida’s Bay County on another charge when Category 5 Hurricane Michael struck in 2018. The damage was incredible. Her prison had no running water for about a week, and inmates walked through raw sewage inside the building.
Melissa Stevens
Stevens developed an infection in atrocious conditions and wound up in a coma. Doctors didn’t believe she would survive. But while in the coma, Stevens said Jesus gave her a vision.
“He took me to the middle of the earth to show me the abyss. Walked through a giant corridor, too high to see,” she said. “There was water on both sides. Shapes on both sides, but he protected me.
“Suddenly, I snapped back into my body. Doctors said there was no sign that I was going to come back.” But she did, and her life was about to take a turn from which there is no turning back.
God has huge plans for this girl. The Oasis is literally that, a place of refuge in despair of prison life. It’s a place where the inmates find worth in lives that once might have seemed worthless.
There are seven activities a week, each one about two hours long. They have movie nights three times a month, always with an upbeat theme.
“The women know I’m there for good,” the Rev. Schonewolf said. About 120 women weekly take advantage of the offerings.
“Kris would come in, and those girls would just light up. She had music and spiritual counseling,” Stevens said. “The way she talked about God, you had to listen.”
Stevens was already saved when Rev. Schonewolf met her, but that was just the start of the journey. Kris showed her what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus. “I was able to work with her, mentor her, go one-on-one with her,” Schonewolf said.
The Rev. Edwards noticed that drive to take Christ’s love to those darkened places filled with damaged people. It’s what made Kris perfect for this task. “From the moment the possibility of this ministry was shared, Kris felt a strong sense that God was calling her to this work,” she said.
“Her spiritual gifts of prayer and healing and outreach, as well as her skills of administration and organization, lend themselves to this unique work. Early on, Kris shared this sense of call with me and never gave up.”
A lot of people gave up on Melissa Stevens. For years, maybe she even gave up on herself, but Jesus never did, and so he sent his servant, the Rev. Kris Schonewolf, to show her just that.
“I’ve prayed her through so much deliverance, spent dozens of hours with her, talked to and prayed with some of her children, watched God completely transform her, watched her struggle, prayed some more, wiped her tears, watched her lay hands on people for healing and deliverance,” she said.
“I watched her being delivered of demonic forces, been there when she had powerful visions from God, seen her preach powerfully. I’ve never believed in anyone’s story more. Yes, God has huge plans for this girl. I can see us doing ministry together when God arranges it.”
Now, look at the change in someone society might have cast away.
“Oasis did so much for me on so many levels. If it hadn’t been for that ministry, I couldn’t honestly tell you where I would be right now,” Stevens said.
“People ask me what my purpose is, and I have no idea at this point. It’s like when you’re packing your bags, and someone says, ‘Where are you going?’ When will you be back? I don’t know.”
The Rev. Kris Schonewolf
She is out of prison now, working full-time, trying to reunite with her nine children, and living a life of dedication to Jesus.
“I do communion every day. I get to witness to people on my job. I was praying for God to send people to me so I could talk about him. A guy came up and started talking to me about God, and it was like, all right,” she said.
“Whatever God’s purpose is for me, what his assignment is for me, he is revealing one little bit at a time. One thing I do know is that I will never stop talking about him until I draw my last breath. At the end of all of this, it’s all about God.”
Joe Henderson is News Content Editor for the Florida Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church (flumc.org). Reprinted by permission. Find out more about this ministry at www.TheOasisLCI.org. You can also contact Rev. Schonewolf at PastorKrisLCI@comcast.net.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
Life Vests and Torpedoes
By Steve Beard –
Some of the most emotional moments broadcast on television are when deployed military parents return unexpectedly to surprise their kids coming home from school, during a musical recital, or at a graduation. Sheer joy boils over and you can almost feel the tight squeeze of the bear hugs. Tears of happiness cascade down the faces of the unexpected with unreserved elation. In a perfect world, those moments would last forever.
A few years ago, I joined my family at the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego to honor my grandfather, Harold L. DuVal, a veteran of World War II. For the families gathered at the site near the Pacific Ocean, it is a breathtaking experience. Those leaving flowers or touching plaques want to make sure that their loved ones are not forgotten. Walking the grounds gives a good opportunity to reflect on the service and sacrifice of men and women in uniform.
While Memorial Day in May is specially designated to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice during military service, Veterans Day in November is an opportunity to show gratitude for all current and former members of the Armed Forces.
February 3 is designated as a special day to honor four specific heroes from World War II (1939-1945) and recognize their acts of self-sacrifice during a fateful night off the coast of Greenland in an area the Navy dubbed as Torpedo Alley – a treacherous stretch of the North Atlantic filled with Nazi submarines. The U.S. Army transport ship U.S.A.T. Dorchester was a cruise ship that had been repurposed to serve during wartime. It carried more than 900 military personnel, merchant marines, and civilians.
At one o’clock in the morning on February 3, 1943, a German torpedo tore a massive hole in the ship. The ship went completely dark. Sleeping soldiers woke up in a whirl of disorientation. Survivor Michael Warish described the scene in No Greater Glory: “The lights went out, and steam pipes broke, and there was screaming. Then the bunks, three to five decks high, went down like a deck of cards. Shortly after, there was a very strong odor of gunpowder and of ammonia from the refrigeration system.”
Those who were awake scrambled to upper levels to reach a lifeboat. In Bloodstained Sea, survivor Walter A. Boeckholt remembered, “I was thrown against the ceiling and then landed on the floor. By the time I was recovering my senses, the ship was already tilting. I grabbed for the door, which hadn’t jammed as of yet, and walked out on deck, realizing I didn’t have my life preserver, I went back into the room to get it. As I returned to the deck, they all seemed to be yelling, crying, and trying to get to their lifeboats. Most of the lifeboats were frozen solid or broken in the process of trying to get them loose.”
On board were four chaplains, all lieutenants. Only a few months previous, the Rev. George L. Fox (Methodist), Rabbi Alexander D. Goode (Jewish), Father John P. Washington (Roman Catholic), and the Rev. Clark V. Poling (Reformed Church in America) had become friends and ministerial colleagues during military chaplaincy training.
In the whirlwind of panic on the ship, the four chaplains from divergent faith traditions handed out life vests to the terrified young men. Refusing to take places on the lifeboats, they helped as many soldiers as they could to escape the sinking ship. As the supply of life vests ran out, each of the chaplains gave their own to four soldiers who were without.
Tragically, only two of the fourteen lifeboats were successfully deployed. The Dorchester sank in less than 20 minutes.
Witnesses report that the chaplains said prayers and sang hymns as they linked arms as the ship was sinking. “When she rolled, all I could see was the keel up there,” recalled Dorchester survivor James Eardley. “We saw the four chaplains standing arm-in-arm … like they were looking up to heaven, you might say. Then the boat took a nosedive. It went right down, and they went with it.”
Another survivor had a similar recollection. “As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything,” engineer Grady Clark testified. “The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the four chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”
Of the 902 passengers, only 230 survived.
There is no way to adequately measure what the efforts and sacrifices of the four chaplains meant on that night. Pfc John Ladd, a survivor, said that seeing their selfless actions was “the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven.” For nearly eight decades, the story has been a symbol of counterintuitive sacrifice, faith-based cooperation, and remarkable love.
Dating back to 1946, the comic book, Chaplains at War, tells the story of the four chaplains who sacrificed their lives for their fellow soldiers during the 1943 sinking of the Army transport ship Dorchester. It was on display at the Chapel of the Four Chaplains located at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Philadelphia, 2018. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Christopher Botzum.)
In 1944, the U.S. government posthumously awarded each chaplain the Distinguished Service Cross and a Purple Heart. In 1948, a postage stamp was released in their honor. In 1960, the U.S. Congress authorized the unique creation of the Four Chaplains’ Medal and awarded those four men posthumously with the recognition.
In 1988, a unanimous Act of Congress established February 3 as an annual “Four Chaplains Day.” There are numerous stained glass memorials, plaques, paintings, and sculptures to their courageous act found at places such as the Pentagon and West Point.
One of the deceased clergymen was the Rev. George L. Fox – the Methodist chaplain. Prior to the fateful night, he had valiantly served in World War I. As an Army ambulance driver, he gave his gas mask to a wounded French soldier. In addition to other commendations, Fox was honored with the French Croix de Guerre, or Cross of War. After the war, Fox became a Methodist minister. Despite having lung damage from World War I, Fox volunteered for service again after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “I have to go,” he told his wife. “I know what those boys are up against.”
For Fox and his fellow chaplains, devotion to God manifested itself as selfless service to those in need.
Floating in the freezing Arctic water after the explosion on the Dorchester, Private William B. Bednar heard “men crying, pleading, praying. I could also hear the chaplains preaching courage. Their voices were the only thing that kept me going.”
“To take off your life preserver, it meant you gave up your life,” said survivor Benjamin Epstein in the Pioneer Press. “You would have no chance of surviving. They knew they were finished. But they gave it away. Consider that. Over the years I’ve asked myself this question a thousand times. Could I do it? No, I don’t think I could do it. Just consider what an act of heroism they performed.”
Amazing grace for survivors. Through the efforts of David Fox, the nephew of the Methodist chaplain on the Dorchester, the memory of the story of the Four Chaplains has been preserved. In 1996, Fox rented a video camera and attempted to interview as many Dorchester survivors as possible. He ended up meeting 20 of the 28 known survivors. According to Fox, the first sergeant of the ship, Michael Warish, reported that the four chaplains had a remarkable camaraderie: “These men were always together.”
“Remember, this was 1943. Protestants didn’t talk to Catholics back then, let alone either of them talk to a Jew,” Fox told America in WWII. “And yet here they were, always together, and they loved each other. The men said it didn’t matter which service they went to, that the chaplains always made them feel welcome and cared for. They were remarkable for 1943, way ahead of their time.”
Kurt Röser, Ben Epstein, David Labadie, Senator Bob Dole, Dick Swanson, Walter Miller, and Gerhard Buske at the Reconciliation Ceremony with the Immortal Chaplains Foundation on February 14, 2000. Röser and Buske were aboard the U-boat; Epstein, Miller and Labadie are survivors of the Dorchester; and Dick Swanson was aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Comanche, which hunted the U-boat. Photo: Immortal Chaplains Foundation web archive.
Through contacts in Germany, Fox also reached out to the three remaining survivors of the German submarine U-223 that had fired the torpedo. “When I was interviewing the U-boat crew, they just would cry,” Fox recalled. “The men had never told their families this story. They realized that when they hit that ship, there were men dying. They cheered the first moment, and then it just got very silent, and they felt terrible after that. These were Germans – they were not Nazis – young boys, 17, 18, 19 years old, forced to do it or they would have been shot, pretty much like in the movie Das Boot. The U-boat crews did what they had to do, but they didn’t like it very much.”
Through a notable reconciliation effort by Fox and the Immortal Chaplains Foundation in 2000, survivors of the Dorchester met with the surviving crew of the German submarine. The men from U-223 had also known loss. The German submarine was sunk a year after the Dorchester attack.
Remarkably, two surviving German veterans arrived in Washington D.C. for a 2000 memorial ceremony and they wept openly after visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum. The small group of both the American and German survivors were invited to the nearby home of Theresa Goode Kaplan, the then 88-year-old widow of Rabbi Alexander D. Goode who had died on the Dorchester.
“She shook the Germans’ hands, and accepted their expressions of regret for her husband and for her suffering,” reported The New Yorker. “When the room was silent, Gerhard Buske (U-223’s executive officer), produced a harmonica, raised his hands to his mouth, and blew out a slow, warbling rendition of ‘Amazing Grace.’ Everyone clapped. Then the room lapsed back into silence.”
Buske returned to the United States in 2003 to speak at a ceremony on the sixtieth anniversary of the Dorchester’s sinking. “We the sailors of U-223 regret the deep sorrows and pains caused by the torpedo,” he said. “Wives lost their husbands, parents their sons, and children waited for their fathers in vain. I once more ask forgiveness, as we had to fight for our country, as your soldiers had to do for theirs.”
Buske concluded by imploring the gathering to follow the example of the four valiant chaplains. “We ought to love when others hate; we ought to forgive when others are violent,” he said. “I wish that we can say the truth to correct errors; we can bring faith where doubt threatens; we can awaken hope where despair exists; we can light up a light where darkness reigns; that we can bring joy where sorrows dominate.”
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News. This article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of Good News. Readers can learn more about this story from the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation at www.fourchaplains.org.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
Stained glass of John Wesley at the World Methodist Council Museum, formerly at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Photo by Steve Beard.
In honor of the passing of our friend Dr. William J. Abraham, we are republishing an address he presented at the 1995 national gathering of the Confessing Movement Within the United Methodist Church in Atlanta.
By William J. Abraham –
One of the most heartening features of life in the United Methodist Church is the deep yearning for renewal that can be detected at almost all levels of the church. In the patchwork of renewal movements within the United Methodist Church, the Confessing Movement focuses quite deliberately on the need for our denomination as a whole to be faithful to the deep doctrinal treasures of the church across the ages which are spelled out so clearly in the Articles of Religion, The Confession of Faith, and in Wesley’s Sermons and Explanatory Notes on the New Testament. Equally, it calls the church to lift high these doctrinal treasures for the whole life of the church in evangelism, liturgy, mission, pastoral care, social action, and every aspect of the work of the church. Implicit in this call to fidelity, reform, and renewal is the judgment that we have neglected these doctrinal treasures or, more seriously, that we have replaced these treasures with alien doctrinal material, which distorts our tradition, which separates us from each other and from the classical faith of the church, and which undermines crucial aspects of our life and mission together.
Why do we need a confessing movement? There are at least four very substantial reasons.
1. The substance and content of the faith have been called into question in our culture and more conspicuously within the church at large.
We are aware that our culture has become radically more and more pluralistic during the last generation. This is something we neither condemn nor applaud. In the providence of God we are called to serve the gospel at a time of momentous changes. God has sent us forth into a free marketplace of religions, ideas, fads, philosophies, and ideologies. In these circumstances, it is patently clear that we can no longer depend on the culture to transmit Christian faith in the public institutions of the land, such as the law, the news media, the academy, and the public education system. On the contrary, we can expect vigorous engagement in the public arena, if not downright hostile attack. We are not surprised, then, when we find the essentials of the faith called into question by intellectual leaders and scholars.
It is another matter entirely, however, when the faith of the church expressed in our doctrinal standards is called into question by those who want to remake or reimagine the faith in ways which repudiate the great classical doctrines of the church universal. There are those who want to displace the revelation enshrined in the Scriptures by attempting to replace it with an appeal to various forms of reason and experience. There are those who want to reject or set aside the Scriptures because they have invented their own canon. There are those who openly repudiate the Trinity because it is believed to be linguistically oppressive. There are those who reject the full divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ because they think it is supernaturalistic or incoherent. There are those who repudiate the atonement wrought by Christ because they think it is a case of divine child abuse. There are those who reject the universal saving work of Jesus Christ because they think they can save themselves with their own religion. There are those who repudiate the evangelistic and missionary activity of the church because they find it too offensive and intolerant in a pluralistic world. There are those who want to set aside the quest for righteousness and holiness because it does not fit with the mores of a new generation.
In these circumstances it is imperative that the church be clear about its core doctrines concerning the Trinity, the full divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, and the complete sufficiency of God’s saving action in Christ. In these circumstances silence is a form of collusion. There is at this moment in history a clear need for the church to confess boldly and clearly the faith by which it lives and dies.
2. As a church we have in reality been committed to a form of practical, doctrinal incoherence for a generation or more.
Throughout the last generation the UM Church has been suffering from an acute case of doctrinal amnesia and of doctrinal dyslexia. I have chosen these images very carefully. In the case of amnesia the analogy is self-explanatory. We have simply forgotten our doctrinal heritage and hence have ignored its rich treasures and reserves. In some respects, however, the analogy with dyslexia is more compelling. As anyone suffering from dyslexia knows, the crucial problem is that one sees the relevant marks on the page but the marks are ingested in a distorted fashion. In the case of doctrinal dyslexia, what happens is analogous to this condition. In our case what has happened is that we have turned inside out and upside down the crucial material on doctrine in the Book of Discipline. We have displaced the actual standards of doctrine laid out in the Constitution by concentrating on the highly speculative material laid out in the section on our theological task.
At a crude and popular level we have replaced the great doctrinal verities of the faith, which are laid out so carefully in the Articles of Religion, The Confession of Faith, and in Wesley’s Sermons and Explanatory Notes on the New Testament, with the famous Methodist “quadrilateral.” We have replaced commitment to the great doctrines of the church with a commitment to a speculative theory of religious knowledge. We have replaced content with process, sacrificing the possibility of a publicly agreed common mind to the actuality of a partisan, conjectural theological method.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Abraham speaks at the Fourth Global Gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in November 2019. Photo: Mark Moore
The consequence is that our identity is now shaped by an interesting but dubious exercise in religious theory of knowledge. On pain of denying our tradition, we are forced to confess adherence to a piece of clever epistemology which was worked out in the 1960s and which is at odds both with Wesley and with the clear content of the constitutional standards of doctrine. In these circumstances the great classical doctrines of the faith, to which Wesley wholeheartedly adhered, are treated as optional alternatives to be received, rejected, remade, or reimagined at will. We have idolized a piece of philosophical speculation and are now reaping the consequences. Not surprisingly, we find ourselves torn asunder by conflicting doctrinal proposals. The quadrilateral effectively fosters this situation. It invites us to evaluate our beliefs and doctrinal suggestions by running them through Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. As a pedagogical device, the quadrilateral indeed has merit. Anyone who is a teacher can testify to this. However, as a formal proposal in the field of religious knowledge, the quadrilateral is an absurd undertaking, for only an omniscient agent could seriously undertake to run our proposals through the gamut of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Only God could use the quadrilateral and, thankfully, God does not need it. What actually happens, of course, is that folk make a good faith effort to meet this grandiose standard, but the considerations are so diverse and complicated that the result is a wild array of alternatives. The quadrilateral is much like a kaleidoscope. Each time you shake Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, a different configuration emerges. The result is doctrinal chaos and incoherence. Even Albert Outler, the great architect of the Methodist quadrilateral, was disturbed by its misuse, and late in life expressed reservations about its logic.
This, of course, is what we get when we use the quadrilateral at its best. At its worst, our use of the quadrilateral is like a lateral in football; if you cannot support your position by one element in the quadrilateral then use a lateral pass to tradition, reason, or experience until you get the support you need. In this instance the quadrilateral is simply a camouflage for any and every doctrinal proposal. It is clearly at odds with the much more modest and nuanced appeal to Scripture carefully stated in the Articles of Religion and The Confession of Faith.
It is in this whole arena that we need very significant reform. Currently, the self-image of United Methodists reflects non-commitment to any specific doctrines. At best it adheres to a version of the Methodist quadrilateral. Against this I want to suggest that the UM Church is a confessional church. We have a clear body of Christian doctrine spelled out in our doctrinal standards. Broadly speaking, these standards commit us to the classical faith of the church developed during the patristic period and the Reformation and laid out in the Articles of Religion and The Confession of Faith. Equally, they commit us to the Wesleyan distinctives laid out in Wesley’s Sermons and Explanatory Notes on the New Testament. Where we are currently required in practice to accept a speculative theory of religious knowledge, the UM Church in its Constitution invites us to accept and explore the rich treasures embodied in the classical and Wesleyan traditions. It is high time that we enter into a new doctrinal reformation which comes to terms with this historical reality.
3. Doctrinal considerations are foundational to virtually every aspect of our life and faith, and nothing short of this will challenge the internal secularization of the church as a whole.
The Methodist movement, which sprang up in the eighteenth century, was part of a profound spiritual awakening which cannot be understood apart from the deep gospel truths which animated its leaders and workers. Methodists laid hold of the faith of the church, opened themselves to the active presence of the Holy Spirit, found themselves gloriously converted, and were then propelled into a spiraling movement of evangelism and social action. This was clearly a mighty work of providence which depended on very specific doctrinal commitments such as we find in the doctrines of creation, redemption, grace, justification, and sanctification. Take away these doctrines and Methodism is unintelligible and unworkable. Doctrinal commitments inform and enter into our work in evangelism, worship, social action, pastoral care, ecumenism, and administration.
Increasingly, with the rise of various secular disciplines that reject or ignore theological considerations, there has been a marked tendency to envisage our work in entirely naturalistic, secular, or procedural categories. Worship is reduced to entertainment or to purely aesthetic dimensions; administration is reduced to the logic of management; social action is cast entirely in humanitarian categories; evangelism is interpreted primarily in terms of nominal church membership; pastoral care is cast in terms of therapy; the election of bishops is turned into political campaigning; preaching is reduced to moralism; prayer becomes a form of comfort and auto-suggestion; the Scriptures are reduced to a set of sacred texts; Christian theology becomes an exercise in philosophical or ideological speculation.
The issue of course is a delicate one, for all truth is God’s truth, and we are free, therefore, to baptize all sorts of material for use in the church. Only a fool would refuse to plunder the secular “Egyptians” of our day and generation. However, our first and primary identity in the church is that we are the Body of Jesus Christ, equipped with a whole tapestry of insight expressed in the great doctrines of the faith and overshadowed by the mystery of the living God. Hence, as United Methodists, we live in and for the kingdom of God, not some secular substitute. In our worship we are committed to the great sacraments of baptism and eucharist, where we look to the Holy Spirit to wash us from our sins and feed us with the bread of heaven. We read the Scriptures not as an exercise in sacred archaeology but as the living Word of God. In evangelism, rather than simply adding members to the church, we seek to let the Holy Spirit deliver us from the bondage of original sin. In social action, rather than pursue the ideals of this or that political party, we seek to let God’s rule enter every nook and cranny of our social existence. In pastoral care, we are committed to the cure of souls; in administration we are looking to the Holy Spirit to give the whole church all the gifts that are needed to be agents of the kingdom; in the election of bishops we are seeking to find the charismatic gift of oversight in the church as a whole; in prayer we are entering the very courts of heaven itself; in preaching we are proclaiming and expounding the Word of God; in Christian theology we are in faith seeking understanding.
Conceived in this fashion, our work in the church is encoded by doctrinal themes and convictions. It is not that we somehow conjure up a set of doctrines and then apply them to this or that element in the life of the church. Doctrine is built into the very conception and execution of our work together. In the face of the widespread secularization of our culture and the strong temptation to mimic the ways of the world, it is vital that we remain steeped in the doctrinal riches of the faith. In this way our life and work together can truly represent the action of the Body of Christ and be filled with the direction of the Holy Spirit. Hence we can by grace be a city set on a hill, an outpost of the kingdom of God, and a vineyard truly built of the Lord, rather than one more social club, or our favored political party at prayer, or an insipid nursemaid to the secular state.
4. There is a need to heal the deep alienation and the sense of intellectual exclusion which exists in significant segments of the church at large.
What is at stake here is far from easy to describe. Let me try as best I can. I will do so by providing a tendentious narrative which will deliberately exaggerate in order to make the crucial point at issue. Ostensibly, United Methodism is an open, inclusivist denomination. We have prided ourselves on welcoming the stranger, on providing a spiritual home for those who have felt they were oppressed in other traditions, and on being a community where people are free to think for themselves. Moreover, we have worked exceedingly hard to empower women and ethnic minorities. These are virtues which very few, if any, in United Methodism would want to forfeit.
Yet this is not the whole story. At the end of the last century, the leadership of the forbearers of modern United Methodism made a strategic decision that has never been adequately faced and worked through. At a time of enormous intellectual and social crisis, we opted to become the leaders of the liberal Protestant movement in North America. Believing that the classical Methodist tradition could not really be defended in the modern world, we adopted a revisionist pose which dismantled the classical faith of Methodism. Like the leaders in most mainline churches we lost our intellectual nerve and elected for massive accommodation to the intellectual elites of the culture.
This was an understandable decision, for liberal Protestants insisted that there was no other way to face the intellectual and social challenges of the day. Hence they felt that they could quietly ignore or dismantle vast tracks of the Christian heritage without shedding any theological tear. This shift – developed quite brilliantly, for example, at Boston School of Theology (which became a kind of Vatican of the tradition as a whole) – was taken as a given by much of the intellectual leadership of our tradition in the twentieth century. Any alternative seemed a perpetuation of a doctrinal dark ages which needed to be enlightened by all that was best in the modern world.
As a consequence, Methodism became theologically schizophrenic. Our roots, our hymnody, our founding documents were wholehearted steeped in the classical Christian tradition, but many of our leaders have been deeply alienated from this whole heritage, even though they had to work overtime to provide a semblance of intellectual coherence for themselves. Over time the fortunes of liberal Protestantism have waxed and waned. Liberal Protestantism was deeply challenged by the rise of Neoorthodoxy before and after the Second World War, but this was relatively easily contained by arguing that the work of Barth and the Niebuhrs was really a moment of self-correction in the development of liberal Protestantism. It was, for a time, given bad press with the arrival of the “God is dead” movement of the 1960s, but this was more of a media event than it was a serious threat to the standing orders of the great liberal Protestant experiment. Overall, during this period the intellectual institutions of United Methodism were a closed shop. It was the exception rather than the rule when someone who was committed to the classical faith of the church was permitted entrance. Too often they were dismissed doctrinally as intellectual illiterates.
As a consequence, many faithful United Methodists were shut out of crucial centers of the church’s life. They did what any group will do under such circumstances: they became frustrated, angry, fidgety, and alienated. Being what all United Methodists are, namely, inveterate, pragmatic activists, they also went to work. Over time they funded and built their own institutions, set up their own parachurch organizations and caucuses, got themselves educated, printed their own literature, held their revival meetings at the grass roots, set up an alternative mission society, and above all, poured themselves into evangelism and church growth. At the same time they worked as best they could within the system, being as loyal as they knew how to the church whose faith they treasured.
Liberal Protestantism is again in serious trouble within the academy. It is challenged on one side by the development of various forms of radical Protestantism and on the other side by a resurgent recovery of evangelical and patristic sensibilities in theology. Some academic institutions have even opened their doors, albeit in fear and trembling, to those who do not share the revisionist agenda. The ethos of liberal Protestantism, however lingers on in the tradition as a whole. Almost all have been preoccupied by a multicultural agenda that focuses on a form of diversity which masks deep opposition to the classical faith of the church on the grounds that it is incredible and oppressive. The inevitable consequence has been that many conservative and traditional United Methodists remain deeply alienated within the tradition as a whole.
We need a vigorous confessing movement at this moment in our history in order to give voice to those who have been systematically excluded from the central life of the church. Members who are committed to the classical doctrines of the faith need to know that they are not alone, that there are others who share their exclusion, that they can be fully Christian within the United Methodist tradition, and that they can learn and relearn the classical faith of the church. In short, there are many within United Methodism who need a space where they can be healed and intellectually renewed to serve the present age. They need a movement in which they can own their own tradition with integrity and deepen their hold on the doctrinal treasures of the church.
Our concern is with doctrine. Without adequate attention to this crucial dimension of our life together we will become antinomians, pharisees, and intellectual anarchists. Worse still, we will become emotionalists, frenetic activists, and even apostates from the faith once delivered to the saints. With proper attention to doctrine we will continue to be part of that great succession of evangelists, saints, and martyrs who, in the church catholic across the ages, have borne a faithful testimony to our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
This essay was published in the January/February 1996 issue of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 6, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
A solar-powered radio allows Tunui Metuni to listen to Trinity FM while tending his family’s livestock in Samburu County, Kenya. Photo by Faith Wanjiru, UM News.
By Faith Wanjiru, UM News –
The Rev. Josam Kariuki of Trinity United Methodist Church in Narok, Kenya, and other clergy began livestreaming worship services and sharing messages of hope during the COVID-19 pandemic. The livestream, however, was only getting to followers who had smartphones.
“A good number of my followers,” he said, “use button phones. Others don’t own mobile phones. I needed to reach them all, especially when they required spiritual, emotional and material support.”
Kariuki decided to start the church’s own radio and television station to reach the most vulnerable communities in slums and the interior areas of Narok with vital information. He created space for the station on the church’s premises.
Though ill-equipped, with only a single video camera and a radio recorder, Trinity Radio and Television has been on the air for a year. Because it is so new, the station is surviving on the goodwill of local churches. Its skeletal staff of eight workers includes six volunteers.
Kariuki is seeking partnerships to help the station remain afloat. Partners could buy video cameras and other equipment or donate solar-powered portable radios and televisions, recorders, transmitters and computers. The pastor is also looking for sponsored programs and media-trained volunteers.
“The sponsored programs and the financial aid,” he said, “will help to train employed staff.” Often, volunteers leave for paid jobs. Another major challenge for the new station is access to remote areas to collect news.
The pandemic, Kariuki said, came with numerous problems due to prolonged school holidays, collapsed businesses, job losses and stay-at-home orders. Many people started working from home.
“This had adverse effects in many slum areas and rural areas of Narok, with a recorded rise in domestic gender-based violence, female genital mutilation, early marriages, teenage pregnancies, child labor and defilements,” he said.
Chief Lesiti Muturo said Trinity Radio and Television instructs the community about their rights and available government resources. Women learn about family planning, the importance of education and other subjects.
After the closure of schools in 2020 because of COVID-19, the church radio station began broadcasting school programs to children in a local language. School-age children, said teacher Paul Sitinei, “enjoy songs, Bible readings and entertainment programs.”
Saloton Ntutu and his family in Narok, Kenya, enjoy listening to Masai songs on Trinity FM. They received the radio as a
donation from Trinity United Methodist Church. Photo by Faith Wanjiru, UM News.
Using the three bilingual stations that broadcast in Kikuyu, Maasai and Samburu, Kariuki said he has planted five new congregations. “We can now preach through the media in our local language,” said Pastor Melisa Soipan of Narok United Methodist Church. “It is impossible to reach our followers through social media like Facebook because there is no internet access.”
Moses Kwaro agreed. “We are proud because we have been remembered and cared for,” he said.
“We are very happy,” leader Tabitha Tumangah said, “because (we) are getting national news in our Maasai language.
This is beneficial to our people who do not understand English and Swahili.” She added that the church’s mission team is mobilizing them to have solar-powered radio because their region lacks electricity.
The radio can be listened to worldwide through the Facebook pages Trinity FM Kenya and Trinity TV Kenya and the website https://umckenya.org/tv/. Trinity Radio and Television reaches the Kikuyu, Maasai and Samburu communities.
Faith Wanjiru is communications director for the Central/Narok District of the Kenya-Ethiopia Conference. For more information, contact Trinity United Methodist Church Mission Coordinator Solomon Kimani at trinity@umckenya.org.
by Steve | Jan 6, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
Photo: Shutterstock
By JJ Mannschreck –
Speaking as a young clergy with a (God willing) long career in front of me, I think it’s important for me to explain why some of us are considering going with the Global Methodist Church (GMC).
1. The Definition of Progressive. There’s a lot of noise being made in the current church conversation about big tents and long tables. Progressive voices and institutionalists are talking about how welcoming they will be for traditionalist voices. “You don’t have to leave” they say, “we will make room for and respect all theologies.” And to be honest, I want to believe them. But if the issue of LGBTQ inclusion is a justice issue – which I’ve heard many, many times – then, at best, what we are going to see is a temporary tolerance.
The definition of progressive is that they understand their ideology as progress. Assimilation is built into their identity. One can assume that they can and will be very kind for a season – but eventually the call of justice will not be content to permit “oppressive theologies” in the room. There will probably be a few years in the Post Separation UM Church (PSUMC) where it will be safe and even comfortable for traditionalist clergy to do ministry. But it will probably get progressively worse for them as the years go by. For those nearing retirement, it might even be the easier choice to stay. But I am not near retirement. I am a young traditionalist clergy. I have no desire to be part of a tradition that will resent me just a little bit more every year for my entire career.
2. United By Mission Alone. It is time for all Methodist traditions (both PSUMC and GMC) to eliminate the Trust Clause. The Trust Clause coerces unity that isn’t really there. The Global Methodist Church has made it clear that autonomy in the local church will be the name of the game, whereas the PSUMC has no intention of getting rid of its hold over congregations. Without a legally binding, practical, and financial threat to keep unity in the ranks, the Global Methodist Church will rely on missional alignment. Rather than being yoked together by rule of law, we will be able to walk next to one another – and work together freely.
3. The Call System (and Guaranteed Appointments). Along with the trust clause, the itinerant system should be eliminated. The current method of appointment for pastors does have its conveniences – but the disadvantages significantly outweigh the advantages. It is a system that can very easily, even if accidentally, breed deep abuse and scandal. Beyond potential abuses, it enables toxic churches and ineffective clergy to point fingers at one another for decades without accountability. I’ve seen this in my own conference in countless examples. The Global Methodist Church is shifting only slightly, to a partial call system. This will be challenging at first. Churches will have a steep learning curve on interviewing pastors. Toxic churches will shrivel and ineffective pastors will struggle to find good churches, but all of those things will ultimately lead to a healthier denomination down the line.
4. Becoming a Minority. I am a very privileged, young heterosexual white man. While I may not come from a fabulously wealthy family and I never had a pony growing up, the reality is that I grew up in extremely comfortable conditions. I believe there is a racial and cultural realignment coming for the church – and I am here for it. I am eager to be a part of a church that is multiracial and where leadership is more equitably shared between Africans, Filipinos, and Caucasians from the United States, Europe, and Russia.
Our African brothers and sisters have lived with a system of inequity for decades. It saddens me to see progressive voices making a lot of noise about regionalization at the exact historical moment when multiracial voices are finding prominence in the power dynamics. Rhetorically, institutionalists talk a lot about diversity – they want Africans in the room – it just seems that they don’t want to have to listen to them. Regionalization is not justice. Make no mistake, it is an injustice issue, and nothing else. The Global Methodist Church, particularly the white conservatives in America, will have a lot to learn in a short amount of time. There is racism buried beneath the surface of some of our congregations, and we will have to deal with that if we are to flourish.
5. Governance Structure – the local Church. The core of my desire for movement to the Global Methodist Church lies in the nitty gritty of church organization. I don’t believe institutionalists or even progressives are bad people. I will miss many of my colleagues, and I wish them blessings in the future from the bottom of my heart. But when I look at the two structures, one system is simply better. For a long time the UM Church has paid lip service to the fact that the front lines of ministry are in the local church. And yet, in my experience and in what I have seen around the country, this is not a practical reality.
In my conference, pastors are actively running away from local church ministry, often seeking out the coveted conference level staffing positions. Despite the financial difficulties and combining of structures, the conference level staff continues to grow. In recent months, they have done a good job of re-orienting back toward the local church, particularly since COVID – but it is still an extremely top heavy structure. There’s a whole lot of apportionment money going to support these massive staffs and the resources they provide (which a majority of churches do not make use of). This is only more pronounced when we consider the massive dollar amounts attached to the work at the General Church level as well.
The Global Methodist Church is offering a far more streamlined organization. In dollars and cents, it will probably cost my church half what it currently does to be a part of that structure. On a practical level, we will send less money up to the denomination, and more money will be left for the local church to do ministry in our community. In rough estimation we expect to move from 14 percent of our budget going up to support the conference down to 7 percent. District Superintendents (or whatever they will be called) will not be seen as a promotional escape from local church ministry, but rather an extra responsibility – possibly on top of local church ministry – taken up as an honor. I have seen some say that the GMC’s Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline (which is significantly shorter than the current UMC BOD) is too short. Critics claim that clearly they didn’t think hard enough if they wrote such a streamlined structure. But I look at the bloated structures of the current UM Church and I believe that a simpler way is possible (and preferable).
What is not on my list of five points? The conversation about LGBTQ inclusion does not even arise (except perhaps tangentially in the first reason). I do not want to move to the Global Methodist Church because of a disagreement over homosexuality. Despite what progressives have been screaming for years, I don’t “hate” gay people. To be honest, I can easily make this decision without even considering that part of the discussion. I would make my way to the GMC on their call system alone, or their governing structures, or their removal of the trust clause. All of these are practical, straightforward reasons that the Global Methodist Church will be a stronger church in the long run.
I know that LGBTQ+ inclusion is the flashy headline. Mainstream media, if they notice this split at all, will talk about how the church is dividing over homosexuality. They have never had much interest in nuance, or really any differences that don’t grab people’s attention. I don’t expect a fair hearing in the public square. Inclusion may have been the lightning bolt that struck the church and lit the roof on fire – but after the flames died down, they revealed a rotting structure set on a leaky foundation. It’s time to build a new house.
For what it is worth, I will be entering through the doorway into the Global Methodist Church, just as soon as they unlock the door.
JJ Mannschreck is the pastor of Flushing United Methodist Church in Michigan.
