by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: Going worldwide: For 25 years the Mission Society has helped the church discover its mission
In June 1975, I attended the West Michigan Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church for the first time. In two months, I would complete my final classes in seminary and take my first appointment as a deacon and a probationary member of the conference. Sometime during that week I met with Dr. Bob Smith, who was to become my district superintendent. After a few pleasantries, Bob got down to business. “Dick, I have a fine appointment for you,” he began. “You are going to serve at Ganges and Saugatuck….”
I don’t recall what he said after that. Not hailing from Michigan, I’d never heard of Saugatuck. But since I had spent the first few years of my life as a missionary kid in India, Ganges was a name I knew. I was secretly gratified that Bob obviously had gone to the trouble to find out about my childhood, and thought it was rather clever that he was playing a joke on me by telling me he was sending me back to India.
But Bob knew nothing about my early years in Asia as a missionary kid, and he wasn’t kidding. Two months later, my wife Pam and I—with a toddler and a newborn in tow—began what became 11 years of sometimes challenging, frequently thrilling, but always fulfilling ministry in southwest Michigan. Our first stop was the Saugatuck-Ganges Parish.
It really was quite natural that I’d think “India” rather than “Allegan County, Michigan” when I heard “Ganges.” Seeing life, ministry, church, and just about everything through international lenses is just what you do when you grow up overseas. Perhaps, too, it was my being the son and grandson of missionaries that especially sensitized me to what I saw happening (or not happening) in the missions program of the United Methodist Church during those years.
By the mid-1980s, what had begun as a gnawing concern among evangelicals in the denomination had grown to alarm and had finally resulted in dramatic action. That came in the form of the launch of The Mission Society for United Methodists, an “alternative” mission agency, as some called it. It was established by an ad-hoc group of pastors and former missionaries who met in St. Louis on November 28, 1983. Within days they tapped the Rev. Dr. H. T. Maclin, a 31-year veteran of the General Board of Global Ministries, to become the founding president. The new agency was incorporated on January 6, 1984.
Chief among the concerns that led to the formation of The Mission Society were: (1) the perceived movement of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) away from programs that had the specific objective of bringing people to faith in Christ; and (2) the dramatic reduction in the number of missionaries being sent by the UM Church around the world.
To put the decline of the missionary force in perspective, at the time of the merger of the Methodists and Evangelical United Brethren churches in 1968, approximately 1,650 missionaries served around the world under those two denominations. But by the early 1980s, the GBGM—which by then had slashed its missionary ranks to slightly over 500—announced the goal of reducing that number even further to just 300, or fewer than one adult missionary for every 100 United Methodist congregations.
Against that backdrop, you can imagine my response to the formation of a new, evangelical, sending organization for United Methodists. In a word, I was thrilled! Finally, someone was actually doing something about renewing biblical missions in my denomination. I determined I would do all I could as a young pastor to support these efforts.
During the summer of 1985, I had the privilege of meeting H.T. Maclin when he spoke at the Michigan Area Pastors’ School. Blessed with a humble spirit, the grace of a true southern gentleman, and convictions of steel, H.T. represented The Mission Society in a way that was received well by many of my colleagues.
A month or two later, we were blessed to have the Rev. Virgil Maybray as the keynote speaker at our congregation’s annual missions conference. Prior to the formation of The Mission Society, Virgil had led the Evangelical Missions Council, an arm of Good News devoted to promoting missions within the denomination. Although The Mission Society was not established by Good News, Virgil and many others who were connected with Good News had been part of its formation. Shortly after The Mission Society was launched, Virgil had become its first vice president.
In the providence of God, I had met Virgil 18 years earlier—the summer before my sophomore year of college. Now, he was preaching in my church, challenging the people of my congregation to commit their lives and their resources to God’s mission, and thrilling us with reports about the new sending agency.
After the conference concluded, I made an offhand comment that would prove to change my life. “If there’s ever anything I can do to help out The Mission Society,” I said, “please let me know.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t looking for a job. I was having the time of my life with the wonderful people at the Leighton UM Church.
But Virgil proposed that I apply for the position of director of missionary personnel with the new agency. When I replied that I didn’t know anything about doing such a job, he was quick to respond that since I was a missionary kid and a pastor, what more did I need to know? I didn’t have a ready answer. (As they say, you don’t know what you don’t know.) By God’s grace, nine months later in 1986, Pam and I moved to Stone Mountain, Georgia, and I became the eighth member of the staff of The Mission Society for United Methodists.
Going wide
The Mission Society’s original bylaws stated that it was to be a missionary sending agency “for United Methodists and others of Wesleyan persuasion” (italics added). In point of fact, however, for its first decade, “MSUM” (as it came to be known) only accepted candidates who were active members of the United Methodist Church.
However, being an independent “faith mission” while at the same time maintaining a visible identity with one particular denomination was something of an anomaly. As The Mission Society became better known, candidates from a variety of Christian communions began to apply for service. Sadly, for nearly 10 years, we turned down many splendid applicants for the simple reason that they were not active members of the United Methodist Church. (Interestingly enough, that litmus test was not required by the GBGM.)
Beginning in the mid ’90s, however, we came to the growing conviction that The Mission Society could accomplish its desire to be leaven within a mainline denomination while at the same time serving the wider Christian community. The result was that we began to accept candidates who were Wesleyan in spirit and conviction though not United Methodist.
The transformation to an interdenominational agency of Wesleyan heritage became complete when the name of the organization was officially changed to The Mission Society in 2008. Today, although the majority of our missionaries and partners are still United Methodists, The Mission Society includes more than 200 cross-cultural workers who come from 12 denominations. (Since The Mission Society’s founding 25 years ago, 465 missionaries have been approved.)
Internationally, The Mission Society collaborates not only with United Methodist central conferences and autonomous affiliated Methodist denominations, but also with a variety of other Christian communions in 32 countries to which its missionaries are assigned.
Unlike some missions whose work focuses on a specific area of ministry (such as Bible translation, disaster relief, or radio broadcasting), the ministries of The Mission Society are as varied as they are numerous (see sidebar on page 15). Nevertheless, our core mission is very simple: The Mission Society exists to lead the Church to the world, and to lead the world to Jesus.
Pointing the Church to the world
If churches are measured by how “missions-minded” they are, mission agencies should be measured by how “church-minded” they are.
Speaking at a missions mobilization conference we had the privilege of leading in Ghana in January 2008, Robert Oboagye-Mensah, presiding bishop of The Methodist Church of Ghana (and a newly-elected member of The Mission Society’s board of directors) said, “God does not have a mission for God’s Church. God has a Church for God’s mission. Mission was not created for the Church; the Church was created for mission.”
If that is true, then it’s high time that mission agencies do a rapid 180° turn and begin to help the Church get about its mission rather than assuming that the Church somehow was established by God to support the agency’s mission.
It was precisely this conviction that led The Mission Society to establish in 2000 what is now one of the two branches of our Missions Operations division: the Church Ministry department. Over the past decade, through seminars, conferences, workshops, and coaching, we have provided training to help hundreds of congregations and thousands of pastors and leaders to more effectively mobilize themselves to reach their communities and the nations for Christ.
It’s not just American churches that we are mobilizing for missions, however. Beginning in 2003, The Mission Society has conducted missions mobilization conferences that have impacted several thousand pastors and leaders from scores of denominations in more than 20 countries, primarily in Latin America and Africa.
It is not the Church’s job to help groups like The Mission Society reach the world. It’s the mission agencies’ job to help the Church reach the world. What we are discovering is that when we work hand-in-hand with the Church, Christ is honored and his work is accelerated.
Pointing the world to Jesus
Leading The Mission Society’s more than 200 missionaries whose ministries reflect tremendous diversity can feel a bit like herding cats at times. But the diversity is only on the surface. At their core, Mission Society missionaries share one common purpose, and that is to offer people Christ. There still is “no other name under heaven by which people can be saved.”
Two biblical themes increasingly shape our understanding and practice of mission. The first is the Incarnation. Dr. Darrell Whiteman, vice president for mission personnel and preparation and resident missiologist at The Mission Society, teaches our missionaries that Jesus’ incarnation is their model for cross-cultural ministry.
God in Christ Jesus went to incredible lengths to communicate his love to humanity. Jesus, says Whiteman, did not just become a generic human. He became a first-century Palestinian Jew who spoke Aramaic with a low-prestige Galilean accent! Philippians 2 reminds us that Jesus emptied himself of all the prestige of being God’s son in order to identify with human beings. If God so fully entered a particular human culture in order to connect with humankind, should today’s missionaries do any less?
Whether it means living in an apartment in the middle of a predominantly Muslim immigrant community in Atlanta or amidst an unreached tribal group in a village in northern Ghana, living with and learning from the people we seek to lead to Jesus is not only a core value, but also a key ministry strategy for The Mission Society’s missionaries.
But the Incarnation not only defines a missionary’s lifestyle, it also shapes the missionary’s message. Although the gospel never changes, the ways in which it relates to the diverse human family must be as varied as are human cultures themselves.
That leads to the second theme that continues to both challenge and instruct us, and that is what we refer to as “radical biblical contextualization.”
What does that mean? Well, throughout the New Testament, Jesus’ followers seemed to be discovering something foundational about missions (see Acts 15, Acts 17, I Corinthians 9). The manner in which the Good News of Christ is conveyed and the outward forms of expression which those who receive it exhibit must take on the look and feel of the local culture if the gospel has any hope of penetrating deeply or spreading broadly throughout a people group.
Our missionaries are trained and prepared to discover where God (whose prevenient grace reached them before they found him) is already at work among peoples who have yet to know Christ. I fully anticipate that as the least-reached peoples become followers of Jesus, their resulting worship and witness will proclaim that Jesus is Lord in ways that may look and sound very unfamiliar to our Western Christian eyes and ears. I’m confident, however, that the Shepherd will have no problem recognizing his sheep and calling them his own.
Both the call to the church to engage the world and the call to the world to embrace Jesus grow out of the Missio Dei—the Mission of God. It is as ancient as God’s call to Adam and Eve in the garden, and as abiding as the promise of the One who said he would be with us always, even to the end of the age.
As The Mission Society celebrates its 25th anniversary, it is with a renewed commitment to follow Jesus as he walks the streets of the city and the dusty pathways of the village. We celebrate the fact that mission in the 21st century is the enterprise of the worldwide Church. Even as the mantle of leadership in the global Church is being passed from the North to the South, we enthusiastically embrace the opportunity and the challenges of becoming servants to the global Church as it reaches out to the least-reached peoples of the world.
The Scripture not only gives us hope but spurs us on: “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’” (Revelation 7:9-10).
Maranatha!
Dick McClain is the new president and CEO of The Mission Society. To read more about the Mission Society’s 25th anniversary, click here.
by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: Letters
Faithful service
It is so hard to think about Good News without Jim Heidinger! (But 28 years ago, it was so hard to lose him from East Ohio Conference. Okay, I was wrong!) What a tremendous influence he has had churchwide. His faithful service to his Lord has been a steady guiding light for many of us within the denomination. There is not much more to be said to what was covered in the July/August Good News magazine, but please add my humble thanks to him. For many of us who have been with him in the struggles and joys over the years, have seen God place new faces in many of the groupings we are involved in. It truly is a new day and we look forward to what God will accomplish in these difficult times.
Dottie Chase
Former Good News Board Member
Gracious spirit
Jim Heidinger is a man filled with a gentle and gracious spirit. He is genuinely concerned about other people and always ready to give a listening ear. Many would understand that he is a man of deep convictions but perhaps fewer would know of his gift of encouragement as he relates to individuals. Many would perceive that he is a strong intellect but fewer would know that he is a devout believer filled with compassion. Many would believe he is passionate about church renewal but fewer would know that he is extremely committed to his local church and its ministry. I long for his faithful, gentle, warm and devout spirit to be multiplied in the lives of those of us who know and love him. May his retirement years be fruitful and joyful!
Bishop Al Gwinn
North Carolina Annual Conference
What a ride
It seemed like just yesterday that my late wife, Virginia Law Shell, was attending that crucial board meeting. She called me and said that if [Good News founder] Chuck Keysor resigned, she thought that Jim Heidinger should be the new president. Chuck did and you did! What a ride it has been for all of us, but especially for you. There is no question that you changed the tone and the influence of Good News from the beginning of your tenure. You can honestly say that you had had a fundamental role in saving the denomination from itself during this more than a quarter century.
It has been a privilege for me to share a part of that journey with you. You can be certain that Virginia would say the same if she were here. And she would be very pleased with herself for her part in your selection for the job.
Don Shell
Lifetime Good News Board Member
What you represent
It is hard for me to even think about my ministry dating back to the early 1980s without also reflecting on you because of who you are, what you represent and what you have done have been so influential for me. As a young pastor, I found in Good News not only an encouragement to stand fast, but also a community within which I could stand secure. During my years on the Good News board, you modeled for me what grace under fire and steadfast of purpose and conviction without either cynicism or malice looked like. Some manage to reflect that kind of spirit during during brief sprints, but you have sustained it throughout an ultra-marathon.
Dick McClain
President, The Mission Society
by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: A closer look at Three Simple Rules
By Les Longden
General Conference 2008 launched a major push from the Council of Bishops and the program boards of the United Methodist Church to transform our denomination by teaching and practicing the “Wesleyan view of the world.” To this end, Bishop Reuben P. Job’s book Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living (Abingdon Press, 2007) has been widely endorsed as a “blueprint” for the Wesleyan way of living.
Many conferences have sent copies of it to every pastor and congregation as a means to recover the three general rules of early Methodist societies. A good number of local churches are using the book in study groups. Study guides have been made available from the General Board of Discipleship and the Reuben P. Job Center for Leadership Development. Sermons on the three rules are appearing on church websites and pastors’ blogs.
What are we to make of all this? I am skeptical about such a programmed institutional push on one interpretation of The General Rules. As a denomination, we have a long history of declaring Quadrennial emphases, launching new curricula, and inventing new programs to shore up our declining effectiveness and confused identity as a church.
Is this emphasis upon reclaiming one element of early Methodist discipline a genuine return to the sources that launch us forward—a resourcement, as the scholars call it—or just one more campaign of slogans to treat the symptoms of our malaise? Such questions require a theological and spiritual analysis of Bishop Job’s book in order to open a genuine conversation about the role and character of spiritual discipline in the Wesleyan way of life. Such a conversation might lead beyond our old pragmatic habits of pillaging our past for present purposes.
Job’s book is the first commentary on The General Rules in 100 years. Since it is a popular treatment rather than an academic one, it should not be held to a high scholarly standard. Still, written by a bishop of the UM Church, and endorsed by the Council of Bishops, this widely-distributed book exercises a teaching function that is worthy of our careful attention.
The conversation might best be opened by reading Bishop Job’s book side-by-side with the original General Rules, then asking the following questions: Does Three Simple Rules provide an accurate paraphrase of the original rules for our contemporary setting? Does it capture the intention and spirit of early Methodism, the real dynamics of its internal discipline? What does it discard as well as carry forward? When changes are made to the original rules, do they maintain the integrity of the original practices in the process of adapting them to the present? Most importantly, does the theological updating offered by Three Simple Rules maintain continuity with the core claims of early Methodism regarding God’s saving work in Christ?
When the two texts are compared it is immediately obvious that a great deal of content in the original is left behind, and further, that the context and intent of the original is ignored (if not silenced).
The General Rules begins with a description of people “deeply convinced of sin, and earnestly groaning for redemption.” Three Simple Rules begins with contemporary anxiety over a “fast-paced, frenzied, and complex world” where “we search for a way to overcome the divisiveness that…leaves us wounded and incomplete.” The language of sin is transposed into a worry that “the path we are on is not healthy or morally right.” The earnest desire to participate in God’s salvation found in the original document becomes a moralistic appeal in Three Simple Rules to “live more and more as Jesus lived” and thus accomplish “the transformation of the world.”
The compelling reason for the gathering together of early Methodists, according to The General Rules, was to be “united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.” Three Simple Rules restates this purpose in astonishingly utilitarian form: “What was it that bound them together in a common endeavor that challenged and transformed them into a holy and righteous movement? They needed and obviously found some instrument that, when used, brought them to a place of transformation.”
The instrumentalist and pragmatic slant of Three Simple Rules is its most worrisome aspect. The first sentence of the book claims, “There are three simple rules that have the power to change the world.” Such transformational language continues throughout, touting the rules as working “wonders in transforming the world.” In stark contrast, Wesley speaks of Methodists as a “company of people having the form of and seeking the power of godliness.” For him The General Rules are a “form of life” that is a necessary, but not sufficient, means to the end. In his sermons he can even use The General Rules as the primary example of the dead formal religion of which Methodists should be wary!
Two-thirds of the way through the book, Bishop Job pauses for a qualification: “We practice the rules; but God does the transforming.” Nevertheless, the emphasis throughout is placed so strongly on what human effort can accomplish with these rules, that it distorts Wesley’s deeper theological vision.
Three Simple Rules also eliminates Wesley’s conviction that the Rules were a means of accountability “that it may the more easily be discerned whether [class members] are indeed working out their own salvation.”
In The General Rules, each specific rule is prefaced with a statement of overarching purpose: “It is expected of all who desire to continue in these societies that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation.”
This expectation assumes that those attempting to keep the rules are in a covenant of accountability with each other, “united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.”
Bishop Job’s version cuts away the thrice-repeated statement and leaves the three rules as free-standing principles wielded by individuals freely exercising spiritual practices which must be “constructed differently for each of us because each of us is unique.” This is a clear example of the abandonment of early Methodist communal discipline for contemporary expressivist individualism.
In Three Simple Rules, all mention of salvation and accountability is muted and minimized. The Rules now become guidelines for practicing contemporary inclusivist pluralism and religious individualism. Indeed, the Rules are explained as a kind of conflict management technique.
It is argued that all our conflicts will be miraculously turned into “common ground” and a “common faith” if we just agree to “do no harm.” We prevent this kind of unity, Job claims, if we allow “loyalty to a theological position to trump our loyalty to Jesus Christ.” It is confounding to conclude that the description of “loyalty to Jesus Christ” is not, in itself, a “theological position.”
We are told that if all parties in conflict agree to be nice to each other, “we find that good and solid place to stand where together we can seek the way forward in faithfulness to God.” Apparently, divided parties must abandon their truth claims as being harmful before they can begin to search for the truth about God. This is the all-too-familiar tactic of the modern theological mind that believes the truth is yet to be discovered in a dialogue where theological commitments are left at the door.
We can surely agree with Wesley that we should “do no harm” to those with whom we disagree. Furthermore, we can affirm that disagreeing on matters of principal is not doing “harm.” Unfortunately, Job’s interpretation of the “do no harm” rule entails uncertainty and tentativeness about Christian truth. Wesley and the early Methodists were not shy about truth claims. They saw the Rules as a way of contending within the community for faithfulness and truth-telling so that disciples “must give an account” and members must “admonish” each other of “error.” Sometimes, for the integrity of the community’s identity, the judgment must be made that some have “no more place among us.”
In addition to cutting away Wesley’s defining purpose, Three Simple Rules truncates the Rules themselves. Whereas the original first Rule stated, “do no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced,” and then went on to articulate certain contemporary “evils,” Bishop Job reduces it to the first three words. The only “evils” named, without using that word, are disagreement and conflict. A similar reductionism is seen at work in the third Rule.
Bishop Job changes the original wording of the third Rule: “attending upon all the ordinances of God.” Contending that “ordinances” is a “strange word to our ears” he opts for a softer contemporary version: “staying in love with God.” The contrast between the two versions is instructive. The original assumes that the seeker after God must be immersed in all the “means of grace”—i.e., those spiritual practices of the church which mediate God’s grace in ways that form and nurture disciples. The revision, while mentioning the same list, repeatedly asserts that we modern folks “name our spiritual disciplines differently,” and all mention of accountability in participation is dropped.
Is the attempt to retrieve The General Rules a step in the direction of recovering a “rule of life” for the Wesleyan Way? Or is it a paraphrase of those Rules for the status quo agenda revealing more about contemporary institutional worries than original Methodism?
We must not forget that The General Rules are just one resource within a larger ecology of five documents which make up our United Methodist Doctrinal Standards. These five are listed in our Discipline as Articles of Religion, Confession of Faith, Sermons, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, and The General Rules. The Rules do not stand alone in our tradition, and are misread apart from this cluster of resources.
On a more positive note, Three Simple Rules does re-introduce us to a neglected part of our tradition. This may be an important service to the church by stimulating the writing of a serious commentary. More than one renewal has been sparked in church history by reclaiming relics and releasing their authentic renewing power.
We should be thankful that Bishop Job has drawn forth from our heritage a text that has too long been forgotten. He has provided the occasion to begin a conversation. To fail to take up the conversation, and to settle for a merely popular and programmatic presentation of the Rules, would be to dishonor both our tradition and Bishop Job.
Les Longden is Associate Professor of Evangelism & Discipleship at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary.
by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: Priming the pump for a miracle
By B.J. Funk
If the smell of gastric juices and dead fish didn’t get to Jonah, the seaweed would. Inside the dark belly of this fish, with saltwater swirling over his nose as he gasped for air, Jonah realized he was not in the middle of some other fisherman’s large fish story! This was his story, and it was getting pretty grim.
After he refused to obey God, Jonah was thrown overboard and found his home to be the belly of a fish. This wasn’t just any old fish cruising around the Mediterranean Sea. It was a God-ordained, divinely appointed, chosen fish! Jonah 1:17 reads, “The Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.”
Jonah lets us in on his desperation in Jonah 2:7 when he says, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you.” Jonah realized God was serious, and certainly Jonah had nowhere else to turn.
Do you have a child living in the belly of a fish? You can always tell a belly dweller because God wants him to go one way, yet he goes another. He swims in the darkness of financial distress, poor judgment, and bad choices. Alcohol or drug consumption fill in the endless holes in his life, and his environment is not anything close to what you would use to create a miracle. In fact, sometimes you want to give up. The fish smell is too musty and rank for your senses, the dampness too moldy, and the darkness too grave. Imagine, however, what God can do with your loved one in these conditions. Sometimes, we need to allow the darkness to do its work. We need to allow it to prime the pump for a miracle!
What imprisonment of darkness has God allowed to swallow your family member in order that they might pray, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you”? God can get our attention when he sends what appears to be impending disaster into our situations. The sailors didn’t toss Jonah into a thick bed of sweet-smelling roses. They tossed him into the frightening darkness of the sea.
What about Joseph? His brothers were jealous of him because Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons. Joseph was hated by his brothers. When he was seventeen, those brothers threw him into a cistern and then sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelites going to Egypt. He spent the next 13 years in prison as an Egyptian slave, but at age 30, by God’s miraculous intervention, Joseph became governor of Egypt. God used a cistern and a cell to prime the pump for a miracle in Joseph’s life. Darkness rubbed away the spoiled child, producing a giant of a man.
In 1784, reprobate Captain John Newton attempted to steer his ship to safety during a dark, violent storm. It was this storm that he later referred to as his “great deliverance.” When it seemed like his ship was doomed for certain disaster, John Newton saw his life ebbing away. In desperation he cried out, “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Grace fell upon his ship and upon his life. Later, he expressed his gratitude with words that led to the song “Amazing Grace.” The dark fear of disaster at sea brought a salvation miracle to John Newton’s life.
In each situation, God got someone’s attention through darkness. Jonah decided to obey God, Joseph grew up, and John Newton cried out to God.
Why does it take our life “ebbing away” for us to call out to God? What is it about darkness that primes the pump for an upcoming miracle? In Genesis 1:2-3, we read that in the beginning of creation, darkness was over the face of the earth; yet the Spirit of God was hovering. Out of this darkness, God said, “Let there be light.”
Creating miracles in the midst of darkness, terrible smells, and conditions that are less than perfect is nothing new for God. Look at the marvelous miracle God performs when he creates a baby in the darkness and dampness of a mother’s womb. What about the darkness and dampness of a musty stable, with donkey and sheep smells permeating the air? From this darkness came the miracle of our Savior’s birth. Then, there is the dark, damp tomb in which the crucified Christ lay. From this darkness, the living Christ arose! In each case, darkness preceded the miracle and primed the pump for new life.
If you have someone living in darkness now, whether in the belly of a fish, in a cistern, cell, or in a storm, you can know that the pump is being primed for a miracle of grace. Take encouragement in these words from Exodus 20:21: “…Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”
B.J. Funk (bjfunk@bellsouth.net) is associate pastor of Central United Methodist Church in Fitzgerald, Georgia. She is the author of The Dance of Life: Invitation to a Father Daughter Dance, a regular contributor to the South Georgia Advocate, and a frequent speaker at women’s retreats.
by Steve | Oct 28, 2009 | Archive - 2009, Magazine Articles
Archive: United Methodism’s Discerning Vote
By Rob Renfroe
The United Methodist News Service has published an article declaring that the 23 proposed amendments regarding the Worldwide Nature of the Church and the proposed Amendment 1 regarding membership eligibility have all failed. Though not all of the annual conferences have released their tallies, there are not enough votes in the unreporting conferences to change the outcome.
What do these results mean? Something unusual and important, that’s for sure.
Rarely have proposed constitutional amendments adopted by General Conference failed to garner the necessary two-thirds endorsement of the annual conferences. Yet, the 24 referenced above did not even come close to passage.
Proposed Amendment 1. This amendment would have removed the pastor’s responsibility to discern a person’s readiness for membership. Clergy would have been required to receive any person willing to recite our membership vows even if the pastor knew that he/she did not hold to the Christian faith or had no desire to live a Christian lifestyle.
When all the votes are tabulated, proposed Amendment 1 is likely to end up very close to 50 percent for and 50 percent against—far short of the 66.67 percent necessary for ratification. No doubt, some will use these results to make the same case they tried to make in Fort Worth—that we are a divided church when it comes to the practice of homosexuality and we should no longer say that it is incompatible with Christian teaching; and that we should admit how divided we are as a church and state that good people can differ on this issue.
It will be most interesting (actually humorous) if groups like the Reconciling Movement try to make that case on the basis of Amendment 1. Why? Because in every annual conference we were told by advocates that this amendment was not about homosexuality—that it was simply offering a warm welcome to those who wanted to be received into the church.
So, which is it? Was Amendment 1 not about the practice of homosexuality? Or was it a cleverly written piece of legislation, claiming to be about one thing when in reality it was pushing an agenda that the church has explicitly rejected for almost 40 years?
What does the failure of Amendment 1 mean for us? First, that important matters having to do with the church’s constitution deserve more time at General Conference. This amendment received less than five minutes of debate on the last day of the conference, as delegates were rushing to finish their deliberations. Later, some delegates reported that they had no idea about the true agenda behind this amendment.
Second, United Methodists trust their pastors. Radicals have created a myth that there are pastors who are using their authority in the most capricious and unkind ways, preventing sincere seekers from the ministry and the membership of the church. But persons in the pew, not motivated by a political agenda, know differently. They know their pastors to be principled and compassionate persons who can be trusted to open the doors of the church to all who come in good faith.
Third, laypersons want membership to matter. Membership is not reserved for the sinless or those who have “gone on to perfection.” But the vows of membership do call for a commitment to the Christian faith as revealed in the Scriptures. And the person in the pew knows that once the vows can mean whatever any person wants them to mean, in actuality, they come to mean nothing—and so does church membership.
Fourth, the defeat of this amendment means that many people organized and worked and were willing to take a controversial stand publicly—many in conferences where there might be a heavy price to pay for speaking out. We owe them our deepest gratitude.
The proposed Worldwide Nature of the Church amendments. It appears that these 23 amendments will be defeated by a margin of 60 percent against and 40 percent for. What their defeat does not mean is that those promoting these amendments were ill-intentioned. Many of those behind these proposals were motivated by a sincere desire to help the church in the developing world to be more effective in its ministry. And neither does their defeat mean that we should not revisit the question of how the church should be structured in the future. We should.
But to fail by such a large margin means that clergy and laypersons, conservatives and liberals, northerners and southerners all found the proposed amendments unacceptable. Some, no doubt, voted against them because they feared the additional bureaucracy and costs required by the new structure. Others questioned why this strategy was being proposed by a mainly American committee, rather than originating with leaders in Africa and Asia. Still others simply could not grasp why we were being asked to approve a structure that had not been fully spelled out—a study committee will make its recommendation at General Conference 2012. We were being asked to pre-authorize the General Conference to adopt a structure without knowing what that structure would be—or what it would do to the church. In essence, we were being asked to sign a blank check. And you simply don’t do that unless you have complete trust in the person to whom you’re giving the check.
And that’s what it comes down to—trust. Many of us simply could not trust that our permission to re-structure the church would not be used by a political faction to promote their single-issue agenda. Though perhaps not intended by the originators of these amendments, there was the suspicion that the creation of separate regional conferences, each with the authority to amend The Book of Discipline, would lead to the exclusion of the international delegates’ input regarding the most controversial and divisive matters before the church.
Radicals, who once thought that the marginalized around the world would adopt their liberal positions, have found that African and Asian delegates are more motivated by biblical faithfulness than what progressives think of as political correctness. And the progressives have become tired of these developing world delegates impeding their agenda of ordaining practicing gays and marrying homosexual couples.
Many of us in the reform and renewal movements feel certain that radicals would attempt to use this new structure to lessen the voice and the vote of delegates where the church is uncompromisingly biblical, most diverse, and actually growing by leaps and bounds. We felt, and still do, that the church in the United States will be better with their full inclusion and input, not worse.
What does it all mean? It means your prayers, your giving, your organizing, and your faithfulness made a difference—and it will be needed again. You can be sure of that.
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
The Imploding Episcopalians
By Riley B. Case
Did we miss something or did the Episcopal General Convention, meeting in mid-July, just thumb its nose at the rest of the Christian world?
The week started off with Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori declaring it is “heresy” to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner’s prayer of repentance. In her opening address to the conference, Jefferts asserted that it is “the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”
That particular remark would wipe out most Protesants of the world, including almost all of the United Methodists. Indeed, it declares as unacceptable almost all the rest of Christianity. That is, of course, assuming that “heresy” conveys its traditional meaning as teaching opposed to the authorized doctrinal standards of the church. This is from the denomination that gave us Bishop James Pike and Bishop John Shelby Spong, real-for-sure heretics who found it difficult to affirm anything true in historic Christianity. One wonders what Schori appeals to as “authorized doctrinal standards.”
But there was more. Having put down (through the presiding bishop) Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Lutherans, and all who believe that persons can be born again individually and reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, the convention then set itself on a course in opposition to the stated convictions of the world-wide Anglican communion by a forthright declaration that gays and lesbians were now eligible for “any ordained ministry,” including the office of bishop (Resolution D025). Anglican archbishops across the world, meeting in special session this past February, had specifically pled with churches (notably the American and Canadian churches) to maintain a moratorium on consecrating any more openly gay bishops. This followed the uproar caused by the election of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire to bishop in 2003. That election caused a serious disruption in the relationship of Anglican provinces and spurred four American dioceses and dozens of congregations, with the encouragement of overseas bishops, to separate themselves from The Episcopal Church.
The action to approve gays and lesbians for “any ordained ministry” also revoked the self-imposed Episcopal pledge to use “restraint” in approving another bishop in a same-sex relationship. The American bishops then sought to justify the action by arguing in a letter to the Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, that the action to open all offices to gays and lesbians was not a repudiation to earlier pledges for restraint, but only a description of where the American church stood at the moment.
In response the Rt. Rev. Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, wrote in the United Kingdom’s The Times that the American bishops’ letter was “double-speak” and that the Episcopal Church’s action marked a clean break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.
But the convention was not yet through. Anglican archbishops had also pled with the Americans and Canadians not to develop prayers and liturgy for same-sex unions. Rowan Williams had specifically appealed to delegates before the Anaheim convocation: “I hope and pray there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us farther apart.”
But by a bishops’ vote of 104-30, the convention authorized the preparation of prayers and liturgy for same-sex unions.
And then finally, to show just how much they wished to identify themselves with far-left causes, the convention debated resolutions condemning the United States and Israel.
Special kinship. United Methodists have a special kinship with the Anglican Church. The Wesleys were Anglican until the day they died. Methodism takes much of its ritual from Anglican rituals and, of course, the Articles of Religion are taken from the Anglican Articles of Religion. We have more hymns in our hymnal by Anglicans than any other denomination (including Methodists). We need the Anglicans.
And America needs a strong Episcopal Church. The American Anglicans (they became “Episcopalian” after the Revolutionary War) were the first church in America. Even after it was decimated by the Revolutionary War because of its British connections, the Episcopal Church was still, with the Baptists, the third largest church in America.
Since then it has been the church of the presidents and of the leaders of the nation. It has been a prestigous church and a church of great wealth. It has the potential for a great spiritual impact for good.
The impact, however, has been severely compromised and the glory is more in the past than in the present. Episcopalians (at least bishops and clergy) in recent times have bought into theological and political liberalism. According to a recent study by Public Religion Research, only United Church of Christ clergy are more liberal than Episcopalians. In the survey, 72 percent of the Episcopalian clergy support the ordination of practicing gays and lesbians (compared with only 32 percent of United Methodist clergy).
In the question of whether or not the Bible is inerrent, a higher percent of Episcopalian clergy said no than any other denomination.
ACNA. In June, the former Episcopal churches who have felt betrayed by a church in denial of biblical authority formed themselves into the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). A number of overseas Anglican churches have indicated they will recognize ACNA. This, of course, can only wreak more havoc in the worldwide Anglican communion for whom any kind of schism is the worst of all travesties. Meanwhile the Episcopal Church has initiated dozens of lawsuits over church properties.
So instead of being a force for spiritual stability in America, the Episcopal Church is becoming known for its infighting, its lawsuits, and its shrinking membership (in the past two years the Episcopal Church has lost nearly 4 percent of its members). From its standing as the 3rd largest denomination in America, the Episcopal Church has slipped to 15th. Its U.S. membership of 2 million pales in comparison to the 77 million Anglican members worldwide. It is now a minor player on the world scene.
And so the question is: did we miss something or did the Episcopal General Convention just disconnect itself from the rest of the Christian world? And, do the United Methodists have something to learn from this fiasco?
Stay tuned.
Riley B. Case is a retired member of the North Indiana Conference, assistant executive director of the Confessing Movement, and a member of the Good News Board of Directors. He is also the author of Evangelical and Methodist: A Popular History (Abingdon). This article was originally written for “We Confess,” the Confessing Movement’s e-mail newsletter. It was adapted and reprinted by permission.
