by Steve | Jan 11, 2021 | Jan-Feb 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Former NFL center Jason Brown with his children (from left) Judah, Jason, Olivia, Noah, and Tre. First Fruits Farm, Browns’ farm in Louisburg, N.C., donates a portion of its harvest to the Society of St. Andrew. Photo courtesy of the Browns.
By Jim Patterson –
Potatoes connect former NFL player Jason Brown and part-time nurse and mother-of-four Lindsey Whitley, though they don’t know each other. Whitley’s home in Indian Trail, North Carolina, is about 200 miles from Brown’s farm in Louisburg. Potatoes from Brown’s 1,000-acre North Carolina property end up as potato soup on the Whitley dinner table through the work of the Society of St. Andrew. The Virginia-based non-profit works to share healthy food and reduce food waste.
The food chain in the U.S. has built-in waste, said the Rev. Michael Binger, a United Methodist and North Carolina regional director for the Society of St. Andrew. Farmers routinely enter into contracts to provide less food than they usually grow, in order to guard against weather and other factors that might result in smaller harvests than expected, Binger said. They try to sell the excess. If they can’t, the Society of St. Andrew seeks the donation of the crops that would otherwise be headed for landfills as garbage.
“Nationwide we do about 30 million pounds of produce a year,” Binger said. Most of the food is distributed in the southeastern U.S. Foundation grants and donations from churches and individuals fund the organization.
“The great thing about what we do, it’s tangible,” Binger said. “You can see the truck coming to the church parking lot and know you’ve distributed 120,000 servings of produce to your community. … You can touch and see and know the impact that you’ve had right around you.”
First Fruits Farm was founded by former NFL center Jason Brown in 2013, after he ditched the career that made him a millionaire. He played seven seasons for the Baltimore Ravens and St. Louis Rams before walking away at the age of 29 from lucrative offers to continue playing.
In 2012, Jason and wife, Tay, packed up their family and moved back to North Carolina, buying the land that became First Fruits Farm. Unlike other farms that donate excess food to the hungry, First Fruits donates almost all of its harvest every year. Donations and rental income from an event hall help to pay the bills.
Volunteers help maintain and gather the bounty. First Fruits Farm estimates it has provided more than 1.6 million servings of fresh produce since 2014. Crops include sweet corn, potatoes, snap beans, cabbage, pumpkins, tomatoes, and peppers.
Binger said his ministry getting food to people who need it is rewarding. “I get to see everybody at their absolute best, when I know that God is working through them and shining through them. The farmers are at their most generous. The volunteers are at their happiest and most giving. I get our donors at their sacred place. I get the agencies at their most grateful. At every step along the way, there is the joy of God in what we do.”
Jim Patterson is a UM News reporter in Nashville, Tennessee.
by Steve | Jan 11, 2021 | Jan-Feb 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Songteller, Chronicle Books, 2020.
By Steve Beard –
I spent the holidays with Dolly Parton.
Well, not literally. Like everything else in 2020, it was all virtual – and it was a whirlwind.
Throughout her rhinestone-studded career, Dolly has sold over 100 million albums, starred in countless movies and TV specials, launched an extraordinary book-gifting program, opened a theme park that attracts more than 3 million visitors per year, and has written over 3,000 songs. More than 200 of her songs have been covered by other artists.
One of twelve children, Parton was born in a log cabin in East Tennessee without electricity. At 74 years old, her literal rags-to-riches story continues to inspire fans across the spectrum around the world. Despite finding tremendous popularity under the bright lights of country music, Dolly’s magnetic folksy appeal has always extended far beyond Nashville.
During the holiday season, she was featured in a Netflix musical, released a joyous Christmas album, seemingly appeared on all the network television holiday specials, and accepted the “Hitmaker” award at the Billboard Women in Music ceremony. Oh yeah, she also helped fund the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.
“I may look like a show pony,” Dolly has famously said, “but I am a workhorse.”
Also released over the holidays was Dolly’s book Songteller: My Life in Lyrics – a 380-page collection of photographs and behind-the-scenes insights from dozens of her most well-known songs. At thirteen years old, none other than Johnny Cash introduced her to the crowd at the Grand Ole Opry. Dolly provides backstory snippets regarding famous collaborations with Porter Wagoner, Willie Nelson, Carl Perkins, Merle Haggard, and Kenny Rogers.
Fans know that Dolly had to make a heartbreaking decision to turn down Elvis’s request to record – and own the publishing rights to – her megahit, “I Will Always Love You.” “I cried my eyes out, because I could just hear Elvis singing it,” she confessed. “But sometimes you just have to stand your ground.”
Dolly has the untutored gift to honor her backwoods traditional roots and simultaneously stretch her unique wings of independence. You can’t help but grin when she writes about hanging out at Studio 54 – the flamboyant 1970s New York City disco night club: “Everybody was dancing. I didn’t…. I’d just sit on the couch and talk to Andy Warhol.” What a sight that must have been.
Behind the razzle-dazzle showbiz appearance and savvy business mind beats an unapologetic heart of faith. Although she capitalizes on her popularity, she offers a strong note of caution regarding our culture’s off-kilter obsession with celebrity.
“Every day, I ask God to help me lift people up and to glorify Him. That’s my mission, to lift mankind up if I can and to make people happy,” she writes in Songteller. “If there’s any light shining on me, I’d rather direct it at Him. I get a little scared sometimes when people act like I’m someone they’re worshipping…. I don’t believe in idol worship of any kind. People often do that to show business people and that’s scary to me. That’s when I say, ‘No look higher. Look up there. It ain’t me. Let me radiate His light, so that people see Him, not me.’”
Dolly grew up attending services at her Grandpa Jake’s House of Prayer. “He preached about Hell so hot that you could feel the heat,” she recalls. While it may have been all fire from the pulpit, Grandpa Jake provided young Dolly an indispensable platform to play the songs she was writing. “I feel like I’m closest to God when I write. I have to leave myself open for the songs to come in or go out,” she writes. “But God doesn’t hand you everything. You have to do the work.”
During songwriting retreats, she prays and fasts – for many days. “If you fast, it cleanses your body as well as your mind, so you can leave yourself more open to God,” she writes. “Fasting is awful. You’ve gotta pray hard, and you gotta have a lot of faith.” Despite the struggle, after several days, she senses a more fluid writing release in what she terms “God space” when lyrics begin to flow.
She humorously writes about a time when her musical family was playing at a different church in the mountains when they discovered the congregation practiced snake handling. “When those snakes came out, my daddy came running down the aisle, cussing the preacher in the middle of that church…. He was scared to death of snakes, and he didn’t believe in that kind of worship.”
One of the songs highlighted in the book is from her 1973 album, “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” It is a touching tribute to a Methodist minister and physician named Dr. Robert F. Thomas (1891-1980). Notoriously suspicious of outsiders, the folks living in the hills and hollers of the Smoky Mountains did not always greet Dr. Thomas with open arms. “A lot of them would hold a gun on him,” writes Parton. “If my wife dies or my daughter dies, you’re going to die, too,” they would say. Thankfully, it never went beyond empty threats doled out in fear.
“I was born on January 19, and it was snowing,” writes Dolly. “When I was trying to be born, Mom was having trouble so Daddy had to ride his horse out to Pittman to get Dr. Thomas to ride with him back to our place.” With no money, the Parton family paid the doctor with a sack of cornmeal.
Dolly never forgot the open-hearted ministry of Dr. Thomas. In her song, she called him a “mighty, mighty man [who] enriched the lives of everyone that ever knew him … a man the Lord must have appointed to live among us mountain folks in eastern Tennessee.”
In addition to his medical ministry, Dr. Thomas also pastored a congregation. “I still remember that antiseptic smell in his little clinic by the church,” she writes in Songteller. “He was there to save those poor people of the mountains, and he was kind of a savior to us.” If you visit Dollywood, she honors his legacy with a beautiful chapel on the premises named after Dr. Thomas. It hosts services every Sunday that the park is open.
When Dolly was young, a relative prophesized over her that she was going to do something special. She laid her hands on Dolly and said, “This child is anointed.” Not understanding, Dolly asked, “Mama, what does ‘anointed’ mean?” Her mom replied, “That probably means that you’re going to do great things for the Lord and do good things in life.”
There is indeed something very special about Dolly. Many years ago, I met her at a press conference for Joyful Noise, a film she did with Queen Latifah. “Are we kin?” she asked me. “I beg your pardon?” I replied. “Are we related? Where are you from?” she pressed.
Here I was standing face to face with one of my all-time favorite performers and I was tongue-tied and muttered, “Well, I’ve lived in Kentucky for 20 years, but I was raised in Southern California and my family is from Pennsylvania and Iowa.”
Undeterred, after the press conference, she came right back at me with that trademark sassy determination: “I still think we might be kin!”
Her radiant smile and effervescent spirit had me almost wondering if she might be right. She is a national treasure and a trainload of joy.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
![Creating in Chaos]()
by Steve | Jan 11, 2021 | Jan-Feb 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Awakening Newborn Stars. Lying inside our home galaxy, the Milky Way, this Herbig–Haro object is a turbulent birthing ground for new stars in a region known as the Orion B molecular cloud complex, located 1,350 light-years away. Photo courtesy of NASA.
By Jessica LaGrone –
2020 was a mess.
It was a global health mess, an economic mess, a political mess. It messed up our events, our holidays, our plans, and our lives. Some lives were certainly more devastated than others, whether by illness or grief or financial devastation, but most people are emerging from 2020 a little battered, bruised, and tired of the unpredictable chaos in which we have been living.
Turning the page into the new year, 2021, feels almost like pausing a horror movie in the middle to grab a snack, then returning to wonder: “Is this story going to resolve, or will the horror only get worse in the next scene?”
We’ve certainly had our fill of mess in 2020. Most of us are crying: “Enough chaos, already! Let’s get back to the predictable, ordinary world we miss so much.” Instead of finishing the horror movie, many of us are tempted to change the channel entirely and see if there’s a syrupy, predictable RomCom on, something to distract and disengage.
What if chaos doesn’t have to lead to despair, but can lead to creativity? As those who worship the Creator God, we don’t have to look far to find reasons to engage rather than reject the mess we’ve been handed. Creating from chaos is a foundational part of who we are.
1. Chaos is often a sign that something new is emerging. We don’t have to look past page one of Scripture to find that chaos isn’t always a sign of disaster. It can actually signal a new start.
Genesis 1:2 tells us that even as God set about creating the universe we live in, “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” Tohu vavohu, the lyrical Hebrew words rhyme out the description: formless void.
This watery chaos, wild and waste, was the starting point of everything we know, everything we see, all because our Creator God has a gift for creating beauty from chaos. God forms order from chaos and fills emptiness. When He says: “Let there be light!” darkness vanishes, and ever since the light has shined in darkness and the dark has not overcome it.
God’s job description: order from chaos, fullness from emptiness, light from darkness, does not end on that first page. We find him engaged in these acts in every chapter of Scripture, and he’s still cleaning up chaos in every chapter of our lives. When Paul described it he got a bit dramatic: If anyone is in Christ… New Creation! (2 Corinthians 5:17) When Jesus comes onto the scene, it’s like our lives get turned back to page one. Chaos ordered, emptiness filled, darkness banished.
Here’s something worth holding onto, for everyone who will ever feel dark or danger, depression or deep distress, here’s where it becomes utterly clear on page one: darkness is not of God. It is separate from him. God is separate from the darkness, but he’s also present in it. He’s not frightened of it. He’s not afraid to walk right up to it and command it. Create from it. Darkness, which will haunt human history in many forms, is simply an ingredient to God. Chaos is something to be shaped and formed by him for the grander recipe to come.
For those who have come out of 2020 staggering and struggling, take heart: God is not confounded by chaos. When we see chaos, he sees the beginning of this original recipe: He simply sets about making all things new.
2. Chaos can inspire innovation. Einstein was supposed to have famously asked: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
He certainly practiced what he preached.
On the day Einstein died, a journalist who heard the news of the famous scientist’s death rushed to the genius’s office to capture the scene of his work on his last day on earth. The surviving photograph shows a desk hidden under crumpled, disorganized papers, a bookshelf half-filled with books stuffed in sideways. In short: a disaster area. This, from the man who gave us simple yet intricate formulas that explained the nature of the universe. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but it seems chaos and genius are next door neighbors too.
Psychologist Kathleen Vohs set out to research the question of whether a messy environment might spur more creativity, more problem solving, and more innovation than a spotless, sparkling workspace. She and her team organized two separate rooms in their laboratory. Or rather, they organized one and disorganized the other, with untidy, cluttered spaces and papers strewn about. Then they studied their subjects in two separate experiments.
In one, they determined whether the subjects selected an option marked “new” or “classic” (they were identical in description except for that one word.) Far more people in the messy environment selected the item described as “new.” The conclusion was that subjects surrounded by order chose convention, and those who were already disrupted by their environment chose novelty.
In the second experiment they gave subjects ping pong balls and asked them to brainstorm uses for them, listing as many functions for ping pong balls as they could come up with. While the subjects came up with the same number of results, the alternative uses named by those in messy rooms were much more creative and fresh in the odd uses they invented. It turns out that being subjected to chaos can actually make us more innovative and creative than an orderly environment.
You may be thinking: That’s definitely not me. I can’t work in a messy place. I need to have order, a clean desk, and everything sorted nicely before I can really begin. That may have been a great 2019 philosophy, but in 2020 it just wasn’t possible. Most of us experienced a disruption of our work, our ministries, our families.
The good news is that disruption is the mother of invention. The COVID-19 crisis has certainly given us plenty of chances to prove this hypothesis. Churches and ministries have had to go out of their way to discover new channels of ministry they would never have developed unless their normal routines were disrupted. Perhaps we can learn something from having the status-quo yanked out from under us. Chaos gives us the impetus we need to be creative, to launch new initiatives in new ways.
The starry night outside of Shahmirzad, located in the north of Iran and on the southern slopes of the Alborz Mountains. Photo by Manouchehr Hejazi.
3. You (yes you!) are creating from chaos all the time. If you are human, you are creative. You may not identify wholeheartedly with that title. Maybe you can’t even draw a stick figure or make an omelet. But as we walk through each day, we are all taking the vast world of raw material we live in and making something of it, making a life for ourselves out of what we have been handed.
Since only God creates something from nothing, the rest of us are forced to use what lies in front of us. Our raw materials include not only the good and gilded creation that he handed us, but also the tarnished elements of the fallen world that we live in, touched by sin and tinged with imperfection. Our task at times seems like spinning straw into gold – uncovering glimmers of the original God-created shine and weaving them into what we make of the world. Other times, we end up unweaving the tapestry – spinning the gold back into straw – makers of mistakes, wrong opinions, wrongs, and hurts.
None of us gets by using only the easy ingredients, the appetizing ones that everyone puts on their list. It’s like one of those cooking shows where they give you a nice basket of ingredients and you begin making beautiful, tasty plans for, what? A key lime pie? A chocolate torte? and then, Boom! The secret surprise ingredient is thrown in. Sardines! Put that in your cake! Plot twist.
Many of us have experienced the same as we sort out the ingredients we’re handed in life. We read the recipe carefully, slowly combining what we think will work best, when all of a sudden: A new ingredient is thrown at us! A child with learning challenges. A career that never takes off the way we dreamed. A parent with dementia. A global pandemic. Plot twist! How will it all come out of the oven now?
We’re all making something of the basket we’ve been handed. Making decisions. Making opinions. Making mistakes. Whether you can carry a tune or draw a stick figure, the number of artists on earth is exactly equal to the population size. The question is no longer: are you a maker? But: What do you make of it all?
We are all making something of ourselves as we make this chaotic and messy world into something together. Consider the end of your day as compared to the beginning: What is in the world at dusk that was not there at dawn? A meal well prepared and enjoyed? A conversation? A compliment? A freshly mown lawn or a reassuring smile? All of these are creations. Less straw. More gold.
The chaos isn’t going anywhere. But neither is the God who twirls it beneath his fingers, kneading it deftly, making the most of the world he has made. Evening and morning: one more day. And it was good.
Jessica LaGrone is a United Methodist clergyperson and the Dean of Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary. Her books and studies include Namesake: When God Rewrites Your Story; Under Wraps; Broken and Blessed: How God Used One Imperfect Family to Change the World; Set Apart: Holy Habits of Prophets and Kings; and The Miracles of Jesus. The Rev. LaGrone’s latest book, Converting Chaos, is scheduled for release by Seedbed/Zondervan in 2022.
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by Steve | Jan 11, 2021 | Jan-Feb 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Original artwork by Sam Wedelich (www.samwedelich.com).
By Scott Sauls –
To the surprise of many, Jesus gave special, affirmational attention to the man Zacchaeus, who is identified in scripture as a chief tax collector (Luke 19:1-10). Because of his role as tax collector for the Roman treasury, Zacchaeus would have been hated by the members of his community. Tax collectors, and especially chief tax collectors, were known as what we might call white-collar thieves. These were men in power who made a habit of exploiting an unjust system – and specifically, the hardworking people living inside that system – for personal gain.
If you were a tax collector, government authorities would impose on you a quota for the amount of money you were to collect from citizens. Once your quota was satisfied, any further monies collected were yours to keep. This, of course, led most tax collectors to extort monies from citizens that were far above and beyond their actual tax burdens. To make matters worse, tax collectors lived opulent, self-indulgent lifestyles for all to see.
This helps us understand why tax collectors specifically were so despised in first-century Roman society. Who could feel anything but contempt for a powerful, self-serving crook?
We can safely assume that Zacchaeus had no one in Jericho he could identify as a friend or a fan. When he walked through the crowds and climbed up into a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus, he did so all alone (Luke 19:1-4). His aloneness in the tree seems to communicate his costly reality – one that is not uncommon for powerful people who’ve built their empires by taking advantage of others – though he has become rich, he has also become isolated.
Since first-century tax collectors were perhaps the most despised people in their communities, it is puzzling to observe how positively the Gospels seem to speak concerning them. In Luke’s gospel, for example, tax collectors are mentioned six times – including the account of Zacchaeus – and in every instance the posture toward them is positive. In chapter three, tax collectors are baptized into the family of God. In chapter five, the tax collector Matthew is welcomed by Jesus into his circle of twelve disciples. (Matthew would later become the writer of the first of the four gospel accounts.) In chapter seven, tax collectors warmly and inquisitively receive Jesus’ teaching. In chapter fifteen, tax collectors and sinners gather around Jesus to hear him teach. In chapter eighteen, Jesus tells a parable of a smug, self-righteous religious man (who is sent home condemned and rejected) and a humble, penitent tax collector (who is sent home forgiven and accepted). Finally, in the Zacchaeus account in chapter nineteen, this man who is chief tax collector receives the gifts of friendship and salvation from Jesus.
The world looks at the likes of Zacchaeus and wants to judge, reprimand, and punish. Jesus, on the other hand, moves toward him, calls him by name, and offers to eat with him. Looking up at this lonely crook, Jesus says, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5).
A Good Name Given. In the chapter of Luke’s gospel prior to the Zacchaeus account, another more virtuous rich man encounters Jesus – a man we have come to know as “the rich young ruler.” Unlike Zacchaeus, he is a religious man who has likely made his money through honest means. He has attended the temple faithfully, is a pillar of his religious and civic communities, and has, by his own account, kept the law of God since the days of his youth.
We are told Jesus looks at the rich man, loves him, and says to him that if he really wants to live, if he wants to be rich in the truest and most enduring sense of the word, he should sell all he has, give it to the poor, and then follow Jesus. Jesus does not offer this prescription to the young man because he has too much money, but because his money has too much of him. Recognizing that he has great wealth, the young ruler decides that Jesus’ invitation is too much. So he turns around and he walks away sad.
Following this encounter, Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! … [I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples respond incredulously, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus comforts them with a gentle answer, saying, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:24-30).
So possible that another rich man – the lowly tax collector, Zacchaeus – receives salvation on the spot as he responds to Jesus’ gentle, surprising invitation. “Zacchaeus! Hurry, come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Once in Zacchaeus’s house, Jesus declares, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:9-10).
Did you catch that? The very man society deems as unredeemable, Jesus identifies as a son of Abraham, the father of all who are faithful. Because this is what Jesus does: He takes a bad name and turns it into a good name. He says to the outsider, “You belong,” and to the outlaw, “Your sins will not be held against you,” and to the shame and regret that drove the sinner up into the tree alone, “I’m coming to your house today. And there, in your house and on your turf, Zacchaeus, I’m going to show you a love and a hospitality like you’ve never dreamed. For your house and your turf, from this point forward, are going to be my house and my turf. I’m going to rearrange your furniture. I’m going to be your new decorator – both interior and exterior. I’m not coming to your house so you can serve me, but so I can serve you; not so you can feed me, but so I can feed you; not so you can take me in, but so I can take you in.”
Jesus invites us to come to him as we are – “Zacchaeus! Come down from that tree. I’m coming to your house today!” – but this must never be mistaken for an invitation to stay as we are. As was the case with Zacchaeus, so it is with us.
When Jesus comes to our house, he doesn’t do so merely to take our side. He does so in order to take over. His “I do not condemn you” always leads to the imperative, “Now leave your life of sin.” He is not our consultant or adviser. He is not our personal assistant. He is our Lord. He has come to save us, and in saving us, to rearrange our furniture, to turn our house into his house, to become the interior and exterior designer of our lives, for the rest of our lives.
The Scandal of a Gentle Answer. The scandal around Jesus is a reality that distinguishes Christianity from every other world religion, as well as from all forms of human philosophy and politics: Jesus and Christianity do not discriminate between good people and bad people. Instead, Jesus and Christianity discriminate between humble people and proud people. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
Consider Jesus’ ancestry – members of faith’s “hall of fame” who were simultaneously and seasonally saint and sinner, virtuous and terrible, selfless and selfish, faithful and prodigal. Noah faithfully built the ark, and he also got drunk. Abraham believed the promises of God and walked courageously by faith, and he also handed his wife over to sex-hungry men twice in order to protect himself. Jacob became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, and he also lied to secure a birthright that belonged to his brother. Solomon was the wisest man on earth, and he was also a womanizer. Rahab valiantly protected the Israelite spies, and she was also a sex worker.
In the Gospels we again see this “simultaneously saint and sinner” dynamic among the friends of Jesus. A despised Samaritan is made the hero of one of Jesus’ most famous parables, as is a prodigal son who wishes his father dead and then squanders his inheritance on prostitutes and wild living. The religious folk disapproved of Jesus’ questionable friendships and regularly reprimanded him for being a glutton, a drunk, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Matt. 11:19). Though Jesus was never actually guilty of being a glutton, a drunk, a greedy man, or a sinner, he was suspected of all of these and more because of the friendships he kept. He was, we might say, guilty by association.
Indeed, Jesus readily availed himself as friend and Savior to outsiders and outlaws, to those regarded as losers and lowbrows and scumbags and pimps and whores and crooks. Maybe this is why the morally upright folk seemed to constantly take issue with Jesus. Maybe this is why they made a habit of criticizing him, discrediting him, belittling him, and becoming aggressive toward him. Maybe this is why they eventually killed him – because he welcomed sinners and ate with them.
But if you are Zacchaeus, instead of being repelled by Jesus, you are drawn irresistibly toward him. There is something about his kindness, something about his gentleness that makes Zacchaeus and others who, like him, have made a moral train wreck of their lives want to come out of the tree and have dinner with him. If you are Zacchaeus, you don’t say in shock, “Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Instead, you say with wonder and awe and gratitude, “Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with us.”
This is the fundamental difference between human religion and Christianity. All of us, without exception, are hopelessly stuck and isolated in sin and selfishness – unless and until Jesus looks up at us in the tree, calls us by name, and tells us to hurry up and come down to him because he is coming to our house today.
Understanding this humbling reality, and letting it get massaged deeply into our hearts so that it reorients our posture, is an essential key to becoming instruments of God’s grace, peace, and gentleness in a culture of outrage.
Scott Sauls is senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and author of numerous books. Taken from A Gentle Answer: Out Secret Weapon in an Age of Us Against Them by Scott Sauls. Copyright © 2020 by Scott Sauls. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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by Steve | Jan 11, 2021 | Jan-Feb 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Original art by Scott Erickson (www.scottericksonart.com).
By Elizabeth Glass Turner –
There are two kinds of propaganda: the true and the false. Propaganda is a charged word, evoking a range of associations depending on your nationality or job. Marketing professionals may harbor fondness for it; historians, less so. But people from a variety of studies will object to the assertion that there are only two kinds. You can read about seven kinds of propaganda, nine kinds of propaganda, all kinds of propaganda and examples of usage, though many of these categories are simply informal verbal fallacies used by advertisers. A celebrity uses this shampoo so you should, too. Nine out of ten users prefer this brand so you will, too (from a survey of people receiving compensation to test it, of course).
Historians may point out that effective political propaganda trades in half-truths and omissions. The word propaganda always brings luggage with it: baggage crammed with ideology, spilling out like stray socks from the bulging suitcase of a refugee fleeing a totalitarian regime. But half-truths and omissions are not good-faith communication; a shampoo manufacturer that claims its products are good for your hair – the hair remaining after you use it, anyway – will not last long. No, in the end, propaganda really does boil down to two types: the true and the false.
The question is whether or not hope is merely propaganda – even the true kind.
It’s an important time to grow in our individual and collective capacity to practice hope. And we do practice it; it’s not something that we simply possess or lack. Multiple crises on varying fronts demand that after we have processed shock, dismay, disbelief, and grief – we grow. We cannot regress. We cannot go back. We cannot shrink into shadows of ourselves permanently. Undoubtedly, there are doctors and nurses, grieving families and exhausted pastors who will find themselves starting awake with jolts of adrenaline for months to come, waves of post-traumatic stress reorienting internal terrain, shaping the landscape of the brain away from old well-worn paths.
Healing takes time. So does hope. And hope is much more than a feeling: it is knowledge. Hope is the knowledge, from experience, that after the worst day of your life, there will come a day when you laugh again. Hope is the knowledge, from experience, that following Jesus Christ will not prevent you from experiencing tragedy but may anchor you from utter spiritual ship-wreck in the face of tragedy. Hope is the knowledge of Jesus Christ when you have lost everything, and losing everything is never glamorously dramatic or inspiring, it’s only awful, ugly, profane.
Hope is never mere propaganda when it looks like this – it’s not marketable enough. Whoever believes Karl Marx’s sneering comment that “religion is the opiate of the people” – an existential placebo to alleviate suffering by lulling the masses into compliance with injustice – is little acquainted with religion that practices temperance, self-control, ascetism, generosity, and the profound power of non-violent resistance.
Religion is only an opiate when it is comfortable, and Christianity is not comfortable. If it is, then we are on autopilot; we are not hearing the calls and commands of Jesus Christ. As C.S. Lewis so famously noted, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
In our time, we cannot respond to the compelling call to practice hope if we settle for the comfortable instead. In North America, we avoid becoming people of hope in the church through convenience and through the cult of individualism. If disciples blur into convenience store consumers, we lose our ability to practice hope, because we cannot sit with discomfort for long. If disciples blur from members of the universal Body of Christ into individual monarchs of our own lives, we lose our ability to practice hope, because we cannot sit with others’ discomfort for long. And if we lose our ability to practice hope, then preaching hope becomes mere propaganda – an inspirational slogan or platitude given without the dogged discipline of practicing hope.
If we are to discipline ourselves to be people of hope – and that is who we are called to be – then we must begin the basic steps of identifying and rejecting convenience, and identifying and rejecting untethered individualism. These are the scales we practice everyday at the piano, plunking out notes up the keyboard and down again, shifting our fingers slightly, and restarting the journey up the keyboard and down again. These are the chords; this is how we practice hope. Choosing inconvenience and choosing to be rooted in the communion of saints settle the practice of hope into our muscle memory.
We don’t practice alone, of course; the very community toward which we pivot in our practice of hope has placed what we need within reach, in the shape of the liturgical calendar. People of hope grasp the oddity of timing; during Lent, a season of penance and fasting, a baby is born, and we celebrate; during Advent, a time to look toward the joy of Christmas, a loved one dies, and we mourn.
The rhythm of the liturgical calendar eludes reduction to propaganda because we are always remembering that we are dust, and to dust we shall return; and that Christ has come to bring life, and bring it abundantly. To gently detach from the lure of convenience is to hone discernment of the oddity of timing.
Jesus knew full well that sometimes people thought his timing was indecent. During a storm, he snored below deck; when a dear friend was dying, he delayed his trip and showed up late; when he showed up late, he seemed insensitive to the reality of decay, ordering a grave to be opened; when his family members summoned him, he ignored them; when a community meted out prescribed justice, he intervened in front of raised rocks on behalf of a half-naked woman; not long after a triumphal entry, he sweat blood while praying; when he had a chance to defend himself to authorities (surely a moment for public evangelization), he remained silent.
His timing, his hope seemed indecent, because he knew what others did not. For Christians, hope is never only an emotive feeling; sometimes, it is grim, bare-knuckled knowledge of the real. This truth inoculates us from the flippant recklessness of pseudo-hope. Hope is never denial of reality; it is practiced in the crucible of reality.
Jesus’ timing wasn’t self-conscious edginess for the sake of being a provocateur; the Way can’t be reduced to a publicity stunt. His antagonists frequently tried to catch him, to make a name for themselves by setting rhetorical or situational or physical traps. Sometimes they were certain they’d finally gotten him. On a more cosmic scale, early church literature provides vivid dramatic depiction of the exultant triumph in hell at the crucifixion of Christ collapsing as evil realizes that it has taken the bait and brought its own doom upon its head – the sulfurous hordes clamoring for the gates to be barred before the prince of peace can enter but too late – the lamb worthy to harrow hell arrives, thundering.
The dramatic imagining of this shocked, frantic scene conveys what we need to know: evil does not have the luxury of ultimate hope, but sometimes, the road to hope leads through hell. Hardly a marketable selling point. Yet the call to indecent hope remains.
When we mindfully examine and dislodge habits of convenience and individualism, when we practice the ability to sit with discomfort and locate ourselves in community and not our little shingled monarchies, we develop an ear to hear a different clock ticking – a different time being kept: the metro-nome of indecent hope.
To become people of hope is to become increasingly alert to the movements of the Holy Spirit. “Be alert,” scripture tells us. Of course, this doesn’t mean to be distracted and swayed by everything that crosses our desk, pulpit, computer screen, voice mail, or smartphone. It means being able to discern which things crossing our paths are pivotal to our development or to serving others. When we are alert in hope, we do not instinctively lean toward the convenient without examining our instinct; we do not lean instinctively toward individualist actions and values without examining our instinct. We do not give everything the same level of attention; we are wary of the messages pelting our way.
People of hope are not easily led up the garden path because we know there’s nothing new under the sun. We are not desperate for longshots because we are settled in the reality of Jesus Christ, who was and is and is to come. We are not quick to believe everything because it is in the lamb of God that we live and move and have our being.
Followers of Jesus practice hope, and in practicing hope, we improve our stance. Skilled martial artists assess each others’ stance to find openings – leverage for combat advantage. The basic starting position in most martial arts provides force for attacks and stability in defense. It is in the thick of the battle that it becomes essential to spot openings by the opponent or to avoid presenting openings to the opponent. So, too, it is not in vague determination for victory that we find our hope; we find it in the tedious daily practice of scales at the keyboard, and we find it in the drills that sharpen our situational awareness, cuing us to pivotal moments or guarding us from unintentionally presenting openings that can be leveraged for our defeat.
Indecent hope, then, is not the bland hope of ignorance. It is a blade that cuts through un-truth, half-truth, pseudo-truth: all the propaganda the universe has on offer, from the doubt spread by the serpent who hissed well-placed questions, to the propositions and circumstances bombarding our day to day lives. We do not have time for anything less.
Our world needs us, desperately. Our siblings in Christ need us, desperately. They do not need our well-intentioned propaganda of inspirational well-wishing. They need our hands, our feet, our pocketbooks, our attention, our focus, our compassion, our time. They need Jesus and we are his Body.
The call to indecent hope inevitably morphs into a call to action – not yet another dreaded summons to exhausted caregivers praying for a bit of sleep before the next patient codes or the child reawakens. This call to action rings up and down the flow chart, pulpit to pews and back again, like an old church bell summoning anyone and everyone to a bucket brigade for a house on fire.
Eight months before Covid-19 emerged onto the world stage, thousands of miles from Wuhan, a fire alarm sounded. Notre Dame was burning: “our lady” was crumbling in flames, and firefighters struggled to control the fire eating the famous Paris cathedral from the inside out. The images were stark: blackened, sooty wreckage collapsed in front of aging stone arches, a cross still standing in the background.
Even the most low-church worshipers viewed the images with dismay. It seemed profane, somehow: the disintegration of a holy place. The catastrophic losses to a different out-of-control inferno seem no less profane: over 300,000 Americans lost to a viral plague as of mid-December 2020, the equivalent of approximately 94 September 11th attacks.
Hope can feel almost indecent when faced with the weight of the world’s suffering. And it would be – without the weighty truth of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who harrowed hell; who is not undone at the destructive force of the hottest fires this world can burn; who knows the name of each casualty, numbers the hairs of each individual, stands next to each overwhelmed physician; who exploits every opening that evil leaves, turning the tables on the propaganda of despair, knocking the teeth out of hopelessness, bellowing a song of healing.
Artist and writer Makoto Fujimura, who recently released Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, pressed a few quiet insights into the palms of weary fellow believers recently on social media: “create something unique and new against fear,” echoing a similar encouragement to “make towards the new,” a lovely nudge toward the substantive hope of heaven and a new creation. He writes, “Art making, to me, is a discipline of awareness, prayer, and praise.” The discipline of awareness, prayer, and praise – how like hope that sounds. Are we ready to practice being brazen enough to look for sprouting leaves in the light beaming through the open void of a burned-out roof?
Elizabeth Glass Turner, a frequent contributor to Good News, is the editor of Wesleyan Accent (www.wesleyanaccent.com).
by Steve | Jan 11, 2021 | Jan-Feb 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Minneapolis Convention Center. Photo courtesy of Meet Minneapolis/Amy Coppersmith Photography.
By Thomas Lambrecht
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ramp up across the U.S. and around the world, church leaders are thinking once again of General Conference, scheduled for August 29-September 7, 2021, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are rumors floating around that General Conference is going to be postponed again. Those rumors are not correct. No such decision has been made to postpone General Conference a second time.
But in the interest of addressing the concerns about the possibility of a “normal” General Conference next year, some of the options that could be considered should be examined, along with their pros and cons.
A Full Ten-Day In-Person General Conference as Scheduled. This option would be the preferred choice of most delegates, all things being equal. There is no substitute for gathering in-person to ask questions, engage in discussion, and modify proposals that the General Conference will consider. This option envisions dealing with the Protocol for Separation along with all the other legislative items (budget, new Social Principles, bishops for Africa, resolutions on social issues, etc.). Having a “normal” General Conference is what we are used to, and it has been planned for the last nine years. The people of the Minnesota Conference have prepared extensively to host this event and are ready to do so.
Obviously, the biggest downside to this option is the question about whether global travel will be possible by August. Complicating matters is the need for non-U.S. delegates – more than 370 out of a total 862 delegates – to obtain visas in order to attend. Right now, U.S. embassies are not granting visas for visits to the U.S. Will they be open and able to grant such visas in enough time for delegates to obtain them and participate in the General Conference?
This hinges on the availability of a vaccine. Most health experts expect that a vaccine will be broadly available to the American public by the middle of next year, if not earlier. It will take time for a substantial percentage of the U.S. population to be vaccinated and to make large gatherings possible once again. (Minnesota is currently banning indoor gatherings of 250 or more.) But it is far less certain that the populations in Africa and the Philippines will have broad access to a vaccine that quickly.
Applications for a visa will probably require proof of vaccination. Some of the vaccines being tested right now require two doses a month apart. It is unknown whether there will be enough doses of the vaccine available to cover the populations of developing countries, including the delegates that would travel to Minneapolis, in time for them to obtain visas.
Holding General Conference without the participation of most of the delegates from outside the U.S. would be legal, but it would be morally wrong, unless there are no other options. Delegates from outside the U.S. make up about 44 percent of the conference. Making decisions about the future of the church with such a large part of the body missing is unthinkable. The decisions made by such a General Conference would be forever suspect.
Another downside to holding a “normal” General Conference is its impact on how to deal with the consequences of separation. If, as expected, the Protocol for Separation passes General Conference, the stage would be set for forming a new conservative Methodist denomination. That new denomination will maintain some of the UM Church’s current positions (for instance, regarding marriage and human sexuality, as well as basic doctrinal standards), while wanting to streamline the way the church operates. At the same time, those remaining in the continuing UM Church will want to make changes, as well. They will liberalize its position on marriage and ordination for LGBTQ persons, add the possibility of a U.S. central conference that enables each region of the world to be self-governing, and probably trim the size and number of general church boards and agencies. Many 2021 delegates will likely decide to align with the new traditionalist denomination. As a result, hundreds of delegates would be voting on petitions that will create or defeat rules for a denomination they will not be part of following separation.
An Abbreviated General Conference Agenda. One solution to this last problem would be to shorten the agenda of General Conference to deal only with those items of business that are necessary to prepare the way for separation. These would include the Protocol itself, the quadrennial budget, election of some general church officers (for example, the Judicial Council), and changes to the pension program as voted by the 2019 General Conference. All other petitions and proposals could be referred to the next (post-separation) UM General Conference.
This abbreviated agenda would allow essential matters to be addressed in implementing the separation. A special General Conference for the post-separation UM Church could then meet in fall 2022 or spring 2023 with new delegates elected from those parts of the church that remain with it. That special General Conference could then enact all the changes to The United Methodist Church envisioned by progressives and centrists without interference from conservative delegates who will not be part of the post-separation UM Church. The new traditionalist Methodist denomination would have its own convening general conference in roughly the same time frame to formally establish its policies and governance.
A Virtual General Conference. Most people have gotten used to participating in meetings and worship through video conference applications, such as Zoom. A number of annual conferences have successfully met virtually using video conference technology. If international travel is impossible, a virtual conference might be possible. Some UM leaders are urging consideration of this option, and the Commission on the General Conference has formed a technology study team to examine this alternative.
A virtual conference would have to be limited to an abbreviated agenda, as described above. Given the number of people involved in the online platform, the pace of discussion and action would be much slower, so fewer items could be dealt with. Because of the time differences between Africa, Europe, and the Philippines, the working day would be much shorter – perhaps only six hours. This would again speak in favor of an abbreviated agenda spread over several days.
Many of the virtual annual conferences allowed participants to sign in from their home or office. That could still work for the U.S. and Europe. However, Africa and the Philippines might find it necessary for delegates to meet at central locations in order to adequately provide for secure Internet connection that can handle a more reliable video conferencing situation. If that were the case, it would be fairer to require all delegates to meet in central locations for the duration of the conference. United Methodist missiologist David Scott calls this format a “distributed” General Conference, since groups of delegates would be meeting in person, while interacting with other groups virtually.
If a virtual format were adopted, legislative committees would be impossible. Instead, the conference would need to follow the pattern of the 2019 General Conference, where the body operated as a committee of the whole to perfect legislation before finally voting on it in plenary session.
This model for holding General Conference could also enhance participation by individual delegates. There could be time before, during, or after the plenary sessions for delegations to discuss the business of the conference and ask questions. Those questions could be posed in writing to the bishop who is presiding over the whole General Conference. The bishop could then organize a response to all of the various questions that are asked, without having to do so on the spur of the moment. That would allow for more efficient use of time. Speeches for and against could be rotated among the jurisdictions and central conferences to give every area a chance to be heard.
One difficulty with this approach is ensuring the integrity of the delegates. It would be important to create a process to ensure that the delegates properly elected by the annual conferences were the delegates who were voting. But there is no way to guarantee that the rules are being followed in each annual conference. We ultimately rely on the trust and integrity of our leaders.
Another difficulty is the possibility that individual delegates could be manipulated by false or misleading information. The General Conference staff would need to ensure that all delegates received the same information. Explanatory information could be video recorded ahead of time and shown to the various delegations in their own language. Answers to questions would need to come from trusted sources of centralized information. The presence of official observers could ensure delegate voting integrity and the impartiality of how delegate groups are administered.
A third issue with this option is the possible loss of money obligated under contract to the hotels and conference venue. Even with a potential loss, however, a virtual conference would cost far less because the travel costs would be much lower. Money saved could be used to supply needed technology equipment for annual conferences to participate virtually. But a special called session of General Conference in Minneapolis in 2022 or 2023 could greatly reduce or eliminate any loss of deposits.
Could Additional Petitions Be Submitted? Regardless of what format General Conference would take, the question has been raised about submitting additional petitions. So far, the Commission on the General Conference has maintained that the only legislation to be considered would be petitions properly submitted to the 2020 General Conference.
If the Commission were to change its mind, or if the Judicial Council were to rule that additional petitions could be submitted, the deadline for individual petitions would be January 11, 2021, 230 days prior to the convening of General Conference. However, annual conferences could submit petitions after that date, as long as they were submitted by July 15, 2021. (I personally believe that, under the Discipline, additional petitions would have to be allowed.)
A Special General Conference. The Council of Bishops could call a special General Conference that could meet virtually even before the scheduled date of August 29, 2021. This special session could deal only with the matters covered in the call, which would be the abbreviated agenda proposed above. That would reduce or eliminate the number of additional petitions to be submitted. It would also focus the General Conference on resolving the question of separation, so that all parts of the church could move forward in the way they believe God is leading them.
The regular session of the General Conference that was scheduled for August 29, 2021, could then be postponed to spring of 2023. That would allow the annual conferences and congregations remaining in the post-separation United Methodist Church to elect new delegates representing a centrist/progressive vision for the church. It would hopefully allow enough time for the whole world to be vaccinated and obtain visas as necessary for travel. The conference could be held in Minneapolis, which might diminish or eliminate any financial loss of money deposited for the 2021 General Conference session. And it would take advantage of all the preparations that have been done for 2021.
What If General Conference Is Postponed Again? If none of the above options are chosen, and instead the General Conference is postponed until 2022 or even 2024, the church will begin to unravel. Many local churches and some annual conferences are hanging on in hopes that the General Conference will meet and provide resolution to our conflict. If that does not happen, some of them will depart. A piecemeal departure of churches and annual conferences serves no good purpose, as it weakens the current church and may not result in a viable new denomination.
Under the Protocol, annual conferences must vote by 57 percent or more to separate from the UM Church and align with a new denomination. If there is no Protocol, annual conferences could separate with a simple majority vote. Lawsuits could be filed to protest such an action, but they would be expensive and protract the struggle for years or even a decade in court.
Local churches might sue their annual conference to separate. If many local churches sued the annual conference separately, the annual conference would not be able to bear the cost of defending so many lawsuits, and would be forced to settle with local churches for pennies on the dollar.
One of the major goals of the Protocol was to resolve the conflict by providing an avenue for separation, thus avoiding lawsuits. Delaying action would open the door to wholesale legal actions that would cost millions of dollars. That money would be better spent on the mission of the church, rather than in courtrooms.
And if there were no Protocol, the conflict would resume within the UM Church. Right now, there is a moratorium on complaints and trials. However, if General Conference is postponed again, that moratorium would fade. Complaints would be filed, trials would be demanded, and conflict would ramp up again.
Most of the people who have been following this conflict for the last several decades are ready for it to be over. They are not willing to wait another year or three. Too much is at stake, given our current inability to pursue the church’s mission unhindered. Postponement is not a healthy option.
Act to Resolve. No matter which option is chosen, there are advantages and disadvantages for each. Some options may ultimately be ruled out by events beyond the control of the church. It is helpful to think through the various possibilities and strive for one that maximizes fairness and universal participation, while providing for the clearest and earliest resolution to the deep divisions within our denomination. While we are engaged in conflict, we are not moving forward. It’s as if two people are in opposite ends of a canoe rowing in opposite directions. Meanwhile, the canoe is sinking. It is time to act to resolve the conflict for the sake of the church’s future.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
