by Steve | Jul 8, 2020 | July-August 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By David Watson –
Photo by Emre Can, Pexels.com.
Here is a simple truth about the human condition: we cannot save ourselves. This assertion flies in the faith of so much Western individualism. We think of ourselves as agents who shape the world around us. We prize self-determination and self-sufficiency, and to some extent we do have power over our lives. There are two areas, however, over which we have no control: sin and death. We are helpless before these. We all sin, and we will all die. We cannot save ourselves, but there is one who can save us, who in fact died to save us.
In his sermon “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, addresses the question, “What is salvation?”
“The salvation which is here spoken of is not what is frequently understood by that word, the going to heaven, eternal happiness. It is not the soul’s going to paradise, termed by our Lord, ‘Abraham’s bosom.’ It is not a blessing which lies on the other side of death; or, as we usually speak, in the other world. The very words of the text itself put this beyond all question: ‘Ye are saved.’ It is not something at a distance: it is a present thing; a blessing which, through the free mercy of God, ye are now in possession of. Nay, the words may be rendered, and that with equal propriety, ‘Ye have been saved’: so that the salvation which is here spoken of might be extended to the entire work of God, from the first dawning of grace in the soul, till it is consummated in glory.”
Wesley most certainly believed in eternal life. His point, though, is to guard against the reduction of salvation to “going to heaven.” We are saved in the present, he insisted. Salvation includes all the work that God does in our lives, from that very first moment in which we feel that our lives may not be right just as they are. Perhaps we begin to believe that we aren’t living in the right way. Perhaps we start to feel the emptiness of a life focused on material pursuits. These moments are the beginning of salvation. God is leading us out of sin into holiness, and thus out of death into life. Indeed God must lead us if we are to make this journey at all. We cannot save ourselves. We have to be saved.
Salvation From Sin. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Paul has spent the previous ten verses talking about the conflict that occurs within a person who at some level knows what is right, but is simply unable to do it. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (7:19). Sin, as Paul describes it, is not just an action we commit. It is a force in the cosmos exerting itself upon human will. Sin is all the “gone-wrongness” of creation, and one of its chief manifestations is the human rebellion against God. Yes, Paul says, God gave us the law, and the law can tell us what is right. This doesn’t mean, however, that we can do what is right. Left to our own devices, we will inevitably succumb to the influence of sin upon our lives. Thus at the end of the chapter, it’s as if Paul throws up his hands in frustration. He cries out in self-condemnation: “Wretched man that I am!” thus giving voice to the pathos of the human condition. “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He has tried to rescue himself, but he cannot. He needs a Savior.
This section of Romans (7:14-24), can be a bit puzzling, since Paul is writing this after he has been saved through Christ. How can Paul say of himself, after his encounter with Christ, “I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin” (7:14)? A constitutive feature of the Christian life is that we are no longer in slavery to sin. The answer is that Paul is not speaking of his current condition, but rather about what he used to be. In so doing, he gives voice to the human condition. He speaks on behalf of unredeemed humanity. We try to save ourselves, but we cannot. We need a Savior, and, thanks be to God, we have one.
Chapter 8 of Romans is the answer to chapter 7. By “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:3-4). Through Christ, God has broken the vise-grip of sin on our lives. Because Christ assumed our human nature in its fallenness, we can be free. We’re no longer addicted to sin. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul puts it this way: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ has made it possible for us to become righteous. Yes, we can still sin. We can most certainly reject God’s gracious and undeserved offer, but unlike before, we can both know what’s right and do what’s right. We no longer live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Paul’s language can be confusing sometimes. His opposition of “flesh” and “spirit” may lead us to believe that he felt the material world (particularly our physical bodies) to be bad, and only our souls to be good. The worldview of Judaism, however, affirms the goodness of creation. In Genesis 1, God saw what he had made and pronounced it “very good.” “Flesh” and “spirit” for Paul are shorthand terms, referring to our redeemed selves and our unredeemed selves. We once lived “according to the flesh” (in other words, as unredeemed people), but now we live life in the Spirit (as redeemed people).
Can we still sin? Indeed we can, but we don’t have to do so. Christ has saved us. He has done what we could not.
Salvation from Death. Followers of Jesus are saved from sin, and thus we are saved from death. Genesis 2:15-17 is the first biblical passage to connect sin and death: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’” We know how the rest of this story goes.
It is an uncomfortable truth of human existence that we are all going to die. These mortal bodies will fail. But then what? Do we simply vanish into nonexistence, or is there something more? Paul is clear that we can choose death. We can choose eternal separation from God, if that is what we really wish. Christ died, however, so that we can have life, and not just new life in the present, but eternal life with God. Paul describes Jesus as “the first fruits of those who have died” (1 Corinthians 15:20). This is an agricultural metaphor. The first fruits were gathered before the general harvest. Jesus was raised, and we will be raised as well. And if we receive the salvation that Christ offers us, we will be raised to eternal life in a renewed heaven and earth.
God is the source of all life, the ground of all being. As we draw near to God, we draw near to life. As we rebel against God, we embrace death. Righteousness is life-giving. Sin is life-denying. Paul writes in Romans 6:20-23:
“When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
To break this down a bit, Paul is saying that sin once had such a hold on our lives that God’s righteous will held no sway over us. We were “free in regard to righteousness,” which is not a good thing. Such “freedom” from God is actually enslavement to sin, and the pathway of sin is a death march. Yet now, Paul says, we no longer serve sin, but God. Rather than death, we receive sanctification. This means we get to share in God’s holiness. We are set apart from the world by being freed from sin and empowered to live in a new way. If sin creates a rift between people and God, holiness is the healing of that rift. We are drawn to God, and the result is life, not just now, but forever.
Death is painful. It is often painful for those who die, and it is certainly painful for those who are left behind. Our grief at the loss of a loved one can be overwhelming. Grief is both natural and appropriate in such times. Christians, however, grieve differently from others. We grieve, but not as those without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). “Listen,” Paul writes, “I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53). The hope that we have in Jesus Christ tempers our grief, and we give thanks to God that we might once again be with those whom we love in eternal life.
Making all things new. For each of us who follow him, Jesus is a personal Savior. Indeed, this was one of Wesley’s great insights during his famous Aldersgate experience: Jesus died not just for all, but for him – personally. While we affirm the personal nature of salvation, however, we should also recognize that salvation is more than this. Jesus is the Savior of the whole universe. As noted above, sin is not just a personal matter, but a cosmic one. It is a rupture in the moral fabric of creation, and we see its effects in manifold ways. It comes to bear on our friendships, our families, our churches, and the many institutions in which we participate. Our marriages, companies, schools, and even nations can be marred by sin and turned toward death.
The personal salvation each of us experiences is part of God’s redeeming work throughout all of creation. In Revelation 21:5, God declares from his throne, “See, I am making all things new.” Paul speaks about a “new creation” in which those of us who are “in Christ” participate (2 Corinthians 5:17). “Everything old has passed away,” he writes. “See, everything has become new!” God’s will is to redeem and renew what has been corrupted by sin and death. To be saved is to be drawn into God’s work of renewal.
As I write this, the United States is boiling over with pain, anger, and fear. The very fabric that binds us as a nation is strained to the point of breaking. We look for someone or something to save us. The contenders are numerous: the President, his electoral challenger, the press, some grassroots movement…. Make no mistake, the choices we make as responsible citizens do matter. Yet they cannot save us. Only Christ can do that. Laws can change behavior, but they cannot change hearts. If we want peace and justice in our land, we must work and pray for God to change hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. We all need to be saved, as individuals and as a society. We need not only a personal Savior, but the Savior of the universe. Sin and death are on the rampage, and like the early Christians we ask, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” (Revelation 13:4). But even as we utter the question, we know the answer. We have a Savior.
Come, Lord Jesus. Come and save us.
David F. Watson is professor of New Testament and the academic dean at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He is the author of Scripture and the Life of God (Seedbed).
by Steve | Jul 8, 2020 | July-August 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Photo by Ruvim (www.pexels.com).
By W. David O. Taylor
In February 1995, I confessed my sins publicly in front of five hundred fellow students at the University of Texas in Austin. This took place at a concert of prayer sponsored by a parachurch campus ministry. Standing on the auditorium stage of a large classroom, I confessed the sins of lust, pride, impatience, anger, and others I have now forgotten. While I had previously confessed my sins to a pastor or a group of friends, I had never confessed my sins publicly. (It is rather terrifying.) As part of a worship and prayer service, the invitation to confess our sins had offered us a chance to be free from the secrets that distort and oppress us.
Everyone, of course, has a secret of one sort or another. Every family and every community and every country has its secrets too. For some it is an addictive behavior. For others it is an abusive or traumatic experience that may only intensify feelings of shame. For still others it is the fear of being rejected, the lust for power, an uncontrollable temper, emotional infidelity, a vicious prejudice, a program of terror, an insatiable jealousy of others, repeated acts of self-indulgence, or something else.
Whatever they may be, with our secrets we hide. We hide from others and we hide from ourselves. Ultimately, we hide from God. In our hiding, we choose darkness over light; we embrace death instead of life; we elect to be lonely rather than to be relationally at home with others. And the certain result of all our hiding is that we become cut off from our Source of life, strangers to ourselves, and alienated from creation, which, in the end, is pathetic, disfiguring, and an utterly tragic loss of life.
The Psalms understand the human condition. In it we see a mirror of humanity at its best and at its worst. We see our very selves reflected back, “be he a faithful soul or be he a sinner” as Athanasius once described the experience of looking at the psalms, as if in a mirror of the soul. Walter Brueggemann writes that the Psalter “is an articulation of all the secrets of the human heart and the human community, all voiced out loud in speech and in song to God amidst the community.”
If we are to be free, Brueggemann argues, our secrets must be told. If we wish to flourish in our God-given calling, our secrets must be brought into the light so we are no longer governed by their corrosive and destructive power. And if we desire to be truly human, we must abandon all our efforts not just to hide our secrets but also to justify them. This is what the psalms help us to do: to tell our secrets faithfully.
To share our secrets with another person naturally requires a great deal of courage. It requires an ability to trust others in ways that few of us feel safe to do. And to tell our secrets to the community requires an extraordinary ability to believe that it will not take advantage of our vulnerable disclosure – by judging us unfairly, by rejecting us, or by gossiping about us – and that we will not be undone by our confession. To be this brave and to trust this readily is a gift that God would willingly give us, if we but asked.
To be open and unafraid with God in the manner that is modeled for us in the psalms is to counter the devastating effects of our primordial sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, their first impulse was to hide. In making clothes for themselves, they hid their bodies. When they heard the sound of their Maker’s voice, they hid from God. In their telltale lies, they hid from the truth, and in their mutual accusations, they hid from each other. All the ways in which Adam and Eve hid resulted in one thing: their dehumanization.
Like Adam and Eve, when we hide from God, we become alienated from God and thus spend our strength trying to transcend life’s limits: death, dependence, moral laws, God-given boundaries. When we hide from others, we cut ourselves off from the life-giving gift of community. When we hide from creation, we deny our God-ordained creaturely nature and often seek to exploit rather than to care for creation. And when we hide from ourselves, we become strangers to ourselves through selfish, self-indulgent behavior that ultimately does violence to our nature as humans made in God’s image.
What the psalms offer us is a powerful aid to un-hide: to stand honestly before God without fear, to face one another vulnerably without shame, and to encounter life in the world without any of the secrets that would demean and distort our humanity.
The psalms invite us, thus, to stand in the light, to see ourselves truly and to receive the reformative work of God through the formative words of the psalmist, so that we might be rehumanized in Christ.
The honesty of the Psalms. Psalm 139 is the paradigmatic psalm of the honest person. There is nothing the psalmist hides from God. He invites God to see it all. “You have looked deep into my heart, LORD, and you know all about me” (v. 1 CEV). It is a cleansing and healing self-disclosure. To be known by God in this way, through and through, nothing hidden (v. 15), nothing excused (v. 23), is beyond the psalmist’s capacity to fully grasp. “It is more than I can understand,” he says (v. 6 NCV).
It is only in standing open before God in this way, naked like a baby and unashamed as the beloved of God (vv. 13- 16), that the psalmist discovers his truest identity. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (v. 14). In the psalmist’s waking hours and asleep at night, the Lord is there (vv. 2-3). No height, no depth, not the darkest night, not a secret thought, neither heaven nor hell, can hide the psalmist from the Lord’s searching gaze (vv. 8- 12). He cannot escape the Lord’s presence (v. 7).
Nor does he wish to. The psalmist feels as precious as all the Lord’s thoughts toward him (v. 17). He is secure in the Lord’s sovereign care (v. 16). All the days of his life are seen by God. It is for that reason that the psalmist welcomes the (often terrifying) searching gaze of God. “Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I’m about” (v. 23 The Message). This is similar to the language we find in Psalm 17:1-3:
Listen while I build my case, God,
the most honest prayer you’ll ever hear.
Show the world I’m innocent –
in your heart you know I am.
Go ahead, examine me from inside out,
surprise me in the middle of the night –
You’ll find I’m just what I say I am.
My words don’t run loose.
(The Message)
To what end does the psalmist pray in this manner? It is so he might walk in the life-giving “way,” echoing the words of Psalm 1.
To walk in this “way everlasting” is to walk in the way that leads to wholeness. We become whole by praying our honest joys and our honest sorrows. We pray our honest praise of God and our honest anger at God; we pray also for honest speech in our words to God. With the psalmist we pray that God will protect our tongues from deceit (Ps. 34:13). We pray that we not sin with our words (Ps. 39: 1). We pray that we resist the urge to gossip and flatter (Ps. 12:3), and that we choose to live with integrity (Ps. 41:12), rejecting words that both inflate and deflate us before God (Ps. 32).
To pray in this way is to keep ourselves open to others and to God. In refusing the temptation to hide from others and from God, we refuse the temptation to use words as a cover-up. We speak instead plainly, trustingly. When we do this, we find ourselves praying freely to God, in a way that frees us. The Psalter understands that we do not often succeed at this kind of speech and prayer, and so it repeatedly welcomes the penitent to confess to God, in the hearing of God’s people:
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
(Ps. 32:1-2)
The psalmist describes the experience of “keeping silent” about sin as a kind of disintegration. His bones turn to powder (Ps. 32:3). He risks returning to the dust (Ps. 22:15). But when he honestly confesses his sin, the Lord forgives him. Instead of “covering up” his sin, God covers his sin (Ps. 32:1, 5), and instead of hiding from God, God becomes his “hiding place.”
If honesty is the capacity to speak truthfully to God, sincerely to others, and without any lie about the world in its real condition, then the psalms invite us to honest prayer about all things, not just the things we suffer or regret. We pray honestly about our shame and bouts of depression (Ps. 88). We pray honestly about our hate (Ps.137). And we pray honestly about our experiences of trust and thanksgiving and joy (Pss. 23; 46; 27; 91).
We pray honestly about God’s trustworthy character, the wonder of creation (Ps. 104), the beauty of torah (Ps. 119), and the virtue of wisdom (Pss. 37; 49; 112).
“It is easy to be honest before God with our hallelujahs; it is somewhat more difficult to be honest in our hurts; it is nearly impossible to be honest before God in the dark emotions of our hate,” writes Eugene Peterson in Answering God. “So we commonly suppress our negative emotions (unless, neurotically, we advertise them). Or, when we do express them, we do it far from the presence, or what we think is the presence, of God, ashamed or embarrassed to be seen in these curse-stained bib overalls. But when we pray the psalms, these classic prayers of God’s people, we find that will not do. We must pray who we actually are, not who we think we should be.”
When we pray the psalms by the empowering and transforming presence of the Holy Spirit, we pray not just who we actually are but also who we can be and shall be by grace. As Athanasius sees it, the psalms not only enable us to be wholly ourselves before God, they also enable us to be wholly our true selves. This is only possible, he argues, because Christ himself makes it possible. Before coming among us, Athanasius writes, Christ sketched the likeness of true humanity for us in the psalms. In praying them, then, we experience the healing and reformation of our humanity.
The good news for the follower of Jesus is that the decision to be honest to God, which the psalms require of us, does not result in self absorption because we have become obsessed with the cross examination of our heart and mind. Nor does it result in self-hatred because we feel that our sin has the last and most definitive word on our life. Grace has the last word, not sin, as the German theologian Karl Barth rightly reminds us. No matter how great our fault or failure, we cannot sin apart from the grace of God.
“We are forbidden,” Barth writes, “to take sin more seriously than grace, or even as seriously as grace.” Why? Because God in Christ does not take sin more seriously than grace, even if it remains true that God takes sin with deadly seriousness. We can be honest to God about the best and worst parts of our human condition, because we know that the grace of God precedes our honest confessions, the grace of God undergirds our honest thanksgivings, and the grace of God follows our honest laments.
What happens when we pray the psalms under the light of God’s grace? We become free to pray with abandonment because we have abandoned ourselves to this gracious God. We have no need to hide from this God, because we are so confident in his grace. And because Jesus comes to us “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), we can be confident that we shall be found and filled with grace. We, too, can pray daring prayers because we trust that Jesus himself prays them with us and in us by the power of his Holy Spirit.
Expressing all the emotions. To this day I regret that I failed to keep the piece of paper on which I had written the eleven sins I had originally confessed to both friends and strangers at the University of Texas. I also regret the failure of courage that I experience repeatedly in my resistance to honestly confess my faults. It is for that reason that I return again and again to the psalms. The psalms show me how to be honest to God. They retrain me to be honest with God’s people, and they remind me how deeply good it feels to be this open, unafraid, and free.
“The Psalms are inexhaustible, and deserve to be read, said, sung, chanted, whispered, learned by heart, and even shouted from the rooftops,” observes N.T. Wright. “They express all the emotions we are ever likely to feel (including some we hope we may not), and they lay them, raw and open, in the presence of God.”
The psalms welcome all such honest speech in order that we might encounter the “life that really is life” (1 Timothy 6:19). If the common saying within recovery ministries is true, that we are only as sick as the secrets we keep, then the secrets we keep result in the deterioration of our humanity. Kept hidden, our secrets rob us of vitality. But when they are brought into the gracious light of God, they no longer hold a destructive power over us, and a space is made for God, who “knows the secrets of the heart,” to rehumanize us (Ps. 44:21).
One of the great benefits of the psalms, Athanasius believed, is that in reading them “you learn about yourself.” You see all your failures and recoveries, all your ups and downs. You see yourself as both a saint and a sinner. But the psalms are not only interested in helping us to be open and unafraid before God; they also help us to be open and unafraid with the people of God: vulnerable, porous, freed, fully alive. And in seeing ourselves in this way, honestly, with others, we find ourselves being reformed by the love of God.
W. David O. Taylor is assistant professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and director of Brehm Texas, an intuitive in worship, theology, and the arts. Taken from Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life by W. David O. Taylor. Copyright © 2020 by David Taylor. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. (www.openandunafraid.com).
by Steve | Jul 8, 2020 | July-August 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
In December of 1784, Thomas Coke, Richard Whatcoat, and Thomas Vasey met with preachers of the American “connexion” for a constitutional convention at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore. Dubbed the “Christmas Conference,” Francis Asbury was ordained as co-superintendent. Painting by Thomas Coke Ruckle, The Ordination of Bishop Asbury, engraved by A. Gilchrist Campbell (1882).
By Thomas Lambrecht –
“Conferencing” is at the heart of Methodist history and tradition. In 1744, only a few years after starting the Methodist movement, John Wesley called together the small group of preachers who formed the core of the movement for a “conference” meeting. They gathered to discern “how we should proceed to save our own souls and those that heard us.” Their agenda was simple, but comprehensive: “1. What to teach, 2. How to teach, and 3. What to do, that is, how to regulate our doctrine, discipline, and practice.”
Ever since, the “conference” has been part and parcel of how Methodists do church. The 1744 conference became an annual affair, a gathering of all the preachers (lay and clergy) who were “in connexion” with John Wesley. Thus, the “annual conference” became the center of Methodist organization. As the church was formed in America and grew, the number of annual conferences multiplied, covering different geographical parts of the country, and later, of the world. Each annual conference formed a geographical section of the general church. To maintain unity, a General Conference consisted of representatives from all the various annual conferences, making decisions on behalf of the whole church. When the church was broken up into regions in 1939, those bodies were called jurisdictional conferences and later central conferences (i.e., jurisdictions outside the U.S.), for the purpose of electing and assigning bishops. Within each annual conference, there are sub-regions called districts that have a “district conference.” And of course the basic building block of the denomination is the local “church conference” or “charge conference.”
Conferences are far more than geographical organizational units. They represent the intuitive genius of Wesley’s organizational mind that identified collective decision-making as an essential component of church structure. Many Protestant denominations in Wesley’s time were governed by irregularly meeting synods or councils that would gather only when necessary. Wesley saw the strength to be gained by collective decision-making by a body of people that is held in constant relationship and mutual accountability.
The idea of collective decision-making was instituted early in the Church’s history, at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), which was called to decide whether Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to follow the Law of Moses. Such collective decision-making allows the Holy Spirit to speak through the diversity of voices who are part of the collective. Reaching agreement among a broad group of leaders often results in a more faithful decision and one that is able to consider more of the ramifications of that decision. It has the added benefit of gaining “buy-in” from the same group of leaders that will have to implement the decisions that are made.
The Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA) has just released Part Seven of its draft Book of Doctrines and Discipline, addressing the role of annual, regional, and general conferences in a new global traditional Methodist denomination. Additional provisions about conferences may be found in the proposed Constitution, ¶203, Articles VI-VIII, that can be found on the WCA website (www.wesleyancovenant.org).
As the WCA considered the wisdom of retaining our conferencing system of decision-making and organization, we also realized the current United Methodist system had strayed off the path in a number of ways that need to be corrected if Methodism is to recover its vitality.
First, the UM system has reversed the hierarchy in an unhelpful way. The annual conference and General Conference were instituted as means to support and empower the work of the local church, which is (we say) “the most significant arena through which disciple-making occurs.” Instead, in recent years, it seems like the local church has existed to support the work of the annual and General Conference. In its reformation of the conference system, the WCA strives to make crystal clear that conferences exist to support the local church, not the other way around.
Second, and relatedly, the annual and General Conferences have grown too large in structure and demand too many resources. The “needs” of ministry at the regional and global levels siphon off too much time and financial resources from local churches, which then weakens the local ministry rather than strengthens it. This is seen in the amount of time pastors spend on annual conference business outside their parish and bishops spend on global church business outside their annual conferences. Many local churches do not see the value to them of the work that annual conference and general church agencies do “on their behalf.”
Accordingly, the WCA’s proposal calls for a lean annual conference structure demanding lower apportionments and less time investment in bureaucracy and meetings, with more time and financial investment in work that explicitly supports the ministry of local churches, including the aggressive planting of new congregations. Bishops and district superintendents are relieved of many of their administrative responsibilities and expected to focus their time and energy within their districts and annual conferences, while still building connections to the worldwide church based on mutual ministry, rather than meetings (see Part Six of the draft Book of Doctrines and Discipline on the WCA website.)
The general church would have only five agencies (called “commissions”) to handle the coordinating and facilitating work of the denomination. (More details on these commissions are found in Part Eight of the WCA’s draft Book of Doctrines and Discipline which has just been released.) The annual conference would have only four required boards or committees to facilitate its work. (It could form more as needed.) The emphasis is really on reducing the amount of structure and reorienting the work of the annual conference and general church to support the local church’s ministry.
Third, as the church has grown over the last 100 years, its Book of Discipline has gotten too prescriptive and controlling, with all kinds of mandates and requirements that often hamper the work of the local church. The current Discipline is 819 pages (not including the index). I have a 1926 Discipline that is only half that size and includes worship rituals, judicial decisions, a description of the course of study, and a directory!
Accordingly, the WCA proposal allows annual conferences to structure themselves in a way that makes sense for them, aside from the minimal requirements for four agencies. This will allow conferences to stay lean in structure, yet nimble enough to adapt to changing circumstances. It will also allow for cultural differences in various parts of the world to be reflected in variations of structure and process. At the same time, nearly all the provisions in the draft Book of Doctrines and Discipline would meet the needs and requirements in conferences around the world. The WCA has worked to craft a book that would apply equally well in Bulgaria, the Philippines, the U.S., or Zimbabwe. This will allow for greater uniformity on the essential matters, while allowing flexibility in many other matters.
Finally, in an effort to take the focus of the church off of the (sometimes contentious) General Conference, the WCA proposal in ¶ 203 (Article VI) of the draft Book of Doctrines and Discipline, envisions General Conference meeting only once every six years, instead of quadrennially. For the first six years, it would meet every two years in order to fine tune the general church’s core teachings and governance structure as we live into a new reality. But thereafter, General Conference will be reserved for making the larger policy decisions and letting annual conferences and local churches focus on their ministry.
The WCA’s proposals are just that – proposals. They will be presented as legislation to the convening conference of a new global traditional Methodist church. We hope you will consider them and give constructive feedback as we compile ideas to guide the formation of a new Methodist denomination that focuses both on biblical faithfulness and on ministry effectiveness and fruitfulness.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Jul 8, 2020 | July-August 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Chris Yuen (right) received a bouquet of balloons during his hospital stay for the coronavirus. Yuen, a 32-year-old member of Midland Park United Methodist Church in New Jersey, spent about 20 days on a ventilator. Photo courtesy of Chris Yuen.
By Sam Hodges –
The Rev. Dunford Cole was too ill with the coronavirus to help with May 31 worship services at the two churches he leads in south Alabama. But he preached anyway via Facebook from his hospital bed the next day.
Fighting for a full breath, choking back tears at times, the 45-year-old pastor of Campground and Rutledge United Methodist churches still managed to lay it on. “Y’all, let me tell you,” he said in a video post viewed more than 41,000 times. “You take care of yourself out there. This thing has been hard, and it’s been bad. And it’s as bad as they claim it to be.” Cole is doing much better and just got home from Crenshaw Community Hospital. His message is the same. “Respect this virus,” he said.
Though some churches have reopened and many are taking steps to do so, the number of COVID-19 cases has risen to about 2 million in the U.S., with 20 states seeing an increase in new cases. Also mounting are the harrowing stories of United Methodists who have been directly affected by the virus.
There have been clergy deaths, including the Rev. Rafael Luna, 61, pastor of a Hispanic United Methodist congregation in Denver; the Rev. Sherrie Dobbs Johnson, 72, a retired Greater New Jersey Conference district superintendent and wife of retired Bishop Alfred Johnson; the Rev. Norm Moyer, retired pastor in the Arkansas Conference; and the Rev. Zosimo Maputi, 67, pastor of Antipolo United Methodist Church in the Rizal Philippines Conference East.
The full extent of COVID-19 clergy and retired clergy deaths is unclear because some conferences are withholding names or cause of death because of privacy concerns and policies. That’s the case in the hard-hit New York Conference. Bishop Thomas Bickerton noted that the conference isn’t always definitively informed of a cause of death. “We estimate around a half dozen pastors and spouses have died (from the virus), and an untold number of parishioners,” he said.
United Methodist laity deaths from the coronavirus include 53-year old nursing home worker Alice Sarupinda in Walsall, England, on April 17. She was part of a Zimbabwean United Methodist congregation in England’s Midlands.
Recovery stories are, thankfully, far more common. Some are dramatic. Chris Yuen, 32, spent 20 days on a hospital ventilator and was nonresponsive much of that time. “A lot of people thought I wasn’t going to make it,” said Yuen, a member of Midland Park United Methodist Church in Midland Park, New Jersey. Yuen rallied, and was able to leave a local hospital on April 22, after almost a month there. “Several nurses and doctors lined up and gave me a cheer on the way out,” he said.
The Rev. Jennifer Stephens, associate pastor at Epiphany United Methodist Church in Loveland, Ohio, came down with the coronavirus in early April. “I’ve been extremely healthy, so it’s shocking to me that the symptoms were as bad as they were,” the 47-year-old clergywoman said. “I’m an avid runner. I eat a plant-based diet.” Stephens eventually tested positive for COVID-19 and was able to recover at home, thanks in part to house calls from a doctor and nurse in her congregation. But she’s still dealing with extreme fatigue and daily headaches, and is concerned about long-term effects.
In early March, the Rev. Kim Strong and his wife, Margo, thought they’d come down with the flu. He felt better after a few days. She felt worse. They couldn’t get her seen at urgent care centers, and they struck out trying to get a virtual visit with a doctor. On the morning of March 17, the situation grew dire. “My wife woke me up and said, ‘I think I’m dying,’” Strong said.
Strong, pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Conway, South Carolina, took her to a local hospital, where she was diagnosed with COVID-19 and found to have pneumonia and a blood clot in one lung. Margo Strong, 61, battled back, and was released from the hospital after six days. “I’m very positive if we’d waited another day (to go to the hospital) she would have died,” the pastor said.
Many United Methodists who did not contract the coronavirus themselves have had a loved one who did. That’s the case with Bishop Bickerton. As he has led the New York Conference through the pandemic, the bishop has had to worry about his 84-year-old father in Florida.
Jim Bickerton tested positive for the coronavirus in a nursing home/rehabilitation center in April. Bishop Bickerton and other family members were not allowed to visit — “Heartbreaking,” the bishop said — but did have daily contact through FaceTime.
After weeks of testing positive, Jim Bickerton began to test negative. “The nursing home is all completely negative at this point,” Bishop Bickerton said. “They had 58 cases and 12 people died. For my dad to be one of the survivors is a real blessing for us as a family.”
Sam Hodges is a Dallas-based writer for United Methodist News. Gladys Mangiduyos and Eveline Chikwanah contributed.
by Steve | Jul 8, 2020 | July-August 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By Max Wilkins –
The worldwide protests in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis took place during the week that God’s people celebrate Pentecost – the birthday of the Church, the birthday of the mission of Jesus, and the Lord’s sending of Holy Spirit, the Breath of Life.
In massive events all around the globe, activists of all races, creeds, and religions recalled his plea, “I can’t breathe!”
There is a Pentecost message in all of this, and it provides some grounding and some hope.
That first Pentecost took place when the disciples had gathered at Jesus’ direction in a prayer meeting in Jerusalem (see Acts 1:6-11). Also gathered there, just outside the room where they were meeting, were people from every race, every tribe, every language in the known world. “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken” (Acts 2:5-6).
Immediately upon receiving the promised Holy Spirit, the disciples went out into that gathering and shared this Breath of Life with the people. That very day a Spirit led community formed that included more than 3,000 people – African people, Asian people, Europeans, and Semitic people.
One of the principle purposes of the sending of that Breath of Life was to inspire community and unity (not sameness or negation of culture and distinctiveness, but a unity of spirit, of purpose, of value for life before God).
Jesus was initiating his mission with the coming of the Spirit. “You will receive power,” he had told the disciples, “when the Holy Spirit comes upon you AND you will be my witnesses, in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”
Those recipients of the Breath of Life were sent to bring together communities from all parts of the world, and to recreate that first Pentecost by coming together across lines of division, expectantly anticipating the sharing of the Breath of Life. The mission is to help those who are unable to breathe – physically, spiritually, emotionally – to be able to breathe the Breath of Life. And God’s people can only join that mission by fighting, in prayerful and tangible ways, against the very systemic forces that are crushing the breath out of people.
George Floyd died in Minneapolis, suffocated in broad daylight in front of a crowd. Many people around the country have taken up the cry of “I can’t breathe” in protest of Mr. Floyd’s violent murder and in solidarity with his experience of helplessness in the face of racial injustice.
I recognize, however, that these words are not just the dying gasp of George Floyd. They are also the suffocating cry of millions of people around the world whose necks are being crushed by the systemic evils of racism, of injustice, of economic deprivation, and of indifference. Evil, in its various forms, has been crushing the life out of human beings forever. And evil as it relates to racism, to abuse of power, to white supremacy, and to indifference to the suffering of those outside our own tribe, is particularly virulent right now. It is also totally contrary to the will of God and to God’s plans for the people of God.
Make no mistake, although the issues can be politicized, these are essentially spiritual issues. Some legal justice may occur in this situation. Yet, even if there are criminal convictions in this case, it is only a bandage on a hemorrhage if the inherent injustice built into the system and rampant in our society is not addressed and acted upon in tangible ways. Systems need to change; hearts need to change. And I don’t think that can happen apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in and through his people.
I praise God that by his grace we are a part of his people. Please continue to be instruments of the Breath of Life.
Come Holy Spirit.
Max Wilkins is the president of TMS Global.
by Steve | Jul 8, 2020 | July-August 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By B.J. Funk –
I have such sweet memories of my mother, who has been vacationing with Jesus in heaven for 18 years. Imagine my surprise when I recently found an issue of Good News from 1984 among her valuables. Even more precious is her handwritten note on the front: “Read Maxie Dunnam’s article, page 7.”
A personal message from Mama? What beautiful irony that I am now blessed to write for a magazine my mother was reading 36 years ago. I had no idea! I love God’s surprises.
In his article, “You Can Grow in your Walk with God,” Maxie discusses how E. Stanley Jones was so instrumental in renewing his spiritual life. In addition to reading Dr. Jones’ book In Christ, Maxie also attended a Christian ashram. There, at this place of religious retreat, Maxie learned about being the actual dwelling place of Christ.
Searching for deeper meaning, Maxie vividly remembered his experience at the altar as the ashram service ended. Brother Stanley asked if the participants wanted to be whole, adding that the only possibility for wholeness was the indwelling Christ. Dunnam responded with an enthusiastic YES! I nodded my own silent YES!
He began to change his attitude about his Christian life, from that of ministering for Christ to that of allowing Christ to live through him. Jones’ In Christ put Maxie in touch with what would become the central reality of his faith journey: the indwelling Christ. Maxie’s quest for a deeper walk with God brought new life into his personal relationship with Christ. He then wanted his vocational purpose to be helping others develop a deeper walk with God. He developed the following definition of spiritual formation: “That dynamic process of receiving through faith and appropriating through commitment, discipline, and action, the living Christ into my own life to the end that my life will conform to and manifest the reality of Christ’s presence in the world.”
My mother underlined these next words: “Simply put, the task of every Christian is to learn to say yes to Christ in every area of life every day. That’s the bottom line of developing a deeper walk with God.” I was being given a rare and beautiful look into my mother’s sold-out commitment to Christ. She lived before me always the words she underlined.
Maxie, instead of focusing only on the three major ingredients for developing and keeping our faith alive – prayer, Scripture study, and corporate worship – as vital as these are, focused his article on other necessary commitments which don’t receive as much emphasis.
The first is being aware of God’s presence throughout the day. More than only the importance of a daily quiet time, we must develop practices that keep us aware of Christ’s presence. To build awareness, Maxie commits each day to Christ. He visualizes Christ’s presence in every situation he will encounter throughout the day.
Mama carried these thoughts into the Children’s Division of our United Methodist Church, where she served as Superintendent for 35 years.
The second is Christian conferencing, deliberately seeking out and listening to the stories of other Christians. Structured small groups are good for this, as is a spontaneous sharing of our faith.
A third discipline is that of solitude. Maxie wrote that his times of silence are sometimes only a few hours or maybe a 24-36-hour period of silent retreat. The purpose of silent times is not just to talk to God, but to learn how to listen.
Confession and examination of conscience bring important questions to the forefront. “Was I condemning today? Did I speak the truth in love?”
A final discipline is generosity, which includes not only tithing but generosity with our time and attention to others. Recognizing that my mother’s Christian life was enhanced by this article makes me know that I will refer to Maxie Dunnam’s article again and again, wanting to take every word into my own desire for a deeper walk with Christ.
Thank you, Maxie. And thank you, Mama.
