by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
Worship time at the 2021 New Room Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Photo courtesy of New Room.
In the midst of chaotic and frustrating times within United Methodism, there is a simultaneous larger pan-Wesleyan movement calling for a renewal of minds and hearts. Over a three-day event in late September, more than 2,100 attended Seedbed’s New Room Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. An additional 600 participated through livestreaming.
Through break-out sessions and plenary addresses, nationally-recognized speakers such as Rich Villodas, Jo Saxton, and Todd Hunter challenged and inspired the assembly. Platform presentations also featured familiar names to United Methodists such as Kevin Watson, Carolyn Moore, and Timothy Tennent.
Despite dozens of book titles under its imprint, the Rev. J.D. Walt insisted that Seedbed, the host of the annual New Room gathering, is not merely a publishing company. “Publishing is not an identity, it’s a strategy. We’re an awakening company,” the Seedbed leader told the assembly.
In our contemporary culture, the challenges facing the Christian church are daunting. “If you listen close enough, there is a generation that is leaving the church – a generation that some are not just calling the ‘nones,’ but now calling the ‘dones,’” said the Rev. Tara Beth Leach, author of Radiant Church: Restoring the Credibility of Our Witness. Particulary on social media, there has been a notable trend of declarations from former churchgoers “deconstructing” their faith.
“If you listen close enough to this generation that is down this path of deconstruction, deconstruction, deconstruction … without any end,” said Leach. “They are not necessarily deconstructing God, but us – the toxic systems and idolatrous systems that we have created.”
Photos on this spread: New Room participants pray and worship during the three-day event. Photos courtesy of Seedbed.
“Returning to church as we have known it, cycling back, is simply not an option,” said the Rev. David Thomas, senior advisor to New Room, in his opening address. “This is where we’re helped by listening to the young. Emerging Christian leaders, these resilient millennial and GenZ Christians, don’t want our church. They’re not rude about it. But they’re clear: they don’t want our org charts and structures, our career ladders and programming, our metrics and trophies. Emerging adults have come of age in a time when church is seen in society as the problem, not viewed positively or even as neutral. The young live in a world that perceives Christianity as undermining the social good.”
Above: Seedbed leaders J.D. Walt (left) and Mark Benjamin address conference participants. Photo courtesy of Seedbed.
Leach believes this a critical time for the church to engage in self-examination. “Perhaps more than ever it’s time we take our finger and point it back inward and ask, ‘Lord, what have we done? What have we abandoned? What have we participated in that has led to this place of a diminished witness?”
Not without hope, Leach believes that the church still has an opportunity to provide a compelling witness. “We are still at this watershed moment,” she said.
The gospel of Jesus Christ remains a magnetic message. “The body of Christ is still the best vehicle the world has for translating the glorious good news of Jesus Christ to a lost and hurting world,” the Rev. Carolyn Moore, pastor of Mosaic Church in Evans, Georgia, and author of Supernatural, told the conference.
Unified Wesleyan Witness. From the very beginning, New Room and Seedbed has operated as a network for Wesleyans across a multi-denomination spectrum that wants to see a spiritual awakening in the United States and around the world. “We are an awakening platform and we are just trying to give it away,” Walt said. “As far and as wide as anybody will receive it.” He slightly modified the familiar appeal of Methodism’s founder John Wesley: “If your heart is as ours, let’s just take each other’s hands and let’s sow for awakening.”
– Good News Media Service.
by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
“The church lives between two advents. Jesus Christ has come; Jesus Christ will come,” writes Fleming Rutledge. “We do not know the day or the hour. If you find this tension almost unbearable at times, then you understand the Christian life.” Photo: Shutterstock.
By Fleming Rutledge –
It is dark early at this time of year and that reminds us of a darkness in our world. There is Christmas tinsel in the streets and Christmas music on the radio, but there is a cheapness at the core. The clock on the bank says it is day, but the hands on the church clock point to midnight.
It is Advent – the deepest place in the church year.
Advent – for the world, is a time of counting shopping days before Christmas. Advent – for the church, it is the season of the shadows, the season of “the works of darkness,” the season in which the church looks straight down into its own heart and finds there … the absence of God.
Now. Come back with me into the very first century AD when the Gospel of Mark was being put together. The young Christian church is going through a crisis of identity. It hears mocking laughter outside, voices saying, “Where is your King? You thought he was coming back, but he has not returned. You have made a very stupid mistake. How can you live without your Lord? He has abandoned you – for this, you want to risk your lives?”
And in its perplexity, the young church repeated a story to itself, a story once told by Jesus of Nazareth. It is one of the so-called crisis parables. It is the Gospel for the first Sunday in Advent, the parable of the doorkeeper.
There is a great household with many family members and many servants. There is a master, who established the household in the first place and gave it its reason for being; he is the one who gathered its members and assigned a place to each. It is he who put the whole operation in motion, who gave shape and direction to its existence. The master has gone away, but his orders are that there is to be a watch at the door, a constant alert. This is the command to the doorkeeper – “Stay awake” – but what he has said to the doorkeeper he says to everyone: “Keep awake.” This state of readiness is to be maintained through the ceaseless vigilance of each family member and servant, each in his own work, until the master returns.
Perhaps you begin to feel the tension in the atmosphere of this parable. Were it not for the master, the household would have no reason for existing; yet he is away. The expectation of his return is the moving force behind all the activity that takes place; yet no one knows when the return will be. Everybody has been ordered to keep awake; yet the days and months and years pass, and still he does not come. Over and over again, the household repeats to itself the charge that it was given – “If he comes suddenly, he must not find us asleep.”
The heartbeat of the parable is strong and accelerated – it is a parable of crisis. It is the story of the church, living in a crisis for two thousand years. The church calendar is not the same as the world’s calendar. The Advent clock points to an hour that is later than the clock on the bank. There is a knocking at the door! Take heed, watch – your Lord and Master may be standing at the gate this very moment. Keep awake, for if he comes suddenly, he must not find you asleep. “A thousand ages in his sight are like an evening gone” (Isaac Watts, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”). There is no way for the church to adjust its calendar to the world’s calendar.
The church is not part of contemporary culture, and never should have been. The church keeps her own deep inner rhythms. New Testament time is different from the world’s time; Saint Paul says, “My friends, the time we live in will not last long …. For the whole frame of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:29, 31). New Testament time is a million years compressed into a single instant – and the time is now. “The hour cometh, and now is” (John 4:23). There is no way to alleviate the overwhelming tension produced by the Advent clock; the only way to be faithful is to be faithful at each moment. “Keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming.”
The church lives in Advent. That is to say, the church lives between two advents. Jesus Christ has come; Jesus Christ will come. We do not know the day or the hour. If you find this tension almost unbearable at times, then you understand the Christian life. We live at what the New Testament depicts as the turn of the ages. In Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God is in head-on collision with the powers of darkness. The point of impact is the place where Christians take their stand. That is why it hurts. That’s why the church has to take a beating. This is what Scripture tells us. No wonder there are so many who fall away; the church is located precisely where the battle line is drawn.
It is the Advent clock that tells the church what time it is. The church that keeps Advent is the church that is most truly herself. The church is not supposed to be prosperous and commonable and established. It is Advent – it is dark and lonely and cold, and the master is away from home. Yet he will come. Keep awake.
He came among us once as a stranger, and we put him on a cross. He comes among us now, in the guise of the stranger at the door. He will come in the future, not as a stranger, but as the King in his glory, and “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Phil. 2:10). “The coming of the Lord is at hand,” says Saint James. “Behold, the Judge is standing at the doors” (James 5:8-9). Keep awake, then … if he comes suddenly, he must not find you asleep.
Fleming Rutledge is an Episcopal priest, best-selling author, and a widely revered preacher. Her many books include The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. The article is taken from her year-long devotional book, Means of Grace: A Year of Weekly Devotions (Eerdmans).
by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
Hand colored lithograph of John Wesley preaching on his father’s grave in the church yard at Epworth in 1742. Currier and Ives artwork. Library of Congress.
“John Wesley and Karl Marx, unmistakably, are the two most influential characters of all modern history,” wrote social historian Dr. J. Wesley Bready (1887-1953) in his colorful and intriguing assessment of the ramifications of the theological and spiritual revival in Wesley-era England. Most recently, Regent College republished Bready’s England Before and After Wesley: The Evangelical Revival and Social Reform, originally published in 1938.
Wesley’s “vital religion” was far more transformative – both individually and societally – than what Marx would have dismissed as the “opiate of the people.” Wesley and his followers addressed issues such as prison reform, education, poverty, health care, human slavery, orphanages, literacy, animal cruelty, and chronic alcoholism. What follows are a few of our favorite excerpts from Bready’s book. –Good News
Passion to be used by God: “Wesley’s supreme purpose was to make men vitally conscious of God. He therefore had no desire to dictate the intellectual niceties associated with the divine work of redemption; rather was he actuated by an impelling passion to be used of God, as a humble but active instrument, in the work of redemption. With prophetic insight he recognized the insidious demons which were luring millions of his countrymen into the tangled labyrinths of moral corruption and spiritual death – and challenging the sway of those demons, he set about to release the victims from their woeful plight. He saw the ecclesiastical machinery of his generation rusty and clogged with dust; he chafed to cleanse it and set it in motion, for the redemption of the general populace. His purpose was not to formulate a new theology or a new theory of Church or State, but to touch dead bones with the breath of spiritual power, and make them live; to release the winds of heaven, that they might blow upon the ashy embers of religion and kindle a purging, illuminating fire of righteousness and truth. He would substitute for the bondage of sin, the liberty, individual and social, of men new-born after the similitude of Christ. He would revive creative, life-giving Faith.”
Attacking the Revival: “During the first two or three decades of the Revival the ugly, riotous interference of mobs was more or less continuous. On innumerable occasions, the meetings of the Wesleys, Whitefield, and many itinerant preachers were attacked by drunken, brawling rabbles armed with such formidable means of assault as clubs, whips, clods, bricks, staves, stones, stink-bombs, wildfire, and rotten eggs. Sometimes they procured a bull and drove him into the midst of an open air congregation; sometimes they contented themselves by performing with bells, horns, drums, pans and such like, to deaden the preacher’s voice. Frequently, when goaded by a violent leader, they resorted to every available means of attack; and not infrequently they expended their fury in burning or tearing down the houses, and destroying or stealing the furniture and possessions, of the Revival’s followers.”
Amazing grace: “Wesley, the Evangelist, was a man possessed of amazing grace. Never did he lose his temper; and always was he prepared to endure a blow, if the dealing of it would relieve the hysteria of his assailant. Repeatedly, when struck by a stone or cudgel, he quietly wiped away the blood and went on preaching without so much as a frown on his face. He loved his enemies; and do what they would, they could not make him discourteous or angry. … In danger, Wesley had taught his followers to think of the Christ before Pilate, of the Son of God before a raging, crucifying mob. Thus it was, that Wesley’s serenity first broke, and later won, the heart of many a mob-leader and ruthless enemy – thus it was, too, that many a one-time brute came to be transformed into a gentle, saintly class-leader and understanding shepherd of souls.”
J. Wesley Bready Ph.D. was a noted sociologist, lecturer, and scholar. These excerpts are from his book Before and After Wesley: The Evangelical Revival and Social Reform (the original edition was published in 1938).
by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
“John Wesley represents an intriguing synthesis of old and new,” wrote Howard Snyder in Radical Wesley, “conservative and radical, tradition and innovation that can spark greater clarity in today’s new quest to be radically Christian.” Photo: Shutterstock.
By Winfield Bevins –
It’s easy for contemporary Christians to think that John Wesley, the great revivalist and leader of the Great Awakening, was opposed to church tradition altogether. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, he was a high churchman who loved church tradition, the sacraments, and the Anglican liturgy. He used the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, which contains orders of services, ancient creeds, communal prayers, and a lectionary. Wesley said, “I believe there is no Liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety than the Common Prayer of the Church of England.”
While at Oxford, Wesley and his brother Charles were accused of being “sacramentalists” because of their insistence upon taking communion regularly. It is said that Wesley took the Lord’s Supper at least once every four to five days, and he encouraged the Methodists to celebrate the Lord’s Supper weekly. Wesley said, “It is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as he can” (“The Duty of Constant Communion”). These are hardly the words of a non-traditionalist.
In many ways, early Methodism could be described as a movement that was founded on tradition and innovation. Wesley traced the Methodist genealogy back to the “old religion,” describing Methodism as “the old religion, the religion of the Bible, the religion of the primitive Church, the religion of the Church of England.” For Wesley, Methodism was not something new, but another link in an unbroken chain of true religion, a religion of the heart, which was “no other than love, the love of God and of all mankind” (“On Laying the Foundation”).
“Wesley’s ecclesiology was a working synthesis of old and new, tradition and innovation…True renewal in the church always weds new insights, ideas, and methods with the best elements of history,” writes Howard Snyder in Radical Wesley. “And true renewal is always a return, at the most basic level, to the image of the church as presented in Scripture and as lived out in a varying mosaic of faithfulness and unfaithfulness down through history. John Wesley represents an intriguing synthesis of old and new, conservative and radical, tradition and innovation that can spark greater clarity in today’s new quest to be radically Christian.”
This return to a more primitive form and practice of Christianity primarily meant returning to the spiritual vitality that was characteristic of the book of Acts and the early church. Wesley and the early Methodists had a vision to recapture a “contagious faith” and to spread it around the world: “Scriptural Christianity, as beginning to exist in individuals; as spreading from one to another; as covering the earth” (“Scriptural Christianity”).
It clearly states on Wesley’s tombstone, that the heart of the Wesleyan revival was the rediscovery of “the pure apostolic doctrines and practices of the early church.” But Wesley did more than read and study the past. He took what he learned and reapplied it, contextualizing it to his own time and place. More than that, he used what he learned to create a disciple-making movement that equipped and empowered thousands of people to join in God’s mission.
The Tension of Tradition and Innovation. One of the secrets of the success of Wesley’s movement was his ability to maintain a dynamic synthesis of old and new, tradition and innovation. While he wasn’t against tradition, Wesley was opposed to dead, dry religion, cold ritualism, and the clericalism that discouraged non-ordained people from being involved in the life of the ministry, all of which had become widespread in the Church of England in the eighteenth century.
The Wesleyan synthesis could perhaps best be viewed as a tension between the embrace of tradition and the need for innovation. While Wesley was a traditional high church Anglican priest who honored church tradition, at the same time, he was an apostolic leader who was willing to innovate, willing to bring change to the structure and methods of the church in order to see the gospel shared and lives changed.
While Wesley honored this tradition, he was not bound by it. He was far more concerned with saving souls, and he believed that the Lord was doing an extraordinary thing by raising up the Methodists and calling non-ordained men and women to preach and serve as leaders in the church. This, perhaps more than anything else, was why Wesley faced such opposition to his work. His embrace of non-ordained people to preach and lead bypassed the institutional hierarchy and upset the status quo. His empowerment of an army of non-ordained women and men was nothing short of revolutionary at a time when the church relied almost solely on clergy to accomplish Christ’s mission.
Wesley worked to keep the old and the new in tension. He began to envision two kinds of ministerial orders: the ordinary Anglican clergy and the extraordinary Methodist preachers. Wesley saw a role for Anglican ministers in providing pastoral oversight of a congregation and administering the sacraments, while the purpose of the extraordinary Methodist preachers was preaching and evangelizing the lost.
Wesley used the Scriptures to aid him in embracing the tension he held between tradition and innovation, between the old and the new. He continued to believe in the need for the ordinary and established Anglican clergy, but he believed that there was an equally significant role for the non-ordained preachers and workers of the Methodist movement. The church was filled with ordained clergy, yet it was not meeting the need of the world to hear the gospel message.
What was needed was an army of lay preachers and evangelists who would preach the good news at every highway and in the hedges. To this vision, Wesley was willing to give his life, dedicating his time and energy to empower a new and extraordinary order of ministry. The result of Wesley’s embrace of tradition and innovation was the birth of one of the greatest Christian movements the world has ever known.
Tradition and Innovation Today. Wesley reminds us that we need tradition and innovation to face the challenges and complexities of today’s world. We do not need innovation at the expense of tradition. Rather, we need innovation that is rooted in tradition. I believe the future mission of the church will be found on the road where the past and the present meet in a re-traditioning that embraces the best of tradition for the sake of the future through tradition and innovation.
The combination of tradition and innovation does not mean compromising time-honored essentials of orthodoxy or church tradition, but rather bringing those essentials into dialogue with the present realities of the church in a beautiful convergence of old and new. I believe the church of the future will need to be rooted in Scripture, tradition, liturgy, and sacraments, while at the same time fully engage in mission at the intersection of the gospel and culture.
By using the term “tradition,” I do not mean tradition with a capital T, as in Roman Catholicism or Lutheranism, but rather I am referring to tradition with a lowercase t, as in what has been common to all Christians in all ages, especially during the first five centuries of the church.
Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “Isn’t tradition just dead religion?” We need to distinguish between tradition and traditionalism.
Historian Jaroslav Pelikan describes the difference between tradition and traditionalism. “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living,” he said. “Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.”
With Wesley, I believe the church of the future will be one that is rooted in tradition and innovation. The recovery of tradition doesn’t mean that we should try to relive the past; it’s about retrieving it and appropriating it into the context of life in twenty-first century North America. I am not advocating reverting back to “the good ol’ days,” but proposing a way for the past, present, and future to come together for a new generation that is rooted in tradition and innovation. I believe that the future of the church not only lies in the traditions of the past, but in the unique implementation of these concepts in our world today.
In his book You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith calls this integration “tradition for innovation.” He reminds us that tradition should be seen as a resource to foster cultural innovation because it provides us with rich imaginative practices that are rooted in historic Christian worship. Here are some of Smith’s examples of how liturgy fosters a fresh missional imagination:
“Kneeling in confession and voicing ‘the things we have done and the things we have left undone …’ tangibly and viscerally impresses upon us the brokenness of our world and humbles our own pretensions;
“Pledging allegiance in the Creed is a political act – a reminder that we are citizens of a coming kingdom, curtailing our temptation to over identify with any configuration of the earthly city;
“The rite of baptism, where the congregation vows to help raise a child alongside the parents, is just the liturgical formation we need to be a people who can support those raising children with intellectual disabilities or other special needs;
“Sitting at the Lord’s Table with the risen King, where all are invited to eat, is a tactile reminder of the just, abundant world that God longs for.”
I believe this is one of great needs in the world today: holding tradition and innovation, old and new, together in a dynamic way. The recovery of tradition and innovation was at the heart of the Wesleyan revival. Wesley wanted to recover the old religion and connect his generation with the early church and its teachings, but Methodism was also something new, contextualized for his time and place, and Wesley was able to give old truth fresh expression. When he spoke about recovering “Scriptural Christianity,” Wesley meant a return to the pure, undefiled “religion of the Bible, the religion of the primitive church” (“On Laying the Foundations.”)
This is not just an outdated idea from a bygone era, but an idea whose time has come once again. We need this integration if the church is going to survive the chaos and complexity of the 21st century. The recovery of tradition and innovation among this generation is a sign of renewal, a Spirit-inspired movement that should give us hope for the future of the church as it rediscovers its ancient roots. The integration of tradition and innovation is found at the intersection of faith, formation, and mission for today.
Winfield Bevins the Director of Church Planting at Asbury Theological Seminary. He also is a frequent conference speaker and author. Some of his recent books include Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Allure of Liturgy for a New Generation and Marks of a Movement: What the Church Today Can Learn from the Wesleyan Revival. This essay originally appeared on Firebrand (firebrandmag.com) and is reprinted by permission.
by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
Mosaic of Father Damien in the Maria Lanakila Catholic Church in Lahaina, Hawaii, established in 1846. Father Damien, who had worshiped there, gave his life to the lepers on Molokai. Photo by Steve Beard.
By Steve Beard –
Looking across the shades of aqua blue water from the northwest coast of Maui, there are two Hawaiian islands seen in the distance. One is Lanai, once home to the largest pineapple plantation in the world. Today, the island is privately owned by billionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle and known for its exclusivity, luxurious accommodations, and spectacular golf course.
The other island is Molokai, known around the world for over a century because of the selfless ministry of Father Damien. From the first time I saw the two sparsely populated islands, Molokai’s tragic and triumphant saga of faith and kindness has held a magnetic appeal.
In 1866, the Kingdom of Hawaii forcibly exiled those suspected of having leprosy (known today as Hansen’s disease) to a small plot of land on Molokai. Called Kalaupapa, the peninsula is surrounded on three sides by the majestic Pacific Ocean and boxed in by a towering 3,600-foot cliff. Father Damien called it a “living graveyard.”
At age 33, Damien unhesitatingly volunteered to be a priest to the rejected and dejected in exile. Ten years previous, he left his native Belgium and spent five months at sea to become a missionary to Hawaii. He was a pious, head-strong, and resourceful priest. To his superiors and fellow priests, going to Molokai was a death wish. Furthermore, the colony had the lawless deterioration of the Lord of the Flies.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” reads the sign above hell in the 14th century poem describing the afterlife in Dante’s Inferno. It also could have been written at the unforgiving shoreline of Molokai for those who had been rounded up and sentenced to a lifetime of misery away from friends, ohana (family), and civilization. When the bishop escorted Damien to the island, he introduced the priest to the 800 exiles as one “who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you, to live and die with you.” No truer introduction could have been pronounced.
Father Damien was a spiritual first responder. Squalor, pain, and suffering surrounded him. And the smell was putrid. “Many a time in fulfilling my priestly duties at their domiciles I have been obliged, not only to close my nostrils, but to remain outside to breathe fresh air,” he confessed. “As an antidote to counteract the bad smell I got myself accustomed to the use of tobacco.” The aroma of his pipe gave him some relief.
“Picture to yourself a collection of huts with 800 lepers,” he wrote to his brother. “No doctor; in fact, as there is no cure, there seems no place for a doctor’s skill.” What he witnessed and experienced was overwhelming. Despite the horrific circumstances, Damien ate from the same bowl as the afflicted, used his fingers to feed poi to those with no hands, shared his pipe, embraced the ill, and gave last rites to the dying. Although he had been sternly warned against physically touching those of his flock, he did the opposite.
Bodily disfigurement came with the disease. Yet, Damien knew that “they also have a soul redeemed at the price of the precious blood of our Divine Savior,” he once wrote. “He too in his divine love consoled lepers. If I cannot heal them, as he could, at least I can offer them comfort.” With gumption and compassion, he even tried to read medical books to help alleviate pain and suffering. He cleaned and bandaged the ghastly wounds, and was even forced to learn to amputate limbs.
In his acts of mercy, Damien expressed his belief that Christ is present in all our sufferings. He worked tirelessly so that those who had been abandoned knew that God, too, did not turn his back. He looked at the innocent orphans and was confident that they had done nothing to deserve leprosy – countering a prevailing belief among some at the time that it was a divine punishment.
As he held the dying, he demonstrated through his embrace: You have dignity. You have worth. You have intrinsic value.
“With parishioners like his Hawaiians, touch was all-important. With a priest like Damien, in whom belief was unaffectedly incarnate, faith was made physical,” writes historian Gavan Daws in the biography Holy Man (University of Hawaii Press). “To mortify the body, to die to himself, to risk physical leprosy in order to cure moral leprosy – this was to be a good priest. If it meant touching the untouchable, then that was what had to be done. The touch of the priest was the indispensable connection between parishioner and church, sinner and salvation.”
From the outset, he addressed his flock: “We lepers.” Damien faithfully preached, baptized, heard confessions, built caskets (an estimated 1,000), dug graves, and buried the dead with respect. He lived the virtues of aloha to those who had been sequestered to die. Furthermore, without timidity, he hounded the government and religious leaders – much to their irritation – for medical supplies, clothing, food, lumber, and piping to provide fresh water to the colony. He was a tireless advocate for the ostracized and forgotten. “I find my greatest happiness in serving the Lord in his poor and sick children – who are rejected by others,” he wrote.
Despair was an ever-constant and dark storm cloud over Molokai. How could it not be? In addition to his priestly duties and doing everything he could to improve living conditions – including building shelters and blasting rocks to create a dock – he also tried to bring joy and purpose to those who were sent there simply to die. Damien organized choirs, an orchestra, horse races, and baseball games.
In his journal, he reminds himself: “Be severe towards yourself, indulgent toward others. Have scrupulous exactitude for everything regarding God … Remember your three vows by which you are dead to the things of the world. … Remember that God is eternal and work courageously to one day be united with him forever.”
As to be expected, even saints become agitated, depressed, and lonely. Father Damien was no exception. Death was omnipresent. “The only thing that really grows here is the cemetery,” he once wrote. “The pews in the church are somewhat emptier, while in the cemetery there is hardly room left to dig the graves.”
At age 49 – after 13 years on Molokai – he discovered that he had contracted the dreaded disease. By this time, despite a handful of detractors and critics, Father Damien had effectively raised awareness around the globe about the plight of those who suffered from Hansen’s disease. His selfless work found support from warmhearted people of all nationalities, politics, and creeds. Princess Liliuokalani presented Father Damien with a medal as a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalakaua – the highest honor of the royal family in Hawaii.
“I am gently going to my grave,” he wrote shortly before his death, three years after contracting the disease. “It is the will of God, and I thank him very much for letting me die of the same disease and in the same way as my lepers. I am very satisfied and very happy.” He died during Holy Week in 1889. For Father Damien, Easter was celebrated in eternity.
In 1936, when there was word that the humble priest was being considered for sainthood, King Leopold III contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to get assistance in exhuming the body of Father Damien from Molokai (then the U.S. Territory of Hawaii) and returning it to his native Belgium. The Hawaiians who knew his complex personality – and saw firsthand the fruit of his energetic and industrious ministry – were devastated.
Decades later, in a much-appreciated move, Pope John Paul II saw to it that the remains of Father Damien’s right hand were returned to his original gravesite on Molokai. It was a fitting tribute to the saint who purposefully held out his hand to the untouchable. 
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
Proceedings of the 2012 General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Tampa, Florida. Photo by Steve Beard.
By Joseph F. DiPaolo –
There’s been lots of speculation about the upcoming General Conference of The United Methodist Church – when it will happen, whether it will happen, what the delegates are likely to do, and what they should do.
This is not surprising. Since 1968 (indeed, since 1792), General Conference is where the buck has always stopped.
Until recently, that is. A big reason we are on the verge of division is because, for the first time since 1792, some folks and groups within the church (including some bishops and even whole annual conferences) have decided that the decisions and policies of General Conference can be ignored or defied. Still, when it comes to legal issues around property, pensions, and liabilities, General Conference has the final word.
But there are even more important reasons why General Conference must meet and soon: to act on the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation and end the state of limbo we are all enduring.
For one thing, only General Conference speaks for the whole church. Many voices today are making predictions and pronouncements about the state of the UM Church, about what annual conferences can and cannot do, about what would be just and fair in any division of the church. The problem is that only General Conference – not any bishop, agency executive, or clergy blogger – speaks for the whole church. Only General Conference brings together representatives from every conference across the globe to decide on questions which affect the whole denomination. It is a messy process, to be sure, but the only one which truly gives voice and vote to all the constituent parts of the body.
In addition, only General Conference can create a consistent policy for the whole connection. Did you know that annual conferences have always been able to allow congregations to leave with their property? Even before the disaffiliation clause was added to the Discipline in 2019, annual conferences sometimes suspended the trust clause when a church closed, merged or federated, or simply negotiated to become independent. As a result, individual annual conferences could, if they chose, create their own versions of the Protocol. But this would be a very uneven and uncertain process across the denomination, and likely create inequities depending on the specific culture and leadership of individual conferences. Only General Conference can create a just and fair process that encompasses the whole denomination.
Finally, only General Conference can prevent the church from devolving into bitter conflict and expensive legal battles over property. The bitter polarization of North American culture has infected the culture of the church, and we have seen it play out at annual, jurisdictional, and general conferences. It has not been pretty. But we now have an opportunity to model a different way, even amid our own deep divisions.
Instead of continuing to fight and trying to force each other into complying with our side’s agenda, progressives and traditionalists can choose to bless one another to pursue different visions of ministry in separate institutions. If we cannot agree on “what Jesus would do,” can we at least agree “what Jesus would not do”? – and surely Jesus would not resort to the power of government (enforcing the trust clause) to make people follow and support him. We can choose to minimize the pain and harm of dividing by agreeing to do so amicably and fairly. We can choose to be guided by principles of graciousness, respect, and the golden rule, and preserve some measure of goodwill to allow for post-separation cooperation on areas of common concern.
For those things to happen, we need the General Conference to meet, and to act on the Protocol.
As a member of the Commission on General Conference, I can tell you that we are still working and planning with the expectation that the deferred 2020 General Conference will meet, as announced, next August. Of course, no one knows what international crisis may erupt, or how the ongoing pandemic will evolve – who could have predicted the last year and a half? Both the Commission members and the Commission staff are acutely aware of the importance of having the General Conference meet and getting the church “unstuck” as soon as possible. I can attest to the professionalism and competence of the General Conference staff, which is constantly exploring ways to make General Conference happen. And I can testify that, even with the differences of opinion and theology represented on the Commission, all have worked well together to do our job, which we know is limited to planning and organizing the gathering; it is up to the delegates to deliberate and decide on the issues and policies.
I am hopeful! Many organizations have found ways to “pivot” and adapt these last 18 months in order to conduct business – including a sibling, global denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which successfully convened a hybrid General Conference this past July. More things are possible today than just six or eight months ago. And of course, all things are possible with God!
Pray for wisdom and discernment for the members and staff of the Commission. Pray that the Lord will soon deliver us from this global plague. And pray that the General Conference will soon meet to resolve the current impasse, adopt the Protocol, and enable a new day to dawn for those of us who follow Christ in the Wesleyan way.
The Rev. Joseph F. DiPaolo is lead pastor at Lancaster First United Methodist Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Wesleyan Covenant Association Global Council and also serves as a member of the UM Church’s Commission on the General Conference. This aricle is reprinted by permission of the Wesleyan Covenant Association.
