by Steve | Mar 20, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2017
Directors of New Hope ministries: (from left) Rev. Cali Depue Eck, Kristy Goff, and Luisa Medina. Photo by Boyce Bowdon.
By Boyce A. Bowdon-
It was November 8 – Election Day 2016. I didn’t have to go far to my polling place. New Hope United Methodist Church is only a few blocks from my home in northwest Oklahoma City.
The church parking lot was nearly full so it took me a while to park. The minute I stepped inside, a New Hope member welcomed me and directed me to The Gathering Area, where voters were lined up. About 75 people were in front of me. As I looked around, I saw the church’s mission statement in bold letters high on the wall near the ceiling. It read: “Building loving relationships with God and others through the hope that is in Jesus Christ.”
Near the front of the room, a video was running on a big TV. It told about the church’s upcoming events and invited everyone to attend. Several credenzas lined up on one wall were filled with platters of refreshments, a large coffee pot, and pitchers of water. People obviously were enjoying them. I heard a man ask, “Are we suppose to pay for these?” A New Hope member standing nearby told him the church had given the treats. “We want you to be wide awake when you vote,” he quipped. After I finished voting, a member from New Hope greeted me and said. “Come back anytime. God bless you.”
Impressed by the hospitality at New Hope, I went back the next day to express my appreciation. Greg Wells, a volunteer in the office who helps with administration, told me more than 1000 people voted. They drank 19 gallons of coffee and ate 28 dozen donuts, granola bars, cupcakes, and cookies. Many people came, he said, who had never been in New Hope before.
Gary told me voting is one of many community activities New Hope hosts, and he explained why the church considers participation in these events to be a part of its mission. He referred to the mission statement I had seen in the Gathering Area. “Everything that brings people in gives us a chance to let them see we respect and value them and maybe to build a relationship with them that might help them feel God’s love,” he said.
Greg described what he and his wife, Rosanne, experienced when they came to New Hope for the first time. “The church where we were members had been declining for years and finally closed, so we started looking for a new church home,” he explained. “The minute we stepped inside New Hope, people welcomed us warmly. Children were running around and young couples were everywhere. The worship service was alive. Music was great. The pastor preached with conviction. He was down-to-earth and he lifted us up. So Rosanne and I knew that first Sunday that we had found our church home.”
When visiting with New Hope’s pastor – the Rev. Dr. J. D. Ward – I told him I was impressed by how the church had gone all out to welcome voters. He gave all the credit to others. “Gary Graham and Greg Wells and their team started setting up the Gathering Area the day before the election and they were back the next morning at 5:30 to finish up,” he reported. “All I did was pick up the donuts.”
Dr. Ward is deeply committed to “Building loving relationships with God and others through the hope that is in Jesus Christ,” the church’s mission statement. “To me, being in mission is a lot of what it means to be the Church,” he said. “We reach out to people on more than one level and try to build relationships with them. We share our concern, and through sharing our concern we share God’s love.”
He read me a thank-you card he had received a few days before from a couple who had had received help several times from New Hope’s food pantry, which serves about 200 people a month. On the card, the couple expressed gratitude for the food and kindness they received. “You helped us survive a ‘rough patch’ we had been going through,” they wrote.
Ward says New Hope’s pantry workers “treat people who come for help like the true human beings they are, with respect and care and concern. We share the love of Christ with them and try to help meet their spiritual and emotional needs along with the food that meets their physical needs.”
Building loving relationships with God and others through the hope that is in Jesus Christ is also at the heart of what Ward seeks to accomplish through his sermons. “The name of our church is New Hope and I think we spread the hope of Christ through preaching the word and that allows people to be inspired and to be hopeful and more positive with other people,” said Ward, who earned his doctorate in church history.
“My thought is that preaching needs to be positive, affirming, and uplifting,” he said. “People are beaten down enough by life. When they come to church, they need a message that deepens their trust in God – that helps them feel loved and cared for and filled with hope. That’s what the gospel does for us.”
When Ward came to New Hope seven years ago, Sunday morning worship attendance was 167. Now it’s 298. New Hope’s mission statement started taking shape during the 1990s, when the congregation was meeting in a strip mall and dreaming about who God was calling them to be and to do, says the Rev. Cali Depue Eck, associate pastor and director of discipleship.
Even during those days New Hope’s people felt God calling them to reach out and build relationships that would help people experience God’s life-changing love. In 1998, the congregation moved about a mile north to their new home on 12 acres in a growing neighborhood, and they took their mission statement with them.
Focusing on the mission statement shapes New Hope’s ministries. “We try to help every member be familiar with the church’s mission statement and understand what it means,” Rev. Eck says. “That’s why we have it in our Gathering Area and in other parts of our building and on our church letterhead, newsletter, website, and everywhere else we can think of.”
She said keeping the mission statement before everyone serves two purposes. “It tells visitors who we are and why we are here. It also reminds all of us who we are and why we are here – that’s just as important!”
Eck says leaders use the mission statement to evaluate existing ministries and proposed ministries. “We expect ourselves to be Christ to the world – that’s who we believe God is calling us to be. And nothing we do matters if it doesn’t contribute toward what Jesus calls us to do.”
Members are encouraged to suggest ministries that can help New Hope fulfill its mission. The idea for a ministry to low-income people in downtown Oklahoma City came from the young adult college age class.
“Years ago, New Hope started making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and taking them to people in a poverty-stricken area downtown,” Eck said. “The ministry grew quickly. Now our congregation donates sleeping bags, blankets, toiletries, coats, socks, and other items. The people know we are coming every second Saturday, so they are there waiting for our bus to arrive.”
New Hope not only ministers to people nearby, it ministers to people far away. Several years ago, after an earthquake in Nicaragua, New Hope’s mission team helped build a Methodist Church in a village near a dump, where thousands of people gathered after their homes were destroyed. “The church we helped build serves food twice a day to children, and we provide money to sustain their ministry,” Eck says.
Striving to minister to physical needs of people in crisis, New Hope also ministers to a variety of educational, mental health, and spiritual needs:
• At the invitation of a neighborhood elementary school, several New Hope members tutor students under the guidance of teachers.
• The church partners with a mental health agency and a drug court to help people with addiction issues rebuild their lives. In addition to providing a place for meetings, the church serves a meal. Several New Hope people attend meetings, Rev. Eck says. “We celebrate their victories and share their grief.”
Luisa Medina – who now directs children’s ministries – has been part of New Hope since she was a child. “I started coming here when I was 12 and even then New Hope was sharing God’s love with people through its ministries,” Luisa recalls. “My love for our church’s mission was fostered back then. As I grew older, being in mission became a vital part of me.”
Now in her 20s, Luisa says she is grateful for the opportunity to pass on what she received as a child to children with whom she ministers. “My hope is that when my kids leave children’s ministry and go to youth, they will have a solid biblical foundation,” she says. “Our goal is for them to know the stories of our faith and to be aware of who we are as United Methodists. With that foundation, when they get to youth ministry they can start digging a little deeper and growing as disciples.”
Luisa says she frequently sees encouraging signs of growth in her children. “Recently, one of our boys received quite a bit of money for his birthday. He wanted to spend most of it helping the homeless – a concern he had developed at church.” With his parents’ permission, Luisa took the boy on a shopping trip. She says he bought household items as well as treats. “We took what he bought to Skyline, our United Methodist urban ministry that helps people who need it. Skyline staff gave us a tour of the center. When we got back to the church, the boy told other kids what he had learned.”
Kristy Goff, director of New Hope’s preschool ministries, says she and her staff are committed to being faithful to New Hope’s mission statement. “We want to be a welcoming and caring community and create an environment that nurtures faith in our children,” she says. “We try to help them know we love them and care for them and that they are precious in our eyes and in the eyes of God. Some of our children are not in a church setting except for when they are with us. We want to make our time a positive experience and help them build loving relationships with God and others.”
Election day is not the only day when the parking places are hard to find at New Hope United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City. Spaces are scarce most Sunday mornings when the 550-member congregation gathers for worship.
After visiting with Dr. Ward, his staff and several members, I know why New Hope is a busy place. It’s not because an entertaining show or sensational spectacle is packing folks in. Why people come is simple. It’s the same reason crowds came to hear Jesus – it’s why the Church is still alive after twenty centuries.
When people come to New Hope, they find what they were looking for, even if they didn’t know it. They experience God’s love giving them new hope and new life. And soon they are part of a community committed to “Building loving relationships with God and others through the hope that is in Jesus Christ.”
New Hope’s pastor, staff, and people know their mission. And their mission motivates their ministry.
Boyce A. Bowdon was a United Methodist pastor for 20 years and director of communication for the Oklahoma Annual Conference for 24 years.
by Steve | Mar 20, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2017
Judy Graham, director of Celebration Women’s Ministries. Photo courtesy of Houston Baptist University.
“The Lord gives the word of power; the women who bear and publish the news are a great host.” – Psalms 68:11
The 2016 General Conference was good news indeed for women’s ministry in The United Methodist Church. Legislation developed by the Renew Network, the women’s arm of Good News, was adopted to allow ministries to women and men in addition to UMW and UMM.
For some, the addition to paragraph 256.7 opens the door for churches to welcome women’s ministry that meets the unique needs and gifts of their particular congregation and conference. No longer is women’s ministry “one size fits all,” nor is the United Methodist Women under the leadership of the New York office the only official women’s ministry outlet.
For others, the Book of Discipline now officially recognizes and encourages the vibrant work of women that has been taking place for decades. One such women’s ministry is Celebration Women’s Ministry, which began in the Texas Annual Conference and dates back to 1997.
Katy Kiser, team leader of the Renew Network, recently sat down and spoke with Judy Graham, president and co-founder of Celebration Women’s Ministry.
Judy, why did you and others feel there was a need for a women’s ministry like Celebration?
There were three founders of Celebration who saw women hungering for spiritual growth. We recognized everyone needs to experience the power of God; that was simply not happening in some of our ministries. We knew that the church cannot transform the world unless we individually have been healed and transformed.
Some needed the basic step of accepting salvation and the life that God intended through Jesus Christ. Others were seeking opportunities for spiritual growth and discipleship. Many women needed the healing touch that only Jesus can provide. And all women needed the sweet fellowship of one another and the power of each other’s prayers.
Many of our churches needed to develop women’s ministry that met these needs. But let me be clear, the founders, including myself, simply recognized a work that God was already doing and joined it. He led us to work within the UM Church and develop a structure by which women could connect to each other and reach out.
How did the Lord lead you to meet these needs?
In 1997, we approached Bishop Woodrow Hearn who gave us his support, as did our annual conference. At our first event, 65 women leaders from 22 churches in our conference committed to pray on a monthly basis for Celebration. We held a meeting at St. Luke’s UM Church in Houston where over 500 women attended. Not long after this, another 55 women from 16 churches met in East Texas and enthusiastically embraced our vision. Subsequently, at the invitation of pastors and lay women, Celebration was started.
Over the next year and a half, Celebration became a foundation and a covering for women’s ministries in which the focus was on salvation, healing, and equipping based on Luke 4:18-19. By providing speakers and studies in these three areas, Celebration met and continues to meet a full range of women’s needs including praise, worship, prayer, personal witness, Bible study, and fellowship. Today in the Texas Conference we have 21 chapters and new chapters are still being added.
You mention that prayer played a role very early on in starting this ministry. Does that continue to be the case for the organization?
We believe that all beginnings should be birthed in prayer. In fact, we ask women interested in having Celebration at their church to pray for several months and receive God’s vision before becoming a chapter. We also ask that each chapter keep their church, its leadership, and their pastor in prayer as well as our ministry.
The National Board has developed “Guidelines for Intercessory Prayer.” Praying key scriptures is just one tool we encourage along with prayer for renewal, revival, and unity. We also pray for one another. We want women to expect God to answer their prayers: for the church, this ministry, and their personal needs. Prayer teams that meet regularly and email prayer teams operate between chapter meetings. We also maintain a prayer room at the Texas Annual Conference each year. Bishop Janice Huie wrote to us, “Thank you for the beautiful prayer chapel your team provides during the Texas Annual Conference. Your oasis helps us strengthen ourselves for ministry decisions.”
Has Celebration been limited to the Texas Conference or the UM Church for that matter?
2017 marks eighteen years of service for Celebration Women’s Ministry. In that time we have begun chapters in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. Celebration is seeing walls come down when women come together to worship Jesus. In our meetings are women of all ages and from a variety of backgrounds.
This ministry is not limited to the UM Church; we work across denominational lines, because regardless of denominational affiliations, women need Jesus and women need each other. The Celebration chapter in Appomattox, Virginia, is one example.
Our National Board is particularly excited about the adoption of Renew Network’s legislation by the 2016 General Conference that gives denominational approval to women’s ministries like ours. While we have always had official approval from our conference and local churches, we expect this action will have a big effect on the expansion of Celebration in other UM conferences not to mention other vital ministries.
Of course, expansion is meaningless unless the lives of women are being freed to heal from sin, grow in Christ, and become equipped to share what God is doing in their personal lives and the life of the church.
Can you share one of those testimonies?
Over the years, we have received thousands of testimonies of lives that were changed by our ministry. One of our members wrote after a Celebration National Conference: “I was a broken child of God. The conference was such a blessing. The main message couldn’t have been more relevant to what I needed. 2 Timothy 1:7: ‘God has not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, love, and self-control.’ I am now, finally, living for God and it feels so great.”
What would be your advice to women who want to begin alternative ministries in their church?
Prayer should be first; it is essential, as well as working with your pastor and church leaders. If your ministry grows beyond your local church, I also would advise working with your bishop and conference leaders. For those who wish to begin a Celebration chapter, all the principles, steps, and requirements are on our website. We have a leadership team that personally guides new chapters and trains their leaders.
Judy, what are your general thoughts about the UM Church and the state of women’s ministry?
Like Renew and Good News, I realize our church is in a crisis over human sexuality, and I would not want to discount that in any way. But at the same time, I see God moving in a mighty way. For years, many of us have been praying and working for renewal. Much of what happened at General Conference indicates that is happening. I contacted Renew when I heard that the GC had adopted legislation officially recognizing a variety of women’s ministries. I felt this was monumental. We need to move where God is moving. Praise God that is happening. In my mind, another huge indicator is the formation of the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA).
Since 2017 marks eighteen years of ministry to women, what will Celebration do to celebrate?
Our celebration begins at our National Conference – the theme is “Covered” – and will continue in our chapter meetings throughout the year. Our theme is taken from Psalms 91:4: “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”
We are praying that the Holy Spirit will join us and stir our hearts and minds to heed His word.
If you would like to learn more about Celebration Women’s Ministries or Renew Network, please visit their websites: http://celebrationministries.org and http://renewnetwork.
by Steve | Mar 20, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2017
By Thomas Lambrecht-
I approached my first meeting as a member of the Bishops’ Commission on a Way Forward for the Church with trepidation, if not fear and trembling. The commission has an enormous and consequential task ahead of it — find a way forward to resolving the impasse between progressives and traditionalists over the church’s stance toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. It was somewhat gratifying that nearly every other commissioner shared the same sense of the overwhelming challenge we face, yet remained open to the leading of the Holy Spirit to find that elusive path between the proverbial rock and hard place.
That sober, yet hopeful, attitude characterized our first meeting last month in Atlanta, Georgia. The commission is capably led by the commission’s moderators: Bishops Ken Carter, Sandra Steiner-Ball, and David Yemba, along with their staff resource person Gil Rendle. They crafted a productive agenda and we moved into work mode, as we discussed the outcomes we want to see from our work and began to sketch out what we will need to learn in order to achieve those outcomes. Small-group processes enabled us to both hear everyone’s voice and get to know each other more deeply a few at a time. The moderators adjusted the agenda and topics to address the needs and desires of the commission. Their goal really is to serve the commission and help our work to be effective.
With members from four continents, several ethnic groups, and a wide range of ages, theological perspectives, and multiple sexual orientations, the commission is indeed the most diverse body assembled in the church, other than General Conference itself. That is an appropriate reality, considering that our denomination experiences diverse realities, such as precipitous decline in parts of the United States and rapid growth in parts of The Philippines and Africa.
It will be a challenge for such a diverse group to come to agreement on a resolution of our crisis that allows us to move forward as a church. Strongly held, diametrically opposite views on essential matters will make consensus difficult. So far, the group is approaching the disagreements with goodwill and a desire to understand. As personal emotional investment comes to the surface, that goodwill will be tested, and the commission will continue to need the church’s prayers for a constructive relationship in the group that can lead to resolution. At the same time, from the beginning, the commissioners have acknowledged our need to settle on an approach that can pass General Conference. Members’ idealism will need to be tempered by pragmatism.
One commissioner recently wrote, “The Commission is not exploring ‘whether’ LGBTQ persons will be fully-included in the life of The UMC, but ‘how’” we include them.” Yet allowing same-sex marriage and the ordination of practicing homosexuals in some parts of The UM Church would violate the consciences of many traditionalists and be unacceptable. A variety of different approaches will be on the table. These are the kind of pragmatic realities that the commission will be wrestling with.
The commission is just beginning its work and has a lot of ground to cover, as we examine such things as the theological foundations of our unity and identity as global United Methodists and discover how other denominations have navigated the same challenge we face. While these issues take the forefront of our attention, we are also mindful of the worsening decline of membership and worship attendance in United Methodism in the U.S. and our need to provide a way for the revitalization of our church in making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We face a tall challenge, and only the grace of God and the prayers of our church will enable us to work our way to a successful outcome.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergy person and the vice president of Good News.
![What Counts as Wesleyan Orthodoxy?]()
by Steve | Mar 20, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2017
Original art created for Good News by Anton Tonchev.
By Heather Hahn-
A friend’s invitation to preach outdoors had John Wesley worried: Could such sermonizing be a sin? While his concern might seem strange today, it made perfect sense in 18th-century England.
Less than a century earlier, Puritans had used field preaching to inflame the people who overthrew the country’s Anglican elite in England’s bloody civil war. By Wesley’s day, many Church of England dioceses had banned the practice.
Going outside church walls to save souls, even with peaceful intent, seemed rebellious and dangerous — certainly not something a respectable Anglican priest like Wesley should do. But after reflecting on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Wesley determined outdoor preaching would put him in good company.
“I submitted ‘to be more vile’ and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation,” Wesley wrote in his journal April 2, 1739. That day, he preached to 3,000 people about Luke 4:18-19.
Field preaching became a key way that Wesley and others in his nascent movement preached “good news to the poor” and promoted Christian revival. He and other Methodist preachers even sometimes braved rocks thrown at them by angry villagers to share their gospel message.
Wesley was fully on board with Christian orthodoxy — that is, core Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and Christ’s resurrection. Where he differed from many fellow Anglicans was in his willingness to be “vile” and defy the conventions of his church to do what he saw as God’s will.
Today, as Wesley’s United Methodist followers wrestle with differences around homosexuality and biblical interpretation, an attendant debate has developed around who in the denomination are the true heirs of the Wesleyan way.
The truth is United Methodists across the theological spectrum have found much to admire about the reformer who both challenged his day’s limitations in ministry and held fast to traditional Christian teaching, even warning against “half-Christians.”
For Methodism’s founder, say Wesleyan scholars, orthodoxy was just the beginning of a faithful life.
“It’s not just about saying the creed — although that’s important — it’s about having an experiential faith,” said Ryan Danker, a Methodist studies professor at United Methodist Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington. He recently published Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism.
“It’s about having a living, vital relationship with the God whom orthodoxy describes. With Wesley, the faith can never be static; it has to be dynamic.”
The creeds and Wesley
For as long as people have sought to follow Christ, they have argued about what that entails. For much of the early church, going back to Acts of the Apostles, people struggled with simply defining the basics of Christianity.
By the fourth century, a sort of consensus developed with the use of creeds. These included the Nicene Creed and the much shorter Apostles’ Creed, first used as a faith outline for Christian converts to recite during baptisms at Easter. Incidentally, the fourth century (367 A.D.) also marks the first declaration urging the New Testament books be restricted to what we use today. Athanasius is the church father credited with developing the teachings in the Athanasian Creed, first on the scene in late fifth century, and helping to establish the canon.
When many Christians talk about Christian orthodoxy, it’s usually the ecumenical creeds they have in mind. Even the creeds didn’t entirely settle matters. By the 11th century, the pope had officially changed the widely used Nicene Creed to add the phrase “filioque,” Latin for “and the Son.” The change meant western Christians now declared the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
Christian leaders in the East objected, and that friction contributed to Christianity’s first “Great Schism” in 1054 between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church.
Wesley had his own issues with the creeds. Later in life, when he edited the Anglican Church’s 39 Articles to form Methodism’s Articles of Religion, Wesley excluded the Anglican Church’s Article VIII, which promoted the three creeds.
Nevertheless, he did include the Apostles’ Creed as part of the Methodist daily prayers and the baptismal liturgy.
The Rev. Randy L. Maddox, William Kellon Quick Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies at United Methodist Duke Divinity School, said Wesley generally agreed with the creeds’ substance. However, Wesley “thought that in places they resorted to philosophical language that went beyond Scripture, and thus should not be required for belief.”
Maddox said that Wesley particularly objected to the Anthanasian Creed, which at points suggests that anyone who disagrees with its exact wording about the Trinity would be denied salvation. Wesley was not the sort to think a quibble over commas could separate people from the love of God.
Orthodoxy and new birth
In his own lifetime, Wesley took criticism for some of the things he said about orthodoxy. Controversially, he wrote in his “Plain Account of the People Called Methodists” (1748) “that orthodoxy, or right opinions, is, at best, but a very slender part of religion, if it can be allowed to be any part of it at all.”
Wesley goes on to write that true religion “is nothing short of or different from the mind that was in Christ, the image of God stamped upon the heart, inward righteousness attended with the peace of God and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
Maddox has written at length about Wesley’s thoughts about orthodoxy in his article “Opinion, Religion, and ‘Catholic Spirit:’ John Wesley on Theological Integrity.”
“When Wesley makes apparent dismissive comments about ‘orthodoxy,’ he is not rejecting the truth of Scripture and the creeds or the importance of seeking the best understanding of these that we as humans can have,” Maddox told United Methodist News Service.
“He is insisting that the purpose of true religion is more holistic. It is the formation of the whole person as one who loves God and neighbor.”
Danker said that Wesley “was driven by a desire to proclaim the new birth” people have in Christ. He challenged people to live as justified by faith on the road to sanctification, even in the face of derision. He aimed to do the same in his own life. He combined belief with action, including a particular focus on ministering with the poor.
It is no surprise that leaders of American and British social movements — from workers’ rights to women’s rights to civil rights — have taken inspiration from John Wesley’s vision of heart-warmed Christianity.
“I think he approaches orthodoxy the same way he approaches the Bible, which is you can read the Bible all you want. But if your engagement is not inspired by the Spirit, what good does it do you?” Danker said. “It’s the same way with orthodoxy. I mean, even the Devil trembles in belief, right?”
Heather Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service.
by Steve | Mar 20, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2017
The Rev. Adam Weber is pastor of Embrace Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Photo courtesy of Embrace Church.
By Courtney Lott-
How do you have a conversation with God? Is it the same thing as talking to a friend? Do you have to use certain words? A particular structure? What do you do when it feels like God is silent? These are the questions Adam Weber tackles in his book Talking with God. Weber is the pastor of the multi-site Embrace Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the fastest growing United Methodist congregation in the United States. He didn’t always find prayer particularly easy. In fact, he used to find it painfully boring and figured God felt the same way.
Caught in a cycle of prayers used only to bless meals and protect sleep, a young Weber once participated simply to check a box and move along. It wasn’t until his parents dragged him to a new youth group that his heart began to change.
The Lord used bad motives in order to reach the cynical teen. While Weber only agreed to attend to meet a new group of girls, for the first time in his life, the gospel began to work its way into his heart. But it wasn’t until his youth director referred to prayer as “talking with God,” that Weber’s heart truly responded. “It was as if my heart leapt with me,” he writes. “I felt like I had found something I had unknowingly been searching for my whole life.”
Thus began his quest to learn how to approach a relationship with God. What he’d originally assumed was a complicated and impersonal task, slowly morphed into simple, intimate conversation with a friend. And it is as friends that Weber addresses his audience in the book. With humble, straightforward language, he walks with the reader on a mission to discovering the beautiful grace we have in prayer.
Throughout the book, Weber weaves in examples from his family life to illustrate different aspects of talking with God. From the Easter Bunny – a judgmental jerk according to Weber – to amusing prayers from his children, the stories he tells lift the often intimidating veil from this means of grace. Behind it, we start to see how rich speaking with God can be.
Hardly the dour experience we often make it, prayer is intended to be a celebration. Drawing a parallel between the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable and us, Weber describes the way God welcomes us into his presence: with singing, dancing, and feasting. “When we talk with God, we’re talking with a God who loves to throw parties,” writes Weber. “Knowing this changes prayer. At least it does for me. I don’t need to be uptight and serious when I pray. Yes, it’s good to have a healthy reverence of and respect for God. But you don’t have to be emotionless or somber.”
It is this kind of attitude change toward prayer that sets us on the right track and helps us avoid the temptation to relegate it to a mere item on a checklist. Amidst the chaos and the crazy, this can be an easy thing to fall into. We make excuses. Claim we lack time. Insist we don’t have the energy. Weber lets us in on a little secret: even pastors wrestle with this. “Truth be told, we will always be able to find reasons why we don’t have the time (or energy) to pray,” he writes. “Instead of making excuses, we have to get to the place where we so clearly realize our desperate need for talking with God that it becomes a priority.”
When we’re able to do this, prayer starts to fill us up rather than draw energy. And when this happens, Weber says, we’re then able to pour into others as well. Likening life to a marathon, Weber writes about just how important it is that we pray with and for each other along the way. The toughest miles, he says, are the lonely ones; the stretches trekked without cheerleaders, or worse, those worn down by criticism. As a body of believers, Weber says that we ought to devote ourselves to encouraging one another through prayer. He even offers his Twitter handle in the notes at the back of the book if readers want to send him a prayer request.
“Practically speaking, encouraging others through prayer can look a million different ways,” he writes. “It can be done while grabbing lunch with a friend [or writing] notes to people. It’s amazing how powerful our words to God can be. How powerful our prayers on behalf of others can be.”
This kind of mutual encouragement is vital when we go through storms, when it feels as if God is asleep. During those times, Weber admonishes the reader to do as the disciples did on the boat in Mark 4, to cry out to the Lord. But what happens when you cry out and yet, the unimaginable still happens? When it seems as if God isn’t listening, Weber confesses that he often tends to avoid prayer all together. It is here that the reader might expect a pat, simple answer, a cure-all verse offered to assuage the anxiety and disappointment we so often face. Instead, Weber is honest, vulnerable, sharing his own struggle with unanswered prayer that his father might be healed from a life altering pain issue.
“I could attempt to explain the unexplainable,” he writes. “I could offer reasons and explanations to your questions and mine, but at times there simply aren’t any. None that satisfy. I’ve found that trite answers cause more hurt than good.”
Weber concludes that the storms we face are meant to remind us to focus on what is important, to focus on Christ and keep walking with him. If we do this, he says, we might come to realize that Jesus is all we’ve ever needed. Cry out to him, Weber writes, at any time, in any place, in any way. Cry out when you’re discouraged, when you’re stuck, exhausted, adrift. Cry out. You will be heard.
Prayer is more even than this, to Weber, however. Prayer is not simply a helpline in times of distress. It is beautiful, intimate access to our Father in heaven. It is being with God.
“Yes, it’s important to learn more about God,” Weber writes. “Yes, it’s important to spend time reading the Bible, learning more about who God is. But nothing can replace simply being with God.”
In his final chapter, Weber encourages the reader to “make moments” with God, to move from simple head knowledge about our creator, to heart knowledge. Rather than standing back and observing from afar, Weber says that we are to enjoy him, delight in him, that we are created to be intimate with him. And we can only accomplish this through prayer, through talking with him day by day.
“Whether you find yourself in the middle of a storm, living in Crazytown, or stuck in mud, I hope you’ll talk with God,” Weber writes. “When you’re exhausted or you feel like you’re going in circles out on a paddleboat, speak with him. ‘Jesus, I want to know you. Jesus, I want to be with you. Jesus, I want to talk with you for the rest of my life. Jesus, I love you.’”
When we pray, Weber says that God will respond to us, that we should expect it. Are you listening? Are you waiting expectantly?
Courtney Lott is the editorial assistant at Good News.
by Steve | Mar 20, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2017
By Duane Brown-
The apostle Peter says we must always be ready to explain our Christian hope (I Peter 3:15, NLT). “Always” probably seems like an impossible goal for most of us. Too often that’s true for me.
Several months ago, while I was talking to the woman next to me on the plane, she discovered I did leadership coaching and requested a session. I happily complied. After about an hour of her answering questions and my coaching, we had devised a workable plan for her to take with her.
In the course of our conversation, we learned that we had grown up in the same denomination. She told me, though, that she had since quit on God and church. I realize now that that would have been a perfect opportunity to talk more with her about that. Why didn’t I do it? We briefly talked through her faith journey, but I regret at the end I didn’t go far enough in the conversation to maybe explore the root of her feeling alienated from God. We can be afraid of witnessing. The apostle Paul and John Wesley might have something to say to us about this.
When Paul experienced God’s transforming power, he became, as you know, an unstoppable force for the gospel’s expansion throughout the Mediterranean. During one of his journeys, as he addressed Athenians who had a shrine to an “Unknown God,” this versatile evangelist proclaimed: “This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.” Then he went on, not mincing words: “God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone, everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31, NIV).
Founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, once said to his church leaders, “You have one business on earth – to save souls.” Wesley expected Christ followers to serve the socio-economic needs of others, but that could never take the lead; evangelism should.
In his book, Growing God’s Church, Gary McIntosh offers a helpful perspective on the church’s evangelistic priority. McIntosh cautions the church against adopting a “holistic view” of mission. In this view God has only has one mission, which may include everything from caring for the environment to preaching the gospel. He argues that when everything is missional, nothing is missional. That ends up meaning that evangelism and soul-winning will never take the lead as the church’s missional priority. Like my experience with the woman on the plane, we help people yet we don’t get to the heart of the matter.
McIntosh believes there is another way besides a holistic view. The church may have numerous and interrelated tasks of missional ministry, but these tasks do not have the same priority. The church’s priority is to reach, baptize, and teach others the way of Jesus. McIntosh supports a church’s involvement in ministries of community transformation, as exemplified by the early church. However, he writes, “While they served the common good, the early church placed a priority on the greater good¸ that of saving souls.”
A way forward is for each person to discern one’s gifts and passions as members of Christ’s body. Then we must accept the tensions and struggles of prioritizing evangelism through creative expressions of our witness in the near, far, and in the hard places of this world.
Duane Brown is a missiologist and serves as senior director of church ministry at TMS Global – www.tmsglobal.org, formerly known as The Mission Society. He is happily married to Patty, and is proud father to Eric, Kathryn, and Elizabeth.
