Turning the Page

Turning the Page

God Outwitted Me: The Stories of My Life by Maxie Dunnam (Seedbed). Hopefully you’ve already read one of Dunnam’s many books or heard him preach. God Outwitted Me is his spiritual memoir about the events that molded and strengthened him to be the prized and beloved Christian leader and communicator that we have come to depend upon within The United Methodist Church.

 

God & Gangsters: 21 Tales from Gangland by Chris Ahrens. In this self-published book, Ahrens interviews nearly two dozen “shot callers, armed robbers, dealers, made men, violent racists, and murderers” who testify to discovering new life with Jesus Christ. As he writes, “Something or, rather, Someone had moved them, and because of that they chose to bow to the Throne rather than die in the Chair.” (More info: Godngangsters@gmail.com).

 

Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music: Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock by Greg Alan Thornbury (Convergent). This is a captivating biography about one of the most intriguing, controversial, and thought-provoking Christian singer/songwriters.  Norman  was a complicated musical pioneer with a prophetic edge who had an enormous influence on both musicians who were anchored in their faith and those who weren’t really sure what they believed.

 

The Spiritual Gifts Handbook: Using Your Gifts to Build the Kingdom by Randy Clark and Mary Healy (Chosen). This is an exceedingly helpful book about the spiritual gifts spoken of in the New Testament. Erasing misconceptions, Clark (Protestant) and Healy (Catholic) provide an insightful exploration of the gifts given by the Holy Spirit to be used by Christians.

 

 

Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed By the Words of God by Eugene Peterson (Waterbrook). The life of congruence urges us to live in sync with what we believe – to practice what we preach and to stretch ourselves between what is written in the Scriptures and how we live that out. Those familiar with Peterson’s poetic preaching will thoroughly benefit from this volume.

 

The 19 Questions To Kindle a Wesleyan Spirit by Carolyn Moore (Abingdon). Like Moore’s preaching, her writing is powerful, relatable, convicting, and energized by the flames of Pentecost. She leads readers through Wesley’s historic questions for ordination with both frankness and grace. For lay and clergy alike, the questions probe and challenge.

 

Mapping Out the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Mapping Out the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Original art for Good News by Sam Wedelich (www.samwedelich.com).

By Elizabeth Glass Turner –

Laughing hard enough to shake dust from the rafters while reading a book about death feels a little sacrilegious, like stifling giggles at a funeral. It doesn’t seem proper. It doesn’t seem respectful.

But while funerals have nice social protocols and traditions for guiding times of grief, the time before the funeral doesn’t. There isn’t an order of worship for waiting on hold while wrestling with insurance companies over cancer treatment coverage; there isn’t a liturgy to follow when someone you know is going through grueling chemotherapy. Left to our own devices, our good intentions can stack up on someone like a sliding pile of Blue Cross statements. When we add blanket theological go-to sentiments, the result can be a 21st century replay of Job’s friends. But if we can’t, like the Man of Sorrows, allow ourselves to be “acquainted with grief” when others are suffering, how on earth will we learn to stare our own in the face when the time comes? And come it will.

By now, you may have seen, heard, or read an interview with Dr. Kate Bowler, a church history professor at Duke Divinity School. Long after her years growing up among Canadian Mennonites, recently she has been on The Today Show, NPR, and in the pages of the New York Times, in addition to countless conversations with faith-based publications. Kate is in her 30’s. She and her husband have a young child. A couple of years ago, she was (eventually) diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Barring a miracle, she won’t get better: but she isn’t yet dead. She is a resident of the valley of the shadow of death. Kate lives two months at a time, from one scan to another. She notes that experts told her, “You have a thirty to fifty percent chance of survival.” By their definition, survival meant two years of life.

Bowler’s wry title – Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved – isn’t a frontal assault on the sovereignty of God. This isn’t a story of a Christian losing faith in hard times, either. Nor is it a denial of supernatural intervention. Rather, it signals what is coming: dark humor, brutal honesty, and faith in the midst of suffering. Bowler’s memoir is like sitting with a friend who has removed all her makeup and starkly answers your inquiry about her health by silently showing you her scars, burns, and lesions while mocking the absurdity of it all.

In a twist, Bowler’s pre-cancer dissertation also plumbed the subject of suffering – particularly, the prominence of the prosperity gospel – “a theodicy, an explanation for the problem of evil.” In other words, if God is all-good and all-powerful, why do bad things happen? Bowler studied prosperity preachers, attended church services where prosperity and blessings were promised. She sympathized with desperate people, struggling with poverty or illness, vulnerable to promises of overflowing health and bank accounts. But in a bittersweet turn, following her diagnosis, she came to a realization:

“I would love to report that what I found in the prosperity gospel was something so foreign and terrible to me that I was warned away. But what I discovered was both familiar and painfully sweet: the promise that I could curate my life, minimize my losses, and stand on my successes.”

On top of her own implicit assumptions that God wanted her healthy and successful (and what Christian bookstore isn’t stocked with titles about finding your purpose and living into your calling?), she then encountered a similar prosperity theology among a multitude of North American Christians:

“The world of certainty had ended and so many people seemed to know why. Most of their explanations were reassurances that even this is a secret plan to improve me. ‘God has a better plan!’ ‘This is a test it will make you stronger!’ Sometimes these explanations were peppered with scriptures like ‘We know that for those who love God all things work together for good.’ Except that the author, Paul, worshipped God with every breath until his body was dumped in an unmarked grave.”

In a chapter simply called Surrender, Bowler slices like a skilled surgeon wielding a scalpel: “Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel’s assurance that we can master the future with our words and attitudes. I can barely admit to myself that I have almost no choice but to surrender. When will I realize that surrender is not weakness?”

What Bowler exposes when she cuts beneath the surface is the simple truth that the more things change, the more things stay the same.Cancer treatment has morphed tremendously over the past 100 years; human nature has not. We still catch ourselves saying, “God, who did something wrong, against your will – this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Was it his theology? Did they not pray? Weren’t they using essential oils? Shouldn’t they have had a better job with better insurance? Did she eat organic while she was pregnant?”

And when Jesus was asked, “whose fault is this, Frank’s fault, or his parents’ fault? Why was this guy born blind?” Jesus responded – none of them did anything wrong. When the thief on the cross asked Jesus to remember him in his kingdom, Jesus didn’t send down an army of angels to save the thief’s life: no, the thief died that day. Conversion didn’t extend his life on earth so that he could go be a witness to the power of Christ, which would have made pretty great sense to me. When Jesus was born, dozens or hundreds of chubby little toddlers in the region were murdered; we don’t sing nativity songs about that, but human tragedy accompanied the birth of the Son of God.

Sometimes when we read the Gospels, we forget that Jesus didn’t blink. Jesus didn’t turn away, cover his nose to stifle stench, or hurry away. Jesus – Jesus leaned in. Whether he encountered people with disgusting, contagious skin diseases or shriveled legs or crusted-over eyes, he reached forward, and he touched. For Jesus, there was no stigma associated with suffering, mental illness, or disease. And if there is one way that the church in America has forgotten how to be like Jesus, it is this Mother Teresa-like response to physical suffering. Bowler probes discomfort with illness, suffering, and lack of control by asking:

“What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, ‘You are limitless’? Everything is not possible. The mighty Kingdom of God is not yet here. What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of ‘the gospel’ meant that we are simply people with good news? God is here. We are loved. It is enough.”

In the end, Bowler eviscerates the malignant notion that Christians deserve to be happy, well, and prosperous (ideas that would have shocked early Christians and still surprise people of faith in other parts of the world); she sighs at verses lifted out of context and plastered on refrigerator magnets; and she relaxes into the great, costly gift of presence. This incarnational turn pivots our response of words to a response of action: we cannot always explain, but we can pick up groceries and deliver them. We (often) don’t have an answer, but we can sit and bear listening in silence to another’s unbearable grief. We may shake with fear at what could go wrong in our own lives, but we can, like Jesus, lean in and reach forward and affirm the beauty of the person in front of us.

Kate Bowler, author of Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I Have Loved. Photo courtesy of Random House.

Reading Bowler’s short but weighty volume repeatedly brought a precious Flannery O’Connor quote to mind: “faith is what we know to be true, whether we believe it or not.”

Anyone who has traveled the dark night of the soul is familiar with this truth. Day to day emotions or perspectives oscillate; faith is what remains in spite of ourselves – or well-meaning others. This kind of anchor is helpful to anyone facing the possible end of their lives, no matter the age, no matter the diagnosis, whether it’s a good day or a very, very bad one.

Kate is hiking the valley of the shadow of death, marking the trail with frank observations as she goes before many of us and lives in the in-between: no longer healthy, not yet on hospice, two months at a time. She is a guide to those near death, and to those still in denial about our fragile human mortality. She is a guide to those who simply drop off homemade cookies, and a guide to those so uncomfortable with sickness and uncertainty that they want to solve it instead of putting an arm around it. In this way, she has leaned in; she has reached out; she has not blinked.

Elizabeth Glass Turner is a frequent and beloved contributor to Good News. In addition to being a writer and speaker, she is Managing Editor of www.WesleyanAccent.com.

Turning the Page

The Next Generation

TMS Global’s GreenLight programs offer young adults a 4-6 week mentor-led experience that guides them as they try to discover God’s leading in their lives. This team (pre-med mission-minded students) spent time serving alongside medical personnel in Ghana. For more information about GreenLight, contact jwheaton@tms-global.org.

By Sarah Parham –

We have all read the reports, the gloomy news that young people are leaving the church in masses. A Fuller Youth Institute study shows that roughly 50 percent of young people who grow up in the church leave the church behind, along with the piles of caps and gowns and high school sports trophies. No one needs a news feed to tell us this. It’s visible in the pews we sit in. It can cause us to lose hope.

But after more than a decade in college ministry, I can say with confidence that many Christian young people I know who are exiting the church are actually in pursuit of the kingdom. They are looking for a church that isn’t contained in four walls. They are looking for something more expansive, more missional. They are seeking a church to go to on Sunday that would be with them Monday through Saturday as well—touching the things they touch, loving the people they love. And this gives me hope!

But how might these young people stay connected to church? How can we, as church members, be an ally in helping them discern how God might use them in His mission in the world?

Don’t have the answers. Young people’s experience of the world is different than any other generation. They cannot stay uninformed of issues and tragedies in faraway places. The problems of other nations are being tweeted and broadcast in their pockets every day. Terrorism isn’t something that happens on foreign soil, but in New York City. Young people want to know what Jesus says about these things.

It can be rather intimidating. Their questions can be hard ones: “Is Jesus serious about taking care of the poor? He talked about that a lot. What is the church doing to help?” We might be tempted to squelch such questions because we don’t have the answers.

But that’s just it. We often don’t have the answers. And that’s not even the point. In my experience working with college-age youth, I noticed that when they asked hard questions, so often they weren’t trying to figure me out or to pin me or the church to the wall. They were trying to figure themselves out. They were trying to understand where their place was in this big, beautiful, and very messy world.

So how can we respond to their questions in a way that satisfies the questions beneath the questions?

Listen to the heart. The transition young people go through is so subtle, adults can miss it. Of course, young children ask why about everything. At some point, though, the why starts to be asked for a new reason. The question goes from “Mommy, why is that man asking for money?” to, years later, “Why is he sleeping outside when I go home to a nice bed?” In other words, as a person grows into adulthood, the question shifts from “Why is the world this way?” to “Why am I in the world this way?” When we miss the twist in the question, we miss the opportunity to speak into the lives of young people about that most precious thing: calling.

So at this junction, keep engaging. Listen to what Jesus is doing in this person. What breaks her heart? What inspires him to do more? What are his talents? What are the things that make her come alive — or the things that keep her up at night? What are the things that make him question?

It gets tricky when we hear hard questions over and over again. But be encouraged. So often, when God is moving in people to do something — like calling them to missions, for example — His call may be experienced as a holy unrest. In other words, there begins a stirring in the spirit that things aren’t the way they should be.

So when young people come to us with their questions, what if we return the questions back to them by asking, “What do you think God is saying in these questions? What if the answer lies in you?” By our questions, we might help them see that the things they notice that are not right could be the very things God is calling them towards. As we do this, we might actually help them discover their place in the mission of Jesus.

And, says the Fuller Youth Institute, we might also help them stay connected to the church. The Institute released a study on the phenomenon of young people leaving the church post high school. They found that there is one X-factor for keeping young people engaged in the church. Listening. When young people have a non-related adult who knows them well and is actively engaged in their lives, the chances of their keeping the faith and staying engaged in a church/campus group throughout college and beyond increases dramatically.

Set them free. If church people ask me what they can do to attract young people, the first thing I ask is what their missions program is like. I often get quizzical stares. Some proceed to tell me about their church’s youth program, or how much money they give to missions. But that’s not the heart of my question.

The reason I ask about a church’s missions program is because young people don’t want to sit on the sidelines and observe. They want to get involved with something meaningful. They want to be involved in missions and outreach. And their doing this might actually mean that they will leave our churches to go elsewhere, even to some other part of the world.

So instead of losing our young people, let’s launch them. Let’s listen to their questions. Let’s help them discern how God desires to use them in the world. Let’s resource them, and then let’s set them free to join Jesus in His mission. This, after all, is the ultimate goal of a missional church.

Sarah Parham is TMS Global’s director of mobilization and candidacy. She holds a Masters of Divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary. This article was reprinted from the Fall 2017 issue of Unfinished, the publication of TMS Global. Used by permission.

Turning the Page

Our Leadership Crisis

By Eduard Khegay, United Methodist Bishop of the Eurasia Episcopal Area – 

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), Russian religious philosopher, wrote in the beginning of the twentieth century that Russian thinking cannot be Eastern or Western. He argued that both of these extremes are not appropriate. His hope for Russia was that she would grow to global leadership, and wake up the inner creative activity of the people. This reminds me of our global United Methodist Church and the importance of a multidimensional view when we deal with issues of our time. We as a church also cannot be Eastern or Western. We need to learn how to bless and enrich one another with our gifts and graces.

The purpose of my essay is to challenge our global church to look deeper. While the issue of human sexuality has moved to the top of our attention, I see it only as a trigger of deeper issues we face today.

In this essay, I will analyze our global movement from my Russian/Eurasian perspective. I will present my position on leadership, take a critical view of Western democracies, reflect on Scripture and Wesleyan tradition, and share my thoughts on unity.

I share this text in the spirit of humility and hope that you will not perceive it as a judgmental “expert’s view,” but accept it as a good challenge to look at our global church differently.

Crisis of Leadership

I love stories. They communicate values and have the power to transform lives. One story I learned from an American friend is about U.S. President Harry S Truman, who had a sign on his desk with the phrase “The buck stops here.” He wanted to remember that as president he carried the ultimate responsibility for making decisions. This story reminds me of my role to lead and carry ultimate responsibility for my decisions as a bishop of The United Methodist Church. While I am convinced that each bishop works hard to lead his or her episcopal area, I find it very puzzling how we lead as the bishops collectively.

I realized at the 2016 General Conference that we have a crisis of leadership. It was quite surprising to hear from delegates that they wanted us, bishops, to lead. As bishops, didn’t we already know that we needed to lead? It is obvious that our global church requires new ways of leading that are different from leading at local or even national levels. And while the United Methodist  structure and decision-making processes can be improved and reinvented, what lies underneath is the way we as bishops relate to one another.

Can you imagine a fruitful organization that is led by leaders who do not fully trust one another and cannot have honest conversations? Can this team of leaders lead through intensified parliamentary procedures and learning more about legal issues? I cannot see how we can lead our global church this way. My prayers and hopes are that someday we as bishops will take more action to build trust and have honest conversations about challenges our church faces today.

For me, the litmus test of trust and honesty among leaders in the organization, especially the church, is how much is discussed in the official meetings and how much is discussed in the corridors. Can leaders trust one another enough to bring the same questions to the official meeting that they discuss in the corridors? Or do we simply want to be polite and politically correct so we do not offend one another? Since when have politeness and political correctness in the church become higher values than trust and honesty?

This brings us to the next important issue for our global United Methodist body: unity. The Methodist movement has enjoyed unity and faced divisions during several centuries of its history. We struggled with the issue of slavery. The Church of the Nazarene, for example, left The Methodist Church and challenged us to practice deeper holiness and simplicity. Our present debate on human sexuality has challenged our unity as a global church. Suddenly we have realized that we understand human sexuality and sexual orientation differently depending on geographic region, culture, theological background, and biblical interpretation. The more important question for me is this: can we have unity in the UM Church without unity at the Council of Bishops? Again, unity at the council is related to the previously stated issue of trust and honesty.

Hey – maybe if I had ten million dollars today, I would invest them in building unity at the Council of Bishops! We need to figure out how to relate to one another and build a spirit of trust among ourselves. Can we model that for our global body? Some may find it too idealistic, given the fact that we speak several different languages, belong to multiple cultures, come from different continents, and live in extremely diverse economic and political systems. May we be reminded that the miracle of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost gave birth to our Christian church and united so many different people as they built trust and honesty in ministry with one another and to the world! The buck stops at the leadership level, and we as bishops have to figure this out. The present crisis of leadership can become an opportunity to do something we’ve never done before with transformational change and reform, leaving a long-lasting legacy for the future of The United Methodist Church.

Western democracies and the rest of us

I have experienced several disillusionments in my life. One of them was during my life in the Soviet Union, when I realized that the Communism we were building was not actually the one that I read about in Lenin’s books. I learned later that you cannot force people of the world to love Communism by using tanks and soldiers. Another disillusionment was when I studied in the United States. I realized that while democracy gives so many great opportunities and freedom to people, the people struggle with as much loneliness, racism, and addictions as they do in nondemocratic countries. I learned that you cannot force people of the world to love democracy by using airplanes and missiles. Here I want to juxtapose a few aspects of life to show that things are perceived and managed differently around the globe. And as a global denomination, we must take a serious look at these differences.

First, let’s look at legal and relational differences. It is no secret to any United Methodist who has experienced another culture that, generally speaking, life in Western democracies is fast paced. People are goal oriented and busy. In most other places of the world, though, relationships are of such high value that being together is often more important than personal goals. As one who grew up in Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union, I love my Central Asian culture. And even after twenty plus years of living in Moscow, I feel much more comfortable in my hometown of Almaty, drinking tea with my friends and sharing our lives, than achieving another new result in the twenty million-population megapolis of Moscow. That is not to say that we will not reach our goals. But as a global denomination, relationship must be our priority. Fifteen-minute coffee breaks will not do it – especially when coffee is not even my favorite drink!

The danger Western democracy projects onto the church is legalism. The way many of our Eurasian delegates experience General Conference is often very shocking. Legal matters, parliamentary procedures, appeals to Judicial Council, manipulations of points of order, disrespect toward presiding bishops – these are some of the things I have never experienced in my non-Western culture; and hope I never will. This is not the church I believe God desires to build. We read in the Acts of the Apostles: “Every day, they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved” (Acts of the Apostles 2:46-47, CEB). One can sense the spirit of relationship rather than legalism.

So maybe if I had ten million dollars today, I would invest them in building relationships among our people on a global level! Maybe that sounds too idealistic. Well, when I visit churches throughout my episcopal area, sometimes my Moscow goal-oriented drive is unsettled when we drink tea for three hours, or eat borsch soup for four hours, or when people ask me to visit their home briefly and we share our stories long after midnight. In the process I find myself puzzled as to when I start my “work.” But after three days like that, I realize that people feel blessed and inspired by being able to share their stories with me, by being able to serve food for me and just be together, building relationships and friendships. Then I realize that building relationships is a higher goal than the one I had in mind. People are energized to grow in Christ and serve others through relationship. This is the beauty of relationships, and we need to develop this more on a global scale. Again, I would say that quick coffee breaks or even lunches (especially business lunches) won’t do it.

Second, let’s talk about human rights and morality. During the twentieth century, the Western democracies excelled at protecting human rights. Indeed, if not for Western democracies that promoted the value of human life and freedom of conscience, our world would likely have drifted more deeply into darkness. However, this focus has gone to the extreme during last few decades. To my cultural shock, I see teenagers manipulating the juvenile justice system; young people behaving disrespectfully toward elderly people in the name of freedom; and many propagating gay relationships as a norm and silencing those who stand for traditional families. I cannot accept that.

What I observe in Western democracies is that morality is often replaced with human rights. When I visited the Annual Conference of the Methodist Church in Britain some years ago, I heard one speaker from Samoa. He passionately challenged the audience with something like this: “When you came to us as missionaries you told us: ‘Dress up!’ [implying that Pacific Islanders’ dress was improper for Christians to wear]. Now I come to you, fellow Methodists in Britain, and say: ‘Dress up!’ [implying the devaluation of morality in this Western democracy].”

I must share with you that I value and love many achievements of the Western democracies. I am forever grateful that I became a Christian because of a U.S. missionary. I feel so blessed to have studied in a U.S. seminary. Many people I admire in the Christian world come from Western Europe and the U.S.A. But in today’s crisis of The United Methodist Church, I feel like part of our church in Western democratic countries acts like NATO, which keeps pushing its agenda and ignoring the United Nations. We do not want to repeat the same mistake NATO made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our churches in the Western democratic countries cannot push their agenda on our global church, ignoring the fact that we are a worldwide body.

I hope our church continues to stand for human rights and teach people the value and sacredness of human life. But I hope even more that our church stands for morality and teaches people what God desires from us and what the Lord condemns. The extreme quest for human rights leads toward extreme individualism, which ignores the collectivism, solidarity, and shared morality so central to Christian experience and tradition. This is interconnected with the previous point on the relational aspect of Christian community and also brings us to the next point.

Third, worldly influence and holiness are critical to our future together as the church. One of the Ten Commandments tells us to observe the sabbath day and treat it as holy. God’s example and God’s design for creation teaches us holiness. As Christians, we are called holy in the Bible, people who are “called out” in this world – people who live by higher standards. We are people who are shaped by relationships with the Holy One every day. That changes everything.

What I observe in the countries with Western democracies is that worldly influence has gradually taken over some churches. Being moral and preaching holiness is not trendy anymore. Instead, individualistic desires to use marijuana freely, legalize weapons, redefine God-given understanding of family, and accumulate more wealth than one can use during a lifetime become modern idols. Many people living in other countries see this as the worldly attack on churches and Christian faith.

One may argue that we lose people because we are not trendy in the society. I would argue that we lose people because we do not consistently strive toward holiness. When you live a holy life, different from the world, you might risk people laughing at you or blaming you for not being loving or just. But Jesus walked this way before us, and he made it clear for people to understand what is holy and what is not. He spent time with the poor and outcasts of society, and he rebuked Pharisees and scribes. Jesus never played with the trendy influences of his time. His message was clear, challenging, unsettling, and transforming. He wants us to be holy because God is holy.

Why do I find these things of high importance for the United Methodist global body today? It is because we are a global body. But the problem is that we are managed as an organization within the Western democracy. And that brings me to my final point in this section.

Fourth, we must address the global nature of our church with its power, money, and politics. The history and nature of the Christian church is such that its leaders from Western democracies sent missionaries to spread the gospel into many continents. They had money and power. In many ways, the rest of us feel like children of our mother church. Our mother was proud of fast growth, exciting results, amazing Christian education, and the alleviation of poverty. She has gladly shared resources with her children. But children began to disagree with mother as her opinions on the issue of human sexuality changed. That is when children had to learn that, unfortunately, even in the church, power, money, and politics are very real.

Suddenly, the children learned that mother would no longer love and support them if they continued to disagree with her. It turned out that mother was no longer satisfied with how much her children contributed, although she had been happy to give them everything abundantly when they listened to her and followed her directions. She began to ignore her own democratic rules that she had taught her children to follow. The majority voice will not stop her because she has the power, money, and politics. She has become so political that her children can neither understand her nor even speak her language. She wants to keep pushing her agenda even if that means losing her children.

Scripture and Wesleyan tradition

Conflicts and disagreements happened in the church historically, and they will continue to challenge our global church as we continue to learn what Scripture means for us today and how we continue to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land and strengthen our Wesleyan tradition. I am convinced that just as God created in the early church, God will create something new through this present conflict in the United Methodist movement. For some, it is a new interpretation of Scripture and a new definition of marriage. For others, it is renewed and strengthened traditional understanding of Scripture and marriage. It is obvious that these realities differ depending on the culture and context in which you live today. How do we continue as a global body? Let me give you one extreme illustration.

As you may know, polygamy is a reality in Africa. Our sisters and brothers have struggled with this issue for many years. Yet we as Christians hold the very orthodox position that monogamy is a norm. Can you imagine our sisters and brothers in Africa disturbing our General Conference with their protests, ignoring the voices around the world, and forcing us to bless polygamous marriages in our own contexts? I cannot imagine that.

Our Wesleyan tradition uses Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience as four authoritative sources together. The current crisis in our church challenges us to “test the spirits to see if they are from God” ( 1 John 4:1 CEB). One can see and feel how Scripture is picked and used to “baptize” what people want to believe rather than what the text says to us. Some people base their position heavily on the experience of their lives or the lives of their family members and friends. Others emphasize tradition that has kept the Christian church alive through the centuries and trials and persecution. The genius of the Wesleyan tradition is that we keep these four quadrilateral parts in creative tension and let the Spirit move us forward. Come, Holy Spirit, come!

What is Unity?

The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church has been an important document, reflecting our unity among many things. Not anymore. Today, I cannot explain to my sisters and brothers in the Eurasia Episcopal Area why some United Methodists break the Discipline while others have to follow it. This is an important time for us to reflect again on what unity is.

As I envision the future of The United Methodist Church, I am confident that our church must have the unity of its leaders first. We need deep listening for one another and to learn from one another. We need to build trust and practice honesty. Where the covenant has been broken, we need time for restoration, healing, and a new level of relationship.

The buck stops with us bishops. I do hope and trust that the General Conference will make a new way forward for our global movement. This, however, would not automatically improve unity in the Council of Bishops and guarantee trust and honesty in our relationships. We need to do it – the sooner, the better.

Shared Christian values, morality, and holiness are important aspects of unity. You cannot have unity between husband and wife if one thinks that adulterous relationships are acceptable, while the other remains fully committed. I hope that our worldwide Methodist movement will constantly strive toward holiness and have a powerful witness with influence in the modern world – our modern world ruled by the “selfie-centered” lives of “my rights” and “my freedom.” The Christian movement has always inspired people to be holy and be together rather than live “selfie” lives.

Our Christian faith is full of tension when it comes to power, money, and politics. How do we use these gifts and graces to sacrifice and empty ourselves, to deny ourselves, to take up our cross and follow the Holy One? Will we hold these gifts as weapons to fight, or will we be willing to be crucified with Christ and experience the Resurrection?

Let me conclude with my personal story. As I was writing this essay, presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had their first face-to-face meeting in Germany during the 2017 G20 Summit. I am perfectly aware that these two names awake a lot of emotions in us, both positive and negative. As a child of the Cold War who was told that Western countries were going to drop a nuclear bomb on the Soviet Union, I still remember those high school drills when we put gas masks on our faces and hid under the table to practice our actions in case of nuclear war. But God brought me to faith in Christ, and through our church I learned that I have sisters and brothers in Western countries who not only do not want war with us in the East, but they also love us as God loves them. They pray that God would use their presidents as instruments of peace. This was a transformational experience for me.

So, when I see presidents Trump and Putin talk with each other, I am hopeful and reminded of Nikolai Berdyaev’s thought that we cannot be Eastern or Western. We are called to be together and bless one another whether we come from East or West, North or South. Like our church at Pentecost, let us continue to meet and share food with gladness and simplicity, listen to one another, praise our God, and serve others. And the Spirit of God will move us forward.

Eduard Khegay is bishop of the Eurasia Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church. This article (originally titled “In Christ there is no East or West”) is taken from Holy Contradictions (Abingdon Press, 2018), a collection of essays representing diverse responses on how United Methodists can live in the Wesleyan tradition in times of disagreement. The seventeen contributors include among others Tracy S. Malone, Thomas Lambrecht, Rob Fuquay, Audrey Warren, and Philip Wogaman.

Mapping Out the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Archaeologist, Mama, Defender of the Faith

Dr. Sandy Richter at the edge of the Ramon Crater in Israel. Photo by Lawson Stone of Asbury Theological Seminary.

By Elizabeth Glass Turner –

The petite, deeply tanned woman you might find at a local coffee shop or watching her daughter’s figure skating practice has an unassuming air and wry sense of humor that leans towards the self-deprecating. Behind the quiet presence lies a quick intensity that shows up in a piercing gaze and direct questions frankly stated.

The tan may come from gardening – or hours spent under the Middle Eastern sun digging in archaeological excavations with college and seminary students. The same daughter who now skates was once worn in a baby carrier to digs in Israel. The woman’s childhood in foster care has given her quick instincts for others’ pain, and she is quick to walk alongside them as they find healing, hope, and redemption in the broken lives of patriarchs and cast-off women scattered through the first two-thirds of the Bible.

Dr. Sandy Richter lives the happily jumbled life of dead languages and volleyball tournaments, travel to keynote presentations and organic gardening, mother to two Old Testament-level miracle children, married to Sanskrit-reading scholar Dr. Steve Tsoukalas.

When asked what initially hooked her in to the Old Testament – a subject in which it’s difficult to call to mind many female biblical scholars – Richter responded with her characteristic frankness and zeal:

“There aren’t many women in my age category in biblical studies at all! Add a husband and children to that and the numbers drop dramatically,” Richter responds. “I started studying Bible for the sake of ministry. When I realized I would be transitioning from ministry into education, I went back and studied more. By then I was doing Hebrew and Aramaic and archaeology and systematics.” Before long she was intensively studying Hebrew (known as Rapid Reading) under Jo Ann Hackett, noted Old Testament scholar at Harvard University, and working on the Tel Dothan archeology collection in Jerusalem under Gary Pratico from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Richter took modern Hebrew at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and applied to excavate under Larry Stager of Harvard University in Ashkelon, a historic Philistine city along the coast of Israel. For her, there was no turning back.

Professor Richter teaching field archeology at Tel Dan in Israel.

Ten years ago, Richter had put the final touches on a book adapted from her Introduction to Old Testament seminary class content. Pastors she trained were yearning for a way to easily communicate the depth of her material to their congregations. After all, the Old Testament is often the wince-inducing portion of the Bible for many Christians. Richter continually managed to do something almost quixotic: she made the Old Testament clear and approachable – and therefore interesting – without sacrificing nuance, substance, or academic rigor. The Epic of Eden will soon be out in a 2nd edition from InterVarsity Press, while the Seedbed Publishing curriculum that builds on the original volume continues its widespread popularity.

“What actually strikes me the most about Epic is the sense of calling I had in writing that book,” Richter reflects. “Of course, in academia you are expected to write. Getting a job, building a reputation in the guild are all dependent on getting those books and articles out. But with Epic I felt called to write the book. I honestly felt like God wasn’t going to let me die until it was written. And now looking back at these past ten years — I am struck by the fact that it has been my most widely distributed and most influential publication.”

Professor Richter teaching Hebrew language at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.

Richter’s sense of personal calling and her ability to bridge the divide between pulpit and chalkboard are hallmarks of her writing and teaching. She has influenced students at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wesley Biblical Seminary, Wheaton College, and now holds the Gundry Chair at Westmont College in Southern California. Whether she’s typing away at a scholarly piece for an academic journal or eating pie in a church basement, Richter finds much to be encouraged by in both the academy and the church.

“In the academy I continue to be encouraged by what I see happening on the side of archaeology, epigraphy, and ethnographic studies,” Richter said. “Amazing new data is coming to light on a daily basis that is putting ‘flesh’ on our biblical characters. For example, the translation and publication of the Mari archive is giving us tremendous new insights into the era of the patriarchs.” Mari is an ancient library that dates to c. 1800 BCE that contains scores of letters and administrative texts involving the identity, language, and movement of the Amorite nomadic pastoralists.

“The first Philistine cemetery to be discovered was just excavated two years ago and being written about currently,” she reports. “The continuing trickle of finds from the City of David excavations are bringing biblical heroes into focus such as Hezekiah. We might even have the Isaiah bullae. Cool stuff.” For lay readers, a bullae is a lump of clay impressed with a person’s seal for a personal letter or document so the recipient knew the correspondence had not been tampered with.

She is always on call to teach clergy and laity alike. “As always, I look into the faces of our pastors and I pray for vision and endurance. These folks are on the front lines and taking it from every side,” she said. “As for the lay people, it is completely untrue that they are disinterested in serious study of the Bible! Hundreds show up every single time with hungry hearts and a level of dedication that puts the rest of us to shame.”

Her speaking schedule takes her to camp meetings and academic conferences alike, among the Redwoods or Swiss mountaintops. She is as comfortable celebrating scripture in a church fellowship hall as she is on a platform speaking to thousands of pastors at a clergy conference.

And that’s what characterizes what others might anemically attempt to call her career: Richter celebrates scripture. She relishes it with a zeal that makes casual students suddenly ponder why they haven’t considered signing up for archaeology or a dead Middle Eastern language.

Dr. Richter holds her daughter Elise at four-months-old in the Wadi Qelt. Photo by Lawson Stone of Asbury Theological Seminary.

“I am convinced that people want to know what is in the Bible. Believers and unbelievers alike are more than curious about the characters who stand as the ancestors of the faith,” she said.

Richter doesn’t waste time with bland Bible study platitudes and inspirational quotes; she delves for something deeper, harder: the truth of the nature of God as it is revealed in the grand narratives of the text. And it turns out, people are starving for it.

“I am as interested in the archaeologically reconstructed economy of the southern Levant in the Iron Age as I am in the ethics of environmental concern as I am in the 6th grade girl sitting in my living room reading the story of Abraham for the first time,” she said. “So bringing the technical data within reach of the average believer and offering them an informed theological read of the text that actually applies to their everyday life and faith here and now.”

Richter believes that both the Church and the skeptic need that opportunity. “It is important that the person sitting in the pew can say with confidence, ‘Hey, I don’t understand all this stuff about the immigration of Semites into the Wadi Tumilat region of Egypt during the Middle Bronze Age, but Sandy Richter does. And she says that immigration helps substantiate the plausibility of Jacob’s immigration into Goshen. So apparently I’m not an intellectual toad for thinking an Exodus might be possible.’

“It is equally important that the skeptic can ask the hard question and get a well-trained and informed response. A God-honoring, Ivy-league response to the hard questions creates ‘room for faith’ for believer and unbeliever alike. People still want real, respectable answers.”

Richter’s commitment to her calling illustrates an unwillingness to pit faith and reason against each other. Piety is not an excuse for sloppiness; academic excellence does not replace the necessity to be of service to the church. A high view of scripture doesn’t exempt one from rigorous study: it demands rigorous application.

The professor is careful in her classes to distinguish what an archeological find can prove about a biblical account versus what it shows may be consistent with the Bible’s account of a particular event. In this way, evidence is carefully weighed. At the end of the day, she queries students, does the evidence leave room for faith? She is happy to say it does.

“The last thing the Church needs is another shoddy, half-baked answer to a real and necessary question,” she said. “If we truly believe that the God of the Bible is the God of truth, we have nothing to be afraid of as we delve deeply into the content and context of the Bible. But if we lie to our children and our congregants in order to ‘protect’ them, give them half-truths that we know one day their own disciplines will expose as false, we are risking their very souls.”

It is a happy antidote to the kind of flippant “God says it, I believe it, that settles it” bumper stickers that shut down curious inquiry into the world of the Old Testament. And what she finds, wherever she goes, is that young and old believers alike are eager to ask these questions and get weighty answers.

It is a rare scholar who influences academics, clergy, and laity with such strong conviction and far-reaching consequence. But this is how Richter lives out her calling in the broad Kingdom of God. The scriptures don’t get old, and her love of them does not wane with re-reading, but deepens.

“God deserves our best. I am a biblical scholar,” Richter states. “And I intend to be as good at that calling as I possibly can be.”

Her charge is clear every time she speaks and teaches: this is the story of God’s activity in real time, in real places. This is your story. This is our story. Tell the story, and tell it well. She lives out that charge with fierce particularity and gentle joy.

“What keeps me in the game is the transformation on the faces of my students,” she said. “There is magic in that moment when the person you are teaching realizes, often for the first time, that this is their story.”

Elizabeth Glass Turner is a frequent and beloved contributor to Good News. In addition to being a writer and speaker, she is Managing Editor of www.WesleyanAccent.com. Look out soon for Richter’s The Fifth Gospel: A Christian Entry in the Book of Isaiah.

Turning the Page

Now is the Time for Celebration

Pastor Adria Nuñez Ortiz from Havana Central Methodist Church in Havana, Cuba, leads a worship song at Celebration event. Photo by Nichole Morten for Celebration.

By Rebekah Clapp –

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” – Luke 4:18-19

“Estamos en Cuba?” I asked myself more than once over the first weekend of March, at the national conference of Celebration Women’s Ministries, held in Houston, Texas. “Are we in Cuba?” The question did not arise because of the damaged water main that caused our four-star hotel to be without water most of a day, leaving us all to freshen up with bottled water, but rather because of the tangible outpouring of the Holy Spirit across this weekend event, the like of which I had only before experienced among Methodist sisters and brothers in Cuba.

In fact, I attended this event because of my connections in Cuba. I was asked to interpret for the conference’s guest speaker, who is a close friend and colleague, Pastor Adria Nuñez Ortiz from Havana Central Methodist Church in Havana, Cuba. This was a first for Celebration Women’s Ministries. Their president and co-founder, Judy Graham, shared with me that they had never before had an interpreter for one of their events and they weren’t sure how it would go.

Participants at the Celebration Women’s National Conference in Houston. Photos by Nichole Morten for Celebration.

A number of women told me that before Pastor Nuñez preached they were worried they wouldn’t be able to follow the sermon, since they weren’t accustomed to listening through an interpreter. They were pleasantly surprised to discover it didn’t cause a problem, and in fact they actually enjoyed it. They were mesmerized by the way that two people could work together to share a message across languages.

Because these women were open to bringing a preacher from Cuba, and were willing to risk the uncertainties, an opportunity presented itself: a large number of Cuban and other Latina women from Methodist churches in the Houston area decided to attend the conference, feeling it would be a welcome space for them. 

Having worked with diverse groups of Methodists across the United States and around the world, it is always a beautiful thing to see us bridge cultural differences and come together under the powerful movement of the Holy Spirit, which does not belong to any one tribe, nation, or tongue. This is what we experienced at Celebration 2018. The theme of the conference was “Now is the Time” from 2 Corinthians 6:2, “…I tell you now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” This fit nicely with Celebration’s mission focus of salvation, healing, and equipping. Along with Pastor Nuñez, Jennifer Cowart of Harvest Church in Georgia was the other featured speaker, and together these women inspired us with their messages to be courageous and trust in God’s power to save us, heal us, and use us for God’s mission in the world. Pastor Nuñez’s messages focused on the stories of women from the Bible who can be models for us in boldly living out our faith and believing in God’s faithfulness. 

Jen Cowart and Judy Graham. Photo by Nichole Morten for Celebration.

After concluding each dynamic and lively sermon, which involved both of us running around the ballroom, Pastor Nuñez closed with a time of prayer. She invited the women to come forward for healing prayer and for impartation. Together with Celebration’s prayer team, we spent hours each night laying on hands, interceding, and inviting the Spirit’s presence – in English and in Spanish – to touch the lives and hearts of these women, to heal them, to equip them, and to empower them. Tears and trembling. Kneeling and dancing. Falling over and jumping for joy.

It looked and felt like worship in Cuba. While I know that these things happen in some churches in the United States, too, most of us, especially United Methodists, aren’t all that comfortable with much moving and shaking and miracle-talk. It’s easy to dismiss charismatic faith expressions in our postmodern society. To chalk it up to cultural differences and contextualization. But, we weren’t in Cuba. And most of the women at this event didn’t have much experience with the Spirit manifesting in these ways. But it wasn’t just the Latina women who were falling in the Spirit or being healed. We all gathered together in the Spirit’s presence with a diverse group of women from across the United States: white, black, and Hispanic; praying in English, Spanish, and in heavenly languages, and women were healed. Across the weekend, we heard testimonies of salvation and recommitment of faith. Testimonies of physical and emotional healing. Testimonies of restoration and peace.

dria Nuñez Ortiz and Rebekah Clapp. Photos by Nichole Morten for Celebration.

I have seen it in Cuba and in the United States, and many other countries as well. Among Latinos and Americans. God is moving and working and seeking to bring all people to himself. God’s Spirit knows no boundaries. When we gather together in unity of the Spirit and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, captives are released, the oppressed go free, and the sick are healed. It’s happening right now around the world, because now is the time of God’s favor. The year of Jubilee has come. 

Rebekah Clapp is a United Methodist clergyperson, graduate of United Theological Seminary, and doctoral student at Asbury Theological Seminary. She is the Strategy Coordinator for Hispanic/Latino Ministries of the West Ohio Annual Conference.

Next year’s Celebration National Conference in Houston will be held April 5-7, 2019. The Rev. Carolyn Moore will be the speaker. For details contact Judy Graham at president@celebrationministries.org or visit www.celebrationministries.org.