by Steve | Aug 9, 2011 | Uncategorized
The AFTE Effect: Behind the scenes theological renewal
By Elizabeth Glass Turner and Steve Beard
2011
Richard B. Hays, Dean of Duke Divinity School and George Washington Ivey professor of New Testament. Scott Jones, United Methodist Bishop of the Kansas Area. Wade Paschal, senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in Tulsa with 9000 members. Tom Albin, Dean of the Upper Room Chapel. Rebekah Miles, associate professor of ethics at Perkins School of Theology. L. Gregory Jones, vice president and vice provost for global strategy at Duke University and professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. Ben Witherington, Amos professor of New Testament for doctoral studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of over 40 books. Steve Rankin, chaplain at Southern Methodist University. Ted Campbell, past president of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary and present associate professor of Church History at Perkins School of Theology. Wendy J. Deichmann, president of United Theological Seminary.
What do they all have in common? They have all been instrumental in the renewal of the United Methodist Church. They all possess a Ph.D. And all of their doctoral studies were made possible by annual grants from A Foundation for Theological Education (AFTE).
Founded in 1977, AFTE is the creation of two regal figures within United Methodism who could hardly have been more different—Dr. Albert Outler, the erudite seminary professor who at the time was the world’s foremost authority on all things Wesleyan, and Dr. Ed Robb Jr., traveling evangelist and the day’s best known critic and reformer of the UM Church.
Ironically, this oddest of couples discovered that they had much in common. They both loved the church, treasured our Wesleyan heritage, and were greatly concerned about the state of theological education within the denomination. And they both felt that true renewal would never be possible or lasting if UM pastors were not trained in the great tradition of classical Wesleyan theology.
In the late 1970s, theological education within the United Methodist Church promoted old-school liberalism, process theology, and liberation theology in all its forms. About the only flavor missing from this Baskin-Robbins approach to theological education was orthodoxy—the classical teachings of the church proclaimed by the apostles and the early church fathers and accepted by believers all around the world for the past 2000 years.
Many UM seminaries at the time had few if any true champions of classic Wesleyanism. And students often left the ivory towers of religious education confused about what to proclaim, ill-prepared for the pastorate, and out of touch with the needs and the beliefs of the church members they were to shepherd.
Albert Outler and Ed Robb were vexed over the theological trends in the seminaries preparing United Methodist preachers and professors. They wanted something substantial and transformative that would provide long-term change. What they agreed upon was AFTE, a program designed to raise up a new generation of leaders.
The basic motivation came from John Wesley. “The Wesleyan tradition affirms both sound learning and vital piety,” explains Dr. Steve G.W. Moore, the senior program scholar of AFTE. “The idea behind AFTE, which Albert Outler and Ed Robb had together, was that those two things had to be held together; one of the key contributing factors was preparing faculty members and leaders for the United Methodist Church who would hold those two together, who wouldn’t let theological education or higher learning be separated from the vital life of the church.
“The circuit riders were given the Wesley library and were expected to read it. There was the belief that when you love the Lord God, the mind is a part of spiritual vitality and spiritual renewal,” Moore continues. “In the Wesleyan context, renewal is not just a matter of either intellectual development or sophisticated theological development—it’s really shaping the whole person and understanding that mind, spirit, body, worship, community, theological education are not separate from the church but are an integral part of the church. The vitality of one is directly tied to the vitality of the other.”
The mainstay of the organization is the John Wesley Fellows program, dedicated to aiding United Methodists pursuing doctorates by annually awarding up to five fellowships worth $10,000 each.
“When I first expressed interest in pursuing a Ph.D., a fellow student told me about AFTE and its mission,” explains Christine Johnson, a doctoral student at the University of Manchester. She knew several professors who were Wesley Fellows and suggested that I look into the application process. “What attracted me to AFTE was their obvious commitment to support evangelical theological education within the United Methodist Church. The more I learned about AFTE’s mission and theological commitments, the more excited I became about the potential of being a part of their work. I resounded with their desire to revitalize theological education with a greater emphasis on the classical Wesleyan tradition and was eager to network with other scholars who share similar faith commitments and interests.”
The total output of church resources from John Wesley Fellows is astonishing: in addition to teaching, preaching, and leading in a variety of capacities, an ever-expanding library of resources reflects the fruits of the investment AFTE makes in up-and-coming church leaders. For example, 21 scholarly contributors to the recent Wesley Study Bible were John Wesley Fellows—including the co-editor, Dr. Joel Green, Associate Dean for the Center for Advanced Theological Studies and Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Liberal seminary deans and presidents were skeptical at best when AFTE began its work. In fact, many were belligerent. One dean was quoted as saying that a John Wesley Fellow would become a member of his faculty only over his dead body. He has since passed on. Three of the Fellows are now professors at the seminary he once headed.
Over time, the credentials and the work of the AFTE students simply could not be dismissed. With degrees from schools like Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, their academic pedigrees were beyond question.
Presently, John Wesley Fellows hold positions at eight UM seminaries: Candler School of Theology, Claremont School of Theology, The Theological School at Drew University, The Divinity School at Duke University, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Perkins School of Theology, United Theological Seminary, and Wesley Theological Seminary. Outside official UM seminaries, they also serve as professors at Asbury Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University, Luther Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, Seminario Evangelical Unido de Teologia, as well as numerous colleges and universities.
These scholars can be found teaching Christian Education, Christian Ethics, Evangelism, Higher Education/Administration, History, New Testament, Old Testament, Philosophy of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Spiritual Formation, Theology, Wesley Studies, and Worship/Liturgics.
“There is nothing harder to accomplish than systemic change,” reports Dr. David McAllister-Wilson, president of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. “I work in a seminary because I believe it is the best place to affect the future of the church and to profess the distinctive syntheses of the Wesleyan movement: personal and social holiness; knowledge and vital piety. But we depend upon a stream of new faculty to accomplish this kind of steady, sustained renewal. The John Wesley Fellows program has made an extraordinary difference by providing an ever-freshening pool of candidates I look to first for almost every open faculty position. This is change on a generational scale which is respectful of the processes and standards of graduate education but determined in its Wesleyan identity.”
Although John Wesley Senior Fellows—the alumni of the program—find classic Wesleyan theology in common, they represent culturally diverse viewpoints ranging from United Methodist renewal group partners to Sojourners leadership.
While AFTE has been instrumental in supporting emerging leaders in the United Methodist Church for several decades, its appeal continues to broaden as the pathways to ministry are reshaped. Moore notes the changes to traditional ministry preparation: “We’re in the midst of the development of multiple paths through which people can pursue a calling to serve the church in pastoral or an extension ministry of the church. I think the church has not completely adapted to the multiple ways that people may need to take to get there. One of our currently funded fellows started the process to seek ordination and it has taken him seven years, from the moment he started the candidacy process to the moment last summer he was ordained as an elder. So much of it was bureaucratic paperwork. The church has not yet adapted—it’s built on kind of an old, professional, corporate model, rather than on a leadership development model. So I think that the truth is the church is always going to be in need of people who are called to leadership.”
Behind the scenes influence. The long-lasting impact that AFTE brings to the United Methodist Church isn’t limited to academic resources or seminary contexts. Surprisingly, the organization that quietly provides scholarships to so many noted pastors, scholars, and leaders has a relatively low profile. Rather, it is content to let its voice be heard through the endeavors of men and women such as Dr. Amy Laura Hall, Dr. Khiok-Khng Yeo, Dr. Priscilla Pope-Levison, Dr. Jerry Walls, Dr. Joy Moore, and Dr. Lester Ruth, to name just a few.
Executive Director Paul Ervin notes that he became familiar with the organization through the late Bishop Earl Hunt, a founding trustee of AFTE. “The thing that most surprised me was how effective it is and how little known it is,” says Ervin. “We’ve just always been very quiet, and have seen that as an asset—that John Wesley Fellows were focused on their mission, not attention. But it did surprise me, how effective AFTE is and how many places these scholars are at work.”
Ervin shares that one of the most gratifying things to watch is the John Wesley Fellows’ quiet but deep involvement in the local church. “As a layperson, I’m interested in a theological education that will primarily look to train people who will be pastors in our local churches and teachers in seminaries. Because of that, I think that it’s important that the training they get gives them roots so they can lead their flock to the Lord. The thing that really impressed me about AFTE is that I’ve seen where they’re all involved in their local church, which is not always the case with professors in seminaries.”
The quiet effects of AFTE’s mission constantly emerge in unexpected places. Moore relates the story of visiting in his office with the head of a seminary in Africa. As they talked, Moore learned that two John Wesley Fellows had recently been to the seminary to teach, as guest professors, without pay. “I continue to be amazed at the creativity of our young, emerging fellows,” said Moore. “They’re creative, thoughtful, very deeply committed, and I marvel at it.”
Despite its low profile, AFTE has awarded over $2.5 million in grants since its inception in 1977. The organization does have a small endowment, but most of its resources dedicated to funding scholarships come from individual donors, many of whom have benefited from AFTE over the years. And it is this very camaraderie that draws students to AFTE in the first place.
Theological fellowship. Every winter, current and former John Wesley Fellows gather for their popular Christmas Conference. Part alumni reunion, part theological colloquium, part networking opportunities, the Christmas Conference provides fellowship, training, and brainstorming. This year’s Christmas Conference included plenary addresses on subjects like “The Future of Theological Education” as well as papers presented by, and responded to by, current and Senior Fellows.
Moore, himself a John Wesley Senior Fellow, describes the passionate exchanges that occur at the Christmas Conference and other gatherings. “To see our senior fellows mentoring and advising the funded fellows is really exciting to watch. It is the best of what the ‘community of scholars’ is about. It is also fun to see ideas that are launched at a Christmas Conference later become articles, books, presentations at national conferences, and especially completed dissertations!”
Moore continues, “it amazes me that when we ask the fellows, ‘what’s the most valuable thing that you’ve gained from being a John Wesley fellow?’ they all are appreciative of the scholarship—it helps them get through and complete their work. But they all talk about the fellowship—they’re part of a community of learners who are committed to real, vital, spiritual life, very thoughtful, historical, biblical commitments, and to community.”
In your mailbox. While AFTE may keep a relatively low profile, it should be familiar to seminary students: every United Methodist seminary student, regardless of the school they attend, receives a free subscription to Catalyst, AFTE’s quarterly publication dedicated to encouraging the academic and intellectual development of United Methodist students.
Ervin explains that Catalyst is “really to help encourage and push creative thinking, to think, ‘hey, I enjoy this deeper reading, I’d like to know more, maybe I’d like to consider getting a Ph.D.’ So it’s not just layperson reading, though a number of laypeople read it; it’s to support seminarians who are going through their education; it’s helpful for them to know that there are people out there who also are thinking creatively in the areas of Wesleyan theology.” Each issue of the Catalyst includes articles such as “Jesus in the Apocryphal Gospels” and “A Profile: Phoebe Palmer.”
Perhaps no other organization has influenced United Methodist theological training more than AFTE has in recent decades. The expected trickle-down of influence envisioned by Albert Outler and Ed Robb is now emerging all the clearer as students who were trained by the first John Wesley Fellows are now preparing mentees of their own. The AFTE family tree continues to grow new branches—and its fruit can be found in your own backyard.
“My father always believed it was better to light a candle than curse the darkness,” says Edmund Robb III, chairman of the AFTE Board of Directors and senior pastor of The Woodlands United Methodist Church in The Woodlands, Texas. “Looking at his life, he lit many candles that have reformed and renewed the United Methodist Church, but I think he might be proudest of AFTE. Its present influence and its potential to impact theological education for decades to come is hard to overestimate.”
To inquire about becoming a John Wesley Fellow or to make a donation to AFTE, contact Mr. Paul Ervin, Executive Director, P.O. Box 238, Lake Junaluska, NC 28745 (paulervin@prodigy.net). Phone: 828-456-9901. Catalyst subscriptions are available to the public for $5 annually. For more information, visit www.johnwesleyfellows.org or www.catalystresources.org.
Elizabeth Glass Turner is a freelance writer who has contributed to multiple online and print publications. She has an essay in the forthcoming “Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy.” Elizabeth currently resides in a multigenerational household with her husband and 11-month-old son.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
SIDEBAR FACTS:
Total John Wesley Fellows: 134
Earned Doctorates: 89
Pursuing Doctorates: 35
Seminary Professors/Deans: 50
College/University Professors: 24
Local Church Pastors: 15
Campus/Military Chaplains: 3
Foundation Executives: 3
Editorial Staff, Publisher: 2
Syndicated Radio Host: 1
United Methodist Bishop: 1
by Steve | Mar 12, 2008 | Uncategorized
Vietnamese pastor spreads God’s Word around the world
17 March 2008
By Kathy L. Gilbert, United Methodist News Service
The Rev Bau Dang would rather not talk about himself. He shies away from the spotlight.
He just made history by becoming the first Vietnamese American elected as a delegate to the 2008 United Methodist General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking body that meets every four years.
He finds it hard to believe that he was elected as a delegate to the 2008 General Conference, which will meet in Fort Worth, Texas, from April 23 to May 2.
And one more thing: He has just finished translating the New Testament into Vietnamese and published 10,000 copies at his own expense.
Vietnam’s communist government has issued a permit to the National Religious Publisher of Vietnam to print the translation, and now Christians in his home country are begging him to send them 100,000 more.
“To me, this is a miracle,” he said. “Praise be to God!”
His translation is spreading the Word of God throughout the country, which he is no longer able to enter.
Because of his stand for human rights, he has been placed on a list of people not allowed to enter Vietnam.
Midlife change Born in Vietnam, the son of a pastor, he served in the South Vietnamese armed forces and moved to the United States as a refugee after the war.
His friends thought he was going through a midlife crisis when he gave up a lucrative job as a manager for Xerox to become a United Methodist associate pastor.
Some of his Vietnamese pastor friends thought he had chosen the wrong denomination because no United Methodist church existed in Vietnam before 1975. “Some even thought that Methodism was a heresy!” he said.
He and his wife, Binh, both left jobs with Xerox in 1988. Since then, the Xerox operation they worked at has Vietnamese pastor spreads God’s Word around the world closed, but the church where he started as associate pastor – Wesley United Methodist Church in San Diego – has grown into a thriving ministry with four different languages spoken at six worship services to more than 400 people on Sunday mornings.
As Senior Pastor now, he plans services in English, Cambodian, Spanish and Vietnamese, “in whatever style fits each group”, he said.
Translating Old Testament He worked on his translation of the New Testament for 10 years. His knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, English and Vietnamese helped him with the task.
He also received training from the United Bible Society.
“I preach from the Bible every Sunday, and the version that we had was translated by missionaries in 1926 in Vietnam,” he said. When they came to the country, they were learning the language and hired a non- Christian to help with the translation.
“We had to live with that Bible for years and years,” he said. He felt uncomfortable with some text in the Bible and did not believe they were clear to the reader.
One example he cited is the passage in John 2, in which Jesus talks to his mother about turning water into wine.
“The way that passage is translated is very offensive to the Vietnamese culture,” he said. The translation made Jesus sound like he was speaking harshly to his mother. “Non-Christians say, ‘How can I believe in a God who responded to his mother so impolitely?’ and it turned them right away.”
Kathy L. Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tennessee.
by Steve | Oct 17, 2005 | Uncategorized
Debating the old professor: C.S. Lewis and the advent of Aslan
By Elizabeth V. Glass
2005
| On a winter night in 1948, C.S. Lewis defended his argument for the existence of Narnia. No, he didn’t try to prove the reality of other worlds behind wardrobe doors. In fact, at that point he had not even written The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But he did defend his case for the existence of supernatural realities, of things powerful and present that we cannot see—in other words, the existence of God. |
On February 2 of that year, Lewis attended a meeting of the Oxford University Socratic Club, an organization whose purpose was to debate issues related to Christianity. In the spirit of Socrates himself, the club was committed to “follow the argument wherever it led them.” The primary speaker for the evening was Elizabeth Anscombe, a brilliant young philosopher at Oxford, who read a paper attacking Lewis’ argument against naturalism in his recent book Miracles. (Naturalism is the belief that all that exists is the material world, and that all things can be explained without God and the supernatural.)
Although Anscombe herself was a Roman Catholic who embraced the existence of God, she found Lewis’ argument against naturalism fundamentally flawed. While Lewis lore has piled up like so many fur coats in his proverbial wardrobe, what is clear is that an exciting debate ensued that evening that has grown to legendary proportions over the years.
In his role as president of the Socratic Club, Lewis had gained a reputation as a formidable debater. But the results of the Lewis-Anscombe debate are themselves hotly contested. Some biographers recount it as “The Night That Lewis Lost.” Others, fearful of tarnishing his image as a scholar and defender of the faith, vehemently defend him. Still others claim that the debate was so disturbing to Lewis that he retreated from formal apologetics, turning to fiction instead. They cite the fact that it was soon after the debate with Anscombe that he began writing The Chronicles of Narnia. Did the celebrated Oxford intellectual and Christian apologist dodge the issues by sneaking into fairy tales, turning himself into the Old Professor of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe?
What emerges is a tangle of criticism and controversy. Like a battle on many fronts, there are multiple factors to weigh in interpreting Lewis’ contribution to academic as well as children’s literature. Some scholars turn their spectacles towards the actual issue that Lewis and Anscombe engaged, whether naturalism can be a coherent worldview. Other critics set their sights on how the encounter with Anscombe affected Lewis’ literary career. Did it shake his confidence in rational apologetics for the faith, or did he emerge personally unscathed but rhetorically defeated? To what degree was Anscombe on target in her criticism of his central argument in Miracles? Decades after the battle between Lewis and Anscombe, all of these queries recently held center stage yet again.
Among the spires of Oxford, England, the controversies of the legendary debate were brought to life by a dramatic re-enactment of the famous Socratic Club encounter. It was performed this past July at Oxbridge 2005, a summer convening of Lewis scholars and fans organized by the C.S. Lewis Institute and held every three years. The re-enactment gave the audience the opportunity to assess for themselves the merits of the arguments presented by Lewis and Anscombe. Adding to the historic significance of the re-enactment was the attendance of Professor Basil Mitchell, who knew Lewis, and succeeded him as President of the Socratic Club.
The script for the event, prepared by Dr. Jerry Walls, professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, and Phillip Tallon, graduate of Asbury Seminary and PhD candidate at St. Andrew’s University, Scotland, relied on several sources. Included by the editors were documents such as C.S. Lewis’ original chapter in Miracles against naturalism, Anscombe’s paper, Lewis’ revised chapter written after the debate, and notes taken by members of the Socratic Club. By weaving these sources together, Tallon and Walls were able to present a version of the debate true to the essence of the original. Staged at St. Aldate’s Church, Oxford, the script was convincingly delivered by British actors Robin Meredith and Christine Way. The performance itself served as a gateway into the world of Lewis and Anscombe, allowing the audience to step through the snow and join the lively professor alongside the cigar-smoking Anscombe.
Following the re-enactment, Gary Habermas of Liberty University interviewed world-renowned philosopher Antony Flew. Habermas has debated Flew publicly, developing a close friendship with him over the past few years. Professor Flew shared reflections on both the content and the significance of the 1948 debate. He attended Oxford and was present the night of the original debate at the Socratic Club. He recalled that Lewis seemed obviously distressed after the encounter, hurrying away across a bridge, while Anscombe exuberantly displayed a sense of triumph. The chat with Flew allowed the audience not only to hear first hand memories of the atmosphere of the debate, but also to catch a glimpse of the inner debate in Flew’s own recent life.
Flew is the son of noted Methodist theologian R. Newton Flew, but he is recognized as one of the most outspoken and influential atheists of our time. Lately, though, he has described himself as “an atheist with some very important questions,” and has shifted to deism. While deism is a form of belief in God, it does not accept special revelation like many major world religions would claim through their prophets and scriptures. Having represented the naturalistic worldview for so long, Flew’s transition to belief in God has caused a momentous stir in the academic community. In addition to making national news, the story even provided a joke for late night TV’s Jay Leno.
While Lewis and Anscombe went hammer and tong over the issue of whether reason requires a supernatural explanation, Flew was persuaded to belief in the supernatural by the imprint of intelligent design in the natural order. In other words, Lewis was firmly convinced that human reason can only be explained by the existence of the supernatural, while Flew was similarly persuaded by the evidence for ultimate reason and design in our universe. In this dramatic transition of thought, Dr. Flew exemplifies the spirit of the Socratic Club in following the argument wherever it leads, even after decades of embracing an opposing worldview.
Although Professor Flew now affirms the existence of God, he cited doctrines like the belief in hell into explain his rejection of Christianity and other major religions. At the conclusion of the interview with Flew, a new debate ensued that was much in the spirit of Lewis. Beginning with Dr. David Baggett of King’s College, Pennsylvania, a line of challengers rebutted Flew’s statements denying the plausibility of Christianity. The questioners included Peter Kreeft, noted Lewis scholar and professor of philosophy at Boston College, and Charles Colson, who had presented at the conference earlier in the week. Almost 50 years after the night at the Socratic Club, naturalism and supernaturalism again held the floor, stirring a lively exchange. For now, Flew remains unconvinced of the plausibility of special revelation as it is understood in Christianity.
If the dialogue with Antony Flew provides a snapshot of the contemporary dynamics of the debate, how should we portray the significance of the original Lewis-Anscombe encounter? Were The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis’ means of running away from reason and escaping into fantasy? Philosopher Victor Reppert doesn’t think so. He recently addressed the question in an essay published in The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy. Reppert establishes the point that far from creating a split between faith and reason, Lewis actually integrates them in his famous stories. Comparing one of his most quoted arguments in Mere Christianity with portions of The Chronicles of Narnia, Reppert finds that Lewis utilized the medium of children’s fiction to communicate the same truths found in his philosophical writings. To illustrate this fusion of reason and imagination, Reppert listens in as the Old Professor evaluates Lucy’s story of having visited another world through the wardrobe.
“Logic!” said the professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic in these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth (LWW, Chapter 5, p.131 and The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, 266).
In this passage, Reppert discovers that Lewis is using essentially the same argument in two venues. In Mere Christianity, Lewis argued that three possibilities emerge from Jesus’ claim to be divine: either he was a lunatic, a liar, or he was telling the truth. And, as described above, the scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe employs the same reasoning about Lucy’s unbelievable journey into Narnia.
What, then, may we conclude from this? The claim that Lewis simply backed into his wardrobe just doesn’t hold. Reppert even suggests that “the Narnia books can themselves be seen as works of broadly Christian apologetics.” This implies that Lewis intentionally infused his fiction with rational portrayals of transcendent truth. Far from splitting reason and faith, as his critics suppose, Lewis brilliantly synthesized the two.
It is only when we understand his commitment to myth as an appropriate illumination of truth that we fully appreciate the scope of his harmonization.
Lewis understood myth as, “at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination.” This description protects the concept of myth from misunderstanding. Lewis makes clear that myth is not a falsehood, nor is it underdeveloped “misunderstood history” formed by a backward group of people to convey their identity and beliefs. Instead, Lewis finds that myth—storytelling that uses the imagination—can sometimes communicate Truth more wholly than other avenues. Myth puts hands, feet, and sometimes even paws on abstract principles, making them easier to see, mimic, and listen to. It binds together right thinking with right action by whispering stories of heroes and traitors. And anytime truth is present, reason is present; so it is possible for made up stories to reflect that “unfocused gleam of divine truth” in ways that exercise rational discernment.
At the end of the day, Lewis’ motives for writing The Chronicles of Narnia are most clearly found when Lewis is primarily understood as literary scholar. The debate with Anscombe merely served to better hone his arguments in his book Miracles. For Lewis, there is creativity in the call to serve truth. Known for enjoying walks around Oxford, Lewis established well-worn paths through many different terrains, whether group debate or popular writing, philosophical treatises or literary criticism, children’s books or epic poems. By also becoming familiar with a variety of terrains, we are best equipped to guide others to Narnia. Truth may be clothed in myth, as Lewis famously dressed it, or in scientific evidence, like that which persuaded Antony Flew. However its advent comes about, following the argument wherever it leads is similar to walking the Road to Emmaus: Truth will appear beside us, much as Aslan did to the children who journeyed through the wardrobe.
Elizabeth V. Glass was a student at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky at the time of this article being published.
by Steve | Sep 26, 2005 | Uncategorized
Archive: Church must change world through witness, bishop says
UM News
Sept. 28, 2005
By Tom Slack
CINCINNATI (UMNS) – To have an impact on the world, the church of the future must have a confident witness, and its people must be “atonement bearers,” according to retired United Methodist Bishop George Bashore.
“Atonement is not an isolated creedal statement,” Bashore said, “but rather it speaks primarily of life-changing power through costly love. God takes the initiative through Christ with us, and so we take the mind of God in our relationship with a hurting world.”
Bashore spoke to participants in a workshop at the Confessing Movement’s annual conference. The workshop, “A Bishop Looks at the Future of the Church,” was one of several held during the Sept. 22-24 conference, which drew more than 300 people. The Confessing Movement is an unofficial United Methodist caucus working to help the church “retrieve its classical doctrinal identity,” according to the organization’s Web site.
The bishop retired in 2000, after 12 years leading the denomination’s Pittsburgh Area preceded by eight years in the Boston Area. Today he is bishop-in-residence at Mount Lebanon United Methodist Church in Pittsburgh, where he teaches a Wednesday morning Bible study.
Through the class, “I find myself thrust into pastoral care,” Bashore said.
A 50-year member of the congregation asked him, “Will you teach me how to pray? All this time I’ve prayed, but not really.” A young widow whose husband died during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks asked, “How can I discern what the will of God is? This thing has torn my life completely apart.” Another Wednesday morning Bible student wanted to know more about eternal life, when the possibility of her receiving a kidney transplant became less and less likely.
“A broken heart is always synonymous with a yearning heart,” Bashore said, “about a deep-seated yearning to meet this God and know something about the vitality of this God, and every one of our churches ought to be able to share the stories of faith so that they can know how to meet this God and experience this God.
“Propositional truths are important,” he said. He told those gathered to “contend for the apostolic faith within the United Methodist Church,” adding that the propositional truths “need to become experiential truths in the lives of our people in our congregations. When that happens, the church is going to have an unbelievable future.”
Sociological studies show Christian faith is losing its impact on the values, morality and decision-making processes in our nation, Bashore said. As he sees it, the problem is that society uses the church’s vocabulary and even the church’s concepts and ideals, but without the church’s content.
“The greatest procrastination is that we borrow from Jesus’ concepts and statements, but don’t introduce people to Jesus, the source of the power behind those concepts and statements.”
Children and youth need to be trained theologically, Bashore added. They need to not only learn the propositions of theology but experience the power of the cross in their lives.
Some older people, like the longtime church member who asked to be taught to pray, might need elementary help on how to pray, how to read the Bible, how to share one’s faith. But more than anything else, people young and old need a sense of the grace of God, and integral to that grace is always a cross.
“We are more than lovers of love,” he said. “We are more than persons of hopefulness and wishful thinking. The One who wept over the sons and daughters of Jerusalem had a passionate longing for the righting of souls in relationship to God, so much so that he went to the cross to accomplish it.”
There may be varying theories and understandings of atonement, Bashore said, but atonement is not owned by any part of the theological spectrum. The reality of individual and societal sin, he added, is so demonic and so destructive that all people need to be “atonement bearers” to one another, and all churches must be atonement bearers to the world.
The bishop named six ways in which the church can have an impact through its witness.
- The church must witness to an eternal God who has “exploded into our world through incarnation.” It must tell the stories of God’s transformation of people who move away from self-centered concerns. He mentioned people in his home church in Lancaster, Pa., who testified in church gatherings, “I met Jesus and he changed my life.”
- The church must witness through caring for people. Bashore said his return to pastoral care in a congregation shows him the many ways in which relationships are broken, and the church cares for people “when passion and compassion walk hand in hand.” “Do we even know one another?” he asked. “At the same time we build in admonitions to become a family as the body of Christ, we don’t make it happen.”
- The church must witness through worship. “Boring and lugubrious worship must go!” he said. “We must move beyond battles between traditional and contemporary worship, and grow in our understanding of God’s gifts through cultural diversity. Worship should primarily be evocative and not just a bunch of words. Orthodoxy doesn’t mean ‘right thinking.’ It means ‘right praise.’ And we should never allow people to leave our worship experiences without an opportunity for commitment” – which, he added, might include a signup table to write to legislators as well as an altar call.
- The church must have a victorious witness to immortality and eternal life. “We will be the community around the world who have that ‘for thou art with me’ confidence about living and dying.”
- The church must address human hurt in God’s world. The world has become a “glocality,” Bashore said, and relationships depend on the intersection of the global and the local.
- The church must have a visible witness in the world. Recalling his sermon at the summer 2000 consecration of Bishop Violet Fisher, Bashore told how a rainstorm drove the gathering into a large hotel lobby, where the service was concluded as hotel guests looked on from various levels in the atrium.
The church can have an impact on the world “only if we have a confident witness,” he said. “We must be atonement bearers.”
Tom Slack is director of communications of the United Methodist Church’s West Ohio Annual Conference.
by Steve | Aug 11, 1996 | Uncategorized
Forward to Our Methodist Heritage (By Charles Keysor)
By Bishop Earl G. Hunt
1996
AFTER DR. JAMES S. STEWART of Edinburgh had preached a few years ago to a large audience of United Methodist ministers and their wives in Charlotte, North Carolina, a young minister (suffering, I fear, from creedal poverty in his own mind and life) said with devastating honesty, “We were embarrassed by the immensity of his faith!”
This candid comment serves to remind us that the Christian community has come dangerously close to losing its gospel in recent years. The reasons are too complex for easy analysis, and are related to the secularization and the affluence of contemporary life as well as to philosophy and theology. In many instances we clothed what amounted to a fundamentally humanistic perspective in the historic vestments of the Church and its ministry. Diminishing church attendance and waning effectiveness in evangelism undeniably are traceable to this grave malady of diluted conviction. In fact, the total problem of the contemporary Church, in my opinion, is the various manifestations of Christian agnosticism that have confronted believers in the last few decades .
But, praise God, there are startling and encouraging evidences of a renaissance of faith around the world today. We seem to be engaged deliberately in the gradual recovery of those cardinal beliefs that compose our faith. The days of creedal drought are surely in twilight. This is an obvious return to our Wesleyan position, for the little Oxford don to whose insights we owe our sectarian origin was never in doubt about what he believed regarding God, Christ, sin, forgiveness, prayer, and the holy life! His theology, always firmly based in the Scriptures, was doxology, and his trumpet never gave an uncertain sound.
It has been my observation that significant and lasting social action by the Christian community always and forever rests upon deep and authentic conviction about the great doctrines of the gospel. There is a historic sequence of idea and deed, conviction and mission, faith and action. Before the imperative of the Great Commission came the indicative of God at work through Jesus Christ in his incarnation, his death on the cross, and his resurrection.
But this has been, in recent decades, the lost movement of the symphony. Now, at long last, we seem about to hear again, in all of its surging power, the whole score of the gospel’s music. If this prognosis is correct, it constitutes the best authentic hope from an earthly standpoint for the survival of the Church.
This renaissance of evangelical Christianity has many faces in our time, but the movement itself is far broader and larger than any one of them. It has already permeated the grass roots of the Church around the earth and is now invading all but the most reluctant of ecclesiastical leadership levels. The Good News movement in the United Methodist Church is one aspect of this development and has articulated effectively its emphasis to our entire denomination. As one who is himself wholly committed to the historical evangelical doctrines of our faith, with appropriate and courageous social implementation, I am pleased to write this brief foreword for Dr. Keysor’s little volume. His skill as a writer and his deep dedication as a United Methodist Christian are everywhere apparent in the pages that follow. I confidently pray that the message of Our Methodist Heritage may find lodging in many lives, and may result, through God’s Spirit, in an awakened interest in the basic truths of our holy religion.
EARL G. HUNT, JR.
Presiding Bishop Nashville (Tenn.) Episcopal Area
United Methodist Church
by Steve | May 6, 1987 | Archive - 1987, Uncategorized
Archive: Give Us Leaders, Not Managers!
The UM Tribe needs a few more chiefs, says this Duke University duo
by Robert Wilson and William Willimon
The persons in key positions in the United Methodist Church today are primarily managers and not leaders. Leaders are persons with a vision that they are able to articulate. They can name the needs, desires and hopes of the people. They have a charisma that inspires confidence. The people sense that the leader understands them and is working on their behalf. Because of this, they will follow into new and uncharted paths.
Leaders establish new institutions: they revitalize and reform old ones. They tend to be controversial because they inevitably challenge existing social structures and accepted ways of doing things. Leaders will inspire both love and enmity, but never indifference.
In contrast, managers accept the validity of the institutional status quo and give their attention to its maintenance. They see that everything is done correctly by the proper person and consistent with precedent. In due course, the institution becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to serve a larger goal. Because managers assume the validity of the organization, they expect the constituents to be loyal to and supportive of the institution. This loyalty is expected even if the people do not feel that the institution is serving them and even if they are opposed to what the institution is doing.
Managers’ status is derived from their particular positions. A great deal of time and energy goes into defining and protecting one’s area of responsibility or “turf.” It does not matter whether the manager thinks of himself or herself as a political “liberal” or “conservative”; any change is threatening and will be resisted.
Every institution needs both leaders and managers; there are certain routine tasks that must be attended to. The problem has become that The United Methodist Church is dominated by managers. Maintaining the institution is their major concern. More attention is being given to the form and composition of church organizations than to what these groups are actually accomplishing.
What Jobs Are Considered Important?
The proportion of the Discipline devoted to the general agencies is an indication of the importance given to this part of the church. It is generally accepted, particularly among clergy, that the most significant positions are administrative and bureaucratic. The individual who moves from being a pastor of a local church to a position in a general agency is perceived as being promoted. The reverse is also true, as one who leaves a bureaucratic staff job to become a local church pastor is perceived as having been demoted.
To rectify past practices, which tended to exclude minorities and women, the denomination has been placing them in administrative and bureaucratic posts. A complicated quota system has been set up to ensure that women, ethnic minorities, persons with handicapping conditions, youth, young adults and older adults will be represented as voting members of agency boards.[1] Executives are under considerable pressure to employ minorities and women. It is a curious, almost tragic, circumstance that has led our women and minority members to accept the notion that the way for the church to rectify past inequities is to have more female and minority managers.
The result of all this is that much time and energy goes into management of the institution. This is time and effort that is not going into preaching, winning persons to the Gospel, building up congregations and ministering to people. The sad fact is that the newest group (minorities and women) to move into leadership in the denomination has accepted some of the least desirable and most organizationally conservative values of the persons it is attempting to displace. Nothing is changing but the actors. Minority bureaucrats fail to increase our minority membership. People do not join a congregation saying, “Let’s become United Methodists; they have an agency executive who is Hispanic.” All too often, we have tried to attack the problem of the lack of ethnic evangelization by our church by removing effective ethnic pastors and moving them into positions that cut them off from the possibility of evangelizing anyone into the denominational structure beyond the local church.
The Rhetoric and the Reality
The self-image of most denominational officials is not that of institutional managers. Many of these people probably see themselves as leading the church into the battle against such evils as racism, sexism, agism, “handicapism” (an awkward contribution to the language invented by a church agency), and perhaps even other “isms” yet to be discovered. The rhetoric is that of bold leadership; the reality is that of control and maintenance of the institutional status quo at all levels of the connectional structure and suppression of alternative points of view.
The test of loyalty for both the pastor and the congregation is whether the local church has paid all of the apportionments in full.
One type of information that many cabinets will have available when they consider pastoral appointments is the amount of money apportioned to each charge during the preceding year and the total each paid. Pastors endeavor to persuade their congregations to pay these askings in full because of the positive effect on their next appointment.
Some will argue, “This is as it should be. Apportionments mean mission. In paying our apportionments, a congregation is moving outside its own selfish preoccupation with the pastor’s salary and its internal needs and reaching out to serve the needs of others.” This is not so. Apportionments represent agency salaries as much as they mean mission.
The money provided by the apportionments to the local churches is, in the main, used to pay the administrative expenses and the costs of the programs of the various denominational agencies, including subsidies to other churches and institutions. Many of these institutions are creations to meet the missional needs of an earlier day. Managers administer yesterday’s decisions rather than lead us toward the creation of new institutions for new missional needs. The work of these groups is important and, in general, makes a contribution to the church and to the society. What is significant is that the denominational officials indicate by their actions that it is the most important work that the United Methodist Church does and that it is the main means of missions.
Anything that threatens a part of that institution will be met with strong resistance. A recent example is the conflict between the General Board of Global Ministries and the independent Mission Society for United Methodists. The latter group wants to send missionaries but has encountered determined opposition. The underlying issue is a theological conflict over the nature of the church’s mission, but the battle is being fought over bureaucratic authority.
The General Board of Global Ministries claims it has been designated as the only missionary-sending agency by the General Conference. A number of the bishops have closed ranks with this board and have refused to appoint ordained ministers as staff or missionaries of the new independent agency; yet United Methodist clergy continue to be appointed to a variety of ecumenical and other, sometimes highly partisan, agencies. The difference in this instance is that an unofficial (but totally United Methodist) group is challenging a part of the institution. Here, again, we have an example of the prevailing attitude that makes maintenance of the institution paramount.
The Desired Type of Leader
It is axiomatic that people get the kind of leaders they want. If this is the case, then United Methodists, and particularly the clergy, want managers who will care for and preserve the institution as it is. Managers tend the institutional machinery. They are not threatening because they can be counted on to see that no radical changes will be made and that no tough choices will be faced. They may be dull, but they are comfortable. There will be some conflict, but it will be among people or groups who aspire to be the managers. We are told that there is nothing wrong with the machinery; we just need more female or black or conservative or liberal managers to run the machinery. The names on the doors change, but not the machinery; so nothing changes. The long-term result is a kind of institutional dry rot, which preserves the form after the strength has gone. The end result is, predictably, fatal.
Clergy tend to be comfortable with the denominational managers because they can be trusted to maintain the status quo. They are the main beneficiaries of the present machinery. The laypersons who are elected to denominational offices in both the annual conference and the general church seem quickly to take on the perspective of the clergy. Despite the attempt of United Methodism to include laypersons in and on the various agencies, there is little evidence that it has had any effect in altering either the style or the direction of the denomination. The machinery is greater even than the laity; it turns all of us into managers.
While United Methodist laypeople will patiently tolerate managers as pastors of local churches, they welcome and respond to leaders. Laypersons want their church and their pastor to be effective. Members talking about their minister will often say, “He is a good man, but …” This is followed by some comment that reflects disappointment in a pastor who is uninspiring, unimaginative, and perhaps downright dull.
Dozens of congregations that are in trouble have been studied. These studies reveal that the three factors most important for revitalizing these dying congregations are leadership, leadership, leadership. In a declining congregation, the pastor appears to be depressed, impotent, immobile, not in control, a passive victim of the surrounding neighborhood or of the squabbling lay leaders or of the national bureaucracy; any alibi is given for the pastor’s inability to see a vision of the church and to communicate that vision to the laity. When pressed to lead, these managers become rigidly legalistic, invoking one paragraph in the Discipline as their authority because they lack the leadership skills to convince, to convert and to persuade. On the other hand, researchers can point with joy to a number of United Methodist congregations in which almost any obstacle has been overcome by the firm, visionary, enthusiastic leadership of a pastor who is a leader.
Take the case of the United Methodist church in Ossining, New York.[2] Three years ago their pastor, the Reverend Paul Bowles, was told, “We’re old; we can’t do much.” Today the attitude is different.
For many years, the Ossining church had had no Sunday school. It had been 35 years since the last vacation Bible school. By 1983, there was barely a child left to light the candles on the altar. Hopeless was the tenor of all conversations about the parish’s future.
The pastor went to work. During that summer, he made 375 calls. He also spent time finding and training Sunday school teachers. When the prospective teachers were asked to name their greatest fear, they replied, “What if nobody comes?” But somebody did come; the day Sunday school opened, 30 children came.
Other things happened. The children brought brothers and sisters. Many had never attended Sunday school. Some parents followed. The youth group grew to 20. Ten young people were confirmed in 1985 and 12 in 1986. There are now two children’s choirs. Last summer’s vacation Bible school had 92 participants. The church is now a vital agent of ministry in families and the community.
Growing and effective congregations have ministers who are leaders, not managers. Vital denominations have leaders who lead, who chart new courses, and who inspire persons to follow, not simply to manage the institutional status quo. A strong leader releases strength in all of us. Too many clergy and laity today feel impotent, unable to move because they have been so effectively thwarted in their earnest efforts to get things moving. While we agree with most of Bishop Wilke’s And Are We Yet Alive? in its enthusiastic call for renewal, we predict that such calls will produce only cynicism and despair if we fail to attend to the specific changes that are needed to turn our enthusiasm into the power to be effective. A revitalized United Methodism must place persons in official positions who are leaders and not simply managers, persons who have a vision of what the church can be and who inspire other people to risk making that vision a reality.
What Can Be Done?
If it is true that the United Methodist Church is dominated by managers instead of leaders, the question is what, if anything, can be done to change the situation? A change in the type and style of people now directing the denomination is not only possible, but also absolutely essential.
First and most important, United Methodists must become more assertive. We are too passive and accepting of what church officials do. There is an ethic at work that believes that one should not disagree or make waves. Such action is thought to produce conflict that will greatly damage the church. Mavericks are silenced or driven out. When this is combined with the feeling that persons in the local church cannot influence what the denominational agencies do, the result is a debilitating lethargy.
Furthermore, a kind of halo effect surrounds the minister. Some laypersons are reluctant to challenge the clergy because the laypersons seem to feel that to do so is almost like challenging God. The laity assume that the clergy—by training, vocation or divine gifts-automatically know what is best for the church when, in reality, the clergy may be among the least able to look honestly at the church. This is particularly true in regard to denominational officials. United Methodists, both clergy and laity, must demand leaders and not simply managers who will maintain the institutional status quo.
Second, United Methodist clergy and laity must look carefully at the process by which denominational officials are chosen. The manner by which the selection I made can determine the type of person who will fill the position. The trend has clearly been toward an overt political process, in which persons openly campaign for a denominational office.
This is most obvious in, but not limited to, the election of bishops. The Discipline now permits the formal nomination of episcopal candidates (par.506). Getting such a nomination is the equivalent of winning a primary election. This has resulted in campaign literature that requires the solicitation of funds from supporters or an investment by the candidate. It has also resulted in the exclusion of persons who might serve the church well, but who will not submit to the indignities of a political campaign.
This present trend has shifted the emphasis from persons being called into the difficult role of leader to the finding of persons who can and are willing to put together the right coalitions to be elected. Caucuses and quotas produce managers, not leaders. People who openly campaign for an office in an institution can be counted on to maintain that institution or to make changes favorable to their supporters. They have already had to make so many compromises to be acceptable to different groups in their coalition that they can’t remember what it means to lead.
Third, United Methodists must be willing to find ways to ensure that the persons selected to become church officials are leaders and not just managers. Because an institution employs the type of leaders the constituents want, the people, if they desire, can have a different type of leader. When the institution is not doing well, the people tend to demand a change in leadership. The United Methodist Church has not been doing well. “If my company had lost 13 percent of its business in the last twenty years, I would be out of a job,” one corporate vice president told us. Resistance to ideas for innovation can be expected from those who have presided over our current decline. It is time that the people called the church officials into account and demanded changes.
[1] The 1984 Discipline provides that each annual conference shall nominate at least fifteen persons to a Jurisdictional pool, out of which the managers of the various general agencies are elected. This pool is to contain clergy (including at least one woman), laywomen, laymen, and at least one person from each of the Asian American, Black American, Hispanic American, and Native American minority groups. Age categories include youth, young adults, and older adults. Finally, the nominees must include persons who have a handicapping condition. (par. 805.b)
[2] “Depressed Church Reaches Out for Cure.” People to People. vol. 2, no.1 (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House. 1986), p.1. From Rekindling The Flame: Strategies For A Vital United Methodism by William Willimon and Robert Wilson. Copyright © by Abingdon Press. Used by permission.
