by Steve | May 29, 2019 | Uncategorized
Shepherd to the fringes: John “Bullfrog” Smith (1942-2019)
By Steve Beard
March/April 2019
“Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town’s garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek … at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died for. And that is what He died about. That is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen ought to be about.”– The Rev. George Macleod, Church of Scotland clergyman and one of the founders of the Iona Community (1895-1991).
More than 20 years ago, I was sitting across the table in a Chinese restaurant in Nicholasville, Kentucky, when John Smith recited Macleod’s sentiments with righteous authority and a piercing gaze to describe part of the inspiration of the calling on his life. At that time, Smith, a well-known media commentator and evangelist to those on the cultural fringe in Australia, was doing doctoral work in missiology at Asbury Theological Seminary.
As a well-scrubbed son of a Methodist minister and a brand new Bible school graduate in the late 1960s, Smith recalls driving past a “bunch of menacing-looking outlaw bikers parked by the side of the road. Oddly, I felt a surge of compassion for these guys who no one really wanted to know. I couldn’t see the local minister making much headway with people like that,” he wrote in his autobiography, On the Side of the Angels.
Smith began to pray that “God would raise up someone able to get alongside such outsiders and show them something of the love of Christ.” At that moment, he sensed the corresponding answer: “Why don’t you answer your own prayer.” Initially, he doubted the call – but eventually he became the president of God’s Squad Motorcycle Club and an authentic ambassador of Christ to the marginalized, rejected, and forsaken.
John Smith died on March 6, 2019, after a long battle with cancer. He was 76 years old. Hundreds of bikers were in attendance at Smith’s funeral in Ocean Grove, a coastal community in the southeast of Australia, to pay their respects – including those from the Hell’s Angels, Gypsy Jokers, Bandidos, Coffin Cheaters, and Immortals.
Sean Stillman, president of God’s Squad UK chapter and author of God’s Biker: Motorcycles and Misfits,described Smith at the funeral as an “academic, a pastor, a preacher, a prophetic voice, an irritant to a comfortable church, an advocate for justice, the poor, the marginalized, and the arts.” More significantly, Stillman said, was his role as husband to Glena, Smith’s wife, and father to his three children and 17 grandchildren.
With a gregarious personality and an encyclopedic knowledge of poetry, pop culture, ecology, philosophy, and theology, Smith garnered attention and stirred controversy through his Christian message, advocacy for social justice, and roaring motorcycles. His appeal was infectious. Currently, there are God’s Squad members in 16 nations around the globe.
Stillman reported on Smith’s ability to connect with men and women “whether it be in a smoky clubhouse bar, backstage at a rock ‘n roll gig, or in the corridors of political power, a chapel pulpit, a street corner talking to a complete stranger, sitting amid Indigenous communities, engaging in academic dialogue, or crying in the pouring rain at a graveside with a grieving family.”
Smith spoke at rock festivals, biker rallies, government hearings, secondary schools, and before the United Nations Human Rights Commission. But his real love was talking one on one with someone who felt alienated from God and the church.
“For Smithy, the road was the place of discipleship and mission, and like John Wesley, one of his mission inspirations, the world very much became his parish,” said Stillman. “It was where you worked out what it meant to be a follower of his hero, Jesus of Nazareth. The road would take you to the marginalized. He taught us that the Gospel still ought to be good news for the poor and uncomfortable news for the powerful.”
Smith was a tireless advocate for human rights and indigenous peoples. Aunty Jean Phillips, an Aboriginal Christian leader from Queensland, testified at the funeral to Smith’s friendship with the Aboriginal community and recalled his “real heart for justice.”
An email from U2 frontman Bono was even read at the funeral. “To John the Bible was an incendiary tract – not some handbook on religion,” wrote Bono. “It was not a sop for mankind’s fear of death – it was an epic poem about life. It spoke about culture, about politics, about justice.” U2 first became acquainted with Smith while touring through Australia in 1984 during the “Unforgettable Fire” tour.
Interestingly enough, the last time I saw John and his wife Glena was after a U2 concert many years ago in Chicago on Bono’s birthday during the Vertigo tour. John asked if my friend, Father Kenneth Tanner, and I could give them a lift across town after the show. They sat in the back and talked about loving the concert but being too tired to attend the after-gig birthday bash for Bono. We dutifully drove them up Lake Shore Drive to the Jesus People commune – silently wishing they had given us their passes to the after party.
Bono’s message at the funeral was spot-on: “When Bob Dylan sang ‘always on the other side of whatever side there was,’ he might have been singing about John, an outsider in an outsider community, an outlaw of a different kind preparing the way for the coming of a different kind of world, speaking truth to power.
“In our last meeting he spoke truth to me, gave me a hell of a hard time, thought I had gone soft and become too comfortable around the powerful. Thought I was living too well,” Bono recalled. “He was probably right. I still think about it.”
That was John Smith. He had the arched brow of an Old Testament prophet but the tenderness of Jesus welcoming the little children into his presence. He was pastoral and irritating. Not everyone can pull that off. It just seemed authentic with John Smith.
“For 35 years, I have been discovering that the world isn’t nearly as hostile to the gospel as I thought it would be. It is not nearly as frightening as we have been told it will be,” he wrote in the pages of Good News two decades ago. “Outside the walls of the church there are many people who want to be loved and would love to have a connection with someone that didn’t treat them like a prize to be won, but persons to be loved….
“I have spent most of my life rubbing shoulders with hippies, outlaw bikers, high school students, secular non-churched folk, artists, and just ordinary people,” Smith continued. “Sure, there are murderers and dangerous people out in the real world. But I have discovered that most people who look a bit scary are actually quite ordinary. At the same time, a lot of people who look very suave are actually very dangerous. The mafia doesn’t go around looking like hippies. They wear the best Italian suits. So if you are going to judge from appearances, you’ll fail from the start. As Jesus said, man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.”
That was the heartbeat of his message to the church.
John Smith “remained passionate about the need for the message of Jesus to be faithfully proclaimed in the public sphere, but he also taught us that it should be something that should be lived,” concluded Stillman. “Putting it into practice was not an optional extra.”
Ride on, Brother John. Thanks for the arched brow and the grin. RIP.
by Steve | May 1, 2019 | Uncategorized
By Kenneth Tanner
I find it amusing, this great befuddlement that befalls some intelligent Christians when it comes to the definition of resurrection. On Holy Saturday the New York Times published an interview with the president of Union Theological Seminary in which she mentioned Christian “obsession” with the physicality of our Lord’s resurrection.
Count me among the obsessed.
There are so many witnesses in the New Testament but John’s testimony that Jesus Christ ate with his disciples, and his words to his disciples in Luke that “a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have,” takes the guess work out of it. This is someone who remains flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone “beyond” death, the grave, and hell.
Yes, the body of Jesus Christ walks through walls and vanishes and – before resurrection – walks on water. There is great mystery here, no doubt, but we are talking about embodied mystery.
One does not have to be a skeptic or a confused cleric – this is not only about a class of over thinkers – misunderstanding of the resurrection is ubiquitous among a wide variety of believing American Christians, who have a tendency to make a ghost of Jesus, who tend to think of Jesus as disembodied in eternity, a state many American Christians consider superior to embodiment.
Americans in general have a fundamental philosophical misapprehension of human nature that assumes we are mere ghosts in machines, spirits in a material prison. Whereas Christian anthropology trusts – insists – that our created earthiness is essential to our humanity, now and for eternity; that one does not have resurrection without a body, even if that body has a transfigured physics.
As Cyril of Alexandria reminds us, echoing Paul, if Jesus does not rise again in a body of flesh – not only for a moment but forever – then death is not defeated, neither is the sin that bound in the grave and in hell everyone who shares human nature.
Jesus Christ ascends in the flesh, transformed somehow, yes, but still bearing the scars of his torment on the body Mary gave him. This is what makes the Son’s ongoing intercession for humanity so intimate and real.
As a fellow human in eternity Jesus Christ is our mediator and advocate, made like his brothers and sisters in every way so that he might be One who rules and judges those whose existence he understands from the inside, because he lived our human story with us in the most vulnerable, authentic, and beautiful way.
In Jesus Christ, God has a mother and a betrayer. In Jesus Christ, God has scars and God has memories of meals and laughter with his friends, and cold nights huddled in cloaks against the desert air; he recalls storms at sea and a grinding emptiness in his guts, dried tears on his face, at the tomb of his friend. In Jesus Christ, God knows hunger and thirst and loneliness and pain. In Jesus Christ, God knows the human devastation of disease and poverty.
And the first Christians are clear about this: the one human nature we all share has been rescued from death by the death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, not only for a moment but forever. This is not a small matter where different opinions and perspectives are allowed.
You can struggle with its enormity and not comprehend it (who does), and doubting is part of being human – the “ants in the pants” of faith, as Frederick Buechner reminds us – and talking about and debating the mystery of it all is part of having faith in community with other persons, but that resurrection – Christ’s and ours – involves cells and skin and eyes and tongues and hearts and lungs (“he breathed on them”) and empty tombs – because transfigured material bodies have somehow escaped them – is a settled matter for Christians.
Yes, it is spiritual and mysterious and beyond science and nature, yes, he hides the fullness of his resurrected glory from his disciples (who could yet bear it?), and, yes, the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is an apt metaphor now for existence and nature and our personal struggles – yes, now death is the not the end of anything or anyone, resurrection is – but resurrection as a word has that “power” because death is defeated when this one human is raised bodily and brings all our bodies with him.
Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan. His writing has appeared in Books & Culture, The Huffington Post, Sojourners, National Review, and Christianity Today. This article appeared in the May/June 2019 issue of Good News. Artwork: Jesus and the two disciples On the Road to Emmaus, by Duccio, 1308–1311, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena. Public domain.
by Steve | Mar 12, 2019 | Uncategorized
Doing General Conference Math
By Thomas Lambrecht
Supporters of the One Church Plan are considering a number of options in the wake of the decision by the 2019 General Conference to adopt the Traditional Plan. One of those options is to come back in 2020 to the General Conference in Minneapolis and attempt to reverse the result, adopting the One Church Plan in place of the Traditional Plan.
One commonly hears the statement that there were “only” 54 votes separating the two sides in 2019, which means that 28 delegates would need to change their minds and vote for the One Church Plan in order for it to pass. Those 28 delegates would most likely come from the U.S., since it is unlikely that OCP supporters will gain more adherents among the central conferences than what they already received in 2019.
But the task in 2020 for OCP supporters gets more daunting. For starters, there were 31 delegates from Africa who did not obtain a visa to attend the General Conference. If all of them are able to gain visas in 2020 (or there are replacement delegates who can), that will likely add at least 28 votes for the Traditional Plan. OCP supporters would then need to gain 42 new votes in the U.S. (half of 54 plus half of 28).
But the delegate totals will not remain the same in 2020 as they were in 2019. Due to changes in membership, Africa will gain an additional 18 delegates in 2020. That will most likely add at least 16 votes for the Traditional Plan. OCP supporters would then be up to 50 new votes required (half of 54 plus half of 28 plus half of 16).
That is not all. The U.S. delegation will lose 22 delegates. If two-thirds of U.S. delegates generally support the OCP, then the OCP would lose a net total of 8 votes. (7 votes lost would be offset by the 7 votes that the Traditional Plan would also lose in the U.S.) That means OCP supporters would then be up to 54 new votes required (half of 54 plus half of 28 plus half of 16 plus half of 8). This would be offset by potentially 5 new votes from African delegates, bringing the total new votes needed for the OCP from U.S. delegates to 49.
This means that OCP supporters would need to either convince nearly one-third of U.S. Traditional Plan supporters to change their mind, or elect OCP supporting delegates in place of TP supporting delegates. That would be a tremendous swing in votes and highly unlikely to happen.
Another way of doing the math is to look at the various constituencies and estimate what percentage of them would vote for the Traditional Plan. The totals could look something like this:
33 percent of U.S. delegates (482) equals 159.
80 percent of Filipino delegates (52) equals 42.
90 percent of African delegates (278) equals 250.
50 percent of European and Eurasian delegates (40) equals 20.
The Total for the Traditional Plan would then be 471, which would leave 391 delegates supporting the OCP, a difference of 80 votes.
Based on this second method, OCP supporters would need to “flip” 41 delegates in order to gain a bare majority. This represents one-fourth of U.S. Traditional Plan supporters who would have to change their vote. Again, this would be a very significant shift.
There are of course some variables in all these math “problems.” But the bottom line is that a lot of circumstances would have to break one way in order for the OCP to gain the votes needed to reverse the results of the 2019 General Conference.
Of course, the OCP supporters could still try to delay and obstruct the will of the General Conference, as they did in St. Louis. But why? As Africa continues to grow in membership and the U.S. continues to decline, the numbers will only get more daunting for OCP supporters.
And the prospect of another public legislative battle, with all the vitriolic rhetoric that came from the progressive side, would only continue to damage the church. I have read numerous remarks by people on social media saying their relationships with persons on the “other side of the aisle” had been damaged by the process at St. Louis. At least one newspaper described what is happening in The United Methodist Church as a “civil war.” Is that what we want to perpetuate?
Based on the public responses from many on the moderate to progressive side, they cannot continue to serve in a church that does not allow them to perform same-sex weddings and ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals as clergy. They desired unity in the church, as long as it meant that they could engage in ministry the way they wanted to do so. But faced with a choice between unity and denying their principles, they are choosing to adhere to their principles, even if it means disunity.
So would it not be more productive for persons across the theological spectrum to agree on a way to separate from each other, freeing everyone to engage in ministry the way they believe God is leading them? An equitable way could be found to divide assets and provide for the continuation of vital ministries such as UMCOR, Wespath, GBGM, Communications, and Archives and History.
Freed from the need to continue fighting one another, the resulting new denominations could devote their whole energies to evangelism, church planting, discipleship, missions, and social action – all according to each group’s theological perspective. In areas where there is agreement, the new groups could continue to cooperate on joint projects and mission endeavors.
In the end, The United Methodist Church does not face a math problem, but a spiritual problem. Is it now possible to choose a different path, one that leads to a constructive future, rather than a destructive one for the church? Can we not work toward a different form of unity that allows for both the separation needed and the possibility of cooperation where warranted? The former United Methodist Church is already dead. We are in the birth process of something new. Can we work together to create that new reality in as painless and Christ-like a way as possible?
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News. He is a member of the Commission on a Way Forward.
by Steve | Feb 25, 2019 | In the News, Uncategorized
By Thomas Lambrecht
Whatever the outcome in St. Louis, some congregations and clergy will be unable to live conscientiously within the boundaries established by General Conference. From the beginning, the Commission on a Way Forward (COWF) acknowledged that an exit path for congregations to leave the denomination with their property should be part of any plan submitted to General Conference. All the sketches of the three plans submitted to the Council of Bishops included an exit path. The Council of Bishops acted to take out any exit path from the One Church Plan and the Connectional Conference Plan.
Some claim there is already a way for local congregations to exit the denomination with their property. This is not the case. Under ¶ 2548.2, the annual conference may transfer the deed of a local church to “one of the other denominations represented in the Pan-Methodist Commission or to another evangelical denomination under an allocation, exchange of property, or comity agreement.” This requires the consent of the bishop, cabinet, district board of church building and location, and annual conference, in addition to the request of the local church.
Under ¶ 2549, the annual conference can close a church that “no longer serves the purpose for which it was organized or incorporated” (as a United Methodist congregation). The conference can then sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of the property, including selling it to the exiting congregation. This also requires the consent of the bishop, cabinet, district board of church building and location, and annual conference, in addition to the request of the local church.
Under either scenario, any of the approving persons or bodies can arbitrarily stop the congregation from keeping its property. Annual conference officials can impose whatever payment requirements they want upon the local church, or refuse to allow the local church to keep its property at all.
The current provisions of the Discipline put the local church at the mercy of the bishop and annual conference. There is no certain or consistent process whereby a local church can exit the denomination with its property.
We need a more fair and streamlined exit path for congregations.
It is not a good witness for the church to be involved in hundreds of lawsuits over church property. The Episcopal Church spent over $45 million at the national level (not counting what local churches spent) in order to preserve church property for the denomination.
The General Conference has prioritized two exit proposals: Petition 90059 Disaffiliation – Boyette; and Petition 90066 Disaffiliation – Taylor.
The church would be best served by adopting either the Boyette exit path. However, certain amendments would eliminate most objectionable requirements from the Taylor option.
This is the kind of generous spirit the Renewal and Reform Coalition believes ought to govern our decisions regarding congregations that choose to exit from the denomination. They are our brothers and sisters. There ought not to be quarreling or lawsuits over property. We ought not try to coerce a congregation into a covenant they can no longer support.
Here’s hoping the General Conference delegates will embrace a fair, consistent, and gracious path for congregations to exit with their property. The future peace of the denomination may depend upon it.
Thomas Lambrecht is vice president of Good News and member of the Commission on A Way Forward.
by Steve | Feb 25, 2019 | In the News, Uncategorized
– By E.M. Bounds –
I believe that what the church needs today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations or more novel methods. She needs Christians whom the Holy Spirit can use—Christians of prayer, Christians mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through people. He does not come on machinery, but on people. He does not anoint plans, but people—people of prayer!
…Spiritual work is always taxing work, and Christians are loath to do it. True praying involves serious attention and time, which flesh and blood do not relish. Few people have such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when inferior work will pass just as well in the market. To be little with God is to be little for God. It takes much time for the fullness of God to flow in the spirit. Short devotions cut the pipe of God’s full flow. We live shabbily because we pray meagerly. This is not a day of prayer. Few Christians pray. In these days of hurry and bustle, of electricity and steam, men will not take time to pray. Prayer is out-of-date, almost a lost art.
Where are the Christ-like leaders who can teach modern saints how to pray and put them at it? Do we know that we are raising up a prayerless set of saints? Only praying leaders have praying followers. We greatly need somebody who can set the saints to this business of praying!
–E.M. Bounds (1835-1913) was a Methodist preacher and editor of the St. Louis Christian Advocate. He is most well-known for his books on prayer such as Power Through Prayer, Prayer and Praying Men, and Purpose In Prayer.
by Steve | Feb 25, 2019 | In the News, Uncategorized
In the first indicator of the direction of the 2019 General Conference of The United Methodist Church, the majority of delegates affirmed the Traditional Plan. In a vote gauging “high priority” vs. “low priority” of various denominational plans, more than 55 percent of the delegates (459 votes) affirmed the Traditional Plan.
Despite what was perceived as a full-court press from the vast majority of North American bishops to pass the One Church Plan, only 48 percent of the assembly (403 votes) considered the OCP a “high priority.”
The Simple Plan, a radical proposal that would have eliminated all Disciplinary language regarding homosexuality, received only 153 votes.
The Connectional Conference Plan, a complicated restructuring of the denomination, mustered only 102 votes.
The Traditional Plan maintains our present position of affirming the worth of all persons and welcoming them to the ministries of the church while supporting our current biblical standards on marriage, ordination, and sexuality. The Traditional Plan has several provisions that need to be voted upon that would allow the church to enforce the Book of Discipline more effectively when pastors and bishops violate our policies. Each of these provisions will need to be approved individually.
The Traditional Plan is most in line with what delegates have supported at every General Conference since 1972. We believe that the Traditional Plan provides the most hopeful path to a faithful future for The United Methodist Church.
Although the General Conference has given indication that it approves the Traditional Plan, we are aware that progressive leaders will attempt to keep the conference from passing the plan. There will be efforts to postpone, amend, and substitute resolutions coming from the floor, seeking to bring work on a Traditional Plan to a standstill. For example, a last minute referral of a half dozen petitions to the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters resulted in the rejection of all but one of those petitions.
Nevertheless, we are gratified that the General Conference prioritized the Traditional Plan, recognizing 2000 years of Christian tradition and the scriptural understanding of sexual ethics. All of this was in spite of the efforts of advocacy groups and bishops focused on changing our views on marriage, ordination, and sexuality.
If passed, the One Church Plan (OCP) would allow every pastor, every congregation, and every annual conference to determine its own sexual ethic. This would be an unwise course of action. Every other mainline denomination that has liberalized its sexual ethics has experienced a dramatic decline in membership and attendance, the loss of numerous congregations and financial resources. It has also sparked lengthy and costly court battles. It’s what we learn from other denominations – all the other denominations – who have gone this way before.
God is good and God is sovereign. We believe God still has plans for the people called Methodist.
