by Steve | Jan 19, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By B.J. Funk
Hopelessness and Christianity cannot live in the same body, for the first word means we have no hope and the second word means we have all the hope in the world. To be hopeless indicates defeat. However, to be a Christian indicates the acceptance of the Power of the universe into our lives. So, how can we be both? How can we be a Christian and also be hopeless?
This was my dilemma when my husband was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. Sitting by his tired body, I watched the infusion of blood change his color many times from stark pale to pink. Week after week, the blood counts gave horrid results. The doctor at Emory didn’t hold back. “Frankly, Mr. Funk, there is no cure for your type of leukemia.”
His words hit us both with cruel reality. What to do? Where to find hope when the prognosis is so grim? We both believed in divine healing and knew that God could take away the leukemia in a second. But, until he did—and if he didn’t—where could we find hope? A steady flow of poison began to move in my heart. It was toxic, deadly and cruel. It was called hopelessness.
I went to the Psalms, and there I gained an important truth. The psalmists felt like I did as they poured their hearts out to God. If they started out complaining, they often ended recognizing God in their situation. They realized that God’s presence and care made the odds meaningless. Usually the hope and confidence in God outweighed the fear and suffering. This was my answer! Many of my prayers started like the psalmists. “Oh God, please heal Roy. Take away this leukemia.” But, more and more I ended my prayer acknowledging his faithfulness. “Please heal Roy, and thank you for the family who brought us dinner tonight.” My complaint and his faithfulness. Somehow, it helped.
We had to learn that while we had one idea in mind, God had another. We don’t think like God thinks. Our minds are limited, clouded with pressures of this life. Isaiah 55: 8 states, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”
Then, I touched a golden nugget tucked away in Psalm 31:24. “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the Lord.” So, we were not to hope in the cure. We were to hope in the Lord! We were not to hope in what the doctor said. We were to hope in the Lord. There’s a big difference in hoping and waiting for what we want and in hoping and waiting on the goodness of God. Our hope had to be the knowledge that He would be with us in the storm. He will be faithful.
A truth began to be so clear to me that it was as if I saw the words bouncing off of the walls in my home in large blinking lights: God does not think like me. His plans are larger than I can even fathom. He has his reasons. My mind is limited.
God showed himself to us in beautiful and real ways we would never have seen unless we had walked through leukemia and Roy’s eventual death in April, 2009. In the days before Roy moved his residence from earth to heaven, God spoke to both of us. Individually and together, we saw his faithfulness. Hopelessness is a poison from that scam artist, Satan himself! Once hopelessness captures our heart, there is a continual toxic flow that blows out the fire of our faith. For Christians, however, there is an antidote. It is not a way that points to our getting what we want; it is a way that points to getting what God wants, and that means only one thing: getting his sons and daughters into a deeper relationship with him. I keep Psalm 119:71 in a spot where I see it daily. “It was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your decrees.”
What have you lost hope about? What are you so worried over that you can’t possibly see a way out? We must train ourselves to get our eyes off of the situation and onto Jesus. We can trust the One who died for us. Therein lies our hope.
In Jeremiah 31:13, God gives some beautiful words to the Israelites. We can claim them for ourselves. He says, “I will turn their mourning into dancing; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.”
I’m not dancing yet. But the other morning my right foot began a familiar but forgotten happy twist as I was getting ready for work. Maybe I’m on my way.
by Steve | Jan 19, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Frank Billman
In John 14, Jesus talks to his disciples about the Father working through him, including doing miracles, and in verse 12 he tells them: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.” Do you think that Jesus meant that even United Methodists who have faith in Jesus today would do what he had been doing? At Aldersgate Renewal Ministries (ARM) we do.
We believe that United Methodists are called to do what Jesus did, including moving in the miraculous. That is why we started the Methodist School for Supernatural Ministry here at our Aldersgate Renewal Center in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The goal of the school is to have participants not just learn about supernatural ministry in the past but to do it in the present.
In “Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained,” John Wesley wrote: “I do not recollect any Scripture wherein we are taught that miracles were to be confined within the limits either of the apostolic age…or any period of time, longer or shorter, even until the restitution of all things.” Wesley’s Journal is filled with accounts of the supernatural in his life and ministry. And early Methodists looked forward to “the work of God” breaking out at their meetings. You can read about these examples in resources such as The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley by Daniel Jennings and Early Methodist Life and Spirituality by Lester Ruth, both available from ARM.
In October 2010, at “Session One—The Basics,” participants in the school were given a historical overview of supernatural manifestations and moves of God from the New Testament to the Methodists and then special concentration on manifestations of the Holy Spirit among Methodists then and now. Many were unaware of this part of our history and they were unaware of places in United Methodism today where miraculous ministry is still happening. It was a safe place for United Methodists to share about supernatural experiences they have had.
Some of the topics shared during the school were: Developing Intimacy with God; Being Baptized in the Holy Spirit, Staying Filled, and Ministering the Baptism to Others; Discerning the Spiritual Times; Flowing in the Gifts of the Spirit; and How God Increases the Anointing.
One of the instructors, Dr. Scott McDermott of Washington Crossing UM Church in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, told the audience, “The church is not a museum for yesterday’s miracles.” His church has a website: www.GodHealsToday.com that shares testimonies of the many healings that are happening at his church.
We needed 20 people to show up to break even. When we found that 94 were coming, we wondered if we were going to have enough room for everyone in the venue. The presence of God was felt during anointed times of worship and soaking prayer. Healings were experienced. Spiritual gifts were received. People were filled with the Spirit.
Evaluations from the first participants were overwhelmingly positive. Here are just a few:
“I felt from the first session that we were in such a holy place,” wrote one layperson from Kentucky. “The presence of God was so strong it was hard for me to stand many times….I’ve been changed by the level of worship we experienced. I’ve been changed by the testimonies of what God is doing among Methodists today….I’ve been changed by seeing the hunger of the people gathered in this place and that God wants to meet us where we are. I’ve been changed by the power of God that touched me this weekend. I’m going home with fire in my bones!”
A pastor from Tennessee testified, “I believe as I step into what has been imparted to me, God will begin to move in signs and wonders and miracles in the local church I serve.”
“For 47 years, I’ve been bored in the UM Church,” confessed another pastor. “Now I understand why. I want to see Acts come alive in the church today. I want God to show up at church supernaturally. I am tired of church as usual.”
During the session, there were opportunities for the participants to receive impartation prayer, prayer that God would impart the power to minister as Jesus did with signs and wonders and miracles, prayer that they would be “carriers” of the Kingdom when they went back to their churches. What has been really exciting is to hear about God breaking out in supernatural power in the churches of participants when they returned home—altars filled with people seeking more of God, physical and relational healings, other manifestations of the Spirit. We are posting these on our website under the Methodist School for Supernatural Ministry.
DVDs of the first session will soon be available for purchase. Attending Session One—The Basics or watching the DVDs is required to be able to attend Session Two, February 16-19, 2011.
Session Two will concentrate on Hearing God. It will provide a biblical and Wesleyan study on hearing God; different ways we can hear from God; giving, receiving, and evaluating prophecy; prophetic evangelism; dreams and visions and other topics.
We are planning on offering topics like prophetic art, and equipping and releasing children and youth into supernatural ministry at our July Aldersgate 2011 conference in Dayton, Ohio, where there will be a larger audience for those topics.
Frank Billman is the Director for Church Relations for Aldersgate Renewal Ministries. More information about the Methodist School for Supernatural Ministry can be found on the ARM website: www.AldersgateRenewal.org.
by Steve | Jan 19, 2011 | Magazine Articles
By Walter B. Fenton
Without question, politics is often a nasty and mean spirited business. Everyone decries the tone and tenor of our local, state, and national politics. “Negative ads,” distortions of opponents’ records, political favors for large cash donations, and the political gerrymandering that strongly tips the scales in favor of incumbents makes for a dispirited, weary, and cynical electorate.
Not surprisingly, good church people want none of this in their midst. But in its justifiable aversion to all the more unsavory aspects of politics the church overlooks its necessity and so mistakenly believes it can somehow have a polity without politics. This is naïve at best and disingenuous at worst.
Ironically, in its attempt to eschew politics the church often ends up practicing politics badly. This is manifested most clearly at the most critical time in the church’s corporate life: the lead up to General and Jurisdictional Conferences (GC/JC). It is implicitly understood—especially among the clergy—that politicking for a delegate’s seat to the GC/JCs is impolitic.
Some annual conferences go so far as to explicitly ban the practice of politics when it comes to the election of the GC/JC delegates. And while everyone who has had anything remotely to do with the election of episcopal candidates knows it is fraught with politics, the politicking goes on almost completely behind closed doors. Episcopal candidates seldom if ever spell out their thoughts on the critical doctrinal and ethical issues exercising the church. Rather, their written materials and answers to delegates’ questions are almost always indirect, and couched in ways that make it difficult to decipher how they will lead in critical areas.
The messiness of politics. The necessity of politics, despite all its more unsavory aspects, becomes obvious when we humbly admit that we are a frail and sinful lot of folk who amazingly enough are called to be the Church. Certainly we all long for that day when we will be the pure bride of Christ, but until that time we are given the task of discerning and living out God’s will in this time and place. That is a high calling and we all know discerning God’s will is fraught with difficulty despite the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the beguiling precision of cranking tough issues through the quadrilateral. And yet, we must do the hard work of corporate discernment, and then we must equally bear witness to what we have discerned.
Thankfully, we have a good polity that offers us freedom and yet necessarily constrains us in our discernment. Our polity orders the body in such a way that individuals are free to speak and share what they regard to be God’s will for the church. Indeed, our polity gives us the freedom and the responsibility of being good writers and rhetoricians. We are charged with the task of persuading one another of the correctness of our discernment. Then, after a period of reflection, we are called to vote on the matters before us. And it is here where the source of all our ambivalence and misgivings about politics in the church is to be found, for there is something acutely odd and disconcerting about voting on what we regard to be God’s will for church.
The New Testament is painfully silent on exactly how the early church discerned God’s will. While Acts 15 is often celebrated as a model, it offers no explicit formula for how the Apostles arrived at its decision regarding the acceptance of the Gentiles. Oddly, the one mode of discernment that is explicitly spelled out is the casting of lots for a replacement Apostle (Acts 1). Although it would save a great deal of time, expense, and agony, I don’t think anyone would seriously propose this method of discernment for episcopal candidates.
For all our high regard for Peter and Paul, for all of our admiration for Martin Luther, and our obvious debt to John Wesley, we people called Methodists have a strong aversion to one individual dictating to the whole body what God’s will for it is—and we clearly are not alone in this. But then what? Well, we have decided that adopting a polity that is expansive and broadly participatory is the best course. It is not a perfect system, but when engaged in with graciousness and humility and also with candor and courage, it is a workable and respectful one. We must always remember that if we have a polity we will have politics. The question, therefore, is not whether we will have them, but rather what kind will they be?
Aversion to politics makes matters worse. The Church’s aversion for politics manifests itself in a variety of ways, but allow me to highlight only a couple of the most egregious examples and to demonstrate how they often make matters worse rather than better.
First, as stated earlier, not a few annual conferences attempt to ban politics by procedural means. This is most apparent when it comes to the election of delegates to the GC/JCs. Clergy and lay delegates to the annual conferences elect these delegates, but they often know very little about the candidates placed in nomination to represent them. This seems particularly true for the laity, many of whom do not know each other well, and may only serve as a lay delegate for three or four years.
At best, lay and clergy delegates receive a list of the candidates’ names with very brief biographies and then a list of local church, district, and conference committees on which they have served, but precious little information is offered about their views on the very contentious issues that we all know they will have to address at the GC/JCs. And to complicate matters further, many annual conferences severely restrict or completely prohibit anything that smacks of politicking on the floor of annual conference or even in the venue where it is held.
Furthermore, and most egregiously, annual conference members are not allowed to review the past voting records of delegates who have attended previous General Conferences. We would never allow this in the case of our state and national government representatives. But as things now stand, a GC delegate can be very discrete about his or her views on a given issue, cast a vote on that issue contrary to the will of the majority of one’s annual conference, and yet never have to answer for casting such a vote. At best, this system creates voter apathy, and at worst it fosters suspicion and mistrust.
Second, our aversion to politics leads to a disrespecting of our polity. This is most evident in the infamous and increasingly strident protests at recent General Conferences. Ironically, it is often the church leaders who most loudly call us to “holy conferencing” and beckon us to be “above politics” who most often allow and engender the most divisive political statements to be made at General Conference.
Protesters took to the floor of the 2000 General Conference in Cleveland and brought the proceedings to a halt. Even worse, some protesters, delegates, and even episcopal leaders precipitated a terrible violation of Paul’s admonition that we should settle disputes among ourselves when they forced the conference to have them arrested by the civil authorities so the church could proceed with its work. In retrospect, the presiding bishop should have requested that our ushers remove the protesters rather than calling in the Cleveland Police Department.
While the protesters styled their demonstration as an act of civil disobedience, it was an unfortunate act of ecclesiastical disobedience.
The protesters returned in Pittsburgh in 2004 and Fort Worth in 2008, and without even allowing the assembled and duly elected delegates to vote on whether they wanted GC proceedings to be interrupted by a protest, the presiding bishops simply welcomed the protesters onto the floor of General Conference, whereupon, the gathering was subjected to the smashing of a communion chalice in 2004 and the shrouding of the communion table in 2008.
The huge disconnect for most of us is being told by our bishops and other administrative leaders not to be political when they allow the most partisan among us who are disgruntled by a particular vote at General Conference to come on to the conference floor, disrupt the proceedings, engage in political demonstrations, and to make full use of the conference microphone to castigate those who have voted their conscience.
Certainly, politics can be stressful, but engaging in politics would be much preferable to the antics that result when we are afraid to be open and honest with one another at the annual conference level. If we were to deal forthrightly and clearly with one another at our annual conferences we could avoid some of the spectacles of recent General Conferences. But dealing forthrightly and clearly means engaging in open, spirited, and grace-filled politics.
Time must be allotted so candidates for JGC/GJCs can speak candidly and courageously about their positions on the critical issues facing the church. And annual conference members must be given the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the various candidates for these important positions. Yes, the process will be fraught with tension, but I have confidence that our annual conference leaders can create a constructive and respectful environment where all candidates share their views forthrightly and at some length. Too many annual conferences attempt to bracket the difficult issues and short circuit the election process. Instead, they engage in long pep-rallies that are never quite as convincing as the planners intended.
The imperative of politics. Clearly, on some issues, folks allied with Good News or The Confessing Movement or with The Methodist Federation for Social Action or The Reconciling Ministries Network are not going to see eye to eye. However, I am thankful that each of them has the courage of their convictions and, despite the constraints placed on them by fearful annual conference bureaucracies, do what they can to engage in a political process that is necessary for a healthy polity.
For in reality, in this in-between-time of Christ’s first and second coming, we frail and fallible men and women are given the task of being the church in the world. We should do it with graciousness and humility, but also with courage and candor.
Walter B. Fenton is an elder in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference and currently serves in an extension appointment as Vice President for College Advancement at Greenville College in Greenville, Illinois.
