by Steve | Nov 16, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By B.J. Funk
“I set out on a broken road, many years ago / Hoping I would find true love along the broken road / But I got lost a time or two / Wiped my brow and kept pushing through / I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you.”
If you are a country music lover, you will recognize these words from Rascal Flatts in the song “God Blessed the Broken Road.” Though it is clearly a song for lovers, it is also transparently Christian in its message. Did you find your way to Christ on a broken road? Did you get lost in your search for a relationship with Jesus? When did you recognize that every sign of brokenness was pointing you straight to a life-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ?
As we trip over the unevenness of the road, we finally realize we are incapable of walking it without his help. As we step across the rough cracks, we may try to jump over them, smooth them, or ignore them, but eventually, we realize that this particular broken road is what God is using to bring us to him.
The song continues: “Every long lost dream led me to where you are / Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars / Pointing me on my way into your loving arms / This much I know is true / That God blessed the broken road / That led me straight to you.”
While it is difficult to wrap our minds around the thought of God working through our brokenness, Romans 8:28 reminds us that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This does not mean, of course, that everything that happens to us is good. We live in a fallen world where evil is rampant. However, God is able to redeem our difficult and tragic situations. It is a good that we could never have imagined or planned on our own: when God plants his foot beside us on the broken road, he does amazing and wondrous things in our lives and in the lives of others. As the song says, he blesses our broken road and uses it to bring us straight to his loving arms.
The next verse grabs my heart. “I think about the years I’ve spent just passing through / I’d like to have the time I lost and give it back to you / But you just smile and take my hand / You’ve been there, you understand / It’s all part of a grander plan that is coming true.”
Did you have some “passing through” years, when you took life for granted, or thought you would live forever, and wasted many hours living for yourself and no one else? I did, and I didn’t even know it. As a young adult, I was in church every Sunday, prayer groups and Bible studies, but my heart still belonged to me. Out of nowhere, a broken road appeared and tumbled my world. I struggled to walk on it, fell and skinned my knees more than once, and cried all the while. At the end of the road, however, I found out what the good God was doing with my brokenness. I watched God walk that road with me. Sometimes, I even sensed he cried with me.
I lost years with self on the throne. Death to self was a foreign concept; now it is a daily process. I would love to have the time I lost, and give it back to him.
This last verse is illustrated clearly in the biblical story of the loving father who welcomes his wasteful prodigal son home. When the son finally comes to his senses and returns home, his father takes his son’s hand, understanding and loving him back to his heart and home. The wise father knows that his son’s selfishness has served a grander plan—a plan that would change a conceited son into a mature man.
A few lines from the devotional Streams in the Desert gives validity to the reason for our broken roads. “It is not until a beautiful kernel of corn is buried and broken in the earth by death that its inner heart sprouts, producing hundreds of other seeds of kernels. And so it has always been, down through the history of plants, people, and all of spiritual life—God uses broken things.”
In this season of thanksgiving and celebration, thank God that he chooses to use you. Thank him for the broken roads that led you straight to him.
B.J. Funk (bjfunk@bellsouth.net) is associate pastor of Central United Methodist Church in Fitzgerald, Georgia. She is the author of The Dance of Life: Invitation to a Father Daughter Dance, a regular contributor to the South Georgia Advocate, and a frequent speaker at women’s retreats.
by Steve | Nov 16, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Wayne Stoltz
There is a foster care crisis in the United States. Children are taken into foster care for three main reasons: deprivation, abandonment, and abuse. Cases range from homeless children whose parents have lost their jobs to two brothers whose mother committed suicide and an infant with numerous broken bones going straight from the hospital into foster care. These stories are played out throughout the nation.
Approximately 500,000 American children and youth are in foster care today, and there are only about half of the necessary foster families to care for them. The problem is large but the solution is local. One organization, which began in partnership with my local United Methodist church, is working to change the way foster care is done in America.
Like many good ideas, FaithBridge Foster Care began with two people with a vision for societal change. Bill Hancock, FaithBridge’s CEO and president, had spent his entire career in policy and administration of child welfare, and I was involved in missions at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta, Georgia. Each week, for many months, we met and defined a new model and new strategies for the way foster care should be done. Rather than considering the national problem, we considered it to be a problem in our local community, and we focused on developing a local solution that could be scaled to a national scope.
Our discussions centered on how to address three problems in the foster care system: capacity, stability, and quality. We developed concepts and strategies for FaithBridge, and I began talks with the missions committee and senior pastor about the possibility of Mt. Bethel starting a pilot program for FaithBridge. Our church had an active, dedicated missions program and in large part, this missions focus has helped the church grow to 9,000 members. We formed the Mt. Bethel Foster Care committee, garnered support, and were awarded a significant grant from the missions budget to fund the start up of FaithBridge Foster Care. This included setting up the non-profit status, working with the state to earn the designation of a child placing agency, and hiring Bill Hancock as its executive director.
“When I heard about this idea, I knew it was something we had to do,” said Pastor Randy Mickler, senior pastor at Mt. Bethel UM Church for 23 years. “As scripture says, ‘take care of the widow and orphans.’ We wanted to do whatever we could to help.”
“The foster care program at Mt. Bethel is part of our compassion into action philosophy,” Mickler continued. “We are called to go beyond our church walls and carry Christ out into the community. These children are batted around from one family or state organization to the next and it’s our honor and duty to provide them with a safe, loving Christian environment. This program makes Mt. Bethel proud to be a church.”
The FaithBridge approach
FaithBridge Foster Care believes the local church can act as a delivery channel for foster care, solving the problems of capacity, stability, and quality that are endemic to the current system. FaithBridge mobilizes and equips churches to provide the services that foster families need to be successful.
To do this, FaithBridge creates within the church a small group network known as the Community of Care, a team of volunteers who act as a support system to foster families and foster children. They help find resources, such as clothes and toys, and act as an extended family, providing respite services, mentoring, special recreation, and extra-curricular activities. Providing this kind of support is critical to encourage good, stable families to become foster families.
Nationally, almost half of the foster families drop out every year because they are overwhelmed by a system that lacks the resources or personnel to help them. The FaithBridge Community of Care model ensures they have the help they need when they need it. They are not alone. This approach also reduces the workload for government child welfare departments while increasing effective placement and quality care.
As founder and organizational leader, Bill has walked the walk and talked the talk. He and his wife have fostered more than 50 children throughout the years, and Bill knows firsthand how it is to feel seemingly alone in this world, having had to leave his own home at the age of 15.
Like Bill, I also have experience with foster children, as my wife and I had many young people come to live with us over the years. Some lived with us for six months, others just as a quick transitional home when they needed a change of venue.
“I believe there is a family for every child and our job is to build bridges between children and families—to bring them together and keep them together,” said Hancock. “Every local church in every community has the mandate and infrastructure to serve families in their local areas better than anyone and to respond to the needs of these families. We create a safety net in the community.”
Mt. Bethel families
Fifteen families at Mt. Bethel have fostered children since the program began in late 2006, with nearly 50 children served in the Mt. Bethel community. Many have helped with respite care. Some families have even moved forward and adopted their foster children.
Kale and Jeff McKisson, along with their seven-year-old son, fostered a sibling group of six boys. According to Kale, it was simply meant to be, as the couple had wanted another child of their own and had inquired about adoption. Kale and her family had been visiting local churches and had just visited Mt. Bethel for two Sundays in a row, when they heard about the foster care program and responded to the call.
“We thought we wanted an infant, but God gave us what we needed,” said Kale McKisson. “We started by fostering two of the brothers who were two and four years old at the time. In a few short months we had the six boys and their two sisters were with another family at Mt. Bethel.”
This story has a very happy ending as both the McKissons and the other family moved forward with adopting these children, and they all remain together as a family who attend the same church. The McKissons grew from a family of three to a family of nine and continue to say if there is a need they won’t turn their back in offering respite, short-term care to other children in need. In the words of Kale, “how could anyone not foster?”
Robin Freeman, who along with her husband and two children, has fostered six children, all under the age of two. According to Robin, being in a ministry together with her family has really helped them grow spiritually. It has also profoundly changed their children, who are now nine and eleven years old, to be more loving, accepting, independent people.
Julie Kirby, now chairperson for the foster care ministry committee at Mt. Bethel, and a foster parent herself, started with a smaller commitment, providing respite care and babysitting support, to being a foster parent of a 13-year-old. She understands that not everyone is able to foster, but they are able to support the program, which now is supported by a network of several hundred people.
This successful ministry is kept in front of the entire congregation with a bi-annual consecration service for foster families, along with many activities throughout the year such as giving a rose on Mother’s Day to all foster moms, and other opportunities to acknowledge and thank these families for their significant sacrifice.
FaithBridge continues to grow
Mt. Bethel was FaithBridge’s first church partner and helped launch the organization. Since then FaithBridge Foster Care has grown to more than a dozen church partners throughout Georgia and has plans to expand into other states in the near future.
Why is partnering with churches FaithBridge’s focus? Christian families understand the need and are more likely to respond to the call. By becoming involved in this societal problem, these families become missionaries in their own community.
“We continue to build awareness and educate people about the foster care crisis and look for church partners who have all the qualities of Mt. Bethel—willing to lead, positive example, a church of influence, with a focus on missions and outreach,” said Hancock. “So many churches and families are stepping up and it’s wonderful to see them making a difference in the lives of children.”
Wayne Stolz is co-founder of FaithBridge Foster Care and founder of Mt. Bethel Foster Care Ministry. For more information on FaithBridge Foster Care, please visit www.faithbridgefostercare.org.
by Steve | Nov 16, 2010 | Magazine Articles
Archive: Good News moves ministry to Houston area
After 38 years of being headquartered in Wilmore, Kentucky, the Board of Directors of Good News announced that it will be moving its advocacy ministry and publishing endeavor to the Houston area. The evangelical renewal ministry within the United Methodist Church has been the publisher of Good News magazine since 1967.
“In recent years, Good News has made a leadership transition. Both Rob Renfroe, our President and Publisher, and Norm Phillips, our Chief Operating Officer, reside in the Houston area,” said the Rev. Keith Boyette, chairperson of the Good News Board of Directors. “For Good News to remain an effective force for reform and renewal in the United Methodist Church, we wanted to position our headquarters in close proximity to our senior staff. In addition, the relocation of our headquarters takes advantage of our significant relationship with a number of strong and vibrant evangelical churches, clergy, and lay persons in the Southeast and South Central Jurisdictions.
“We want to capitalize on those relationships as we continue to advocate for a more faithful and fruitful United Methodist Church,” says Boyette. “Our offices in the Houston area will facilitate much easier travel to resource our partners and to encourage their ongoing involvement in our efforts.”
Good News’ long tenure in Wilmore began in 1972 when founding editor Charles Keysor left the pastorate of Grace United Methodist Church in Elgin, Illinois, to join the faculty of Asbury College in order to develop a program of Christian journalism.
“It is difficult for me, frankly, to think about the Good News office being anywhere else than in Wilmore,” said the Rev. James V. Heidinger II, President and Publisher Emeritus. “That is all that I’ve experienced. However, this is a move I support. This is the right time for a transition like this. Some of United Methodism’s most vital congregations are located in the Houston area. The leadership roles for Rob and Norm will be made much easier with the relocation. Furthermore, I am confident that Good News’ commitment to United Methodist renewal will remain focused, strong, and vital in the new environment.”
The move of the ministry to the Houston area—the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States—was a unanimous decision on the part of the Good News Board of Directors. The administrative office will be relocated in November to Spring, Texas. The editorial office will remain in Wilmore, Kentucky, until next spring. Correspondence and donations will still be received at the Wilmore office until the editorial office is moved.
“Wilmore, Kentucky, is a home base for my soul; just returning there for a day or two refreshes me and reminds me of my happy years at Asbury,” said the Rev. Ken Werlein, a member of the Good News Board of Directors and pastor of Faithbridge United Methodist Church in Spring, Texas. “But Houston has given me countless opportunities to put real shoe leather on all the good theory I learned in Wilmore. Our frazzled denomination needs the real influence of Good News more than ever, and anchoring in a metropolis of our denomination’s largest and most influential churches should only expand that influence.”
—The Good News editorial team.
by Steve | Nov 16, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Rob Renfroe
If you haven’t heard yet, Good News is moving its offices. What’s not changing is our historic, God-given mission to reform and renew the United Methodist Church. That has always been the purpose of Good News. And it always will be.
Decades before I became the president and publisher of Good News, I respected its work—and I was comforted by its voice. Good News assured me that there were committed, Wesleyan Christians who were speaking up for me and for others like me—people who believe that Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life; people who believe that the Bible is the Word of God; and people who believe that the Church is meant to change the culture, not be changed by the culture.
In those early years of my ministry, I was greatly encouraged to know that I was not alone. In Good News there was a movement within our denomination that would not let our elected leaders, whatever their titles, go unchallenged if they led our church away from the truth once and for all delivered to the saints.
Recently in my daily Bible reading I came upon Paul’s words to his son in the faith, Timothy. He wrote: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:2-4).
Even in Paul’s day there were teachers and leaders who did not want to hear the truth, much less preach it. Even in the first century, sound doctrine was difficult for itching ears to listen to—and some in the church preferred to remove the offense of the Gospel and be told what was culturally acceptable. But Paul instructed Timothy to “preach the Word” whether people wanted to hear it or not because the truth of the Gospel is our hope and our salvation.
Good News has always understood its mandate to be similar to what Paul instructed Timothy. Nearly two thousand years later, the time that Paul predicted is certainly here. And we must be Timothy to our generation. We must defend the Gospel from those outside the church who condemn us for being narrow-minded and from those inside the church who would compromise the truth into something that itching ears want to hear.
On the opposite page, you will read about the unanimous decision by our Board of Directors to move our offices to the greater Houston area. Many on our Board have historic, spiritual, and emotional ties to Wilmore. Relocating was not an easy decision. But we are doing so because we are convinced that such a move will make us more effective in defending the faith, holding our United Methodist leaders accountable, and speaking out for people like you and me who believe that the Gospel is the revelation of God and the hope of the world.
Our address may change, but be assured that our mission, motivation, and ministry will not.
Rob Renfroe is the president and publisher of Good News.
by Steve | Nov 16, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Anne Jackson
In May 2008, I posted a question on my blog that simply asked, “What’s one thing you feel you can’t say in the church?”
Hundreds of people responded. The question spread far—both in the Christian faith and outside, even being posted and discussed on a highly regarded atheist blog. The conversation went global. Websites in the UK and a radio station in Australia took the question and posted it to their own audiences. Regardless of someone’s religion (or lack thereof), it appeared that everyone had input.
Those outside the Christian faith spoke familiar sentiments about the façade the evangelical movement has created over the centuries:
• Christians say one thing and do another.
• If Christians can’t be who they are within their own churches, why are they even a part of a church? Why not go someplace where they can be themselves?
We’ve all heard those accusations. From the media, to people in our workplaces, to our families, this perception comes as no surprise.
As far as those within the Christian faith, the responses to the question were as intriguing as they were heartbreaking.
• “I currently feel no connection to God when I pray or read the Bible.”
• “I have been a Christian for 27 years and I still don’t understand the point of praying.”
• “Sometimes I wonder if this whole Christianity thing is a lie.”
• “Most of the time I never feel forgiven for my sins…partly because it’s hard to forgive myself…the other part is that church people seem to never let you let it go and move forward.”
• “I’m a pacifist.”
• “Why do we have lavish worship centers but there are starving children in our own backyards and around the world?”
Some boldly placed their names, even links to their websites or blogs, while others remained apprehensively in the shadow, concerned that even the modest sense of anonymity the Internet offered was not enough to protect them from being judged.
Of course, the root of the question didn’t stem completely from social curiosity. It came from places in my own heart and life where I was afraid to say something inside a church or to other Christians. Fear had kept me silent, had overruled confession and I needed to know I wasn’t alone.
So I asked the question.
I didn’t anticipate the response it would receive.
Broken
At around five hundred comments, you can imagine the variety of answers. This question obviously struck a chord with a lot of people. I read and reread the comments for months. I printed some out and kept them on my nightstand, trying to understand the scope of why so many people felt they couldn’t say so many different things in church. Surely there had to be a common denominator.
Fear was obviously there. Shame. Rejection. But those feelings were more of the why people didn’t speak up more often.
I was looking for the what.
What did things like poverty and being gay and worship and money and porn and sex and depression and abuse have in common?
One night in December, seven months later, it hit me: Brokenness.
Whether it’s as a result of sin, or fear of the response we’ll get by speaking up about something like politics or relationships or mental health in a broken world, it all boiled down to brokenness.
And if this fracture in whatever part of our lives threatens our reputation, our character, or our dignity, we hide.
If something in our spiritual life is broken or is confusing to us, we hide.
If a relationship is broken, we hide.
If there’s an unhealthy habit we fall back on, we hide.
If there’s a controversial political or social issue confronting us, we hide.
We ultimately want to hide what’s broken, whether it occurs individually or in a community. The Bible is filled with broken people, most of whom at some point or another tried to cover up their brokenness. Yet it seems like the people who are the most broken, the most helpless, are the people God often uses the most.
King David committed adultery and murder, yet he was considered a man after God’s heart. Rahab was a prostitute, but she understood her culture and helped protect Joshua’s spies. (She later gave birth to Boaz, making her the great-great-grandmother of King David, whose lineage continues on to Jesus.)
The disciples were considered spiritually worthless in their culture and had already been rejected by various rabbis (that’s why they were all working in their respective family trades when Jesus found them), and they were the 12 people Jesus most closely associated with.
Through church experiences and relationships in my own life as a child and as an adult working in a church, the pressure to be perfect and to have all the answers strongly influenced my decision to keep quiet about a lot of broken things. Some were decisions I was making that were sin. Others were the result of the sin of others, or simply questions about my faith and my God.
We’ve all seen how dangerous it can be to be vulnerable in the church. But now, we have the chance to do something about it.
Sanctuary
The church is supposed to be a safe place for everybody, especially the people who are the most broken, right? The Bible says the kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit—those so broken they have nothing to offer. Jesus came to heal the sick.
Although unofficial in title, the concept of the church being a refuge dates back to the time of Moses and Joshua. In the Hebrew culture, there are historical records of fugitives seeking protection at altars, which recognizes religion’s role in protecting human life even for the most terrible offenders.
The Christian church adopted the right of sanctuary in the fourth century. Because of Christendom’s strong belief in the sanctity of life, clergy and priests began acting on behalf of criminals, defending them from unfair judgment and execution. It wasn’t an easy out for the criminal; they were often restricted in their daily activities, but at least their lives were safe in the church until they received the king’s pardon or a fair punishment.
Anyone was welcome to take safety in the church at this time—not only criminals, but slaves who escaped cruel masters and those who couldn’t repay debts. Village townsmen, women, and children who came under attack from outlaws could take refuge in the church.
However, as time went by, people with power interfered with the system and began excluding specific groups or crimes. At first, those who had committed treason or murder were no longer allowed to find safety. Over the next few centuries, slowly, fewer and fewer crimes were given the right of sanctuary, until the end of the eighteenth century, when it was abolished altogether.
Outside of the legal system, hundreds of years ago, when a person confessed certain sins or doubted or renounced their faith, some Christians refused to welcome that person back into the church, even if the person had truly repented. These kinds of Christians felt like the church was better with these so-called sinners out of the picture.
I find it interesting that in our current culture, we identify the church as a safe place for broken people to find refuge. Church is a place for us to claim the right of a modern-day sanctuary where we can name our sins or ask our questions, and be protected and sheltered while we search for grace, forgiveness, and answers.
Yet as history shows us, for hundreds of years, churches have been sacrificing the beauty of confession and brokenness for religious trappings and the malady of perfectionism. In some cases, if we don’t measure up to a manmade cocktail of moral codes and checklists—if we aren’t “good enough”—we no longer feel welcomed in a church or around other Christians.
We feel ashamed.
We feel ashamed that we don’t measure up to the “holiness” of others.
And shame tells us to keep those ugly, messy parts hidden. Without our secrets showing, maybe then we can be accepted.
We think, and in many cases have experienced, that if we share our secrets or our questions, we’ll be rejected.
And alone.
And so people—broken people like you and me—feel pressured to choose.
Either we can conform to an institutionalized and over-organized product of religion, masking and repressing our secrets or questions or shortcomings, or we can escape the walls of the church and find a place outside a faith-based environment where we are free to share all of who we truly are.
Most of us choose to live in one of these extremes: conforming or escaping. Few can find peace living in the tension of both. Those of us who do wonder if we’re too idealistic to believe a faith community can be a hospital for our wounds to be welcomed and healed, that true sanctuary can be found both within the walls of the church and outside the church as well.
At the risk of sounding overly idealistic, I’d like to say that for those of us who believe the church should be one of the safest and most grace-giving places a person can experience here on earth, it’s time to reclaim what our faith stands for.
It’s time for us to politely but passionately disagree with those who make church a “safe” place by removing all the messiness.
It’s time for us to put all we have out in the open—not for the sake of faux humility or self-depreciating exploitation or attention, but for recognizing the things the Cross stands for and left for us: ultimate love and undiscriminating grace.
Anne Jackson is an author and blogger. This article is an excerpt from Permission to Speak Freely: Essays and Art on Fear, Confession, and Grace (Thomas Nelson, 2010) by Anne Jackson. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission from Thomas Nelson, Inc. Photo on opposite page by John Short.
