conference – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

Ode to the Book of Discipline…

Posted on June 2, 2011Leave a comment

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Oh Book of Discipline, how do I love thee…

Let me count the ways.

I love that when I am confused about how to proceed regarding a new parsonage purchase, you contain orderly directions.

I love that when I wrote my papers for ordination nearly every question could be found within your beautiful pages.

I love that as a new pastor I can use you to add weight to my words… because it says so in paragraph such and such of the Discipline.

I love that as I look through prior editions, I can see how our church has grown and changed.

I love that you contain, without apology, the history and tradition of our roots and that those pages cannot be changed.

I love that you hold the outcome of our shared wrestlings as the people called United Methodist about difficult issues and theological quandries.

I love that as much as I love you, we both know that you are never completely perfect and that each time our General Conference meets we can fix typos and make amendments and add clarifications.

I love that you are dynamic and changing and yet, at the same time the foundation for our shared ministry through time.

I love that in the words of the 2004 edition, you are “the most current statement of how United Methodists agree to live their lives together.”

I am running to be a delegate to our General Conference in 2012. And this afternoon I recieved a phone call from a fellow pastor who had some questions for me. I thought it was awesome that she has taken her own initiative and is doing more research on each person to make an informed decision.

One of the questions that I was asked was whether I will uphold the Book of Discipline as it stands… or something to that effect.

At first, I hesitated. Because as an ordained elder, I am under this particular rule of law. These are the agreements that we have made together about how we are going to live together.

So the first words out of my mouth were, “yes, as a pastor, I will work to uphold the Discpline.”

But immediately, I had to qualify that statement.

Because you see, every four years, the Book of Discipline is subject to change and scrutiny. Every time our church meets together as the General Conference, we “amend, perfect, clarify, and add our own contribution to the Discipline.” (tenses changed, again from the BOD2004)

The Book of Discipline is not holy or sacred. It is a conversation through time. It is the product of our connectional spirit. And while we meet for fellowship and celebration of ministry and worship at General Conference… we also meet to speak on behalf of the church and to figure out how we are going to agree to live together for the next four years.

The United Methodist Church is diverse, global, changing, and – I pray – Spirit led. As such, we adapt to new situations and ministry fields, we attempt to respond to the new problems the world throws at us, and we continue to try to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ in this place and time.

So yes, I will work to uphold the Discipline that I love… but if the case is made, if it will further the work of God in this world, if we will make more disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world… I will vote to change it in a heartbeat.

it causes me to tremble…

Posted on June 6, 2010Leave a comment

Day two of our annual conference has completed. We have voted on exactly 7 items of legislation. And we have celebrated and praised and prayed and remembered and sung and danced and ate and hugged and sat and walked and listened.

Some brief highlights for me so far:

“Hi, I’m Fred.” Our “priest” for the conference introduced himself and welcomed us into a spirit of worshipful work and I truly have felt this particular time of conference has felt different because of it.
advocating for young adults at our legislative section and dreaming up possibilities for community college ministries
Rev. Doug Ruffle’s challenges to be a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of the Kingdom of God…
crazy fast and delicious dinner at A Dong
even though clergy session was inhumanely long – it had a wonderful spirit to it as we gathered to worship (thanks clergy band!) and celebrate the ministry we share… and have good conversation about itinerancy
ordination!!!!!! being surrounded by family and church members and friends, the weight of all of those hands upon me, the feeling of the bible underneath my fingers, singing with joy
the reminders throughout the day of the gift of the scriptures: Bishop Kulah talking about Jesus expounding the scriptures; Barbara Lundblad’s take on radical love enfleshed in John’s gospel (love that bends down, that reaches beyond, that puts people before rules, that is here in this moment, that renews itself as soon as you think it has ended); Bishop Job sharing what a day, a year, a decade’s worth of living in the word can do for our lives; a friend’s amazing rendition of a song from the musical Philemon during prayer;
the Rethink Rock video
the voices of young adults who stood to speak out of love for what they care about on the floor.
sharing deeply with one another truths about things that have hurt us… so that we might give them over to God.
our conference artist’s work… and the poetic description of what God is sharing with us through it. The idea of being baptised into the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ being symbolized by a font filled with shards of glass… of chairs of hospitality inviting us to take our seat… the challenge that being radically hospitible brings… of the chair on the cross being an invocation – asking for God to enter our lives.

Sources of Revelation

Posted on January 12, 2010Leave a comment

The United Methodist Church holds that Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason are sources and norms for belief and practice, but that the Bible is primary among them. What is your understanding of this theological position of the church?

In traditional Wesleyan thinking, scripture must be the central source of theology and all of the other three means listed above are secondary. Yet, that can create an interesting dilemma. Do we use scripture to interpret our experiences and to put hedges around our tradition and to limit our reasoning, or are each of the three ways of interpreting and using said scripture. I think that one of the challenges presented by both postmodernity and the emergent movement is that we are in all cases limited by our human finitude. We simply cannot go back and use scripture in a vacuum. We always interpret it through a lens, through a glass dimly. Our historical understandings of events are culturally flavored. And scientific advances have also challenged tried and true scriptural understandings, leaving us to ask whether we read passages in scripture as absolute truth or as humanity’s best understanding of events, at the time, as inspired by God.

I think the best way of defining our norms and practices is to hold all four of these sources as important and yet also realize that even grounded in all four of these, we might not have the full picture. Our practices and our beliefs might still need to grow and change as we grow in our faithfulness towards the God of all creation. One of the gifts that postmodernity brings is the idea of the intersubjective – that which we hold as a community in common. It allows us to discern together what the best practices are for us right now as we attempt to be faithful, and yet also leaves open the possibility that another truth, a better practice, a more precise or expansive norm may exist.

In effect, that is what we do through conferencing. We leave open the possibility that the Holy Spirit still has places to move us. We share our stories and allow ourselves to be formed by others. We read the bible through new eyes when we hear it read at General Conference in the voice of a brother from India or a sister from Africa. We can communally gain a more holistic picture of God than our own subjective experiences and methods of reasoning and traditions and even versions of the scriptures permit.

Photo by: Jon Wisbey

thinking ecumenically and maybe a little politically

Posted on May 1, 20091 Comment

Lately, I have been having quite a few conversations, theologically and politically with fellow pastors.

It would be fair to say that my current colleagues are more conservative than my colleagues in seminary or college. And what amazed me was the fear that “liberal” colleagues expressed 8 years ago over the Bush administration are the same fears being expressed now, under a new administration by my “conservative” friends. In both places, I heard words like “facism” and “homeland security” being thrown around with fears that their rights to the things they hold most dear would be stripped away. Each is afraid that their most important values will be tossed to the side.

In that same conversation, we also talked about the differences in how we recieve God’s grace in each tradition. In United Methodism it’s through the means of grace – which include works of piety and works of mercy. In the Lutheran tradition, it’s through the word – in preaching, study, baptism, etc. In the Reformed tradition God’s grace isn’t limited and yet there was a strong hesitation to say that grace comes through works.

All of these things together – both the political and theological conversation – have me feeling like we aren’t even talking the same language with one another. We are looking at the exact same thing: political decisions on one hand and God’s grace on the other, and we interpret each in completely different ways. After our conversation we got to a place where we could agree to disagree theologically – but we didn’t really even touch the political difference (well, we did debate torture for a bit).

I don’t know that I have ever wished for full unity within the Christian tradition. I understand that there are important theological differences in what we claim to believe. We can agree on the fundamentals, but how those fundamentals are played out – woah. VAST differences. Same with the political landscape. The idea of a one party system would be a terrible plan… in fact, I would be in favor of lots of political parties, each articulating clearly their perspectives.

Debate and conversation are important (in United Methodism, we call it conferencing). They help us to form and reflect upon our beliefs. They call us to know our own positions well enough to speak for them. But they also call us to listen and to be aware of when our positions are in need of reformation. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in… to help us reach a consensus… to help us reach God’s will… in the midst of our vast differences.

That last piece of the puzzle isn’t happening. In politics and in the church, we hear what we fear from the other side. We interpret the actions of the “opposition” as being tactical moves to wipe us out. And especially when we throw around labels like facism, we are invoking the idea that we need to stand up and fight back – not have a conversation, but stage a full out rebellion. I was there and listening to those points of view in 2001, I am there and listening to those points of view now in 2009. I’m hearing those same arguments in the church around our constitutional amendments right now. And it doesn’t work. It creates dissension instead of making room for the Holy Spirit to move and perhaps change all of us. Fear and unwillingness to listen only makes us more rigid in our points of view and more ready to see subtle differences as vast gulfs.

Jon Stewart had a guest on earlier this week, Cliff May, and they discussed torture. And I mean discussed it. They both spoke clearly about what they believed in an informed and articulate manner. And they respected each other. That doesn’t mean that neither made mistakes. But at the end of it, they both understood one another better.

I pray that we might all do this. We might all listen more and fear less. That we might ask questions instead of making assumptions. That we would be willing to look at our own positions through the eyes of another. And then, if after we have done all of that, we still have fears – if we still believe that the foundations of our beliefs and values are crumbling around us – YES! stand up and speak loudly and be the prophet you are called to be. But listen first.

And… fyi – I’m extremely disheartened by the Pew Research Center poll (altho it was a small sample) that going to church – especially a mainline church – makes you more willing to support torture.

some thoughts on amendment one

Posted on April 28, 20091 Comment

The first amendment that comes before our Annual Conferences from General Conference this year is to change the wording of paragraph 4 in our constitution.

There are a whole lot of youtube and blogposts and newsletter articles about this and suffice it to say – there are reasons to be in favor of it and to be against it. (not all of them might be rational, but…)

I ran across a post by John Meunier on the topic however that spoke to a lot of what I was feeling. Especially in regards to how similiar the first part of the amendment is to paragraph 214 in the Book of Discipline.

Here is my response to his blogpost:

I absolutely agree with you on the first part of the amendment. We already have the idea of “all persons” in our BOD – so it should be there in the constitution as well. I have especially noted that the amendment talks about eligibility – and I don’t necessarily see that as denying the rights of pastors to determine readiness for membership, or the rights of BoOM to examine candidates for ministry. Just because you are eligible for something doesn’t mean that you are going to automatically get it (see paragraph 215 in the Book of Discipline)

The wording of the last line of the amendment is unfortunate I believe.

I think the intent is to make it a consistent paragraph and it may have shot itself in the foot. I, too, am interested from a strictly procedural standpoint what the implications are. I don’t have the fears that others do about it.

Here is the current last sentence of paragraph 4.
In the United Methodist Church no conference or other organizational unit of the the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member or any constiuent body of the Church because of race, color, national orign, status or economic condition.
Here is the sentence if amended.
In the United Methodist Church no conference or other organizational unit of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member or any constituent body.

As I would read it, just in a common sense sort of way, it makes me think that no conference or organizational unit can build discrimination into their structure. And to me, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have a process for readiness or standards for participation.

Who really should be up in arms about this (and I haven’t seen any official word) is the United Methodist Men and Women’s units…

bagh!

Posted on August 13, 20081 Comment

i got a message today from the conference that the church has not been paying my pension and health insurance (which includes my individual contribution that has been witheld from my paycheck every month). I’m assuming the treasurer just didn’t know it was supposed to be sent in. But it means that we technically have $10,000 more in our accounts than we should and that we are not holding steady on our finances like we thought. doh.

Yet another thing they don’t teach you about in seminary.

edited: good news! the mess up wasn’t on our end! the conference forgot to bill us. we still owe the money, but at least neither me or my lovely wonderful treasurer messed up =)

being true to your beliefs…

Posted on April 30, 20082 Comments

This morning I was approached by a congregation member who wanted to invite me to join him for a gathering of the Methodist Laity Reform Movement. This is a group within our conference that wants to promote a more conservative reading of the social principles but also is looking for more grassroots reform of the whole conference system. There are some things in their agenda and principles I can agree with, but not everything – particularly the views on homosexuality. While I hate to say that is the only issue that would keep me away from it, the fact that half of their “issues” on the website were regarding whether gays and lesbians can be ordained or members or on Supreme Court rulings regarding homosexuality, I have to take a step back.

I have not yet stood up and shared my opinions/beliefs on the subject. I do have a Human Rights Coalition equality sticker in my office and a number of books in my marriage and relationship counseling section – if anyone is interested in looking that would announce where I stand on the issue.

I guess the question I have for other pastors is how do you start to broach the subject? Do you wait until asked specifically, or in the case of this group, should I have said up front that was the reason I wasn’t interested? I did say that there are many reform movements and caucuses in our annual conference and that it wasn’t one I was interested in participating in, but I left it at that.

I want to be true to myself, but I also want to be pastoral and help the congregation wrestle together with this issue. It relates to one of my last posts regarding truth and perception. I have a position on the issues that I can’t impose as fact upon others. I need to listen to them, as much as they need to listen to me. And we all need to open up space for the Holy Spirit to guide us.

And it all has to do with understandings of scripture. Ironically, my mom called me just yesterday. She said that a co-worker knew that I was a pastor and so he came up to her and asked if I had read 1 Timothy 2. She didn’t really know what he was referring to (and didn’t stop to check), but passed along the information to me. One of the reasons that we (or many of us) don’t take verses 11-15 seriously today is because 1) we have been revealed other truths by the Holy Spirit… ie: we have witnessed women’s ability to lead and teach men and 2)we are able to contextualize that passage, look at where and why it was said and we also judge it against other scriptural passages.

So, i guess I’m just waiting to have this conversation and wondering if i should be the one to initiate it.

roundtable preaching

Posted on February 13, 2008Leave a comment

This past semester I got to work on my senior project with Dr. John McClure, a professor of homiletics at Vanderbilt Divinity. My project has been on the intersection of so-called postmodern church practices with rural churches in Iowa and one of his suggestions, as a homiletician, was that I incorporate some kind of collaborative preaching model.

And to be honest, with my leadership style and my own values, I desperately want to do so. I truly believe that the Holy Spirit brings us to and reveals to us the Word of God as we read scriptures and as we pray about what to preach. And I also believe that I am not the only person the Holy Spirit speaks to in my church! There is a word to be proclaimed and who knows who might have the message from God this week. I think there is also something that we each bring to the text, experiences that we have that need to be shared with others. And that whenever two or more are gathered, Christ is present.

So I made the invitation to people in the church to join me on Monday afternoons for a “roundtable” discussion about the text for the week. And unfortunately the weather both weeks so far has been awful – snowy, icy, foggy. And as I might have expected this early in my ministry at this church, the participants are all the same faithful people who show up for each and every other church group. The good thing about this group is that it is designed to change completely every few months, so in May I will be asking those individuals to stop coming and to help me recruit others.

One of my greatest temptations in this group is to talk too much. I really want to hear what their perspectives and their questions in relation to the text are. I spend monday afternoons doing some serious research so that I can at least begin to address whatever might come up. So far, there have been good outcomes! Last week we were looking at Jesus in the wilderness and the temptation, but because the lectionary places that text alongside Adam and Eve in the garden we got to talking about how as humans we can resist temptation… and that got us thinking about holding each other accountable. I don’t know that I ever would have gone the direction of accountability with the sermon had it not been for the group, but they are aware that as a church we need to be more actively supporting one another. It turned into a great message!

I’m still learning how to incorporate their ideas into the sermon in more compelling ways, however. I realized halfway through the sermon that I said “in our roundtable group this week we discussed..” or some variation of that too many times. I need to refresh myself on the last chapter in McClure’s book “The Roundtable Pulpit”