global – Salvaged Faith

Reflections a week after General Conference… #umcgc

Posted on May 29, 20162 Comments

As Psalm 146 reminds us: human leaders and human institutions aren’t everything. They won’t save us.

We are finite and we make mistakes.

Only God is forever faithful.

Yet, any denomination or tradition comes from God’s followers attempting to live out their faith and their discipleship together.

Fully knowing that we are not perfect, we nevertheless seek to do the best we can to respond to God’s movement and calling in the world in a given place and time… based on where our forefathers and mothers have led us and based on where the Holy Spirit is calling us anew.

That is what we tried to do at General Conference. Over 10 days, we attempted to be faithful to God’s leading and yet we are not God and our plans are just that… ours.

Over these last two weeks, we very nearly split our denomination into pieces. Our differences are stark. Our life together is marred by conflict as much as collaboration. And I’m going to be honest… I’m not quite sure yet what comes after General Conference.

We asked our Bishops to help us find a way forward out of our predicament and that way forward is still vague.

So rather than making predictions, maybe it would be better to share who we are and how we got to this place. I think fundamentally, there are three key things to keep in mind as we wrestle with what it means to be the United Methodist Church.

First, I think it is helpful to understand that the United Methodist Church is a global church.

We are the only protestant denomination that is worldwide. Our churches span from Manila to Legos to Moscow. And, while the church in the U.S. has been declining, the global church is growing exponentially.

In the last ten years, the U.S. has declined in membership by 11%, while the church in the Africa Central Conference grew by 329%!

42% of United Methodists now live outside of the United States.

One of the most important things we do at General Conference is listen to one another, try to understand more about our contexts, and find ways to help ministry flourish all across the world. And that is not an easy task.

But because of our global partnerships, we can do amazing things like Imagine No Malaria and our United Methodist Committee on Relief is the first to arrive on the scene of disaster and the last to leave.

And we can learn from one another.

I remember listening to a committee four years ago debate the process for closing a church. A woman from Liberia stood and said that she was extremely confused as to what we were talking about… not because of a language barrier, but because she simply couldn’t comprehend why we would close a church. The church in the United States needs that passion for the gospel that is growing so fast we can’t build enough churches!

As we continue to debate the inclusion of LGBTQI people in the life of our church, I also heard clearly from our African delegates, like my new friend Pastor Adilson, that their contextual struggle is not with homosexuality, but with polygamy. Rather than asking if same-gender marriages are allowed in their churches, they are struggling with how to welcome and include a man who has four or five wives. Does the church ask him to divorce all but one? What happens to the other wives? Or the children? How is the entire family welcomed?

We are also learning to reframe our conversations to be more global than United States centric. One of our debates this year was about a resolution for health care that referenced the Affordable Care Act. When 42% of United Methodists live outside the United States, these kinds of statements need to be broader in scope. It was hard to be talking about a system that only applies to some of us, when so many people in that room had little to no access to care, much less health insurance.

One of the realities of being a global church is that multiple languages play a role in all of our meetings. While we have four official languages as the UMC: French, English, Portuguese and Kiswahili, we had simultaneous interpretation in Russian, German, Spanish, and many others.

An ever present reality is also that in many of these global areas Christianity arrived along with colonialism. “Most Africans teach their children that Jesus and other biblical characters are muzungu (Kiswahili, “white”) notwithstanding the fact that Jesus would likely have been dark complexioned because he was born in the Middle East.” (http://unitedmethodistreporter.com/2016/05/11/are-africans-grown-a-response-to-bishop-minerva-carcano-dealing-with-wounded-united-methodist-church/)

We, as a church, have tried to combat colonial impulses by allowing the conferences outside of the United States to adapt our Book of Discipline to their local contexts. However, that means that 42% of the church doesn’t have to abide by all of what we vote on… and that we need their votes in order to make changes to the rules only we follow.

Second, it is helpful to know how we make decisions.

The roots of our church lie in England, but we were born during the American Revolution. And our polity, our government is modeled upon our national government.

Just like the government, we have a judicial branch and a Judicial Council.

Our Bishops function as the executive branch.

And the General Conference itself is the legislative branch… just like Congress.

864 of us were elected as voting delegates to represent the worldwide church and we were half clergy and half laity.

The General Conference is the only body that can speak for the United Methodist Church and everyday people like you and me are the ones who make the decisions.

So those of us gathered there had the responsibility of pouring over legislation and making changes to our structure, rules, and positions… four years worth of work condensed into two weeks.

I believe that to discern the Holy Spirit, one has to be humble, empty yourself, and allow other voices to influence you.

The first week of conference is largely spent in legislative committees and in those smaller groups some of that discernment could happen. I had truly transformative experiences in my committee and the work felt good and holy.

But all of those relationships and trust falls apart when an item comes to the floor of the plenary session. There, the decision making process moves away from consensus building and instead creates winners and losers.

On the FIRST DAY of conference… we spent hours debating the rules that we would use in order to debate. We used and we abused Robert’s Rules of Order.

And when we were presented with an alternative decision making process (what you might have heard as Rule 44) to use for particularly contentious issues, we debated it for two days and then voted not to use it.

But we did accomplish some things. We approved the creation of a new hymnal for our church. We strengthened our process for the affirmation of clergy. We created new pathways for licensed local pastors. And we added gender, age, ability, and marital status to the protected classes in our constitution.

Third, it is helpful to understand that while it appears that our conflict as a church is centered around the inclusion of LGBTQI people, our division is deeper.

Our church is a very broad tent and the likes of both Dick Cheney and Hilary Clinton call our church home. This is one of the things that I love about the United Methodist Church.

But I think what came into focus for many of us at this General Conference is that our disagreements may no longer be sustainable.

Perhaps fundamental to our conflict is how we interpret scripture. For some, scripture is absolutely central and the only tradition, reason, or experience that matters is that which scripture can confirm. For others, scripture is absolutely central and yet we have to interpret scripture through the lenses of our tradition, reason, and experience. That shift might seem subtle, but it can make the difference between allowing women to be ordained or not in our church.

We also fundamentally disagree about whether we are a church of personal piety or social holiness. Of course, John Wesley thought it had to be both… but where we place our emphasis determines how we engage with the world and the moral stances we choose to take.

All of this difference is floating beneath the surface of any conversation about how LGBTQI people are included or not in the life of our church.

If you asked me a month ago what was going to happen at General Conference I would have been full of optimism. You see, I’m a bridge builder.

And so I went to General Conference with all kinds of hopes about how we would make decisions to benefit the church all over the world and how in spite of our differences we would find a way forward together.

I don’t think it was naïve to believe this going in.

But in the midst of our gathering in Portland, something shifted. Something shifted in my own life and in the hearts and minds of countless other delegates.

We realized that we could no longer keep doing what we have been doing together as a denomination.

We realized that our differences were tearing us apart.

And in Portland, we made a very conscious choice to avoid the end of our denomination through our votes. We voted to seek unity, to try to find a way to remain together for the sake of God’s mission in the world. But there is a phrase we kept using that I think is important. Unity does not mean unanimity.

As we look at our differences, particularly in the three areas I named, for many, we avoided the end, but are only delaying the inevitable.

Maybe our global structure is unsustainable.

Maybe our decision making process has to change.

Maybe our fundamental disagreements will only continue to allow conflict to rule our work together and we would be better to split amicably and allow each part of our church to be the most faithful it can be to God’s will.

The next four years as United Methodists will not be easy. We have asked the Bishops of our church to lead us in discerning a way forward and that might mean that in the next two or three years we will call a special gathering to decide how to move forward… on what it means to be a global church, on our structure, on our polity, and on our stances regarding human sexuality.

I have about 45 more minutes of things I could share with you and I’m happy to continue to have conversations about our work. But I want to leave you with this one request.

Pray for our church.

Pray for God’s will to be done.

Pray that we might follow the one who is faithful forever, who as Psalm 146 reminds us…

defends the wronged, and feeds the hungry. God frees prisoners— God gives sight to the blind, and lifts up the fallen. God loves good people, protects strangers, takes the side of orphans and widows, but makes short work of the wicked.

In spite of all the good and all of the mistakes that we made at this past General Conference, I take comfort in the knowledge that God’s in charge—always.

More than we can ASK or IMAGINE

Posted on August 28, 2013Leave a comment

On the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, a lot of people are talking about dreams today.

Dreams for racial equality. Dreams for unity. Dreams for access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Dreams for our children. Dreams for reconciliation. Dreams for a future with hope and freedom, love and peace.

As I read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech again today, I was struck by how focused on the American experience it was. Never before in my reading had I noticed how every word is intertwined with a sense of national identity and a prophetic reality check on our history and at the time, present conditions. Or rather, I had always taken that piece of the address for granted. The American experience encompassed my worldview. This country is my country. It is the place of my hopes and dreams. This is the place where they are realized.

Only, in the last year, my eyes have grown wider.

I’m dreaming different dreams.

I’m looking beyond borders to the needs of my brothers and sisters half a world away.

And so I read those words in a new way today.

Today, I’m thinking about the injustices of a world in which WHERE here we live determines IF we live.

In my work with Imagine No Malaria, I’m constantly trying to figure out how to get my friends and colleagues and brothers and sisters in Iowa and the United States to think about the lives of folks who do not live in this place.

I am trying to help them understand the “fierce urgency of Now” – the need for action, the need to take the momentum in our global fight and step on the accelerator so we can truly overcome this global disease that is taking so many lives.

Our fight is not necessarily against racial injustice, but we are battling a disease of poverty. We are working desperately to overcome systemic problems of access to care and education and resources. We are working with those whose very fight with the disease keeps them trapped in the poverty that puts them most at risk.

In our work with Imagine No Malaria, we have placed our feet firmly in the promises of Ephesians 3:20… that God will do far more than we can ask or imagine by his power at work within us.

So we are raising our voices and dreaming prophetic dreams, too.

We imagine a world in which WHERE you live doesn’t determine IF you live.

We imagine a world where mothers tuck their …children in at night under bed nets and no longer worry for their safety.

We imagine a world where 655,000 deaths a year are prevented because we have taken action against malaria.

We imagine a world where illness and death do not keep families from fulfilling their dreams for education and work and stability.

We imagine a world where United Methodists from every nation stand together, united, to overcome disease by putting God’s abundant resources into the places where they are needed most.

Our work does not end with our imagination any more than the dream of Dr. King ended with the words said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

God works through us… in us… God accomplishes great things because we stand up and speak out and choose to turn our words into actions.

Just as his speech was a call to action and solidarity, a call to “never be satisfied” until the dream is fulfilled, I am spurred on to keep going, to keep preaching and speaking and working until we watch those deaths from malaria diminish to zero.

The work of the United Methodist Church in Imagine No Malaria is not the same challenge as overcoming oppression and injustice. It will not lead us into clashes of power and the resistance we find will not be water hoses and dogs and hatred… but we still have to work together. We still have to be willing to step out of the comforts of our position in order to give sacrificially to make the dream a reality.

We still have a kingdom dream, a dream of brothers and sisters of all hues living full and abundant lives, working together, praying together, struggling together.

We dream not of a nation, but a world, united by God’s love and sustained by God’s redeeming power.

Willing to Yield

Posted on September 23, 2012Leave a comment

I want to start out this morning with a testimony… and I think it is very important that you understand this is not me preaching about what you should go out tomorrow and do… I am simply sharing what my experience of God was this past year.

That is an important qualification, because I’m going to be talking about money. And talking about money makes a whole lot of us uncomfortable… but it is a part of our daily lives and it is an important part our words from James this morning.

And my testimony is this: For the first time in my life, this year I tithed to the church.

Now, I have always given to the church. But for a long time, I made excuses about how much I should give.

When I was a teenager and had only part time jobs, I might have stuck a dollar or two in the offering plate – whatever pocket change I might have had that day. It was the last of my money… not the best.

When I was in college, I did not attend a church regularly on Sundays, but worshipped on campus Wednesday nights – and no one asked for a financial contribution. No one asked me to give, much less give sacrificially.

As a seminary student and an intern at a church, I was spending more money on school and travel than I was making and piling up debt. I gave my time to the church and occasionally a few bucks as well.

And then I came here. I came to be a pastor and I knew that I could not ask you, in good faith, to give faithfully to the church and to God, if I was not also giving. Having a steady paycheck for the first time in my life, I should have immediately started tithing. But I didn’t. I held back. I looked at my student loans and a bit of debt from college… I looked at how much our cable bill was going to be… I thought about how we wanted to travel a bit… I knew that taxes would take a chunk of my wages… And so I started out small. I gave to the church – but only a small portion.

And then, I became comfortable with that level of financial giving. I knew I was doing God’s ministry in other ways and so I didn’t worry about it.

But one day a year or two ago, I was having a conversation with a friend, a fellow pastor, about the things that we cling to… the things we hold close and refuse to give to God.

I realized in the midst of that conversation that I had never willingly yielded my money to God. There had been times when I had given out of guilt. I have given because it was what I was supposed to do. I have given out of habit as the offering place went around and each person in the pew pulled out a buck and dropped it in. Sound familiar?

But never had I prayerfully thought about what God wanted me to give. Never had I searched my heart to ask what I was willing to yield, what I was willing to joyfully give up in my life for the sake of our Lord and our church.

I started out last year by giving a much larger percentage on a regular basis… and this year, my heart led me to give a full 10% of my income to the church.

I joyfully give that money to God… and I have to tell you – I haven’t missed one cent. I now give to the church first… the money comes out of my paycheck before it ever comes home with me. I give God my first and my best, instead of the change in my pocket – instead of the leftovers from my own spending and desires.

I have been blessed through my giving. No, I don’t have more money in the bank than when I started… but now I am reminded that the things that money buys – cable t.v. and new clothes and name-brand cereal don’t last. What lasts is the kingdom of God. What lasts is the word of God. What lasts is the joy that I have found through letting go… through being willing to yield.

Now… I’m going to put my preacher hat back on.

Because we all have different places in our life where we have been unwilling to yield. It might be money, like me, but it might be an addiction. For others the thing they grasp is their pride. Some of us are unwilling to let go of our schedules or our desires.

Throughout the book of James, we get some harsh truths about what it means to live in Christian community. On Labor Day weekend, we heard about the source of our conflict – pride and a lack of humility. The next week we were reminded that rich and poor are all the same and we need to stop judging and stop loving. Last week, we were dished up some truth about wisdom and speech… and our tendency to ignorance and cynicism.

In each message – we have been asked to let something go. Our pride and the need to “be important”, our status and the desire to “be better”, our knowledge and the need to “be right”, and today we are asked to let go of the material things we cling to and the stuff we seek out. We need to let go of our desire to “be the joneses.”

As we read James… even though I have experienced the joy of willingly yielding and letting God have control of my money – I have to admit that each one of these admonitions still hits close to home for me also. Each of these realities is something that I continue to struggle with, even as I know I am being faithful in some ways.

1) Keeping up with the Joneses kills our souls

James is quite clear in chapter four that our desire to keep up with the ways of the world means that our heart has gone astray from God. Familiar verse from the gospels reminds us– you cannot serve both God and money. And so every time that we choose the things we want over the things of God, we have cheated on our Lord and Savior – we have been unfaithful.

It is hard to accept sometimes, but God cares about what you do and what you have. If our gracious Lord and Savior makes sure that the birds of the air and the flowers of the field are taken care of… then he’s also working to make sure that you have enough – that you have abundant life. But so often, we turn our backs on the life God has given us and want to be someone else and have other things. Verse 5 reads: Doesn’t God long for our faithfulness in the life he has given us?

This life might not be perfect. We might not have everything. But Mother Theresa once said, “grow where you are planted.” Don’t look over the fence at your neighbors and want what they have… gratefully give thanks every day for the gift of life and the wonderful things that are a part of yours. When we humble ourselves before the Lord and give thanks for who we were created to be, God is right there, ready to lift us up.

2) Keeping up with the Joneses is killing other people

James chapter 4 starts with the hard truth that war and conflict comes from our desire to have what we don’t have and our desire to keep what is already ours. As he says in verse two: “You long for something you don’t have, so you commit murder. You are jealous for something you can’t get, so you struggle and fight.”

That reality is lived out on our newspapers and television programs every single day. Bank robberies and drug related shootings. Civil wars in far off countries about the precious resources of those places. Jealous acts of violence enacted towards someone for cheating or stealing a person you loved from your life.

But there is a quiet hidden reality to these verses that we are not always ready to admit to – a truth that needs to be confessed about ourselves. The things that we have in this world – everyday, ordinary things that we buy and use and dispose of… our desire to have those things is killing people, too.

Take my cell phone, for example. This summer, I dropped my phone and cracked the screen. So I upgraded to something new. My husband upgraded at the same time, even though his old phone was just fine. But within these simple devices are resources and minerals that you can’t find everywhere. In fact, the tin inside of these devices that are used to solder the metal parts together is mined mostly in Indonesia and China. I read recently about one province in Indonesia, two little islands where nearly half of the tin for cell phones comes from.

The tin mining industry has devastated these two little islands. The mining is done in shallow pits and these pits cover the island – thousands and thousands of pits dotting the ground. Most of this mining is done by hand, rather than machine and it is not a regulated industry. Small groups of men, often boys, work in these pits and scrape the walls by hand.

The reporter who visited the sites had this to say: “these dangerous pits – the walls literally just collapse and bury people alive. In one week, while I was on BangkaIsland, there were six men and actually a boy, a 15-year-old, who were buried alive in these pit collapses…”

My heart broke when I heard that story… how our demand for smart-phones and tablets has caused an industry to explode without regulation or safety and that people are dying so that I can have 3G. Our relationship with God and our command to love our neighbor means that we need to think carefully about the purchases we make in this world. We need to pray before we buy something. And we need to be informed about the far reaching impact of the things we want.

3) Keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t get us anything but fat and dead

We are often so focused on the things that we want today, that we do not stop to think about the far reaching implications of the stuff we accumulate.

As Brandon and I start to pack up our house, we have tons of things that we do not need and will never use. We are busting at the seams with cheap trinkets and clothes that no longer fit and craft supplies we don’t have time to use. It has been a reminder that we have abundantly blessed… and so we are taking this opportunity to share and donate and repurpose some of what we have been given.

The reality is that the stuff we have will not last forever. And we won’t be alive to enjoy it forever.

As James continues in chapter five, the wealthy get one final harsh warning. In this translation from The Message, I want to invite you to hear these words… remembering that we are each wealthier than 75% of this world:

Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you’ve piled up is judgment.

^4-6All the workers you’ve exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You’ve looted the earth and lived it up. But all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse

All you’ll to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse.

The old adage says, you can’t take it with you… and its true. Our time here on earth is short and piling on pleasures and wants and desires doesn’t get us anything but a house full of stuff that someone else is going to have to sort through.

James’s advice for us: remember that you are nothing but a mist that vanishes with the sunlight. Remember that you are nothing but grass that withers and a flower that fades. What good is all of the wealth in the world when tomorrow you are gone?

Let’s take a deep breath. Because we can hear these harsh words and they cut straight to our core. We might want to give everything away when we go home because we feel so guilty.

But I need you to hear this.

God does not want your money, if he doesn’t have your heart.

God doesn’t have any use for your stuff, if he can’t have your soul.

God doesn’t care about the things that you own… even if they could be used to help other people… unless you are willing to give him your life.

Let us prayerfully ask about what God wants us to yield. Let us joyfully and freely give – not because we have to, but because we want to. And let us join with Christ in the world along paths “the Joneses” don’t often travel

a day in the life of a reserve delegate #gc2012

Posted on April 26, 20121 Comment

The morning starts at 6:45 with showers and hotel room coffee and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made from groceries I picked up yesterday.

As a reserve, I get to observe most of the time, and so when I arrived at the conference at 8am, I made my way to the Superintendency committee. I’m not sure why I picked it, but there I was. Devotions were led by the committee chair and then we got down to business… mostly. The group started with two easier ones – and chose to not support an item to allow for laity to become bishops and an item that would require district superintendents to serve outside of their annual conferences. And then the fun began. 5 proposals all dealing with term limits for bishops had to be dealt with. Which would they chose? How would it affect central conferences? Are term limits a sign of distrust or a tool for effectiveness? Is being a bishop different than being an elder? The process was long, and at one point, the group decided to return to language allowing central conferences to chose their own term limits for bishops (current practice). Which then left the question of what to do with US bishops. As the debate went on, and an amendment was made by a delegate from a central conference, a woman from Germany stood to speak. She gently spoke to the fact that the committee had allowed for contextual local control for the central conferences to make their own decisions and asked that other central conference delegates would refrain from editing the proposal that was before the body so that the US delegates could make decisions about their own context. It was a gracious act of kenosis.

Lunch gave me the opportunity to sit down with other young adults and have a Q&A with Adam Hamilton about the Call to Action and Interim Operations Team proposals. Adam was extraordinarily gracious and did his best to listen and answer what he could. There were still many questions and not enough time and not enough dialogue back and forth (the format and sheer number of YP who turned up – 50+) didn’t allow for it. BUT – you could sense there was a change of feelings… it didn’t hurt that the backdrop for the conversation were the words “HEAL” – our theme scripture for the evening.

After lunch, I tried to catch up on some social media conversations. I sat outside in the sun, recharged my phone (which I used excessively b/c of the poor internet), talked with some other reserves and rested. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon session observing the Faith & Order sub-committee which was discussing qualifications for ordination. One of the most interesting parts of their work was watching the difficult work of the translator and the difficulty of not only multiple languages, but the added language of Robert’s Rules to complicate matters. It was an exercise in patience for all involved and they truly lived out the process graciously and beautifully… in spite of fumbles and human missteps. That happens… keeping the spirit is the hard part and they succeeded.

The hardest part about the process is that you can’t talk. You can’t add information. You can’t help to clear up problems. You can just be there. I tried to be available by offering to move chairs, by shushing folks next door who were being too loud, offering markers, etc. As a reserve you really are support. You can love and care and pray, but you can’t really participate in the same way. For anyone who knows me, that is a difficult thing for me to do. I like to be actively engaged and twitter has been one way for me to communicate and share even though I cannot use my physical voice.

Tonight’s plenary greeted our Pan-Methodist brothers and sisters from across the globe and featured nominations for important general church positions. It also featured a point of personal priveledge that lifted up the failure of the process of holy conferencing (not enough time, guidelines, compassion, importance) the day before – specifically in regards to LGBT issues. It was evident there was pain and hurt felt by many…

but the beautiful thing about a church conference is that God is in our midst. Our theme for the day was healing and plenary led into worship where we sang Balm in Gilead and talked about the healing power of Jesus’ love in our lives and we were challenged to lift up to God the places where we have hurt or been unkind or have sinned… the places we need spiritual healing as well as physical healing. It was powerful. Tears freely poured. I prayed with one of the marshals for her sister who is ill. We sang, we prayed, and God moved in that place.

10:00 – time to head back to the hotel… with stops for conversation, and witness, and sharing. It’s nearly 1am now… the blogging is done, the mind is clear, and I can sleep.

A global church #gc2012

Posted on April 24, 2012Leave a comment

This Sunday, the African Ministry from St. Mark’s UMC came and joined our congregation for worship. Well, they didn’t just join us… they led us. Pastor Dieudonne preached, the choir sang, the little boys danced, and it was an exciting, uplifting time of worship.

One of the things that really stuck with me was that Pastor Dieudonne kept reminding us that God is doing us a favor in worship… meaning that God is blessing us right now by allowing us to be here in this place. And it truly was a blessing to gather with brothers and sisters from around the globe and to remember what we are about and WHO we are about.

My congregation was full that morning – not only with members of my church and our brothers and sisters from Cedar Rapids, but also from other churches in our community who wanted to come and worship with us. So we were not only global, but ecumenical, and all different ages were a part of our celebration, too!
For three hours, we were a living embodiment of the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic church… the body of Christ, itself. It was awesome.

And it got me very excited because this morning, I’m in Tampa. And delegates from every state and countries from all across this globe are gathering. And as we worship we will remember that we truly are a global church. We are a church that has listened to the command of Jesus Christ to make disciples of all nations… at least we are trying to do so.

So far, I’ve visited with folks from Michigan, Ohio, Alabama, Boston, Puerto Rico, Illinois, Korea, and the Phillippeans. (Yes, I know I spelled that wrong… my brain keeps wanting to type Philippians)

But on the plane yesterday, I was also reminded that our global church has some work to do. We do not truly share our standards across the globe. We will make a lot of decisions these next two weeks that will only affect the United Methodist Church in the United States. We will employ practices that are very “American.” Our denomination does not represent the diversity of the very places that we live in, much less the world. There is work to do!!!

For the next two weeks, I hope and pray that we might not only become empowered to truly be a global church, but to listen to our brothers and sisters, to speak out of the fullness of our hearts, and to be willing to change and expand and grow if that means welcoming someone else at the table and into the Body of Christ… or maybe even being willing to get up from our table and go to join someone else in creating the body of Christ where they are!!!

GC04: The Call to Action for the US Church?

Posted on April 3, 2012Leave a comment

Taylor Burton-Edwards reminded me a few weeks ago that there needs to be a distinction made by the Call to Action and all of the proposals that have been issued forth. It think that it is helpful to see the CtA as a sort of vision that has been cast but that does not necessarily include specific proposals.

In fact, when our Iowa Annual Conference delegation read the Council of Bishop’s statement on the Call to Action, we endorsed the document for conversation because it does challenge us to think in new and creative and transformative ways about what it would mean to be the church in a new time and place. I think that this video put out by the Call to Action team also does this:

We See A New Church from Call to Action on Vimeo.

When I saw the video, I was mostly inspired and felt like I could find agreement with about 95% of what we were being called to live into. The vision put forth here is of United Methodists out in the world, sharing the good news, working for transformative change in our communities, and the call is to do something bold NOW… I agree.

BUT… that doesn’t mean we can’t have serious conversation about whether some of these proposals are the best possible solutions for us to live out that vision. I actually am beginning to worry they aren’t bold enough, that we won’t have the courage to really make changes that will transform our church and the world.

There is also a larger question that I started pondering after seeing this particular video. If we are doing something right globally… if we are making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world in places like Nigeria and Indonesia and Russia… then how will these proposals affect that work? Are we really talking about a problem with the UMC in the USA and parts of Eurpoe? And will a focus on American lackluster Christianity actually harm our global impact as a church?

What I see around me is not necessarily a problem only with United Methodism, but a problem with how American Christianity has been watered down and has lost its ability to truly claim a space in the world. Many young people my age have no interest in the church and do not believe it has any value or meaning for their lives. They can change the world without us. We have not articulated how we have something to offer… we have not connected with people in our country in a way that shares the true transformative power of a relationship with the church and with Jesus Christ. But that doesn’t mean that what we are doing is necessarily wrong for other parts of the world.

Maybe underlying this problem is another question: how can we contextualize the ministry of the church without losing our global unity? How can we continue to resource and support the amazing work we are doing on the African and Asian continents and at the same time make adjustments to our engagement with the American and European dechurched and unchurched? And will our current proposals hold up one at the expense of the other? Will our focus on vital congregations drift us towards congregationalism and isolationism? Or will it inspire us to learn from one another and from what is working in other parts of the world in a way that makes our connectionalism that much stronger?

My sister is waiting for me in China…

Posted on February 17, 2012Leave a comment

I love me a good singing and dancing show, so I was excited to hear the minds behind “Chicago” were turning their attention to television and a new network series about the theater and Broadway.

So far it has been a fairly good show… two episodes in. One of the “B” storylines is about how one writer, Julia, and her husband, Frank, are seeking to adopt a child from China. They have a teenage son, Leo, and have been talking about this for a long time. In episode 102, the father character begins to have doubts about the length of the process and if it is worth it.

In response, Leo gets angry… He, too, has been looking forward to this new addition to their family. As he talks with his mom, he says very plainly:

you said that my sister is in China, that she’s waiting for us in China. She’s waiting for us to come and get her… What is going to happen to her if we don’t go and get her?

Part of the adoption preparation includes writing a letter to the birth mother. Of course, the child hasn’t even been born yet, and they don’t know who this woman will be, but it is an exercise in planning for their future.

Julia’s letter goes like this:

To the birth mother of my daughter,

Our lives are so far distant from each other. It as if neither of us exists. I will never know you. Even though you will give birth to her, my daughter may never know you as well. But I want you to know, I will guard her like a lion. I will raise her with love. I will protect her from the wounds of lonliness. She will be a child of two lands and she will wear that knowledge with pride. And at night, we will call to you on the wind, and perhaps you will hear us and know that she is safe.

It was a powerful moment, but this whole idea of thinking about a family you don’t know half way across the world got me thinking about our Christian family. We are often willing to imagine our brothers and sisters in Christ as the folks who attend church with us and who live down the street, but we sometimes forget about the ones who are halfway across the world.

When we choose to follow Christ and when we are adopted as sons and daughters of the living God, we become children not of two lands… but two families. We have mothers and brothers and fathers and daughters… but our family becomes wider. Our vision expands. Our hearts grow in the knowledge that somewhere in China or Nigeria or Switzerland there is a sister who is waiting for us… a brother who wants to share in the love of the body of Christ.

I have heard it said sometimes that we should spend less time taking care of people and sending missionaries half way across the world, because there are people in our back yards who need us to. But I think when we embrace the love of God that statement becomes a false dichotomy. Our brothers and sisters are right here in our midst, but they are also on the other side of the planet. If we let go of the boundaries of municipalities and nations… if we let go of the division of race and class… if we began to imagine each child of God as someone who is a part of our family, how might our ministry change? Would we promise to raise them with love? Would we dedicate ourselves to protect them from the wounds of not only lonliness, but war and famine and disease? As Leo asks, “What is going to happen if we don’t go and get her?” What will happen if we ignore our brothers and sisters when they need us the most?