United Methodist Church – Salvaged Faith

UMC 101: An Inclusive Church

Posted on February 20, 2022Leave a comment

Text: Luke 5:17-26, Book of Discipline – Constitution Preamble and ¶1-5, ¶140, and the new 6

Over this last month as we have worshipped with one another, there has been a recurring theme at the core of our tradition: God’s grace and love is for all.

The prevenient grace of God stretches out to all people, inviting them in.

When we become disciples, we are called to reach out in love to do no harm and do good to all we meet.

Grounded in the core of our faith, we create space for difference and open our arms to encounter people with varying languages and cultures and traditions.

We believe that God reigns over all of human existence, and we trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us as we seek responses that share the healing and redeeming love of God with all people.

And we go out, each uniquely gifted and equipped, to make disciples of all peoples and transform the world.

In our statement on inclusiveness in our Book of Discipline (¶140) we say:

“We recognize that God made all creation and saw that it was good. As a diverse people of God who bring special gifts and evidences of God’s grace to the unity of the Church and to society, we are called to be faithful to the example of Jesus’ ministry to all persons.
Inclusiveness means openness, acceptance, and support that enables all persons to participate in the life of the Church, the community and the world.”

In our Constitution, we proclaim that “all persons are of sacred worth” and “all persons without regard to race, color, national origin, status, or economic condition, shall be eligible“ to worship, participate, receive the sacraments, and become members of the church. (¶4)

The church… the Body of Christ… is for all… and needs all.

But the truth is we need these kinds of statements, because we have not always lived out this truth.

As we talked about last week, sometimes we have been more of a fortress protecting those inside, rather than a force out in the world seeking all people.

We have placed barriers on who was welcome and how they could participate.

We have created separations between races, genders, and classes.

Over the last few weeks in our Confirmation class, we have been exploring our United Methodist history. Each student presented on a different topic or person from our past and together we learned about people who did not experience the church as inclusive and open to all.

We learned about Richard Allen, a freed black man and ordained pastor who was sidelined in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He left our denomination due to the discrimination and formed the African Methodist Episcopal – or AME Church.

We learned about Anna Howard Shaw, who felt a call to ministry but was denied ordination in the MEC. In her journal she wrote, “I am no better and no stronger than a man, and it is all a man can do to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil, without fighting his Church as well.” (Story of a Pioneer, p. 123-124). She left the denomination and was ordained by the Methodist Protestant Church in 1880.

The Methodist Protestants themselves had left the denomination after growing concerns about the power of clergy and the exclusion of lay people from decisions.

The Free Methodists broke away from the denomination over their concerns for the poor after New England churches began the practice of charging for your spot in the pew!

Or what about the story of Bishop Andrews who gained slaves through each of his marriages and refused to set them free… his story became part of the rationale for why the Methodist Episcopal Church, South broke away from the rest of the denomination.

When the MEC, MEC South, and Methodist Protestants eventually merged back together in 1939, we learned about the segregation of the African American clergy and churches in the Central Jurisdiction.

We can find throughout our history these stories of exclusion.

But along the way, there were also folks who exemplified the spirit of our scripture reading for today… friends and colleagues who have torn down walls, built new structures, shattered glass ceilings, and burst through roofs in order to bring people to Christ.

Mark and Luke tell us the story of the crowds who gathered to hear Jesus preach in Capernaum. Five friends came together, four of them carrying their friend who was paralyzed.

But as anyone who might be vertically challenged like myself can attest, it is difficult to see over a crowd.

And it must have been even more so for this man on his mat.

The group tried to shoulder their way in closer, but to no avail.

And then they got creative.

They climbed to the top of the roof and began taking a part the tiles to make an opening above Jesus so they could lower him down.

They refused to let their friend sit out on the curb.

He, as much as any other, was a child of God who belonged at the feet of Jesus.

Do you know what I noticed in this pericope reading it this week…

It doesn’t say that they brought their friend in order to be healed.

There are many stories where people specifically brought people to Jesus to be healed, but that phrase is not used here.

The crowds gathered wanted to hear Jesus preach and to hear the good news.

Why would we assume anything different about this paralytic man?

In fact, Mark Arnold reminded me this week of how Jesus responds to this act of home vandalism. “Jesus sees the faith of the man and his friends first and includes him in his ministry of grace and forgiveness… only referring to the man’s disability when challenged about his authority.” (https://theadditionalneedsblogfather.com/2019/09/11/disability-sin-god-heaven/)

He goes on to write, “everyone, including disabled people, are made in God’s image.”

When we talk about inclusiveness in the church, we speak of our call to share the ministry of Jesus with all people and make sure that every person is able to participate fully in the life of not just the church, but the community, and the world. (¶140, p. 101)

It means “the freedom for the total involvement of all persons who meet the requirements… in the membership and leadership of the Church at any level and in every place.”

Our call to inclusiveness does not ask someone to adapt or change who they are in order to have a place at the table. It is a recognition of their faith and gifts and belovedness in God’s eyes… just as they are.

And it entails our commitment to “work towards societies in which each person’s value is recognized, maintained, and strengthened” through basic human rights and “equal access to housing, education, communication, employment, medical care, legal redress of grievances, and physical protection.”

It means speaking out against acts of hate or violence against people based on who they are.

And within the church, the call to inclusiveness means that sometimes we have to tear the roof off the house to make sure that everyone has access… or add a ramp or an elevator to the church.

It means utilizing assistive hearing devices and closed captioning on our facebook live stream.

One of the things that I think we have gained during Covid-tide is broadening how we make our worship accessible for our members who were homebound and we continue to mail the entire worship service to more than fifty homes every week. Where we can’t bring folks to church, we bring the church to them.

It means including youth and young people on our leadership teams and making commitments to protect children through our Safe Sanctuaries policies.

Here at Immanuel, it meant changing our maternity leave policy to a parental leave policy.

And it also means, as we say in our Constitution, that the church “shall confront and seek to eliminate racism, whether in organizations or in individuals, in every facet of its life and in society at large.”

I mentioned before the how we institutionalized racism through the Central Jurisdiction here in the United States. Just as those four friends literally changed the structure of that home, Confronting racism sometimes means changing our denominational structures and I give thanks that the Methodist Church eliminated the Central Jurisdiction with the insistence of the EUB church as part of the merger that formed the United Methodist Church in 1968.

But this also includes learning about and repenting of our history, as well as actively seeking to not just make room at our table for neighbors who are black, indigenous, or people of color… but building new tables – together.

As a predominately white congregation, this might entail intentionally building relationships with people and church neighbors that look differently than us.

And, it means that we bust open the glass ceiling and do the same for women and girls who have faced discrimination in the church. In fact… this new paragraph on gender equality was only added through a constitutional amendment approved in 2016 and then ratified by annual conferences in 2019.

Still, there are more walls to tear down.

Another constitutional amendment failed by just 5% to meet the 2/3 threshold for implementation by annual conference votes.

Currently, our constitution proclaims that “no conference or other organizational unity of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member… because of race, color, national origin, status or economic condition.”

That amendment would have expanded our protected classes in the constitution to add gender, ability, age, and marital status.

We continue to go on to perfection.

As I think about what it means to be United Methodist today, I think about those five friends from our scripture.

I think about how each one of them was beloved by God and a person of sacred worth… just as they were.

And I think about how they worked together to make sure that all were able to be in the presence of Jesus.

Our call to inclusiveness in the church is a call to relationship and faithfulness.

It is about invitation and welcome.

It is about breaking down walls and tearing apart ceilings and fighting so that our friends and neighbors can all gather at the feet of Christ.

But it is also about owning up to the reality that along the way we have not always lived into this ideal and acknowledging the people who either chose to leave or were forced out of the church simply because of who they were.

I am reminded that my access and privilege to even stand here in this pulpit is not something to be taken for granted.

I remember the people who fought to make this a reality and look for ways to use my voice to speak up on behalf of others who are excluded.

May we, as United Methodists, continue to work to ensure that the doors of the church are open to all people, may we embrace one another with love and acceptance, and may we provide the kind of support that is needed so that all of our siblings can fully participate in the life of this church.

UMC 101: The Mission of the Church

Posted on February 6, 2022Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8

I think one of the greatest failures of the church today is that we put God into a very small box.

Jesus is our friend and companion.

The Holy Spirit holds our hand and brings us comfort in tough times.

The Father tenderly calls us to do the right thing.

These are all images that are safe and simple and focused on ourselves.

Not only are they woefully inadequate for encountering a world full of problems that are too big to tackle alone, but they can’t begin to capture the fullness of a God who is truly other… truly holy.

The prophet Isaiah begins to have visions.

Over and over he sees images of the failings of his nation and the bloodshed and oppression his own people have caused by relying on their own might to solve the problems they faced.

And then Isaiah has a vision of God.

A holy, living, powerful God.

Not a safe and gentle friend, but a vision of the Lord upon a throne.

God’s presence is so great and beyond comprehension that just the hem of God’s robe fills the temple.

And there are winged creatures, seraphim, flying around shouting at one another:

“Holy! Holy! Holy! Is the Lord of Heavenly Forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!” (Isaiah 6:3)

As the room shakes and fills with smoke, Isaiah isn’t comforted and he doesn’t feel safe and secure… he is afraid for his very life.

“Mourn for me; I’m ruined” he cries out.

He sees just how unholy he is compared to God.

He sees just how unworthy his neighbors and his nation are.

And he knows that this wholly other and almighty God sees it all too.

But then this God does something unexpected.

God’s holiness draws close.

A glowing coal touches Isaiah’s lips and his sin and his guilt are gone.

But this isn’t just about Isaiah.

It isn’t just about one person encountering the holiness of God, repenting of their sin, and being forgiven.

The way some of our churches live out this story today, Isaiah would have gone home from this incredible experience, assured of his salvation, stay loosely connected with his faith community, and hold on to this memory when things were tough.

That’s how we too often treat faith, isn’t it?

But that isn’t the end of this story.

The voice of God thunders throughout that space asking… “Whom shall I send? Who will go?”

How will this world be transformed from a place of sin and death?

Who will call people to repentance and carry the message of love and forgiveness?

And forever transformed by his encounter with the holiness of God, Isaiah realizes he has a job to do.

It will be hard and messy and frustrating and full of joy and power and love.

But he takes up the call and allows God to send him back into the world to transform it.

You know, if I were to sum up the core of the gospel message that Jesus proclaims it just might be: God loves you, God forgives you, and God has a job for you.

Every day, in a thousand different ways, God is inviting us to participate in the reign of God’s kingdom.

God is asking, whom shall I send into this world to fulfill my reign and realm in this world?

And the church has stepped up to say, “Send us!”

Our Book of Discipline lays out for us our purpose:

“The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor, thus seeking the fulfillment of God’s reign and realm in the world.” (p. 93)

The text goes on to say that “whenever United Methodism has had a clear sense of mission, God has used our Church to save persons, heal relationships, transform social structures, and spread scriptural holiness, thereby changing the world. In order to be truly alive, we embrace Jesus’ mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and to make disciples of all peoples.” (p.94)

I just love that phrase… in order to truly be alive…

You see, we believe that when we encounter the holy, awesome, expansive, presence of God it changes us.

It transforms us from those who are dead in our sin into those who are alive in the Spirit.

It empowers and emboldens us to head out into the world not as ordinary people, but as servants of Christ.

In order for the church to be alive it needs to be actively engaged in this work as well.

What does this look like, practically speaking?

Well, we good old “methodical” United Methodists are pretty clear about the process for carrying out this mission and making disciples. And we hold one another accountable to this process by tracking and monitoring how well we do each year:

First, we need to proclaim the gospel! And this isn’t just about my sermons on Sunday mornings. It is about how all of us share the good news of Jesus in our daily lives.

It is about how we show the world that we love God and love our neighbors. Or as the Book of Discipline puts it, “the visible church of Christ as a faithful community of persons affirms the worth of all humanity and the value of interrelationship in all of God’s creation.” (¶124, p. 94)

We connect people to one another, we connect issues to our faith, and we connect all of it to God.

Each year in our statistical reports, we take note of how well we are doing in this area by reporting our church demographics and who we are reaching.

It probably isn’t much of a surprise to you, but the professing membership of our congregation is predominantly white and just over 60% female.

About 30% of our participants in Christian formation groups are children or youth and just 3% of our participants are between the ages of 19-30.

These kinds of statistics challenge our local church to think about how we might reach out to younger and more diverse people by building new relationships in our daily lives.

Second, we help our neighbors experience God’s grace as they repent and turn to faith in Jesus. Just as Isaiah confronted his own sin and received forgiveness, we proclaim a need for transformation in hearts and lives. One ofthe primary ways we do this is by sharing the message of God with people in our times of worship.

We talk about the sins and concerns of this world and God’s intentions for all the earth, we hear about the grace of God, and we give people the opportunity to respond.

And so every year, we keep track of how many people are worshipping with our faith community, and how many baptisms, professions of faith, and new members our church has witnessed.

In 2020, before the pandemic, our church had an average worship attendance of about 160. What has been amazing is that even throughout this difficult time, we have grown the number of people who worship with us each week. When you combine our in-person and online attendance, we have been reaching, on average, just over 180 people every Sunday!

In this past year, we welcomed five new people to our faith community, baptized two little ones, and are supporting twelve students as they go through the confirmation process.

The third thing that we believe the church does as we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world is help people to grow in their own Christian life. This happens in worship, for sure, but also in small groups, conversations, leadership opportunities, and the various places we share our gifts with one another and the world.

One of the biggest ways that we can see that our church is alive and continues to thrive is that even as we suspended some of our opportunities, we adapted and created new ways to grow.

We have studied scripture on Zoom, included younger folks in our brass group, brought in new leaders for Sunday school, continued to include those who moved away in online opportunities, and expanded teams to support and encourage our elders, our teachers, and our college students.

When you add up all of the individuals who have participated in some kind of ministry opportunity in this last year, 229 people have been nurtured in their faith through this church.

Fourth, we give people opportunities to say, “Here I am, send me!” As the Book of Discipline puts it, we “send persons into the world to live lovingly and justly as servants of Christ by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, freeing the oppressed, being and becoming and compassionate, caring presence, and working to develop social structures that are consistent with the gospel.” (¶122, p. 94)

Our call is to put faith and love into practice in real and tangible ways that make a difference for our neighbors and transform this world more into God’s realm each day.

As a church, we keep track of the number of folks who serve in mission and community ministries that our church sponsors… from Joppa, to Hawthorne Hill, to CFUM meals, to Trunk or Treat, and more. 131 members of this church actively engaged in this work… and we know so many of you are engaged beyond this church too in service and work of advocacy and justice.

Together, we try to not only see, but respond to the hungers that people experience in their lives… not just for food, but for safety, for healing, and for relationship.

And we do all these things not just once… but over and over again. In our work of putting faith and love into action, our witness continues to make disciples who will transform the world.

You know, I have to be honest.

In this season where the world is talking about the “Great Resignation” and the stretch and strain so many people are feeling, it is hard to get excited about recommitting and increasing our engagement with the church of Jesus.

Not only are we busy, but we are tired. And for all sorts of legitimate reasons.

One of the reasons we put God into that small little box is because we aren’t sure that we really can take on one more responsibility.

It seems easier to hold God at arms length… to focus only on the small differences God makes in your daily life… instead of worrying about anyone else.

But friends, the holy and awesome and terrifying power and presence of God is here!

The whole earth is full of God’s glory!

“Woe is me!” Isaiah cried out.

He was ready to die, give up, give in…

And the holy power of God gave him the ability to say, “Here I am… send me.”

And our church believes that in order to truly be alive… to be energized and empowered… then we have to let that burning coal of God’s love and mercy and grace touch our hearts.

We have to “embrace Jesus’ mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and to make disciples of all peoples.” (p. 94)

Take a moment to rest and rejuvenate your spirit…

But also know that the Holy Spirit is ready to set your heart and your life on fire.

And friends… the good news is that we don’t have to do this work alone.

Each one of us within this Body of Christ called Immanuel has a unique gift and role to play… whether it is praying, or leading, or giving of your resources, or doing the hands on tasks of ministry.

Here at Immanuel, we embrace this vision of discipleship. We believe that we follow Jesus as we connect with one another… as we worship and repent and confess our faith… as we grow in community… and as we go together to the world.

All of us, together, with God’s help… can not only be disciples… but make disciples… and transform this world.

Again & Again, God Shows the Way

Posted on March 7, 2021Leave a comment

Text: John 2:13-22

From the beginning of time, God has been trying to show us the way.

The way to abundant life.

The way to shalom.

We catch a glimpse of how God wants us to live in the laws of Scripture, which Bible scholar, Walter Bruggemann describes as “God’s full intention for the life of creation.”

But again and again, that intention is distorted in our lives.

Many years ago, our family visited Arnold’s Park at Lake Okoboji.

One of the highlights was the tilted house. Walking sideways on crooked steps and the ceilings seem to shrink above you feels odd and disconcerting.

We all know what a house should look like and feel like, and this was not it.

From there, my neice dragged me to the house of mirrors.

As we stood in front of skinny mirrors and fat mirrors and wavy mirrors, she giggled and pointed as we were transformed into creatures we didn’t recognize.

One minute I had mile-long legs and the next a neck as long as a giraffe.

We laughed and told stories about what it would be like to live with really tall tummies and itty-bitty heads.

I have to admit, I found the sight less amusing that she did.

The distortions brought what I perceived to be my flaws into greater focus and blew them out of proportion… or reduced my favorite feature into something grotesque.

We’ve been talking a lot about reality for the last few weeks… and how we come to know what is true about ourselves and our faith.

Sometimes, we don’t realize that we have been looking at ourselves through funhouse mirrors.

We think we know what is true and real about ourselves and our communities.

But perhaps, we have simply been living for too long in a tilted house full of funhouse mirrors.

We have grown familiar and comfortable with the distortion.

So when God shows us a more excellent way, it can feel like our world gets turned upside down and inside out.

So often, Jesus is portrayed as a gentle soul who walks alongside us and listens to our thoughts.

Yet how often does he do the unexpected?

He shows up in places he shouldn’t, loves the unloveable, calls the unworthy and brings us life through his death.

Instead of allowing us to stay comfortably where we are, the Christ we meet in the scriptures challenges everything we know.

In our reading this morning from John, Jesus is in Jerusalem for the annual Passover festival.

Those making the long trip would not have brought the animals required for sacrifice with them, but the streets and Temple would have been packed with vendors offering animals for sale.

Others exchanged currency so that titles and offerings could be made in coinage that did not bear a human image, like the Greek and Roman coins did.

This was the normal, expected way of doing things.

This was routine life in the Temple, especially around the holy days.

Without these vendors, the system just didn’t work.

This structure, with its rules and order, vendors and priests, were all part of how an individual made a connection with the presence of God.

You jumped through the hoops because that was the system.

But as God reaches out to show us another way, some of those systems needed to change.

God wanted to take up residence not within the curtains of the inner sanctuary of a building, but to lay aside glory and be born among us.

This is the moment, for John, when the new understanding of the Temple is born.

overturn
by lisle gwynn garrity
inspired by john 2:13-22
sanctifiedart.org

Jesus begins flipping over tables.

He disrupts the system.

He takes everything we knew and turned it upside down and inside out.

It is chaos and disorder and it will take days for the Temple to get up and running again.

All eyes turn to Jesus and the religious leaders cry out, “By what authority are you doing these things?”

“Who on earth do you think you are?”

They need something to make sense of what has just happened and why everything is in disarray.

Jesus responds by pointing to his own body, the very dwelling place of God.

This story is not about the moneychangers or the Temple… but about Jesus.

It is a caution against any institutional systems and structures that have distorted and twisted our ability to see what God is doing in our midst.

More than once in the history of faith, the Holy Spirit has moved in our churches and turned over some tables and the church failed to respond because of rules and traditions.

A new opportunity for ministry gets snuffed out by people who don’t catch the vision.

A church gets so wrapped up in what color their carpet is that they can’t see the neighbors in need outside their door.

Someone experiences a call to follow Jesus, but the book of rules says that it just can’t be possible.

From the inclusion of women in ministry, to the welcoming of immigrant communities of faith, to the questions we are wrestling with today over whether we will embrace LGBTQ+ people in the life of the church… I have seen time and time again that our systems and our rules and our traditional ways of doing things can get in the way of the very presence of God in our midst.

I love the United Methodist Church… most days…

But as Jesus turns over the tables in the Temple this week, I can’t help but think about the systems that we have put in place that keep us from the real ministry of Christ in this world.

This week, we announced the necessary postponement of our 2020 General Conference to the fall of 2022. With it comes a virtual meeting in May, to approve suspending our rules, so that we can vote by mail on twelve items to keep the institution functioning.

A friend and colleague, Rev. Andy Bryan put it this way:

“I am part of a denomination that needs to set a meeting to suspend our rules so that we can create new rules to dictate what we are supposed to do when we cannot meet to create rules.”

From unnecessary paperwork, inflexible constitutions, timelines that are out of sync with the world, and standards for ministry that deny the way the Holy Spirit moves in the lives of people… if we could flip some tables and transform some systems to better support ministry, we all would benefit.

A lot of us are asking hard questions about what it really means to be the church and do the ministry of Jesus.

For too long, we made a home in a system that felt comfortable… for us.

But the walls were crooked and the mirrors have been distorting who we thought we were.

We are coming to terms with how our institution has supported racist policies and colonial attitudes and are seeing the Holy Spirit move from the margins and tear down walls and chains that have been keeping us from the way of Jesus.

God, after all, does not dwell in the boxes we have created or the books we have written.

God desires more than rituals and rules.

And in our scripture for this morning, we see that lived out… for even with the Temple disrupted, people found a way to celebrate Passover.

They found ways to praise God and remember their history.

It wasn’t the building or the specific rituals that were important… but their relationship with the God who came and dwelt among them and led them out of oppression… the one who showed them what it means to truly live.

A drawing of a bird

Description automatically generated with medium confidence

The Akan people of Ghana have a concept called Sankofa…

San… ko… fa…

In their language it means to go back and take what you need to go forward.

They represent this idea with the image of a bird, reaching back to take an egg from its back.

When we realize that we’ve been living in tilted houses and looking into funhouse mirrors, sometimes the best way to move forward is to go back and remember who we are.

To remember our call to love God and to love our neighbor.

To remember the plan for God’s shalom and the foundation of our life together in the commandments.

To remember that God has already shown us what is good: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

This year, our lives have been turned upside down and inside out.

But in so many ways, we, too, have had the opportunity to embrace the idea of Sankofa.

We’ve returned to the basics of our family life.

We’ve spent time reaching out in love and care to one another.

We’ve remembered that God doesn’t just live inside the sanctuary here at Immanuel, but is present in our homes and our work, too.

We’ve embraced generosity towards our neighbors.

As the tables of our lives… and our church… have been turned over this year… I’m grateful for how God’s love has shown the way.

In just a few minutes, we are going to gather around the table and share in communion.

Before we do, we want to share with you the theme song for this Lenten series… “Again and Again” by the Many.

As you watch and listen and pray, we also invite you to gather whatever elements you have at home and bring to them to your table… or coffee table… or set them in front of you.

Pour yourself a glass of juice.

Break apart your roll or donut or slice of bread and make sure each person in your home has a piece.

Let your hearts and minds and bodies prepare for the invitation to meet God right where you are.

Salvaging Faith in 2020

Posted on January 22, 2020Leave a comment

It’s been a while.

A long time since I just sat down to write without a deadline looming.

Without it being someone else’s project.

Without the pressure to say just the right thing for a specific audience.

It’s been a long time since I wrote just for me.

I started this blog in the summer of 2007 as a place to reflect and muse and capture all of the parts of myself, my story, my tradition that were important to keep carrying with me into the future. In many ways, the idea of salvaging all of these pieces of faith were intended to be a way of curating ideas that had value and meaning and importance in my life.

It never really mattered if anyone else read these pages, although it has been really nice to have company along the way 🙂

But somewhere in the midst of the busyness of church and other people’s projects and my marriage I just stopped writing. I stopped reflecting. I stopped looking around and processing what was happening in my life in this particular way.

But I have some time now.

Monday began a four week renewal leave from my church and one of my primary goals was to spend some of my time right here at the keyboard. Not because there is anything important I have to say, but because the very act of thinking and writing and processing itself is a spiritual practice that has been missing from my journey.

The fact that it took me a day or two to actually sit down with the laptop says a little bit of something about the hesitation that I’m feeling about doing so. I think, in part, that is because so much of my life lately has revolved around the church. I’m afraid that if I sit down to write, I’ll just get sucked back in to it all. That I’ll lose my ability to truly disconnect for a few weeks and re-center myself in who I am.

So for now, here’s a list of things I’d like to write about:

How the Rooney Rule (and its mixed results) might provide guidance for the draft Book of Doctrines and Disciplines proposed by the WCA
Does wanting to preserve the parts of our connectional nature and structure that are working make me an institutionalist? And if so, can I live with / accept that label? What does it mean to salvage the best parts of who we are and take them with us into the future, instead of starting over?
Why I think the Protocol is our best option for the mission of the church to make disciples and transform the world
What I’ve learned about what it means to equip the saints… the hard way… from failing to do so and overfunctioning in a mid-sized church.

There.

Now those things are set to the side and off my mind. I might pick them back up in the next few weeks. Or maybe not.

After all, this leave is not about the UMC or my local church or my ministry there. It is about looking out at everything else in my life. My marriage, my family, my relationship with God, the things that make me laugh and feed my soul, my friendships. It is about taking some time to dig through everything else that makes me me and working to salvage the things I might have discarded or ignored or let lie fallow for a bit.

To pick up those pieces and put them back together in a way that feels whole and good and right.

And to relearn how to preserve and protect them so that when I head back to work, they don’t take a back burner.

Summary of 2019 General Conference Decisions – modified after Judicial Council Ruling

Posted on April 26, 201913 Comments

Decisions of the 2019 General Conference

Timeline for Implementation in Central Conferences

In general, when legislation before a GC is approved, it goes into effect on January 1 of the following year.
Central Conferences (outside the U.S.) have additional time because they are allowed to adapt and change the Book of Discipline to fit their context. These groups will not be meeting until after the 2020 General Conference. This legislation gives them until May of 2021 to implement any of the legislation we approved at this special session.

WESPATH Pension Liabilities and CRSP amendment.

These two pieces of legislation give guidance for if a local church leaves the UMC or if a clergy person terminates their conference relationship regarding pensions. The local church that leaves has to pay their share of unfunded pension liabilities.
An amendment was made that also notes that nothing in this legislation prevents the Annual Conference from collecting other obligations.
Clergy that terminate their relationship will have their pension benefits converted to the actuarial equivalent balance, which can continue to be invested in their personal defined contribution account through Wespath.

Traditional Plan

The eight petitions that will be implemented as of January 1, 2020 are:
- 90032 #1 Update of the footnote that describes what a “self-avowed practicing homosexual” is according to recent Judicial Council decisions. This does not essentially change our Book of Discipline, rather notes current rulings.
- 90036 #5 Expands episcopal responsibilities by adding that Bishops are prohibited from consecrating, commissioning, or ordaining people who are self-avowed homosexuals. (NOTE: Everywhere else in our Book of Discipline we use the word “practicing.” This word was inadvertently left off of this piece of legislation, but it was never amended by the body. This means that if someone is openly gay or lesbian, even if they are celibate, they cannot be consecrated/commissioned/ordained.)
- 90042 #11 Mandatory Minimum Penalties for clergy who have been convicted of conducting same-sex weddings or celebrations of homosexual unions: First offense – one year suspension without pay. Second offense – termination of conference membership and revocation of credentials. (Note: this is the ONLY mandatory penalty we have in the Book of Discipline)
- 90043 #12 The District Committee on Ordained Ministry and Board of Ordained Ministry cannot approve/recommend for candidacy, licensing, commissioning or ordination, someone who does not meet the qualifications for ordained ministry (which include being a self-avowed practicing homosexual). The bishop shall rule unqualified candidates out of order.
- 90044 #13 When a complaint/charge is brought to the Bishop regarding a violation, the Bishop has discretion about how to proceed. Now, the Bishop cannot dismiss the complaint, unless it has no basis in law or fact.
- 90045 #14 One of the results of a complaint/charge is a Just Resolution. Now, Just Resolutions have to name all identified harms and how they will be addressed. The unconstitutional part is that it has to also include a commitment not to repeat the violation. This line is removed and the rest remains.
- 90046 #15 One of the results of a complaint/charge is a Just Resolution. This changes the process so that the complainant has to be part of the process and has to agree with the resolution.
- 90047 #16 One of the results of a complaint/charge is a church trial. Previously, the Church could not appeal those decisions. This legislation allows the Church to appeal to the committee on appeals or to the Judicial Council.

Disaffiliation – Taylor/Minority Report Version

If a local church wants to disaffiliate over matters of human sexuality this is the process that can be used from Feb 27, 2019– Dec 31, 2023. It requires a 2/3 majority vote of professing members present at the church conference. Terms will be negotiated with conference Board of Trustees w/ advice of cabinet, and other conference officers. Standard terms will include: being able to leave with property with the exiting church paying for legal/transfer fees, any unpaid apportionments from the previous 12 months plus an additional 12 months of apportionments, its share of unfunded pension liabilities, and payment or assumption of all debts/loans/liabilities prior to departure. The annual conference has to approve such an exit by a simple majority.

Thinking about running as a General Conference Delegate?

Posted on March 27, 2019Leave a comment

A number of people have reached out to ask about what my experience was, what they need to know, what all is involved. Here are some of my initial thoughts… and if there are comments/questions I’ll continue to expand and update this in response.

I am still praying and discerning whether I want to do this again, but even typing this all out has been helpful for that process to me!

Time Commitment

Reading/Studying of Legislation (see below) – take a few hours, every week, from November/December – May
Two or three retreats with the delegation (usually a Friday-Saturday) where we discuss legislation, hear from experts and interest groups about why they think particular legislation is important, and build relationships
General Conference itself – two full weeks – 24/7… it’s life-giving and exhausting all at the same time… like Annual Conference stretching on x5.
Jurisdictional Conference – far less of both a time and emotional/spiritual commitment… focused on electing Bishops, less on actual legislation
Things to consider:
Do I have the support of my family, work, etc. to give time to this commitment? This is a big stressful endeavor and what you don’t want is the additional stress of deadlines, resentments, etc.
Am I prepared to do the extra work of spiritual/emotional/physical self-care to keep myself healthy (in all aspects) for this process? You have to get enough sleep, drink lots of water, pray, have good resiliency.

The legislation preparation… I think to be a good delegate, you need to be prepared to know your legislation.

You will be assigned to a particular committee, and you are going to be the expert on that section so that you can teach/explain what is being discussed there to others on the delegation. I worked to prepare charts, summaries, etc for my fellow delegates.
There are 12 committees that correspond with different areas of our life together, like judicial administration, faith and order, local churches, etc.
Others on the delegation will become experts on the other areas, but you should also have read and how you want to vote on everything before you get to General Conference.
I used a lot of tabs, highlighters, different colored pens… whatever you need to do to mark-up your legislation so that you know what you’d like to support, where you have questions, any changes you’d like to see made, etc.
You also need to work to familiarize yourself with Roberts Rules of Order (at least the basics) and to have a good sense of what is in our Book of Discipline. Part of my prep included adding tabs to make it easier to navigate my BoD so I knew where different sections were. I worked to figure out what the BoD said in my section in particular, so I could see what the changes in legislation meant.

General Conference Itself

First week is legislative committees. The one you are assigned to will meet and your smaller group (75ish people) will work through every item in your section. You will make amendments, argue for and against, etc.

You will elect a chair, vice chair, and secretary – these are VERY important positions, and so if you don’t know folks, turn to people who might share your perspective to get some advice about who would be good in those positions and why. I think its important that they be fair and unbiased, rather than on your side. These positions, especially the chair, have a lot of power as to who gets to speak within that group.
Because this is a smaller group, you really do have the ability to be heard here. Raise your hand. Go to the mic. Ask questions. Make changes. This is the place to really shape the process.
Everything that has an affirmative vote of a certain percentage in legislative committee goes to a consent calendar to be voted on in a block.
Everything else, or things that have minority reports, will be addressed individually by the larger body.
If you aren’t happy with how something turns out in voting, you can create or sign on to a minority report. This will then bring your perspective back to the larger body.
I had an amazing experience in my legislative committee. We broke into two subgroups and so thirty of us had really good conversation, listened well, made friendships, worked to build consensus… it was the beauty of the process at work!

Consent Calendars

These are published on one day, and then the next day we vote on them.
You have to pay attention to them. Your homework each night is to look individually at the consent calendars and to go back to your notes of what you want to support or not. I usually then transfer my notes back to the consent calendar.
If there are things you don’t agree with that are on the consent calendar, they can be removed. This is done by filling out a form and getting 20 other signatures. Then it comes before the body later for a discussion.

Plenary Discussion

We will vote on whole consent calendars at once, or on individual pieces of legislation. You have the ability to speak for, against, amend, ask questions, etc.
Plenary is VERY different from legislative committees. It is much harder to get to speak. You register electronically to do so and then the presiding bishop calls on you. I like to talk and interact and engage… and to not be able to say something or to be waiting all day and never get the opportunity to do so is part of the process.
I have found these discussions to be brutal. Emotions/Spirits are high. People are polarized. Our process here is very unhealthy and doesn’t lend well to what we think of as Christian Conferencing.
This is the part of the process where you need the most emotional/spiritual/physical resiliency.

Worship – don’t skip it – it is often the most life-giving and replenishing part of what we do. These folks have worked hard to help support us and to keep us focused on God and I have always found it to be balm to my soul.

You can’t do it alone.

There are group chats/apps/discussions going from various caucus groups. Get connected with them. Things, particular in plenary, move so fast and sometimes it is hard to understand what is happening. These groups often have connected folks who understand polity well who help to explain why something is being said or what the process is. They also can provide quick updates as to the impact of amendments. You are absolutely free to still vote your conscience, but they provide some helpful suggestions.
These groups also provide emotional/social support. You get to know people and find out when meet-ups are and can build connectional relationships.
Take time to have meals with others… listen to people you disagree with to see where they are coming from. Explain your positions not to convince, but to help them understand, too.
Let others help you and support you.

Bible 101: Art, Science, History of Interpretation

Posted on February 10, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Luke 11: 27-28

Over these last few weeks in Bible 101, we have explored how our scriptures were put together, translated, and some of the creative tension that was baked into the text itself.
Today, our focus is on interpretation. Once we understand what a scripture meant in the time and place it was written, how do we then live and apply it today.
After all, Jesus said that blessed are those who hear God’s word and obey it, who put it into practice, who allow it to shape how they think and live.

There is part of me that wants to offer you six simple rules for interpretation.
To give you a set of guidelines to follow.
To say this is the United Methodist way of approaching scripture.
But the reality is, interpretation is messier than a list of how-to instructions.
It is as much an art as it is a science.
It is as much about the mystery of the Holy Spirit as it is about the rigid teachings of our ancestors.
And because of that, faithful United Methodists today disagree about how to read and apply scripture.

That was the struggle lifted up by our friend, Al Lockin, near the beginning of our Bible 101 series. What are we to make of our differences? How can we read the same text and come to such different conclusions?
When we hear the word, but our interpretation of scripture leads us to obey, to practice, to live out the teaching of Jesus in different ways, what do we do about it?
This particular question is so important for this moment in the life of our church, because in just two weeks, our denomination will hold a four-day conference in St. Louis. The reason we need to have this big meeting is because we don’t agree on how to interpret and live out the scriptures as they relate to LGBTQ+ persons. As I shared with you last summer during our series on A Way Forward, faithful Christians read the same six scriptures and come to different conclusions about what they mean for us today.
And while in some ways what we are debating in St. Louis is that interpretation, the deeper question, the bigger question is actually this: are we willing to continue to be a part of a church, of a community, of a denomination with people who disagree with us?

So today, I want to step back from the rules and guidelines of interpretation. I want to offer a reminder that confronting differences in how we live and apply scriptures is not something new.
In fact, scripture itself lifts up the reality that faithful people interpret things differently.
As we have shared these past few weeks, even the Torah itself, those first five books of scripture, hold within them contradictions and tensions and different interpretations of events.
Were there two of every kind of animal, or for some animals on Noah’s ark were there actually seven pairs? Well… it depends on if you are reading the interpretation of the priests or of the other oral traditions.
Our biblical canon even contains different historical accounts – in the books of Kings and Chronicles, we find different takes on the same events, told from different perspectives. It would be like holding in your hands two different histories on George Washington – one told from a military expert writing in the 1800s and the other from a modern day expert in leadership… you are going to get different stories… but its all about the same set of events.

When we get to the time of Jesus, the recognized and agreed upon texts of the Jewish faith were fairly established… but there were different schools of thoughts and ways of understanding what those texts meant and how we were called to live them out.
Earlier this week, I posted in our facebook group a video from Rob Bell that talks about what it meant to be a disciple in the time of Jesus.
While all children would have learned and would have memorized the torah… the first five books of scripture… after the age of ten, most children would finish their education and would go and learn their family trade.
But what Bell describes as “the best of the best of the best” would embark on a new phase of education.
They would go and apply to become a disciple of a particular rabbi whose teaching that student wanted to embody. One rabbi might look at a verse and say that this is what it means…. But a different rabbi from a different town might look at it slightly differently. And they would commit their life to learning from that rabbi.

One of the things that tends to happen, however, when you have different ways of interpreting God’s message is those differences can become institutionalized.
In the gospels, we see a number of schools of thought present… kind of like different denominations today.
The Pharisees held together the written law of the scriptures with an oral tradition of interpretation called the Talmud. They believed in an after life and that a messiah was coming to usher in a new age. Much of their practice was shaped not around the temple, but around gatherings in synagogues.
The Sadducees rejected that oral teaching and focused only on what was written in the law. And since there is no mention of an afterlife in the Torah, they didn’t believe in one. They also focused their practice around the Temple. A unique feature for a group that held close to a literal interpretation of their texts is that they were open to much of Greek thought and incorporated it into their teaching.
You’ll also find descriptions of the Essenes in this time. This was a sort of monastic movement with strict dietary laws and a commitment to celibacy. Their relationship to the written and oral law was often more spiritualized and we have discovered writings like the Dead Sea Scrolls from communities like the Essenes that show us very different ways of approaching the life of faith.

Much of our New Testament, aside from the gospels, was written by Paul – a Pharisee, taught by the Rabbi Gamaliel, who was a student of Hillel. One of the more fascinating things that I found as I was doing research for this message is that Hillel was known for his seven rules of interpretation… and many have worked to draw parallels between those seven rules and the writings of Paul and how Paul himself worked to interpret Jewish scriptures into early Christian teaching.

As the church began to be established, one of the things that the early Christian leaders did was to try to form a standard, a core set of beliefs that we all hold in common together. We call these creeds. For example, the apostle’s creed was not written by the apostles, but summarizes the core of that teaching. Let’s turn to page 881 and read aloud the traditional version together.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;*
the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic** church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

But as time has moved on from this time of creedal confessions, we have watched as time after time, our different ways of understanding God and the scriptures have created new schools of thought, and fractures and splinters and new denominations and movements… including the United Methodist Church.

In our core scripture for today, Jesus has been teaching the disciples and was casting out demons. Even in the midst of that miracle – there were different interpretations happening in the crowd around what was happening.
One woman finally shouts out – Blessed is the woman who gave birth to you!
I find this a really thing to shout out in this moment, but perhaps one of the reasons she felt the need to raise her voice is that in the midst of all of the conflict and chaos of interpretation, she wanted to affirm where Jesus was coming from.
She wanted to celebrate his particular brand… his line of thinking… the people who formed and taught and shaped the way he was approaching scripture.

What I find really fascinating here is that Jesus challenges her words… It’s those who hear God’s word and live it, obey it, put it into practice that are blessed.

Our work is not to focus on the people who formed us, or the rabbis we follow or the perspectives we belong to. Our job is not to get so stuck in one school of thought or to be focused on the past.
Our job is to take God’s word and live it out.
Our responsibility is to take ownership ourselves for how we put into practice the faith that has been handed down to us.
In fact, one of the core teachings of the United Methodist Church is that we believe it is the theological task of each and every single person not to regurgitate the work of others, but to engage with the scriptures and to wrestle with what they mean today.

In the past, we have talked about some of general framework in the United Methodist tradition for approaching scripture and applying it to faith today.
You’ve heard about the quadrilateral – scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.
But guess what… even faithful United Methodists don’t agree on THAT as a general framework… or how to apply it… or what to do when faced with disagreement between tradition and something like experience.

When we go back farther to the writings of John Wesley, I find some very helpful advice as we encounter our differences today.
One… he talked about being a man of one book… but he always had a number of other books in his hands…. Other translations of scripture… writings and teachings from history and tradition… wisdom from the natural sciences of his day… even a manual for how to heal people who were sick.
But over and over, he also reminded us that as we each engage in our work of interpretation, that personal responsibility, we are not called to do it alone. He formed people into groups of accountability. He reminded people of their call to be the church. And in various ways he reminded us that we are called to embrace humility and love and compassion when we are confronted with conflict in our interpretations.
As he wrote in his sermon on the Catholic Spirit “If your heart is as my heart, take my hand.”
In essentials unity, in non-essentials, liberty, in all things love.

GC2019: Committee On Reference

Posted on January 17, 20191 Comment

This past weekend, I was part of the meeting of the Committee on Reference for the General Conference.

Typically, our work focuses on assigning (or referring) petitions and legislation to various committees of the General Conference. But we were tasked with a new role in light of this special called General Conference.

As Paragraph 14 of our Constitution states: “the purpose of such a special session shall be stated in the call, and only such business shall be transacted as is in harmony with the purpose stated in such call unless the General Conference by a two-thirds vote shall determine that other business may be transacted.”

When our Bishops issued the initial call, it was “limited to receiving and acting upon a report from the Council of Bishops based on the recommendations of the Commission on a Way Forward.” And so, they asked our Judicial Council (basically our Supreme Court) – does that mean that we will ONLY discuss the report… or can others submit legislation, too?

The Judicial Council ruled that “petitions which are in harmony with any business which may be proposed in the Bishops’ Report are allowed.” And it would be up to the committees of General Conference to determine this. That committee – Committee on Reference.

Since then, to help with utter clarity, the call was amended so that the report is not the Bishops’ report… but the COWF report. So… our Committee on Reference was tasked with evaluating which, if any, of the 98 valid petitions submitted by any group or individual were “in harmony” with the business proposed in the COWF Report.

You can read the official report of our actions here and here.

Here are some of my general take-aways from our gathering. Our committee represents every central conference and every jurisdiction. We worked thoughtfully, carefully, and with a great spirit of openness. Every person set aside their own preferences to create criteria we thought were in line with the call for the conference. Knowing it was an entirely subjective process, I think the clarity of our criteria and the consensus around those criteria was powerful.
It was clear early on that anything having to do with bishops was seen as out of harmony… I think owing to the reality that globally we have very different understandings of the episcopacy. While the accountability piece is important for traditionalists, there was also a strong sense that those petitions were about changing the episcopacy and therefore not related to what we are there to do.

There were other petitions that would also have changed dynamics around the General Conference’s ability to make changes or create charges, or how we legislate. Those were also out of harmony for our more limited call. Same with a petition that would have impacted the judicial council.

What remains are petitions that are seen to directly relate to the inclusion or exclusion of LGBT persons (which is language that came out of the COWF as they narrowed their focus from human sexuality more broadly)… AND/OR petitions that we believe were designed to modify, correct, perfect the three COWF plans. What remains are plans that could essentially be seen as amendments or additions to the three plans.

We were not willing to entertain the possibility that dissolution was even remotely “in harmony” with the call of our special conference.

I think that is really helpful as we narrow our focus. As a delegate, I feel like we don’t have thirty plans to choose from… we have three… with a whole bunch of possible amendments to them. Even the Simple Plan or Fully Inclusive Plan could be seen as essentially amendments to the One Church Plan in that they remove the same things, but in a different way. The other more exclusive amendments to those paragraphs could be seen as amendments of the Traditionalist Plan. The “gracious exit” or “trust clause” petitions were seen as possible amendments to ANY plan – even though all of the plans didn’t include them, because one did, it was seen as something that could be valid for any/all.

THAT SAID… what our committee was NOT supposed to do was to think about the constitutionality of any petition. Some of what has been allowed through is clearly unconstitutional based upon what the Judicial Council has already ruled. It will be up to the General Conference to determine either to vote it down or to change it so that it is constitutional.