We are called Methodists for a reason

Perhaps my column in the Reporter this week is too strongly worded. But I don't think so.

All the so-called "experts" say that denominationalism is dead. They say that people don't want to identify with a denomination anymore. They say that denominations will be much better off pretending like they aren't denominations anymore.

I dismiss all of that "expert" opinion. Every bit of it.

We are part of a story - a history and a tradition that makes us who we are. As I have been reminded myself lately, we don't get to choose our own story. We are born into it, shaped by it, and we find our identities in it.

Our story is the story of Methodism. It is the story of a people who arose out of a response to an extraordinary call of the Holy Spirit. As I write in my column, "Originally intended as an epithet, the name [Methodist] came to be associated with a people who shunned religious pretension, practiced a rigorous discipleship, sought furiously after the way of salvation and relentlessly carried the gospel to the poor and lost."

Frankly, that's not an identity I particularly want to lose, anyway. Our recovery as a church - and by that I mean The United Methodist Church - will only come when we stop trying to follow what the culture identifies as the latest trend and start practicing the kind of discipleship that John Wesley instilled in his early followers.

Don't get me wrong. Christ ultimately desires unity for his church. And I think that is both a physical and a spiritual unity - one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. But that unity is not achieved by forsaking the distinctiveness of our tradition in favor of a bland, happy-go-lucky megachurch. Such a model only serves to imitate the surrounding pagan culture dressed up in religious language.

If we Methodists started acting like the Methodists of 1742, 1784, or 1824, it would be scary what the Holy Spirit could accomplish through us. That calling has never left us. Who will answer it in this day and age?

What would happen if we all tithed?

I read this article by Matt Vande Bunte in a recent edition of the United Methodist Reporter. The link will take you to the same article in the Chicago Tribune.

I'm familiar with the depressing statistics about the level of giving among American churchgoers. But it always helps to be reminded what the church could do if we all gave at the bare minimum of what God expects of us.

Citing an annual study of church giving, the article reports, "The study theorizes U.S. Christians could evangelize the world, stop the daily deaths of 29,000 children younger than 5 worldwide, provide elementary education across the globe and tackle domestic poverty - and have $150 billion left over annually - if church members tithed a full 10 percent of their income."

Wow. And you know what the average U.S. churchgoer gave as a percentage of income in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available?

(Drumroll please ...)

A whopping 2.56%!

There has simply got to be a way to help Christians understand that giving is a foundational part of discipleship. God, speaking through the prophet Malachi, makes it clear that giving less than a tithe is equivalent to robbery (Malachi 3:7-10).

Any ideas on how we can nurture better stewardship?

Read any good books, lately?

A parishioner at my former church e-mailed me the other day to ask what books I would recommend for a group preparing to go on mission.

That got me thinking. What books are really good for mission groups in preparation for service either at home or abroad? Do you have any recommendations?

I could think of three off the top of my head that I have used...

1) Gracias!, a journal from Henri Nouwen of his time as a missionary in Peru and Bolivia. This book is as readable and soul-searching as anything Nouwen wrote. I have used it specifically for groups going to Peru, but it would be very good for any mission in a Latin American context.

2) Yours Are The Hands Of Christ, by James C. Howell. This book, written by a United Methodist pastor, can be read either as a guide to discipleship or to mission (or both). It is written with a combination of erudition and anecdote, which is fitting from an author who has a Ph.D. (which Howell does) and is also a great preacher (which I have heard that he is). I would recommend this book for mission groups as well as small groups or Sunday school classes that are seeking to better understand Christ's call to discipleship in the world.

3) Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith, by George McGovern, Bob Dole, and Donald E. Messer. This is an interesting recent book that tackles the issue of global hunger from a non-partisan, faith perspective. It is good to use in a church with a wide range of political viewpoints because of the way McGovern and Dole approach their task. They assert that ending global hunger - a problem that disproportionately affects women and children - is an issue that all people of faith can agree on. They also claim that hunger can realistically be eliminated by the year 2030. The key is to figure out how to join (churches, governments, NGOs) together to get it done. The book has some deficiencies, and at times the contributions of Dole and Messer do not seem to match up to that of McGovern. (That's particularly disappointing in the case of Messer, who is a United Methodist ethicist and is supposed to be providing the theological heft to the book.) Still, it is a great book to use in preparation for a mission in the developing world. A mission team I led to Peru last summer read it beforehand, together with a lot of mutual prayer and joint physical preparation. The Holy Spirit really used this text to galvanize our attitude toward a children's feeding ministry in the location we were heading. It helped set the whole tone for our mission effort (as well as for continuing efforts after we returned).

I'd like to hear what books others are reading for mission and discipleship in the church.

Quiet desperation

Our generation has a crisis of 'meaning.'

That is, we have become confused about where we should find meaning in our lives.

If you ask people, they will say that they find meaning in life in all sorts of ways - their families, their faith, their jobs, their hobbies, and their recreational interests, etc.

And on the surface, that is true. But our culture (and by that I mean 'consumer culture,' roughly understood) teaches us to find meaning in purely market-driven, materialistic ways. We are told that our happiness is directly connected to what we have the ability to purchase. Meaning is equivalent to the acquisition of certain commodities.

And this is more than just a straightforward process of the advertising industry convincing a consumer to buy a certain product. It is rather the culture that has developed where we are encouraged to constantly spend in order to consume, consume in order to spend more, and keep a wary eye on our neighbor to find out what we should be consuming next.

In this environment, a man's insistence that he finds meaning in his family is corrupted by the market's definition of how that meaning is construed. His understanding of value in the family is tied directly to the home he has bought, the car he drives, the vacation he is able to take, and the entertainment system he is able to purchase. The accoutrements surrounding the family thus become the litmus test of the family's 'success' or level of happiness.

I think Gen X'ers instinctively realize that there is something deeply flawed about this market-driven, consumerist value system. But because we are immersed in it all day, everyday, we don't always know how to escape. To fight misery, we adopt a number of different strategies. One is to surrender to the system, attempting to lose yourself in complete and total participation in it. Another is to find a chemical release, through alcohol, illicit drugs, or prescription drugs. Both approaches are attempts to avoid the deep spiritual illness that results from trying to find meaning in an ultimately meaningless system.

Where should we find meaning, then? Scripture is clear that the only proper locus of meaning is love. It is love of God, who has created us and desires our full redemption. And it is love of our neighbor, who reflects the very image of God to us. When the church is living as the church should, it is the place where we can learn about that love.

I know some of you might be rolling your eyes right now. Just another preacher who says that Jesus is the cure for everything. But look, we've all found ourselves staring obsessively at ads on television, salivating in some store at a shopping mall, and preoccupied with the idea of purchasing this or that product (which, of course, we really do not need).

When that happens, haven't you ever felt a vague sense of unease in your gut? And doesn't living in a world where you are manipulated into situations like that leave you feeling just a little like something is very, very wrong?

I write about this reality in my column this week. I welcome your thoughts.

The place of faith in my life

I admit that I don't reveal a lot of myself on this blog. I am most comfortable digging into and discussing issues facing the church. Those issues always involve me, as both a Christian and a pastor, but it is not easy for me to openly discuss my own place in the middle of all of it.

But I've got to tell you, I read something today that gave me a feeling I haven't had in a long, long time. It's a short article in the new issue of Newsweek magazine. The article discusses Harvard University's debates over whether to require its undergraduates to take a course in religion. Harvard isn't exactly returning to the bosom of the church, mind you. But some on the faculty do believe that living in a religiously complex world makes knowledge about religion a must.

Well, it ain't going to happen. As soon as a study group of faculty members offered a curriculum proposal that included the required religion course in the area of "faith and reason," a lot of other faculty members freaked out. Newsweek reports that most of them were from the science faculty, and that they felt offended that "faith" and "reason" were being mentioned in the same sentence. As the article explains, the scientists see the two as distinct forms of knowledge that should not be lumped together in anyway.

There was an element of condescension in the statement, of course. But that got me thinking: there are a whole lot of people out there who equate faith in God with pure superstition. I have always known this to be true, but I don't think about it very often.

That made me think what my life would be like without my faith.

And the thought of it scared me to death.

I mean, it made a nauseous, sick feeling go throughout my whole body. And I realized that removing my faith would remove the only reason I have to live on this earth. My entire day-to-day existence is tied to trying to live into my faith more and more. My whole sense of hope is wrapped up in the faith I have that Jesus Christ's purposes will be fulfilled - for me and for this world.

Don't pigeon hole what I mean by "hope." Yes, it is an ultimate hope - for a general resurrection of the dead and for life eternal. But it is also the hope that gives my earthly life meaning, that which helps me to make sense of suffering, of love, of my own existence.

I guess there are lots of people out there who just reconcile a complete lack of faith in God with their lives on earth. I don't envy them.

Help Wanted: Generation X Leadership

Have you taken a look at the age demographics in the United Methodist Church lately? If you had to take a guess, would you think that Gen X'ers represent:

A) 35% of membership
B) 25% of membership
C) 15% of membership
D) Less than 10% of membership

If you guessed "D" you are right on target. That's right: our whole generation makes up less than 10% of the total membership of the UMC.

There could be any number of different reasons why this is the case. But if your gut reaction is to say, "Our church has just fallen behind the times," you should think again. Wealth, mobility, and the Baals that the world has to offer to Gen X'ers have a lot more to do with the reason. If membership hemorrhaging has anything to do with our interior ecclesial life, it has more to do with our refusal to insist on high standards and accountability than it does on issues of Traditional VS. Contemporary worship styles.

I write about one possible response to this trend in my Reporter column this week. It is simply this: If we want Gen X'ers to see the church as a place where they are wanted and needed, the church needs to start relying on them. That means making a concerted effort at putting Gen X'ers into leadership positions, from the local church on up to General Conference.

Do you have any ideas?

Is 'Generation X' real or imagined?

I sometimes get challenged from readers of my U.M. Reporter column about my focus on the concept of "Generation X." Some claim that it is just a word game, that there is no such thing as a coherent group of people defined by that label, despite what definition I or others might try to apply to it.

Obviously, I disagree with this point of view. I think there is a "Generation X," and I think it has some definite parameters, related to both age and experience. The problem with most people is that they want to judge the Gen-X concept by some type of hard scientific criteria, leading many to conclude that there is no such thing. But the concept of generation is a cultural one, so its definition is always going to be somewhat fuzzy.

In a column a few months back, I attempted to talk about the history of the term, "Generation X" and the the distinctiveness of the group it describes with reference to Henri Nouwen's The Wounded Healer. I'm going to print the column below. It's a bit long, but I would be interested in feedback if you have thoughts one way or the other. Is there a "Generation X?" If so, what is its defitinion?

"GEN-X RISING: 'Inward generation' must find courage to engage surroundings"

By Andrew C. Thompson

Most people would say that Generation X received its name from the 1991 publication of Douglas Coupland's novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. The media picked up on Mr. Coupland's name for the generation of seekers the book describes, and the label stuck.

The popular definition of Generation X evolved into something like the following: the rising generation of young adults, characterized by a deep sarcasm and sense of irony, who are frustrated by the rampant materialism and lack of meaning they see in the world and yet see no clear alternative.

However, Mr. Coupland never claimed to coin the term. He borrowed the "X" from an earlier novel, Paul Fussell's Class (1983).

Moving further back in history, Generation X was also the name of a punk band formed by Billy Idol in 1976. And even earlier than that, Generation X was a cult novel written in 1963 by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson, both Britons. The Generation Xers that they described were actually Baby Boomers, but ... well, let's not get that complicated.

As a descriptive term, "Generation X" has an interesting history. The complexity of that history is fitting, because the generation of people it labels — those born between 1965 and 1981 — is complex as well. And if the popular definition that has evolved is, in some sense, correct, then Generation X is a generation that desperately wants to find its way home. We Gen-Xers find ourselves in a fog, and we strain to see the light emanating from the lighthouse. We know there must be a safe harbor somewhere, but the path from stormy sea to solid ground is not clear.

The great spiritual writer Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) never wrote specifically about Generation X by name. However, he was concerned with the youths he saw growing up around him in the 1970s and 1980s. Nouwen's classic, The Wounded Healer, took a hard look at the generation of youths contemporary with the time of its publication in 1979. He called these kids "the inward generation," and he said that they were "the generation which gives absolute priority to the personal and which tends in a remarkable way to withdraw into the self."

Nouwen saw something characteristic about Gen-Xers long before they were ever called Gen-Xers. Namely, they see a lack of value in the world around them. Things seem to exist on surface levels only, and so the deep hunger that we all have for meaning gets turned inward in a search for something real.

"Everywhere we see restless and nervous people, unable to concentrate and often suffering from a growing sense of depression," Nouwen wrote. "They know that what is shouldn't be the way it is, but they see no workable alternative."

The search for a relief from anxiety takes on many forms, which are often unhealthy. Even people of faith have a difficult time.

Seekers after success come to embrace a worldly version of it that is related solely to salary level and hoarding material possessions.

Seekers after salvation come to privatize it in such a way that it is relegated to the salvation of individual souls, disconnected from the rest of the creation.

Seekers after discipleship come to understand a version of it that disconnects religious life in the church from secular life in the world.

Privatization, personalization, individualization. Call it what you want to. This is the tendency in Gen-X youths that distressed Nouwen. It smacks of a cynicism about the world so great that an "inward turn" is the almost compulsive reaction by a generation that hungers for something the world is not offering.

Nouwen believed that the cynicism of the youths he encountered was based on the ultimate danger to life posed by nuclear weapons. He wrote The Wounded Healer in the midst of the Cold War, when "the nuclear option" was something other than a tactic for dismantling the filibuster in the U.S. Senate.

Today, I suspect that the deep unhappiness of Generation X is based less on unconscious fears of nuclear holocaust and more on the pace of life — driven by developments in technology that race along faster than the human mind and human heart can keep up.

If we are indeed "the inward generation," then it is time that we gathered the courage to turn around and begin to engage a world that, admittedly, can seem huge and threatening. Truthfully, the world needs us. And fog or no fog, the ship that we steer must find its way home.

Don't know much about history...

I was a history major in college, and I have always appreciated good commentary on the importance of history in informing responsible citizenship in the world. In the past several years, it has seemed to me, more and more, that a good knowledge of history can also offer the church a powerful reminder of the prevalence of human pride and sinfulness over time.

In a recent op-ed piece, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (pictured at right), casts a historian's eye on the necessity of knowing history for a nation to understand the world in which it exists. He writes, "As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future."

Schlesinger is talking about our current experience in Iraq. He compares our mis-adventures there to America's experience in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, marveling at the similarities between the two.

But his observations hold a lot of relevance for the church as well, even though that is not his intention. If the church does not take stock of its own tradition - both great triumphs and utter failures - it will bumble along with no mission and no purpose other than as some kind of weak panacea to the anxieties of its members. We must realize that our tradition makes us who we are. Only by identifying ourselves within the Christian story can we recognize ourselves as the people of God who are called to witness to God's plan for the salvation of the world.

"History is the best antidote to delusions of omnipotence and omniscience," Schlesinger writes. "Self-knowledge is the indispensable prelude to self-control, for the nation as well as for the individual, and history should forever remind us of the limits of our passing perspectives."

Just so, our own history reminds us that qualities like omnipotence and omniscience can only be ascribed to God. We do have only passing perspectives, and the self-knowledge of that fact can lead us into the humility and trust that are necessary qualities for discipleship to Jesus Christ.

Back from travels...

I took a little unannounced hiatus from blogging for a few days over the Christmas holiday. Emily and I were on the road visiting family in Tennessee and Arkansas, and it was just too much to try to write meaningful posts. But we're back in Durham now, and I am gearing up for the spring semester here at Duke. So I should be back on a more regular schedule.

I've received a couple of responses from the admittedly impassioned post a couple of weeks ago about the death penalty. I am as adamantly against the death penalty as I am against abortion, positions for which I make no apologies. My views on these two issues arise directly out of my faith, and perhaps someday I will write a post on why this is so.

In the mean time, I was interested to read in this morning's New York Times that a legislative commission in New Jersey has recommended that the state wipe its capital punishment laws off the books. That would make it the first state to officially abolish capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in the 1970s. As the article notes, the New Jersey commission's recommendations are following a national trend away from the use of capital punishment as an acceptable part of our penal system. The Times articles notes, "[The commission's] report found 'no compelling evidence' that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it 'is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency'."

I say 'amen' to that. You can read the rest of the article here. And as always, I welcome your thoughts and comments on this issue.