Pax Christiana

"He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:17-20).

I mentioned before that I'm reading John Howard Yoder this summer. That reading is part of a theology seminar with Stanley Hauerwas (Dr. Hauerwas regularly invokes Yoder's influence on his own theological understanding and has remarked before that Yoder made him a pacifist, or as he might put it, a practitioner of Christian non-violence).

Reading Yoder is disturbing. I wish I could say that he makes me feel good, or energizes me, or stimulates me, or helps me out in some way. But he speaks the truth in a way that makes me extremely uncomfortable. He convicts the Laodicean lukewarmness of my faith.

Yoder is relentlessly biblical in his theological argumentation, which makes him very difficult to disagree with at times (alas, he knows the Scripture much better than I ever will). He makes a compelling case for who Jesus is - namely, the incarnate One who reveals the Father's love through non-resistant suffering at the hands of the world. But he also goes further and makes a compelling case for who we should be as the Church (and this is where you start to get uncomfortable). Jesus' normativity for the world is in his person and work, of course. But it is also in his teaching. The Sermon on the Mount is meant to be practiced; our thinking that we cannot do so is only because we have become so deeply mired in a "Constantinian" practice of faith.

I believe that any Christian who does not want to be a pacifist has, at some level, to reckon with Yoder:

"[T]he Christian does not renounce war because one can expect intelligent citizens to rally around. They usually won't. The believer takes that stand because the defenseless death of the Messiah has for all time been revealed as the victory of faith that overcomes the world ... When the Christian whom God has disarmed lays aside carnal weapons it is not, in the last analysis, because those weapons are too strong, but because they are too weak. He directs his life toward the day when all creation will praise not kings and chancellors but the Lamb that was slain as worthy to receive blessing and honor and glory and power (Revelation 5:12-13)" (Yoder, He Came Preaching Peace, pp. 27-29).

I thought about all of this today because I have been re-listening to a lecture that Dr. Hauerwas gave at the end of the spring semester this year. In it, he reflects on the church as a community of non-violence. Here's a quote from the lecture that is classic Hauerwas in content. By comparing it with the above passage from Yoder's He Came Preaching Peace, you can see Yoder's influence on him:

"Constantinianism, that is, the church's accommodation to the thinning out of our language and our understanding of courage ... results in the loss of our skills for survivial. Because exactly what Christianity is, is ongoing training in skills of survival of a community across time, [which] has been sent out in the world to live non-violently as part of our worship of God in a violent world. Thus, my claim that Christians are not called to non-violence because we believe our non-violence is a strategy to rid the world of war. But rather, in a world of war, Christians as faithful followers of Christ cannot imagine being anything else than non-violent. And that will make the world more violent. Because the world does not want its 'order,' which it calls 'peace,' exposed for the violence it is. And that's exactly what you must be about" (lecture, 4/19/07).

So should pacifism - which sometimes goes by the terms non-violence or non-resistance - be normative for all Christians? That is, are we expected to take the Sermon on the Mount so seriously that we actually practice it?

Gratuitous Cat Post

I tend to shy away from personal posts on this blog. I like reading personal posts on other people's blogs, but that isn't why I created Gen X Rising.

Then, of course, there's my cats. The Typist over at Dogblogger allows her dog to have an entire blog to itself. And John the Methodist at Locusts and Honey has long chronicled the daily habits of his rabbits.

So I figure Lulu and Ruthie deserve at least one decent post. My apologies in advance. And thanks for the indulgence.

When Emily and I married, we were both single parents raising feline children. So there was a certain Brady Bunch quality to the whole thing. I had Ruth, a tempermental and skittish gray tabby. And Emily had Lulu, who sometimes acts so sedated that we are afraid she's secretly addicted to tranquilizers. (Side story: When we moved to North Carolina, we got some actual kitty tranquilizers from a vet friend of ours. We figured 12 hours in the car would be tough on them. So we put the pills in the middle of a delicious meal of Fancy Feast, per our vet's instructions. Ruthie ate all around her pill without touching it, and then got extremely agitated when we tried to force it down her throat; Lulu dutifully gobbled hers up and spent the next 9 or 10 hours in a coma.)


So that's Lulu above. I love this picture because it looks like the Holy Spirit is being poured out directly onto her. (And hey, who's to say that it isn't??) She is a serene animal. For you Myers-Briggs types, she is whatever combination of letters equals "calm, agreeable, friendly, and generally takes life as it comes."


Then there's Ruth. Unlike Lulu, Ruthie spent her first few months on the streets. I rescued her back in 2003, but she's never been able to fully shake the feral nature that her early kittenhood gave her. She's a great cat, but she spends a lot more time outdoors (and she has a disturbing tendency to kill small animals like birds and moles and then leave them on our back doorstep). She's a good cat too, but she plays by her own rules. Lulu would never think of spending the night anywhere other than at the foot of our bed; Ruthie, on the other hand, often spends all night wandering the neighborhood.

In the picture above, Ruthie has managed to get herself up on the roof of our garage and is trying to figure out a way down. Typical.

Ok, so I feel better now. Thanks.

Conference within a conference

The past few days have had me busy trying to catch up from the time I missed when I was back in Arkansas for annual conference. Hopefully, my posts will become more frequent in the days ahead.

I can't overstate how optimistic I was at the general vibe on the part of Gen X and Millennial clergy who got together during our annual converence session. This was really the "conference-within-a-conference" for me. In fact, I was so pumped that I worte a column about it in the Reporter. You can read it here.

One of the things that occurred to me as I was sitting with my colleagues and friends at annual conference is that we are "on the clock," so to speak. We ain't gonna be young long. So our window to really influence the church in a formative way is probably going to be narrow.

Oh, we'll influence the church sooner or later. But if we don't make our presence felt until we achieve "senior status," then I am afraid we will have forgotten why we thought the Christian life should be lived differently in the first place.

For any Arkansas readers out there, Eric Van Meter has begun to follow up on our discussions at conference. I believe he will be trying to get folks together late in the summer or early in the fall. For non-Arkansans, I hope you all will begin to investigate common work and ministry among the X'ers and Millennials out there. It is worth the effort.

Peace to all...

What a week!

It's Friday evening, and I am finishing a 7-day period where I preached at a blessing service for a friend's child, attended the Arkansas Annual Conference, worked like crazy to get caught up on all the Latin work I missed while I was away from Durham, and logged about 2000 miles in travel. It's good to be home!

Since this was the year we elected delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences, it was an interesting annual conference session. I'll share a few thoughts:

-- As always, it is really good to attend annual conference just to see friends and colleagues in ministry. That was especially the case this year, since I am now living in North Carolina and haven't gotten to see those folks Emily and I have missed over the past year. I also had a lot of people express the desire for us to return to the conference when I finish my Th.D., something that I hope God provides a way for us to do.

-- This year marked the third year in a row that Eric Van Meter has organized a Gen X clergy supper. We had 30 or so clergy and clergy spouses who gathered in the Arkansas Tech University Wesley Foundation building on Monday evening for good ol' Arkansas barbeque (this is a noun rather than a verb for those of you not from the South). Eric does a good job of resisting the temptation to set an agenda at these gatherings. And so the conversations just naturally flow from what our concerns and hopes happen to be. This year, we focused on the need to keep in touch with young seminarians while they are in school as well as talking about how to get better involved in connectional conference structures such as the Board of Ordained Ministry and other appointed bodies. We believe this is important to add our voices to conference leadership. This year, we made the firmest commitment yet to keeping in touch and making progress throughout the year. We had some volunteers offer to serve as 'point people,' and I think we are going to use the new 7 Villages website to build an online connection. Kudos to Eric for all his work in this area. He has shown real leadership. And good luck to him as he starts a new appointment in campus ministry at Arkansas State Univeristy in Jonesboro. The Gen X clergy gathering is, by the way, something I would highly recommend for other annual conferences to do.

-- Billy Reeder and his group Sanctus led an emergent-style worship service outdoors following regular worship on Monday evening that was pretty well attended. The Holy Spirit was obviously in attendance, which was awesome.

-- This was the first conference session that I have attended where we have elected delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences. For all the horror stories I have heard about how nasty elections can be, I think this one went pretty well. We ended up electing a balanced group including Conservatives, Liberals, and Moderates. I think that is important, since it reflects the makeup of our annual conference. For the record, I personally voted for people who would generally be categorized in all three groups.

-- Kudos to Revs. J.J. Whitney and Aubrietta Jones, who were elected as General and Jurisdictional delegates, respectively. They are both Gen X'ers and help to bring a young clergy voice to our delegations. Sarah Steele, a Millennial teenager, was also elected as a lay delegate to General Conference. And Jay Clark, youth ministry guru who has held positions in the Arkansas Conference, New England Conference, and the General Board of Discipleship, was elected as a Jurisdictional alternate. Jay is soon moving from Nashville to become the minister of youth at Pulaski Heights UMC in Little Rock, and my only regret is that he was not elected as a General Conference delegate in his own right. But then, there's always 2012!

One final note: In her e-mail recap of annual conference, SMU professors (and Arkansas Conference elder) Rebekah Miles wrote, "There is nothing like the sound of a group of preachers and lay people singing hymns loudly and enthusiastically at annual conference." Amen to that! "And are we yet alive?" You bet we are. And the work of the kingdom goes on.

New like Newby

What can a 20-year old cat teach us about annual conference? A lot, if you ask me. In my column this week, I write about Newby, an elderly feline who experienced a rejuvenation when she was turned into an outside cat after 16 years of living indoors. (This is all a true story. Newby lives in Jackson, Tenn, and I heard her tale directly from her owner.)

Newby's personal renaissance was not a miracle. She simply rediscovered the telos of cathood - namely, chasing small animals, basking on sunny porches, and generally catting around the neighborhood. And when she got in touch with her inner cat, Newby's numerous physical problems disappeared practically overnight. She had spent 16 years on the couch, so to speak, and she just needed to relearn what it meant to be a cat. And that made all the difference. For the past four years, she has had a new lease on life.

So what does this have to do with annual conference? Or General Conference, for that matter? I think everything. The Wesleyan idea of holy conferencing could be a great way for us to support one another and equip one another for ministry. It could be a place of powerful prayer, enthusiastic evangelism, charismatic conversation, and wonderful worship. There are elements of that in conferences now. But we still allow bureaucracy, legislation, reports, and Robert's Rules to dominate.

Like Newby, we need to get back in touch with our inner cat. We need to remember what we have forgotten, namely, what the purpose of Methodists gathering in conference is supposed to be about. I plan to work on that at the Arkansas Annual Conference session, which starts tomorrow in Russellville. I know there are others out there. But it is going to take a grassroots movement, and no large ship can be turned on a dime.

I am, by the way, standing as a candidate for election to General Conference 2008. I haven't written about that at all on this blog, because I do not want to 'campaign' in the traditional way. But it has been a matter of prayer for me for several weeks now, and I plan on engaging some of my lay and clergy colleagues in conversation around General Conference issues this next week. Regardless of whether I am ultimately chosen, I do find it heartening that several Gen-X clergy and lay delegates are standing as candidates. I think this is a sign of hope.

Gen X/Y Gathering

Things are extraordinarily busy right now. I'm taking a large summer load of coursework, and I'll be taking off this weekend for annual conference in Arkansas. I am going to try to continue to post at least once per week, but if I slack off a little bit, just bear with me. I am laptop-deprived, so I don't know what my opportunities for Internet access will be in AR next week.

Just wanted to give everybody a heads-up on Amy Forbus' report on the Gen X/Y Gathering that took place at Mt. Sequoyah in Fayetteville, AR, in late May. You can read it on her blog here. I also talked with Eric Van Meter, a clergy friend from the Arkansas Conference, and he said the event was fantastic. There were about 56 participants, mostly from the South Central Jurisdiction, but also including people from as far away as Florida and Maine. Doug Pagitt and Tim Keel were featured speakers. There was worship, Holy Communion, and lots of free time to discuss the future of the church and how we might lead in the coming years.

The Gathering was also put together in 'grassroots' fashion. This was not the programmatic idea of a general board, jurisdictional committee, or annual conference. It was the result of a Spirit-led movement of pastors who wanted to see seminarians and clergy get together to talk about crucial issues of how we can lead the UMC faithfully forward in our day.

My current residence in Durham didn't allow me to attend, unfortunately. But it has been good hearing about it from Amy and Eric, and I'm sure I'll hear more at annual conference next week. From what I understand, the Gathering has already spawned further conversations - about another event in the future, but also about more sustained work between pastors and churches within annual conferences. That is good news.

If you attended the Gathering and would like to share more in the comments section of this post, feel free.