What's happening to the preachers?

Lovett Weems and Ann Michel think they know.

They have a new book out from Abingdon, entitled, The Crisis of Younger Clergy, that analyzes the results of the 2006 survey conducted by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary on clergy demographics in the United Methodist Church.

In 1985, there were over 3,200 ordained elders in the UMC under the age of 35. Today there are around 850. The book tries to get a handle on this troubling trend and, even more importantly, suggest ways that the church can provide the kind of culture where youth and young adults are able to really hear the Holy Spirit's call to ministry.

I write about Weems and Michel's new book in my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. In addition to that, Robin Russell has a good Q&A article with Weems where he answers questions about the importance of young clergy in the church.

I endorsed this book before it came out, and I have a review of it that will appear in the Reporter in the coming weeks. I think it is timely and important, and it is a great book for anyone who cares about the future of leadership in our church. I could easily see how a Sunday school class or small group might use this book as a way to start a conversation about how to nurture the kind of church environment where calling is affirmed and supported. Check it out!

The United Methodist Way

Taylor Burton-Edwards has a provocative piece in the United Methodist Reporter this week. He comments on a paper presented by Dr. Randy Maddox during a retreat at Lake Junaluska, NC, last winter that brought together bishops and district superintendents from all over the connection. The paper, which is entitled, "The United Methodist Way," looks at Methodism's origin as a flexible, Holy Spirit-led revival movement that incorporated people into a way of life marked by progressive freedom from sin through holiness of heart & life. This process was possible because of the working of God's grace, which first reaches out to sinners and empowers them to respond by shaping their lives around holiness through participation in the means of grace.

The paper (downloadable here as a pdf file) suggests that the United Methodist Church today is, ironically, in much the same shape as the Church of England in John Wesley's day - "marked by much nominal commitment and spiritual lethargy." But it also argues that the means for responding to the Holy Spirit's call are already present within the church's tradition. It suggests such common features of church life as Disciple Bible Study, Covenant Discipleship, and Volunteers in Mission are examples of Wesleyan ministry that have the power to really be transformative. And it suggests that, when individuals and congregations commit themselves to such practices, the Holy Spirit is given the place to work.

Now this is my own interpretation of the paper's central intent, and it is admittedly loose. But Burton-Edwards offers a critique that, surprisingly enough, seems to suggest that the church as a whole is ill-equipped for the type of renewal the paper is advocating. In particular, he asserts that:

-- John Wesley and the early Methodists "did not try to reform the Church of England per se" but rather set about to engage in mission (what he calls "a bias toward action").

-- "[O]ur current denominational and congregational institutions are simply not designed to make missional Christians, much less deploy much of what early Methodists were up to."

-- These same "institutions" are "continuity structures and supply houses, not on-the-ground missiologists."This response begs the question, "Then who can respond to the Holy Spirit's call?" Claiming that the structures he's referring to are not the answer, Burton-Edwards goes on to suggest what (or who) is. He responds: "You are."

Now I don't want to belabor this point, but what Burton-Edwards is saying, what he is not saying, and what he is saying wrongly are all extremely important for anyone who cares about the future of our church.

First, Burton-Edwards is incorrect in a historical sense when he suggests that Wesley wasn't trying "to reform the Church of England per se." In point of fact, it was always Wesley's hope that the revival experienced by the Methodists in their societies would spread to parish congregations more than it did. His stated mission for the Methodists was that they "reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness over these lands." Frank Baker has an informative chapter concerning Wesley's many attempts to form a coalition of evangelical Anglican clergy serving parishes in John Wesley and the Church of England (see "Uniting the Evangelical Clergy," pp.180-196). As an historical anecdote we might also think of the way in which Wesley intended to hand over the leadership of the Methodists to the ordained priest John Fletcher, who was ensconced in a parish as the vicar of Madeley. Though by the end of his life Wesley realized that a good proportion of the Methodists would probably separate, it was always his hope and his aim to reform the church rather than separate from it.

Second, Burton-Edwards seems to suggest that the paper itself claims renewal must take place in a top-down manner. It is vague what he means by "denominational and congregational institutions" but it seems that he is thinking on the level of general boards and agencies, as well as bishop-led conference ministry staffs. Interestingly the paper never suggests that either general boards & agencies or annual conference ministry staffs need to be at the vanguard of the types of Wesleyan ministry it advocates. (An appendix at the end of the paper suggests ways that bishops can be involved in nurturing this ministry, but I actually read it in an anti-programmatic way.) Instead, the paper focuses on Wesley's three-part exhortation from "Thoughts upon Methodism" where he advises that the Methodists must hold fast to the "doctrine, spirit, and discipline" with which they were formed as a body of faithful Christians.

Admittedly, the General Conference as one of those top-down institutions must ensure that orthodox doctrine is maintained so that the church remains faithful to Scripture and the catholic tradition of the church. But beyond that, doctrinally-faithful practices constitutive of Methodism's original "spirit" and "discipline" as suggested by the paper seem almost wholly to be located at the local level. (As a pastor with experience in campus ministry and the local church, that is at least how the paper seemed to come across to me.)

Ah, but there's the catch. Burton-Edwards lumps general church-level and annual conference-level institutions together with congregations themselves ("denominational and congregational institutions"). It is a confusing aspect of his commentary in general (Does he mean the heart of congregational life? Does he not? And if he does, why does he assume congregations are so inherently deaf to the Spirit's call?). But regardless, the claim that congregations are somehow incapable or ill-equipped to nurture the United Methodist Way - as the paper describes it - is a serious one that drives at the heart of our polity.

As you can probably guess, I disagree. Local congregations are the perfect places to nurture the kinds of disciplined practices that early Methodism knew and fostered. If it can't happen in the local church, it can't happen anywhere. To answer the question, "Who or What is the answer?", with "You are", is to miss a very important point. There are no solitary Christians. In fact, there are no more "holy solitaries" than there are "holy adulterers" (Wesley's own claim). We are only Christians in community. And the community we are called to be a part of is a local congregation.

In some ways, I think I understand what Burton-Edwards is saying in regards to top-down renewal. He's a staff member at the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville, and seeing church bureaucracy from the inside he wants to warn us away from thinking it holds the answers to our deepest ecclesial problems. He resists any suggestion that the GBOD or any other bureaucratic structure can bring about renewal, and I applaud that. In fact, his point in that regard is essential to anyone who thinks large programs are God's answer to the need for true revival.

But lumping local congregations into that same category? And suggesting that the Wesleyan approach to revival or renewal is not centered on local church life? I think he's wrong there.

We shouldn't underestimate what God can do in a local congregation. God works miracles there. And one of the miracles God might be preparing to work is the renewal of the People Called Methodists.

Happy Easter!

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Whey do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' Then they remembered his words.

When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you..."

- The Gospel According to Luke 24:1-12, 36

O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done?

O Love divine, what has thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father's co-eternal Son
bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th'immortal God for me hath died:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Is crucified for me and you,
to bring us rebels back to God.
Believe, believe the record true,
ye all are bought with Jesus' blood.
Pardon for all flows from his side:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Behold him, all ye that pass by,
the bleeding Prince of life and peace!
Come, sinners, see your Savior die,
and say, "Was ever grief like his?"
Come, feel with me his blood applied:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

- Charles Wesley, 1742

Mandatum Day

Like countless other children, I grew up hearing the term "Maundy Thursday" during the Lenten season and just assumed that the grown-ups around me were saying "Monday Thursday." I knew Easter was a special time, so I just assumed that this "Monday Thursday" thing was part of the deal. If Jesus could come out of the tomb on Easter morning, why couldn't we have Monday and Thursday on the same day??

I was actually in divinity school, about ten years ago, before I never learned the origin of Maundy Thursday. By then I knew enough to say "Maundy" instead of "Monday." And I knew the term had to have something to do with the final gathering of Jesus with his disciples on the night he was betrayed. But I still didn't know what the strange modifier "Maundy" meant, nor why it had been attached to a day that otherwise would have done just fine as "Holy Thursday."

Tracing Maundy Thursday's lineage actually requires doing something that Protestants almost never do: opening up the Latin Vulgate. Turning to John 13, where Jesus washes the disciples' feet, we read this in verses 34-35:

Mandatum novum do vobis, ut diligatis invicem. Sicut dilexi vos ut et vos diligatis invicem. In hoc cognoscent omnes quia mei discipuli estis, si dilectionem habueritis ad invicem.

Here is a literal, if somewhat clunky, translation:

A new commandment I give to you all, that you love mutually. Just as I have held you dear, so that you may also hold one another dear. In this way, everyone shall learn that you are my disciples, if you will have love for the purpose of mutuality.

The Latin mandatum novum translates as the English new commandment (think of our synonym "mandate"). And Maundy is just a corruption of the original mandatum. So Maundy Thursday is really just Commandment Thursday, the day when Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us. Moreover, wrapped up in Jesus' mandatum to us is a deeper implication: namely, that if we are doing it right, the world will be able to identify us as Christians by the very quality of love that we bear toward one another.

When we preach this passage on Maundy Thursday, we should take care to emphasize the extent of the love Jesus was talking about. Specifically, Jesus' qualifier, "Just as I have held you dear" (or more conventionally, "Just as I have loved you"), calls us to look both forward and backward in the gospel for those specific ways that Jesus loves the disciples.

Looking backward, we recognize that Jesus says these words right after he has disrobed and, taking the role of a servant, washed each of the disciples' feet. He models love for them not by a long-winded discourse on the virtue of love, but rather by showing them love firsthand through his actions. The footwashing conveys a depth of meaning that simple words could not.

We also look forward to how Jesus will love the disciples (and indeed, the whole world) through his death on the cross. So while the love he models for us takes the form of servanthood, it also carries that servanthood to an absolute extreme. It includes the sacrifice of the servant's own life, or as Jesus himself says, the laying down of the shepherd's life for his sheep (John 10:11). And this is the love with which we are to love one another.

As difficult as this teaching is for Christians, we should recognize that it is not an option. Jesus teaching is a mandatum, a commandment. And there is a reason for this. In English translations, the end of the passage reads, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." But the static quality of "know" in English obscures the meaning of the Latin cognoscent, which carries the progressive meaning of learning or acquiring knowledge. The world does not understand the true meaning of love. But through the church's witness to Christ's love for the world - expressed through the love of the disciples for one another - the world can learn what love really means. So the telos of Mandatum Day is that our embodiment of the command becomes the means of salvation for the world. Only when the church faithfully practices Jesus' love can the world learn that there is a better way to live.

Flawed results, but useful implications

Last week, I cited the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's new study on the religious landscape in the United States. I want to highlight what I think is a very insightful analysis of that study from David Steinmetz, who teaches church history at Duke Divinity School. Dr. Steinmetz contributes op-ed columns to the Orlando Sentinel, and a few days ago he wrote this article looking at the results of the Pew Forum's survey.

Dr. Steinmetz says that, while the survey's conclusions rest on "impressive data", they nonetheless are "flawed by their failure to understand the nuanced boundaries that exist between and among Christian churches." As an example, he invokes the categories of "mainline", "evangelical", and "historically black" as labels that have limited usefulness. For example, while many historically black denominations exhibit evangelical theology, they rarely self-identify as evangelical (a moniker which is associated with white Protestantism). Moreover, while the United Methodist Church falls under the "mainline" category, there are many United Methodists who do self-identify as evangelicals.

Here's the main point: Steinmetz suggests that labels are more accurate to describe individuals' theological outlook than they are broad denominational identity, exactly because denominational identity means much less than it once did regarding the theological outlook of its members.

Thus, he concludes that while the Pew Forum is accurate in describing the American religious landscape as fluid, "what that thesis means requires analysts to ask questions as nuanced and complex as the reality they are studying -- in short, some better questions than they have asked thus far."

I think Steinmetz is right on in these comments, and they raise the question for me: Are broad religious labels meaningful in any sense, when they are applied to denominational identity? Or conversely, have we reached such a point in Protestant culture that denominations are so pluralistic as to be relatively meaningless as identifiers of theological conviction?

My own contribution to the wide-ranging conversation about the Pew Forum study comes in my current column in the United Methodist Reporter, which takes a wholly different tack than that of Dr. Steinmetz. I look at what the Pew Forum concludes about "net loss" in terms of religious shifting. As a "net loser" of members through such shifting, how can the United Methodist Church better form its members so that they understand their Christian identity in a United Methodist context? As a sanctificationist people, we ought to do that pretty well. The current state of our church suggests that we do not.

Into the wilderness

My friend Eric Van Meter, campus minister at Arkansas State University, continues his series on the church in this week's United Methodist Reporter.

In his current column, Eric says that he has always had a desire to work along "the borders of the church." He uses the image of an old, rusty barbed wire fence that is meant to mark off territory but stands largely forgotten. Those familiar with the UMC's recent wrangling over the meaning of church membership will not fail to catch Eric's meaning: the dry description of boundaries off the page of a Book of Discipline are no match for the identity given to us in a living faith with Christ through the church.

Eric writes, "Regardless of how much time we spend trying to identify our target market, or how many assimilation classes we hold to help people transform from outsiders to one of us, the fact remains that the land between the United Methodist Church and the world at large is frontier territory. It's chaotic, disorderly, untamed ... And interesting."

He uses his own ministry group as an example - college students. They show a deep desire for relationship with Christ but are often skittish about the formal aspects of church membership. But there are plenty of them out there, in the wilderness areas, waiting to be found. (Note, for instance, my post earlier this week about the 48 million religiously unaffiliated people in the United States alone.)

Eric admits that boundary issues are important, but he insists that we pay a disproportionate amount of time dealing with them. He suggests that moving out into the wilderness - a call to evangelism if ever I've heard one - would help us refocus on the true meaning of the gospel.

The subtext here definitely touches on issues of sexuality in the church, and Eric is offering one way forward (even if it is implied rather than explicit). There are other ways of approaching that particular topic, of course, and some would suggest that a greater emphasis on discipline and accountability in membership is the way the church should move. Regardless, with General Conference looming ever closer, it is certainly a timely subject matter.

Number crunching

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a study last month that charts the religious demographics of our country. It makes for fascinating reading. The study looks at shifts in and out of religious traditions, and its findings suggest that church attendance is just as fluid as it looks on the ground.

For instance, 28% of adults indicate that they have left the religious tradition of their childhood. But because the Pew Forum is dealing with broad categories ("Catholic," "Protestant," "Muslim"), that number is a little misleading. When shifts between Protestant denominations are taken into account, the number jumps way up to 44%. The number of those who do not identify with a religious tradition at all is 12%, and the number of those calling themselves either atheist or agnostic is 4%.

The Pew Forum study also looks at net winners and net losers in all this shifting around. The United Methodist Church, it turns out, is a net loser. 8.3% of adults said they were raised Methodist, whereas only 6.2% identify as Methodists now (which includes both the UMC and other Methodist denominations). That comes out to a net loss of 2.1%.

So what do these numbers mean? Essentially, it means that more people leave Methodist churches than stay or transfer in. In my mind, that's an issue of formation. Our people are not formed in such a way that they see their membership in the church as fundamental to their identity. So they leave.

Robin Russell has a good analysis of the Pew Forum study in the current edition of the United Methodist Reporter. My column in the upcoming issue will offer my own take on the study, and I'll link to it when it appears.

Like so many of the statistics you see about church membership these days, there is a level of frustration at what is happening to the church. But I can see some real positives as well. For instance, the 16% of the American population that is either unaffiliated, agnostic, or atheist, represents about 48 million potential Christians! For those who are called to evangelism ministries, you have your target population!

Also, if we know some vital information about how we are losing members, it gives us a starting point from which to engage in conversations about how Christian formation can better occur in the life of the church. And then maybe those folks who are drifting away will see reasons to stay and grow in their faith.

Wesley Matters

I'd like to discuss some Wesley matters.

Namely: Does Wesley matter?

There has been an ongoing lecture series here at Duke Divinity School entitled, "What is Duke theology? Or ... How did we get here?" The series is co-sponsored by the Socratic Club and the Women's Center at the divinity school, and it is billed as, "A series of lectures/discussions on the various influences on professors and general milieu here at Duke Divinity School. Professors will lecture on significant theologians and theological movements and how Duke has tended to react against these or in line with them."

The series has been really interesting so far, and it has included Dr. Allen Verhey on H. Richard Niebuhr, Dr. Curtis Freeman on Karl Barth, Dr. Mary McClintock-Fulkerson on Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Dr. Amy Laura Hall on the Yale School. Upcoming lectures will include Dr. Fulkerson on Feminist Theology, Dr. Stanley Hauerwas on Stanley Hauerwas, and Dr. Richard Hays on Biblical Studies.

Some of the topics listed here are personal to the professors giving the lectures, and others relate to some of the major influences on the so-called "Duke School," a term I categorically reject but which is increasingly used by theologians and graduate students at other universities to describe what goes on around here.

But what is most interesting to me about this list is that there is no lecture entitled, "Dr. _________ on John Wesley" or "Dr. __________ on the Wesleyan tradition".

Now keep in mind that this is Duke Divinity School, the school that prides itself on being the flagship United Methodist seminary and that also has the largest concentration of scholars doing work in the Wesleyan tradition of any school anywhere. Why would it not occur to two of the most active student groups on campus to include a professor speaking on the importance of Wesley or the Wesleyan tradition in shaping the school's intellectual culture, spiritual life, and missional calling?

I am here as a doctoral student studying Wesley, so my opinion is naturally going to be skewed. An M.Div student might well give a compellingly affirmative account of Wesley's importance to the life of the school. But I fear that the lack of Wesley in a lineup like the current lecture series is reflective of Wesley's status as necessary to the institution but not to the lifeblood of theology here.

If so, that is truly unfortunate. And I wish I knew how to help future clergy understand the central importance of Wesley to everything we do. I would also be curious to know the status of Wesley on other UM seminary campuses.

Clergy collars: yea or nay?

Every year at annual conference, I see more and more of my Methodist clergy brothers and sisters wearing collars. I have never asked any of them why, and I have never donned a clergy collar myself. But the issue of collar wearing has come up among some friends here at Duke recently, particularly with my Free Methodist friend and fellow blogger Casey Taylor, who has posted a couple of times on this issue recently (see here and here). Besides engaging in a fascinating and friendly debate with a Baptist pastor from Australia named Gordon (a contributor to the Neo-Baptist blog), Casey raises a lot of helpful points around this issue.

My brother Barkley is an Episcopal priest in Roanoke, VA, and he wears a collar everyday. (In fact, that's him in the picture above.) He has mentioned to me one of the points that Casey raises - that, because he is so easily identifiable as a member of the clergy, the collar sometimes provides ministry opportunities he would otherwise miss. He has also shared with me a bit of the history of the collar about which I was not aware: that it (in combination with the black clergy suit) is essentially a modern adaptation of the cassock which was once the everyday apparel of the clergy. That is interesting, since most people today think of the cassock as a vestment (an opinion which Barkley says is technically incorrect).

These points are echoed by a former Duke student named Jonathan Melton, who is now serving an Episcopal parish in west Texas. In a reflection piece in Duke's Anglican/Episcopal House of Studies publication Perspectives, he calls clergy collars "symbols of humility and availability." Jonathan argues that it is important to wear the collar exactly because it can be an awkward and difficult experience for the person wearing it at times. Like a policeman's badge or a physician's white coat, it announces to the world that this person serves a certain role and that he can be called on for aid.

I am curious to hear others' opinions on the pros and cons of wearing a collar. Theologically speaking, I regard it as adiaphora - there is no clear Scriptural injunction either for or against it. That means it essentially boils down to a pastoral issue: Is it conducive to a more effective ministry to wear the collar? Two strong issues in its favor for me are: 1) that it marks one as clergy and hence as a minister of the gospel to the watching world; and 2) it calls the wearer to a high accountability for actions and attitudes in the public sphere. As our culture continues to secularize, I can see many benefits to this form of public clerical witness.

If you are clergy, do you wear a collar regularly? And if you do not, have you thought about it?