Continuing the Hendrix debate

I received a copy of an open letter by the clergy members of the Hendrix Board of Trustees that will appear in the upcoming issue of the Arkansas United Methodist. It is written specifically in response to the op-ed article I published in mid-May. The letter was e-mailed out to an Arkansas young adult clergy e-mail list that I had contacted about the proposed charter revisions.

I am serious about wanting open debate on this issue, so I am going to offer the letter without comment for now. You can download it here:

Letter_from_Hendrix_Clergy_Trustees_5-29-08.doc

I do intend to respond, because I think that the points that the clergy trustees raise call for further conversation. But I will wait until the letter appears in the next issue of the AUM.

Let me say something else as well. A friend and former professor of mine at Hendrix raised the issue of some of the language I used in my Wednesday blog post. What I had intended as tongue-in-cheek, wry, or witty comments were received by some as mean-spirited and cynical. I deeply regret that.

I do believe that the blogosphere is a democratic, free-wheeling arena of public discourse where we bloggers often mix in humor of various kinds to spice up our commentary on issues. However, through targeted e-mails, I invited a diverse crowd into this blog to read my argument on the Hendrix issue. This included a lot of people associated with Hendrix College or the Arkansas Conference who are not regular readers of this blog. Because of that, I should have moderated my writing more closely and recognized how sensitive an issue this is for many people. I apologize for my carelessness, and I apologize to anyone I may have offended through my comments. I have gone back and edited the post significantly, hopefully removing any language that might be construed as base.

Hendrix College and the UMC

I am a 1998 graduate of Hendrix College, in Conway, AR. Hendrix is a small liberal-arts college that has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church (or its predecessors) since its founding. It offers a top-notch academic education, and I am grateful for my experience there as an undergraduate.

If you are a Methodist who attended a Methodist-related college or university, you know how strange college-church relations can be at most of "our" schools. Methodists frankly don't know how to do church-related higher education anymore (there are some specific historical and cultural reasons for this, which I will not go into right now). The resulting confusion can often lead to strained relationships between the church and its colleges.

My own alma mater of Hendrix is a great example of just such a strained relationship. There are some aspects of its church-relatedness that are laudable. The second of the missions to Peru this month that I've been writing about was - that's right - a group of Hendrix students who were wanting to learn more about the church in Peru and wanting to help out with earthquake rebuilding efforts. The college thought enough of the mission to ask a clergy alumnus (me) to lead it. That kind of stuff is great.

But then, there's other stuff. For instance, the president of Hendrix, Dr. Tim Cloyd, has pushed through a proposed change to the Hendrix Charter that would reduce the number of Arkansas United Methodist clergy on the Board of Trustees by half. Currently, ten clergy in full connection serve on a 42-person Board (along with the bishop and director of conference ministries, who serve in an ex-officio capacity). The change would reduce that number to five clergy. The newly freed up five Board members would be United Methodist, either clergy or laity, from anywhere in the U.S.

The key question here is why. Here's a school that has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years in every measurable category - from enrollment, to endowment, to academic programs, to buildings. The church doesn't seem to have stood in its way in any of that growth. So why take what can only be seen as a punitive action against the church in Arkansas by reducing its presence on the Board of Trustees?

Talk to clergy and laity in Arkansas, and you'll hear dozens of possible reasons. Some say this is the inevitable next step in a relationship that has been declining for decades. Some suggest that this is a punitive move by the administration, in response to the Annual Conference's decision last year to equalize funding with historically black, UM-related Philander Smith College in Little Rock. Some current Hendrix students and alumni both, who are particularly unhappy with the president, suggest that it is just one more example of his insistence on remaking the college in his own image.

From talking to people related to the college, I get the sense that the administration will argue that this will actually strengthen the church-college relationship by allowing the college to stock the Trustees with nationally prominent clergy and laity from other states. A memo by President Cloyd to the Hendrix faculty and staff, dated February 19th of this year, classified the proposed changes as one of a number of "important actions" that would move Hendrix closer to being a "national leader" in "engaged liberal arts and sciences education." But there are at least four problems with the administration's line:

1) The stated purpose of the college (see Hendrix Charter, Article 1, Section 3) is to "carry out the plans, past and future, of the Conferences of the United Methodist Church in Arkansas for the development of Christian education through [the college]." The statement of purpose in the Charter doesn't say anything about the UMC in other states or annual conferences, and thus it is somewhat confusing for the college to argue that the Arkansas Conference should acquiesce in its own diminishment on the Board of Trustees. And besides, the administration simply isn't offering anything (yet) about how this will strengthen the relationship between the college and the church in Arkansas. It will be curious to see if that changes.

2) The college's reasoning will most likely rely on a very optimistic view about how the five freed-up Trustees positions will be filled in the coming years. That is, it will assume that the college will continue to seek Trustees with strong United Methodist connections who care a lot about the church-college relationship. Anyone familiar with how and why people get chosen to serve on such boards knows this is unlikely when competing against other needs (deep pockets, influence, political connections, etc.). This is not to say that it's wrong to ask wealthy and powerful people to serve on the Board. And it's not to say that such people can't have strong UM connections. But it is to say that preachers fall pretty far down the list of attractive candidates for such a Board. And it is also to say that church commitments tend to lose out to other priorities by those whose first commitment is not to the church. The clergy who are selected are selected because they, as people who are by definition committed to the church, have been constitutionally included in the makeup of the Board in the college's charter. Laity who happen to be UM and are selected may or may not put the interests of the church first, but the fact of their church membership will never be the sole reason they are chosen for Board membership.

3) There has been the suggestion by some people that at least some of the five freed-up positions will be filled by nationally prominent clergy. Now, I grant that one or two megachurch or big steeple pastors may be asked to serve in the early years. But the likelihood that the College is still going to voluntarily seek out preachers for its Board of Trustees 10 or 20 years down the road - after the debate around the charter changes has been forgotten - is (in my opinion) slim.

4) A key administration argument is that the proposed changes will allow the college to reach out to committed Methodists (clergy or lay) in other parts of the country. This ignores one huge question: If the college cares that much about including prominent Methodists on its board, why doesn't it just ask some of them to serve? There is no change to the charter needed for this. With a 42-member Board, it can ask all the Methodist clergy and laity from around the country that it wants! And herein lies the key to seeing through the flawed reasoning around Hendrix's proposal. Ask yourself this question: If the Hendrix administration truly wants to strengthen its ties to the church, why does it feel like it has to make permanent changes to the college charter that actually diminish the number of clergy on the Board of Trustees? I continued to miss the logic in that line of reasoning.

Ironically enough, I learned about the proposed change by accident through a chance conversation in April. This is the type of thing that the administration would probably like to have flown under the radar, so it could be presented at Annual Conference and approved without a lot of debate. But as an alumnus of the college, Hendrix is my alma mater - my nurturing mother. And like all alumni, I have a responsibility to look out for her well-being. So I've penned an op-ed piece in the Arkansas United Methodist newspaper that highlights the proposed changes. Here it is, in three PDF files because it was spread out over three different sections of the paper:

Hendrix College and the UMC, page 1

Hendrix College and the UMC, page 2

Hendrix College and the UMC, page 3

The catch is that the Annual Conference has to approve any changes to the Hendrix Charter. If the Conference says no, the charter stays as it is. I actually want to improve the relationship between Hendrix and the Arkansas Conference, so my article offers some suggestions. I welcome any conversation here on this blog.

Home Sweet Home

My plane touched down at the Raleigh-Durham airport yesterday at about 4:45 p.m. I had to spend most of yesterday in Miami due to a flight cancellation, but I'm safe at home now and wading through e-mails after a good night's sleep. It will be nice to settle back into a normal routine.

There is, of course, a big part of me that is still back in Peru. I hope to be able to continue to share stories and pictures over the next few weeks. The picture above was taken in the Methodist Church in Chincha Alta by my friend Danny Redding-Rhodes. The two of us, together with Cody Schuler, were working on sermons that we preached later that weekend. Note the Spanish-English dictionary!

Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers.

On the road again...

After a lovely two-day stay in Cusco (11,000 ft high in the Andes Mtns), the Hendrix crew is heading back down to Lima today. We'll spend the day there before boarding an overnight flight that will take us to Miami tomorrow morning. With a little bit of luck and a tailwind, I'll be back home in Durham by noon tomorrow!

This has been a wonderful trip - in many ways, I feel like I've done some things in Peru this time that I never have been able to do in my previous trips. It has also given me some ideas about how future trips might be planned, how the mission in Chincha might be expanded, and how the connections between the Iglesia Metodista del Peru and the United Methodist Church might be strengthened. It will take a few days to sort through a lot of my thoughts. I'll try to share some of them through blog posts and UM Reporter articles.

I want to say thanks to everyone who has been praying for me and for the two mission teams that have been working here since May 1. I know the Holy Spirit has been with us. God bless you all.

Last night in Chincha

Today is Friday, and tomorrow the current group from Hendrix College will saddle up and head back to Lima. We've had a wonderfully productive week of work at the Methodist Church's campamento in Tambo de Mora, where we have been involved in several painting projects, construction of a perimeter wall (destroyed by the 2007 earthquake), and the replanting of an orchard (that was damaged by the tidal wave caused by the earthquake). I've really enjoyed getting to know the 4 guys and 8 girls from Hendrix. They have worked hard, built relationships with our hosts, and reflected deeply on their experiences here. From Lima, we'll go up to Cuzco for a two night stay that will include a visit to Machu Picchu.

I wish I could be blogging more during my stay in Peru, but finding time to head over to the Internet cafe has been a little tough. I'll get back to a more regular posting schedule next week once I get back to North Carolina. I'll also try to add a little more about the ministry of the church at the campamento in Tambo de Mora itself. What our brothers and sisters in Peru are doing there is truly inspiring.

Chincha, Peru: What we did, where we went, and why we did it

Happy Pentecost!

As I prepare to receive the mission team from Hendrix College this evening, I wanted to share some more information about the activities of the team that flew back to the U.S. late last week. The team consisted of a diverse collection of folks from quite a number of different locations. The people included:

-- Andrew and Emily Thompson, Lynn Cross, Nathan Kilbourne, and Emily Dueitt (from Duke Divinity School)

-- Stephanie and Joe Dunn (from Candler School of Theology)

-- Danny Redding-Rhodes, Jessica Bridges, and Angela Flanagan (from Vanderbilt Divinity School)

-- Rev. Dee Harper (associate pastor at FUMC Searcy, AR)

-- Rev. Cody Schuler (pastor of Edgewood UMC in Fargo, ND)

-- Rev. David Hollis (pastor of the Lee Circuit three-point charge near Opelika, AL)

Of those 13 people, 7 of us had been to Peru at least one time before. And all of us have experienced a call by God to engage in mission work. For me personally, I never see the signs of the oneness of God's people so much as when I am in ministry with my brothers and sisters in the Iglesia Metodista del Peru.

Let me breakdown the itinerary we kept over the course of our 8 days together ... Thursday, May 1, was our travel day, and it was a long one. We arrived at the Nashville airport at 4 a.m., and after spending most of a long day waiting in the Miami International Airport, we hopped on board our international flight to Lima around 4:30 p.m. After landing and clearing customs, we met up with Pastor Pedro Uchuya, the district superintendent of the Distrito Costa Sur (or South Coast District). We traveled with him from Lima to Chincha, and we finally fell into bed around 2:00 a.m. (making it about 22 hours worth of travel in all!).

On Friday, May 2, Pedro took us on a tour of some sites around Chincha. Our contributions to the church's mission in Chincha this year (what we often call, 'project money') were put toward the construction of the district superintendent's office in downtown Chincha. Pedro sees connectionalism as a real key to the strengthening of the Methodist Church in his district, and the physical presence of the D.S.'s office, as well as the various ministries that will be coordinated from it, is an important step in making connectional identity a reality. As he explained it to me, the office of the D.S. will be the central point for the various churches around Chincha, so that they can all be better related to one another. We also visited the Templo Central, or the main church in Chincha, which is right around the corner from the D.S.'s office. This is the church where I have stayed, prayed, worshipped, and played over the past several years. A water issue kept us from staying there this year, but it still served as a central meeting point where we could engage in conversation and worship together.

The next day was Saturday, May 3, and we took a large part of the day to go out to Tambo de Mora, an outlying community about 20 minutes from Chincha Alta. This was a hard-hit area during the August 2007 earthquake, and signs of the devastation are still common. Tambo de Mora is also the site of one of the most exciting mission projects that the Methodist Church in Peru is working on right now. They call it the campamento, and it is a combination of church, community center, and retreat camp. I am going to give the campamento a blog post all its own, so I won't go into much detail here. But this is the place that is closest to my heart, and I have worked on its construction over the past 8 years. Tambo de Mora is a very poor community, but it is clear that the community also sees the work of the Methodist Church there as a great sign of hope. It was good to introduce our team to it, as well as to many of the people who live in that area and participate in the church's ministries.

On Saturday night, Pedro took us to one of the iglesias libres, the free churches, which tend to be much more charismatic than their Methodist cousins. Sometimes we hear about the growth of Pentecostal churches in Latin America as a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit, but as Pedro would be the first to tell you, it's not all good. These churches often reduce Christian discipleship to the religious experience of charismatic worship, and I myself heard the revival speaker say, "The gospel is not social, it is spiritual" (as if there can be a real separation of the two). It didn't take long to realize why Pedro had taken us to the service. He wanted us to see a little bit of what the Methodists in Peru are struggling with. Apparently, Protestants of other traditions are often attracted to the emotional worship of the charismatic churches and drift away from their own communities to become a part of one of the free churches. This is clearly frustrating to Pedro, who pointed out to me more than once the theological problems of the charismatic tradition.

Sunday, May 4, was a day for worship, and we had a great experience at the Methodist Church of Pueblo Nuevo (a suburb attached to Chincha). I got to teach a Sunday school class there, and other members of our group went to various classes for worship and study. We also visited another Methodist Church in Pueblo Nuevo called Micaela Bastidas, which is one of the main sites for the Methodist Church's Ministerio de Alimentacion, or Children's feeding ministry. This program has been going on for several years and receives monthly assistance from Dee Harper's church in Searcy, Arkansas. After a wonderful lunch at a local restaurant El Colque, we worshipped in the evening at the main church in Chincha Alta, where Danny Redding-Rhodes and Cody Schuler tag-teamed the sermon and I assisted Pedro in celebrating Holy Communion.

On Monday, May 5, we spent most of the day in conversation with Pedro at his home in Pueblo Nuevo. This was an important day, as it allowed us to take the raw experiences of the previous few days and refine them through conversation and interaction with Pedro. He told the story of the project in Tambo de Mora, talked about his hopes for a stronger connection between the churches of his district, and talked some about the theological conflicts with the charismatic churches. We also met Dr. John Deaver this day, who has committed to living half the year in Chincha in order to begin a health ministry aimed at preventative health and the care of mothers and children. That evening, we were back at the main church in Chincha Alta, where I led a bible study (in Spanish!).

The next day was Tuesday, May 6, and we toured the Escuela de John Wesley, which is connected to the church in Pueblo Nuevo. Through our connections to both the church and the school, I started getting to know a young local pastor named Obed, who both leads worship at the church and teaches at the school. The status of the school, and its relation to the Methodist Church, are both a little up in the air right now. But regardless, it is doing a great ministry with children (and as I was told, is also the only school named after John Wesley in all of Peru). We also worked at the office of the D.S. on this day, unloading a truck of bricks that will go to build the office's second floor. After sharing some educational resources we brought with Pedro (such as Sunday school curricula, VBS stuff, and Upper Rooms), we ended up back at the main church in Chincha Alta for a bible study (which I taught, again, in Spanish).

Wednesday, May 7, was our last full day in Chincha. After breakfast we had a meeting with Lucho Ruiz, who came down from Lima to tell us about Voluntarios en Accion, the organization he heads out of the bishop's office which seems to be like a combination of Volunteers in Mission and UMCOR in the American church. We later went back out to the campamento in Tambo de Mora, where uber-artist Danny Redding-Rhodes led a painting project to re-paint the emblem of the Methodist Church on the front gate of the campamento. We also had more time for playing with the children there, and Pedro and I were able to give the team a more extensive tour of the facilities and their intended use.

I took the group back up to Lima on Thursday, May 8, from where they flew back to the United States.

The trip as a whole was interesting to me, in that it pushed my conception of what a mission trip is all about. I am a firm believer that short-term missionaries need to allow their expectations of a mission trip to be conformed to the needs and desires of their hosts. I had mentioned to Pedro that I was bringing a group of people who wanted to learn more about the churches in Chincha, with the hopes of bringing their own groups someday. Pedro took that ball and ran with it, and he basically constructed our trip around the themes of experience, education, relationship-building, and worship. As we traveled around from church to church under Pedro's care, we were joining with him in strengthening the ties between his churches as well as the ties between the Peruvian and American Methodist Churches. And at the same time, all the members of our team were soaking in the basics of short term missions. As a way to aid this process, Danny Redding-Rhodes and I set aside conversation time where we talked to the group about mission logistics and the way that the theology of mission is embedded in how you go about preparing for the trip itself.

We did little manual labor on this trip, but in many ways, what we did do was much more important. With the members of this team, seeds have been planted and watered. The great possibility now is that 13 people will return with 13 different groups in the future, thereby expanding the work in Chincha and the relationships between Methodists of Peru and the U.S.A.

That's a heck of a lot to read, but if you are still with me, thanks! And if you would like to know more about the mission in Peru - including how you can be personally involved - drop me an e-mail.

God bless +

A respite in Lima

Okay, so I'm in Lima now with a little more time to write and let you know just what the heck I'm doing in Peru. Most of you probably remember the terrible earthquakes that Peru suffered in August of last year. Those quakes struck the very area where I've been working through nearly-annual trips since 2001. The epicenter of the quakes was in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Department of Ica (equivalent to a state in the U.S.). The departmental capital city of Ica, together with the cities of Pisco and Chincha, suffered widespread destruction and a loss of life that topped 500.

Soon after the earthquakes occurred, many people who had accompanied me in mission trips in past years started sending e-mails to see what could be done. The first matter, of course, was to join with our brothers and sisters in the Methodist Church of Peru through prayer for their healing and recovery. And the second task was to begin sending down assistance for relief supplies, which many people did. But the third task was to start a conversation about how we could physically travel down to Peru to help out with recovery efforts. The original hope was to go in January, so that we could be there as soon after the earthquakes as possible. When airfare costs made that time frame impossible, we rescheduled for May. The group that formed promised to be interesting in its makeup: a number of young pastors with previous Peru mission experience, current seminary students with a heart for mission, and a couple of spouses with past experiences in Peru as well (including mine!). There was no rhyme or reason to the group's roster, which included pastors from North Dakota, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama, and seminary students from Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. It was simply those who responded to the call to go, help as they could, and join with the Peruvian church in witness and mission. We set our dates for May 1-9, and I also accepted an offer from my alma mater, Hendrix College, to lead a subsequent mission team of Hendrix students that would follow this first trip from May 11-21.

The interesting wrinkle for this group was that all of the people who signed up - whether they had been to Peru before or not - expressed an interest in learning how to lead short term mission trips. Some of these folks are already serving in ministry positions, while others are in school. But they all discerned a call to connect with Peru through learning to lead trips themselves at some point in the future. So my partner in leading this trip, Danny Redding-Rhodes (who directs the Cal Turner Fellowship Program at Vanderbilt Divinity School and is soon to be commissioned in the Arkansas Conference), and I together began to envision the trip as both an outreach to the earthquake damaged areas and a 'Leadership Development' experience where we could help our team members work through the nuts & bolts of mission logistics, purpose, and theological undergirding.

The long story short is that the trip has been great. We did not do nearly the amount of actual manual labor that we thought we would do. The Methodist churches themselves did not suffer much earthquake damage, and it has been long enough since the quakes that the acute needs have long since been taken care of (although signs of the quakes are everywhere, in the form of piles of rubble on sidwalks and streets). But what we did do, under the direction of Pastor Pedro Uchuya, the district superintendent of the Ica District, was engage heavily in forming relationships, bearing witness, strengthening the sense of connection in the district, and joining in worship with the churches around the city of Chincha Alta. The trip ended up being heavy in the education area, which was great for the aforementioned Leadership Development component we were aiming to emphasize. We had the opportunity to visit a great diversity of churches and communities, and then afterward to talk about what we saw, what it showed us about the Peruvian church's ministries, and how we could connect with those efforts through future trips. This was great for helping my team members think through their own calling to mission, and it was also clearly what Pedro thought was most important for us to be about while we were in Chincha.

In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul writes about the gifts God has given so that the saints can be equipped for ministry. I think there is something to be said about both the development of the spiritual gifts of leaders and the way those gifts can be used for forming the discipleship of the whole church. The great folks on my team have all been gifted by God for the work of ministry, and it was a blessing to be with them so that they themselves might be better equipped to form disciples in mission in the future. I give thanks to God for that.

I want to write more about the specifics of some of what we saw and did, but I'll save that for another post. My team has returned to the U.S. now, and I am in Lima for a couple of days waiting for the mission team from Hendrix College to arrive. For me, it is a chance to relax and catch up on sleep before the second half of my own time here begins. That's important, since the group from Hendrix will be focused much more on manual labor. I have access to the Internet at the hotel where I'm staying in Lima, so maybe I can write more before I head back down south.

Chillin' in Chincha

We've been in Chincha since late Thursday night ... Hard to write a lot because of the Spanish-language keyboard and the crowded conditions in the Internet cafe. This has been a wonderful trip, different in some significant ways than trips I have taken to Peru in the past. Because of the large number of seminary students and young pastors on this trip, we have been focusing heavily on forming relationships with local churches and communicating the story of the Methodist churches of this area to the group. This is all in the hopes that some of the folks will want to lead groups themselves in future years.

Pastor Pedro continues to amaze me with his energy, his leadership, and his love for Jesus. They have been working through some difficult times here lately, due to theological differences with the iglesias libres, the free churches, which tend toward an over-spiritualized gospel and a tendency toward 'prosperity preaching'. Pedro has been sharing a lot of this with me and with the group as a whole, and in some strange ways, it is nice to see a church struggling bravely with divisions that are truly theological in nature (not that our church's struggle over moral issues is not rooted in theology, but our debates over them rarely reach the level of theology from which they spring). As the district superintendent for the Chincha District, it is Pedro's task to help the church through its current struggles and grow it stronger.

As always, the church's ministry with children is among the most awe-inspiring example of God's work that I have seen. In a few days, I'll have some free time in Lima and will try to write more then. For those of you out there who have been to Peru with me before, you would be interested to see a lot of what is happening here.

Your continued prayers for this mission are appreciated!

Worlds enough and time

Well, the last 24 hours of my life have been crazy. I'm in Nashville, ready to fly to Lima, Peru, very, very early tomorrow morning with a mission team I'm leading to work with a community in Chincha Alta. This is the same community I've visited several times before, and it is led by Pastor Pedro Uchuya, who is a friend, Christian brother, and spiritual hero to me.

The last day of my life has been spent grading final exams, packing, praying, and generally not getting a lot of sleep. I had planned to do one big General Conference-related post, and the time just caught up with me.

So all that's to say, I'll just have to do a GC breakdown when I get back!

There has been a WHOLE lot of interesting stuff come out of Ft. Worth over the past couple of days. If you have any thoughts and want to share them in the comments section, please feel free. I did get an e-mail tonight from Carol Bruse of the Texas Conference about the passage of the candidacy petitions. That's exciting news. If anyone at GC wants to comment on that or any other matter, I'll be checking the Internet from time to time in Peru and would love to hear some info!

Otherwise, I will be back from the mission on May 21 and will start posting again regularly - about Peru, GC, and otherwise - at that time. I would also appreciate your prayers for this trip. My experience with Peru over the past few years has shown me the depth and fullness of God's grace at work in this world. The church is a wonderful place to give your life. And friends, we've got all the time in the world for this stuff.

Peace to all +