Charge conference = brain meltdown

I got home last night around 10 pm, after a marathon 14-hour day of ministry. Not that it wasn't enjoyable - morning worship, afternoon home visitations, and evening bible study were all extraordinary experiences of the grace of God working in the life of his church. Heck, even the finance committee meeting that capped off the night was redemptive!

Sure, you may be asking, "Finance committee ... redemptive?" Well, yes, in a way. I serve in a small church where there is no paid staff (except me). And that means that the administrative structure of the church is carried forward by the laity. So when we sat down to hash out the coming year's budget, I got to experience - for the first time in my ministry, actually - what it is like for a group of God's people to set goals for themselves with no "professional" expertise. The intimacy and familial feel of such a meeting is powerful.

I've got to admit, I'm struggling just a little bit in our run-up to charge conference. My two previous appointments were as a campus minister and as an associate pastor in a large membership church. Campus minister? No worries - no charge conference. Associate pastor? We'll handle the tough stuff, thanks, just turn in your associate pastor's report. It was easy!

But all that changes when you find yourself in a ministry setting like the one I'm in now. There is quite a bit involved in 'getting your house in order' in preparation for the district superintendent's visit. And I'm starting to understand those early autumn sighs and worried looks from the student pastors I have known around Duke for the past two years. When you don't come from an administrative background, trying to juggle Lay Leadership, Finance, Trustees, P/PR, and the Church Council can be a pretty daunting task.

All of which is why I'm grateful for the saints at Mt. Carmel UMC. No pastor could ask for a more loving group of folks, who are understanding of a pastor who has some years of experience in the ministry but no years of experience preparing for charge conference. And I'm learning that grace can be found in unexpected places - even in a finance committee meeting!

Our deepest need?

This post is about what I think Christians' greatest need is in the present. I am writing it in connection with my new column in the United Methodist Reporter.

I've been reading a lot the past couple of months about the Great Awakening and the birth of the modern evangelical movement in the 1730s and 40s. When you look at what people like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and John Wesley were focused on, there are differences related to each leader's personality and ministry setting. But there's one thing with which they were all concerned: the New Birth.

In "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Edwards warned about the dangers facing "unconverted persons" in the congregation. Whitefield practically willed others to experience the New Birth in his impassioned sermons. And Wesley was convinced that the revival in England was occurring because evangelical ministers were preaching a strong doctrine of justification by faith alone.

I mention this because I think that a strong message about the New Birth was exactly what the church needed at that time. The church had been under assault by Enlightenment rationalism for decades, and the latitudinarian attitude of many in the Church of England hierarchy didn't do much for nurturing a vibrant faith.

And us? My strong view is that the deepest need in the church at present is real community. Everything about our culture teaches us to be individualist consumers. When we go to church, we do it with the mindset of customers. When we engage in discipleship, we often do it as religious consumers looking for a return on our investment. The market mentality of American society pervades everything we do. It is so pervasive, in fact, that we often don't realize it is there.

Without the church, we have no hope. The church is the body of Christ. That means no church, no Jesus. And no Jesus, no salvation. Unless we learn how to overcome the fragmentation that plagues us at present, I fear for our future. I have no plan to offer, no easy solution for overcoming the whole freakin' culture. I do think it has something to do with re-learning what it means to be friends with one another. But that isn't as easy as it sounds.

No commentary needed

Is there such a thing as meaningless baseball?

You hear that a lot about some MLB teams in September. For every match-up featuring opposing wild card contenders, there's always a yawner between sub-.500 teams. TV cameras do their best not to show stands that are 50% (or more) empty, but even on television you can't keep from wondering, "Why are they bothering?"

I actually happen to think there is no such thing as meaningless baseball. And I say this as an utterly failed baseball player myself, who tried for a year as a 7th-grader to play a game for the first time that I had never played before and fell flat on my face. But my adolescent attraction to the game was more than just an attraction to the dugout. It was an attraction to the game. And to this day, there isn't much I like more than losing myself in the strategy and tactics of one of the most geometrical, symmetrical, beautiful games every invented.

The only way you can ever think that there is such a thing as meaningless baseball is if you see the fundamental importance of baseball as located in a place other than the 9 innings of an individual game itself. Now, don't get me wrong. I get into playoff races as much as the next guy. They've changed a lot: from true pennant races, to divisional races, to wild card races. But for the teams contending, September is still an exciting month.

Nevertheless, I believe the real beauty of baseball really exists between the time the first pitch is thrown and the last out is made. A former professor of mine used to say that baseball is so compelling because it is an overlapping series of chases, all of which appeal to our primal predatory instincts. The batter chases the pitch; the fielder chases the hit ball; the base runner runs around the bases while being chased by fielders. You add all of that to a game that is ideal for compiling, measuring, and comparing statistics, and it shoots for geometric harmony like an ancient Greek temple - only on more levels!

The very idea of meaningless baseball is rendered, well, meaningless, when you disregard playoff races and focus instead on what happens within the games themselves. It is as close to beauty as athletic competition can come. And there are plenty of theological and ecclesiological analogies - which will have to wait for another post.

Sock monkeys...

... are awesome.

We all knew that. But who knew they could be such an effective tool for ministry?

Check out this Sock Monkey ministry website.

[Random, unrelated thought for the weekend: Jon Stewart's interview with Tony Blair on last night's Daily Show episode showed two things: Blair's deftness as a politician and Stewart's utter lack of interviewing skills.]

News for Probationary Clergy

If you read this blog, you probably know that I am a big believer in Covenant Discipleship. As a contemporary expression of the early Methodist class meeting, Covenant Discipleship offers the church a small group format where we can learn how to 'watch over one another in love' and pursue holiness of both heart & life.

The real force behind Covenant Discipleship now is Steve Manskar, who is the Director of Accountable Discipleship at the GBOD in Nashville. I mention that because Dr. Manskar, along with Dr. Paul Chilcote of Ashland Theological Seminary, will be leading a Wesleyan Pilgrimage Group made up of Probationary clergy in May of 2010. I mention that for two reasons: first, because if you are a probationary elder or deacon (or if you will be one by then), you should really think about going. From my own experiences in England, visiting Christ Church and Lincoln Colleges at Oxford, the Epworth rectory, the New Room in Bristol, and City Road Chapel in London (where Wesley is buried), I can tell you that 'being there' is quite an experience that can connect you to your heritage.

And the second reason to bring this up is because, as this announcement points out, the GBOD and GBHEM are trying to raise money to subsidize the trip for young clergy through a Wesley Pilgrimage Scholarship Fund. It's an expensive proposition, and if you have extra money, donating some could help your poorer brothers and sisters take a pilgrimage that would be formative for their ministry.

Sabbath-keeping

You know, we take most of the Ten Commandments with a high degree of seriousness. We're not into idol-worshiping, we try to refrain from stealing, and we know adultery is wrong. So why have we lost our commitment to "Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy?" (Exodus 20:8).

This question was brought home to me on a recent Sunday, which I recount in my current UM Reporter column.

When you look at the Sabbath command in both Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15, you find these points made about Sabbath observance:

-- It is a way to remember and honor God's work of creation.
-- It is a way to remember our deliverance from slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt.
-- It provides rest from our labors at least one day per week.
-- It ensures rest for subservient members of society, such as children, slaves, and animals.

In addition to these points, we might also note that in the Deuteronomy version, there are more words devoted to the Sabbath command than any of the other 9 commandments: 129 in the NRSV translation (and 89 in the Exodus version), as opposed to only 4 words for the command not to murder.

The real reason to observe Sabbath is not because of some cost-benefit analysis about what it provides us, but rather because God commands it. But I'll tell you you, it's not easy. I started thinking about this seriously when I had the encounter I describe in my column - an attempt to eat lasagna on a recent Sunday thwarted by the owner's of Pino's Italian Restaurant in Henderson, NC, who closes every Sunday for "God, family, and friends" (as it says on the sign he hangs on his door). So I wrote the column and then committed to a Sabbath observance of my own: only worship, rest, and play from now on.

The big question for me became, "What is work?" Clearly, anything associated with worship cannot be considered work. Even though I am the pastor of my congregation and receive financial compensation for my leadership of the church, worship is properly understood as celebration. But is reading work, if it is reading that pertains to my graduate studies? That's a significant question for me. If you have ideas or advice, I'd like to hear them.

Another big issue centers around engaging in commerce. When you shop or go out to eat on Sunday, you are forcing others to work. And it seems to me that a part of our Sabbath witness should be to allow the kind of rest to laborers that the biblical command is talking about. I've stopped going out to eat on Sundays, and I actually had to catch myself from swinging by Blockbuster on my way home from church yesterday. I'm going to try hard not to engage in any commerce at all on the Sabbath.

Ultimately, I think Sabbath-keeping is a way for Christians to reclaim their distinct identity as the people of God. In that way, I think Sabbath-keeping can only finally be sustained in a community. Individual observance will tend to fail when opposed by a culture that cares nothing for Sabbath (Chik-Fil-A excepted, of course!). So if anyone would like to share ideas about Sabbath, I would love to do that.

[End note: I'm aware that the actual, biblical Sabbath is talking about Saturday rather than Sunday. But in the early church, the fact that Jesus' resurrection - "the Lord's day" - occurred on the first day of the week meant that Christians began to center their worship lives on Sunday rather than Saturday. For centuries, that has meant that Christians identify their Sabbath with Sunday.]

The Quadrilateral: a plea for help

I'm currently working on a project that involves the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, and I need your help.

Not long ago, Kevin Watson pointed me to a post on his blog where he takes Mainstream United Methodists, an Oklahoma caucus group, to task for misrepresenting the Quadrilateral in one of their newsletters earlier this year. The newsletter makes such outlandish statements as "Wesley's Quadrilateral is the center piece of United Methodism." My response to that would be "Wesley had a Quadrilateral? Huh. Never knew that. Where does he talk about it?"

Part of my project looks at the way the concept of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is used popularly in the UMC. I've tracked down some references in blogs, letters to the editor, and news articles, but it occurred to me that readers of this blog might have come across references of their own.

Do you know of sources - stories, letters, blogs, etc. - where the Quadrilateral is described? If so, can you point me to them?

Feel free to post here or e-mail me at the address in my 'Contact' page.

Thanks.

Hauerwas, Milbank, and the pope

The photo above comes courtesy of Ben Myers' blog, Faith and Theology. It was taken at a conference in Rome last week and shows Pope Benedict XVI greeting theologians Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank.

Wouldn't you love to have overheard that conversation?

The Prodigal Son returneth...

A notable development: Not long ago, I posted about a few upcoming changes in the blogosphere. One of those is the return of Shane Raynor to active blogging, with a blog called Wesley Report: United Methodist News, Life, & Culture.

Now I ain't exactly an old-timer in the blogosphere (in fact, Gen-X Rising turns two years old tomorrow), but for those of you newer than I am, you should know that Shane played a crucial role in forming the Methodist blogging community - otherwise known as the Methoblogosphere - back when he wrote his first blog, entitled, Wesley Blog.

At the UM Reporter, I looked at the burgeoning blogosphere in this column in October of 2005, with specific reference to the impact that Shane's work was having. In the same issue, an interview I did with Shane ran as a companion piece to my regular column. Shane stopped writing the Wesley Blog because of other things going on in his life, particularly around his involvement in his local church's youth ministry. (He tells a bit of the story in this post.) I am glad to see him back and blogging again. Shane is an insightful writer who is unafraid to take on tough issues. He will be a welcome (re-)addition to our conversations about faith and the church.

Addendum: Clifton Stringer has written a biographical blog post on Shane that you can access here.

What (or who) is driving history?

The presidential campaign season has become an all-consuming affair for many in this country (and particularly for the national media). We were distracted by the Beijing Olympics for awhile, but now that those have passed and the Democratic and Republican National Conventions have redirected our attention, it seems that all eyes are trained on the issue of who our next president will be.

I have friends who are wholehearted Obama supporters and friends who are wholehearted McCain supporters. My own column work and blogging makes me interested in the genre of op-ed writing, so I read a lot of columnists from both the liberal and conservative persuasions as well. (Come to think of it, that would make for an interesting blog post in and of itself: Who are the best op-ed columnists out there?). Inevitably, as we draw closer to the election, the extremist tendency in everyone's views seems to get dialed up.

And here's what gets me about the points of view that I hear in person and read in print -- in the polarized atmosphere of the campaign season, people on both the left and the right tend to view their own party's candidate through rose-colored glasses while seeing the other's side's guy as a laughable, almost-inconceivably bad choice for president. In the process, the Democrats think a President Obama would restore dignity to the Oval Office, repair our damaged reputation overseas, bring in universal healthcare, balance the budget, end the war, and rewrite the tax code to be more just. Meanwhile, Republicans thing a President McCain would reform the damaged Republican party, enable true bipartisan legislative work, protect us from Islamic extremism, face down a resurgent Russia, keep spending low and taxes lower, and make government less intrusive. As the expectations of each side for its candidate get higher, the demonization of the other side gets more intense.

I had a conversation with a good friend today who reminded me of a frequent refrain in the work of John Howard Yoder: The real force driving the world is not the United States of America; it is not freedom & democracy; it is not capitalism; and it is certainly not Barack Obama or John McCain. It is, rather, Jesus Christ. And the body politic that Jesus leads is no nation-state. It is the church.

I don't want to suggest that your vote is not important. And I don't think it is inconsequential that Obama might make a serious difference in the healthcare crisis in this country, or that a McCain appointment to the Supreme Court might bring us one step closer to ending the abortion holocaust in this country. But it is vitally necessary that Christians put this presidential campaign into the proper perspective.

In He Came Preaching Peace (1985), Yoder writes,

"[T]he primacy of Christians' loyalty will show in our sense of ultimate values. In the minds of many serious people, what really matters about human history is the creation of institutions which will create and distribute material abundance, and will guarantee human rights. This is what we read about in the history books. These things do matter. And generally Christians do much to help achieve them. But what matters most, the real reason that God lets time go on, is his calling together of his own people through the witness of the gospel. Not buidling and protecting a bigger and better democracy, but building the church is God's purpose; not the defeat of communism, or of hunger, but the proclamaition of his kingdom and the welding of all kinds of men and women into one new body is what we are here for. Kings and empires have come and gone in times past and shall continue to come and go until the day of Christ's appearing. For Christians to seek any government's interest - even the security and power of peaceable and freedom-loving democracy - at the cost of the lives and security of our brothers and sisters around the world, would be selfishness and idolatry, however much glorified by patriotric preachers and poets.

"Not only in Abraham's time was it a testing of faith to be called by God to abandon all else out of loyalty to that 'city whose builder and maker is God' (Hebrews 11:10). Even more today, when nationalism has become a religion for millions, will the true depth and reality of the Christian profession of church people be tested when they must choose between their earthly and their eternal loyalties.

"What is our allegiance? It is to that people 'elect from every nation, yet one o'er all the earth.' Our nationality? Christian."

Practice makes perfect

My latest column in the United Methodist Reporter was inspired by some reflecting I was doing on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I'm not sure what caused it, except that this seems like the most threatening hurricane season since the terrible one in 2005. For the first few days after Katrina overwhelmed New Orleans, I remember feeling this sense of disbelief that was similar to what I felt (in a more intense way) when the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11. Then in the days following the storm as the situation got worse, I remember feeling panicked and helpless, like I should be doing something.

I was pastoring a church in Searcy, Arkansas, at the time, and our church (as well as the United Methodist Church of Arkansas) did end up doing a lot. We raised thousands and thousands of dollars for relief supplies. And as soon as it was possible individuals and small groups of people started traveling from Searcy down to affected areas in Louisiana and Mississippi to pitch in. When several dozen refugees were settled in a camp right outside of Searcy, our congregation cooked meals, bought phone cards, and donated clothing to them as an act of love and hospitality. As all these things started happening, I remember my feelings of helplessness turning to thankfulness, as I saw how the Holy Spirit was at work amongst my flock.

I finally got the chance to go down to the Gulf coast in October, about 5 or 6 weeks after the storm. I was leading a group of students from Hendrix College, and we stayed about 5 days in Pascagoula, Mississippi. That's the story I tell in my column. It was humbling to see how the great majority of the good that was being done was being done by Christians from all over the United States. The two most common vehicles on the road that week were pickup trucks and church vans, and quite a few of those vans had the cross-and-flame logo of the UMC. It was a tough, tough situation. But the people told us over and over again that they didn't know what they would have done without the churches.

One reason that committed discipleship is so important is because it is a form of training. The little things we do each day - prayer, Scripture reading, helping our neighbor, tithing - are forms of preparation. Ultimately, they prepare us for full citizenship in the kingdom of God. But between now and then, they prepare us to know how to act when the Hurricane Katrinas come.