It's not what you say...

... it's how you say it. Or, so the old saying goes.

I've thought about that saying a lot over the past few days, after re-reading my last two blog posts and carrying on a conversation about them with a few folks over telephone and e-mail.

Electronic communication media - whether e-mail, blogging, or otherwise - is a flawed blessing. It connects us in ways we never before imagined, and it allows for a rapid exchange of ideas and points of view. But it is also tone deaf, which can lead to problems that I'm sure any reader of this blog has experienced firsthand in his or her own life. I once read a columnist who called e-mail a "multiplier of misunderstandings" because of the way a poorly worded message can ignite an office-wide controversy that the message's author never intended. You could say the same thing about blogging, because of its inherently opinionated character and inability to communicate nuances in tone of voice.

Which leads me to the point of this post. My last two posts (here and here) were fired-up views on some of the problems the United Methodist Church faces at present together with suggestions for positive change. My intent in both posts was to be positive, but I didn't want to let my desire for constructive suggestion obscure a deeply-held view that the church has got some serious structural problems that need to be addressed soon. So I didn't hold back, assuming that anyone reading this blog knows how seriously I take the calling of discipleship on all our lives and the importance of the church as the body of Christ where we learn the depths of saving faith. I admit that I think strong language is sometimes needed to overcome the inertia that we all experience in the church of just going about our business and assuming everything will turn out alright. Clearly, things are not alright and it is going to take intentional and probably sacrificial commitment to bring about the kind of reforms that can equip us for faithful service in the years ahead.

But what I was not intending to do was run the church into the ground or suggest that God is not still working through us. As I mentioned in a response to one of the comments last week, I was baptized, married, and ordained in the UMC. Amongst Protestant churches, I think we have the most solid core doctrine and can make one of the best cases that there is still a need for Protestantism to exist at all. I'm very hopeful about what a reformed and reinvigorated UMC could mean around the world, and I hope to be a part of that renewal through my own ministry in the years ahead.

So I say all that just so you won't get the wrong idea about my occasional 'soapbox' moments. I had a difficult blogging experience about a year ago with an issue related to my alma mater that almost caused me to reconsider blogging entirely. I ended up deciding that I could still do it effectively, so long as I made sure to take the time to communicate well and always err on the side of charity. That can be done even in impassioned ways, so long as your audience isn't taking you the wrong way.

On another note, I should mention that I saw a great example just yesterday at my church of a way that the UMC is still engaged in powerfully Wesleyan ministries. In our district's "Mission Saturation Weekend," every local church in the area received a speaker who presented on different ways the church is in mission. We happened to get Rev. Mark Hicks, who is the executive director of Disciple Bible Outreach Ministries here in North Carolina. His ministry is centered around bringing the gospel into people's lives through the popular Disciple Bible Study series, and it has a wonderfully Wesleyan twist: one of its primary efforts is in prison ministry. Mark's organization trains individuals and local churches to go into prisons all over the state and establish a ministry presence through offering bible study classes. As Mark described his work to us, he cited both Scripture and John Wesley in abundance! He clearly believes that the church is crucial to helping prison be a place of rehabilitation rather than retribution.

Faithful ministry goes on through the UMC each and everyday, and people like Mark Hicks are testament to that. When I cast a critically constructive eye on the church, it is always with the belief that our potential is enormous and that we could always be preaching and practicing the gospel in greater ways than we are. But that should never obscure the things we are doing, and I'll keep that in mind in the future.

And by the way, Mark Hicks is one of the editors in the new book, I Was In Prison: United Methodist Perspectives on Prison Ministry. It's at the top of my summer reading list.

My vision for church reform

Okay, so this is a pretty long post. But if you were interested in what I wrote last week, you might be interested in this too.

My last blog post looked at the viability of the United Methodist Church's future as a denomination. That future is by no means certain. With declining numbers in the American church, an anemic sense of evangelism and mission, a lack of commitment to Wesleyan doctrine, and a movement afoot to split the church into regions based on national and regional boundaries, the church is at a crossroads. In addition to that, the stiflingly bureaucratic forms of church government we have adopted are seriously inhibiting our attempts to carry out our primary mission, which is to proclaim and practice the gospel so that we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

There were several questions directed to me in the comments section of that last blog post, so let me address them first:

1. One respondent asked why we would spend time and energy trying to repair a broken institution when we could be spending that time making disciples one-on-one. That is a great question, and it points to the driving issue I was trying to get at in my recent article in Faith & Leadership. Jesus has called us into his church. That means that the church is, first and foremost, the community of Jesus' disciples. But over time, the community gains an inescapably "institution aspect" to it. And that ain't a bad thing. Because we believe that the church witnesses to the gospel throughout history, we believe there is a continuity to the Christian community from the time of the apostles to the present. That continuity is evident in the church's historic doctrine, the church's ministry (including the ministry of both clergy and laity), and the church's mission. If you don't accept the church-as-institution, you very quickly begin to suffer from a form of historical amnesia that ungrounds you from the Christian tradition. That's bad for basic Christian theology and can lead to a shallow biblicism. It is also a peculiar temptation for Americans, who tend to see everything in "newer is better" terms and want to discard anything that appears not to work well.

2. Another respondent asked how viable I think the UMC is over the long term, and to what degree I am committed to stay in it. The first part of this question is, in a sense, THE question for Methodists. Clearly, the growth of the church in Africa and the Philippines (and in parts of Europe) shows that the Holy Spirit is working through our church. But the church in the U.S. is a different issue, where we seem to be tearing ourselves apart over differences in moral doctrine and seem to have lost the will to evangelize in a robust way. I can't answer the viability question with any certainty, although I'll make some suggestions later in this post. As far as the issue of my own commitment is concerned, I was baptized, confirmed, and ordained in the UMC. I took vows that commit me to a ministry of Word, Sacrament, Order, and Service in its midst. I believe our church has the resources within its tradition to be a powerful witness for Jesus Christ in the world. So I ain't going anywhere.

3. Yet another respondent asked about my views on the proposed constitutional amendments that would initiate a process of structural reform in the UMC as a whole. If you aren't aware of these proposed amendments, you need to read up on them. As a starter, see this post from Wesley Report. This is a complicated issue, and I am working on an essay that addresses it right now. I'll let you know when I'm finished. Until then, I would only say that I think the restructuring is a very bad idea. The issue most often raised to support it is that the General Conference is too "Americentric" (meaning too focused on the concerns of the U.S. church). But all that is needed to remedy that is discipline and patience. The discipline would come in the form of limiting the number of General Conference petitions submitted that focus on peculiarly American concerns and structuring the agenda more equitably. And the patience would come in simply waiting a few years as the size of the church outside the U.S. grows. Since delegations to the General Conference are proportionally-based, the dominance of the U.S. delegation will eventually even out. And that will happen sooner than you think. Restructuring of the church is overkill. And it would open the door to the separation of the church into national or regional constituencies, thus reinforcing the nationalism that has led to innumerable problems over the past few hundred years.

4. Finally, a question was asked about how to go about extricating ourselves from a bureaucratic approach to ministry and recommitting ourselves to the missional task of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That's what I want to take up in the remainder of this post, so consider what follows my humble attempt at addressing this most crucial issue.

First, there are quick changes we could make to the way we go about some our vital tasks that would make a huge difference. I'll mention two. One is to reshape the agenda of our annual conference sessions so that they are almost entirely centered on worship and equipping. Have all your awards and recognitions done at the bishop's office in the weeks leading up to conference. Film them and put them on a DVD, which you then distribute to the conference delegates. Also make the commitment not to spend time debating and voting on resolutions, which are among the most counterproductive activities that an annual conference does (with an exception made for the year before General Conference, of course, when the annual conferences have the ability to submit petitions). Then take all the new time you've got to worship (perhaps getting a 2 or 3 sermon series from your bishop casting a vision for the conference's ministry) and equip clergy and laity for ministry (through substantive workshops on doctrine, mission, evangelism, etc.). This may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the potential that annual conference culture change represents. Remember that there was actually a time when Methodists looked forward to annual conference as a time when the Holy Spirit renewed the church.

And as another easy change we can reclaim the ordination process as a personal experience rather than a bureaucratic nightmare. This can start immediately by a new attitude from clergy mentors, who often see themselves as cogs in the wheel rather than real contributors to spiritual formation. If mentors will commit to get involved in the lives of their candidates and stay involved, it can have an immediate humanizing effect on the process. (I'm not blowing hot air here. I have done that with a candidate of my own, and I think it made a difference.) Beyond that, annual conferences can do whatever possible (given the Book of Discipline regulations) to further humanize the ordination process by de-emphasizing the bureaucratic elements of it and accenting the human contact. Getting the candidates and the probationary clergy together with the Board of Ordained Ministry registrar (apart from the annual retreat) to go over processes and troubleshoot questions in a supportive setting would be a start. All of these things take time commitments from the clergy involved, but all of them are do-able without official action by a governing body. Again, it may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the difference young clergy can make when they are optimistic rather than cynical about the church and their place in it.

Second, we need to think carefully about what we want our annual conference ministry staffs and our general boards and agencies to do for us. And I want to be careful here, because I think the folks who make up these staffs are committed disciples who pour out their hearts for the church. But in general, I think the more we can reduce the size of the church bureaucracy, the better off we'l be. Take the issue of top-down programming, for instance. Because these staffs are expected to generate programming, and local church pastors and laity are expected to attend, it gives us the erroneous notion that "connectionalism" consists primarily of us all doing our duty by attending programmatic events that are often ineffective or inapplicable to our settings in ministry. Moreoever, the programming I have been most impressed with has never come from 'on high,' but has rather been the vision of a pastor or a church who have shared it with the rest of us. If the time and energy spent on conference and general church-level staffs doing programming was handed over to congregations, then it just might happen that congregations in geographical proximity to one another would reach out and join together in true connectionalism for common ministry and mission. But so long as your attention is focused on the next mandatory thing coming down the pike from your district superintendent or bishop, or from the conference ministry staff, then you will never think to look laterally for how you can cooperate with sister congregations near you.

I also believe we need to seriously re-think the role of general boards and agencies in setting the agenda at General Conference. I don't know this for a fact (and I would appreciate someone who does enlightening me), but my understanding is that the proportion of General Conference legislation that originates with general board and agency staffs is quite large [UPDATE: In the comments section of this post, Steve Manskar from the General Board of Discipleship offers some corrective comments on this point. I thank him, and welcome anyone else shedding further light on the extent to which general church structures 'set the agenda' at the General Conference]. I don't mean this harshly, but that amounts to the entire church's agenda being driven by bureaucrats who may not even be in touch with what is going on in the church 'on the ground.' And the result is that the church becomes committed through the legislation that passes to certain courses of action, which require lots of money and which are (not surprisingly) often carried out by the same general boards and agencies that originated the legislation in the first place. It is also no wonder that church bureaucrats would tend toward the belief that the church's problems could be legislated away. That's the mindset of someone who works in a bureaucracy, whereas I would argue that the church's problems are best solved through the Holy Spirit's work in local congregations. Like annual conference sessions, the General Conference could actually be something that people look forward to with something other than fear and dread. But change has to start somewhere.

Third, I believe reform has to entail a re-commitment to Wesleyan doctrine. Look, if we do not believe that our Wesleyan heritage offers something unique to the church catholic, then it becomes very difficult to make an argument that we should exist as a separate church at all. I wrote my current UM Reporter column about the importance of grounding ourselves in our doctrine. The trouble in the church now is two-fold. First, those who do invoke Wesley or Wesleyan teaching often betray a lack of serious reading in Wesley (and you can see this particularly in the way terms like 'catholic spirit' and 'social holiness' and 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' are misused). And second, many don't even bother with our particular doctrine and instead work from a combination of shallow pop theology and the therapeutic junk - which is easier but does nothing to form mature discipleship. Our congregations are starving for solid doctrinal content that could open up their lives to the reality of God's revolutionary work in the world, and we make them settle for hearing about how to be a nice person. It doesn't have to be this way. But it's going to require us to read seriously out of the tradition and stop trying to turn Wesleyan discipleship into a lukewarm mushy bowl of 'open hearts, open minds, open doors' oatmeal.

So that's it. A few practical changes. And a few changes in the way we approach ministry. It's not the total solution. But it would make a difference.

"Denomination" in the dock

We live in a pro-confessional, anti-denominational age. For large mainline denominations like the United Methodist Church, that could mean disaster. Follow with me on this:

Christians (particularly younger ones) are starting to realize that faithful discipleship and good citizenship do not mean the same thing. There was once a time when the phrase, "America is a Christian country" did not sound so nostalgic. Our culture was, broadly speaking, Christian. So you could count on the idea that teachers, politicians, and businessmen would take Christian convictions seriously (even if they did not subscribe to them themselves). But that era has passed. Our culture has become secularized and pluralized to a degree that calling America "a Christian country" strikes one as hopeful but unrealistic.

And Christians are starting to catch on to this reality. They are - perhaps for the first time in American history - beginning to understand that Jesus may have a call on their lives that differs from that of the nation. Even more important, they are realizing that Jesus' call and the nation's call are not just different, but also at points incompatible. So more Christians accept the challenge that self-identifying as "Christian" actually means something. It may put them at odds with their neighbors, their co-workers, and particularly with the broader culture. But this is what it means to be confessional. The New Testament promises us that it will, in some ways, make life more difficult. But it is a life in service to the living God.

Here's the irony: At the same time when Christians are starting to realize the need for a confessional identity, they are becoming increasingly resistant to the idea of a denominational identity. In my own tradition (the United Methodist Church), you see that all the time in new church plants, where the name of the local church will either minimize or wholly conceal the name of the larger denomination (such as: "THE RIVER CHURCH" in huge letters, with "a united methodist congregation" in tiny letters underneath, if it is present at all).

The recent decision by the pastor and staff of GracePoint United Methodist Church to separate from the UMC and launch GracePoint Community Church in Wichita, Kansas, is an excellent example of this trend. This is a complicated situation, to be sure, and it is not one I care to issue judgment about. Frankly, I don't know enough of the details. (To find out more, see Shane Raynor's investigative piece on his blog and the United Methodist News Service's recent press release.) Whatever the events over the last couple of years that resulted in the split, you have to recognize this: the leadership of the church believed it had a vision, and it did not have the patience or the willingness to allow that vision to be lived out within the context of the UMC's ministry.

My interest is not in the details, but rather in the underlying cultural situation that leads to such unfortunate incidents. Why the recent and widespread desire for congregational polity over other forms of church organization, such as the episcopal and connectional polity of the United Methodist Church? As the new GracePoint goes its own way and takes its place among the growing crowd of "community" and "bible" churches, I want to ask, "Why is it that we have come to have such little interest in the identity that a denominational label gives us?"

For those who have been ordained into an ecclesiastical communion like the UMC and have no intentions of leaving (like myself) this is a crucial question. Here are two thoughts:

-- First, our culture is becoming increasingly individualistic in general, which means we tend to see large institutions as impersonal, bureaucratic, and lacking relevance for our lives. Whenever anyone makes a statement about "increasing individualism," everyone tends to nod his head and go on. But I think we have to pause and consider this more carefully. In his recent book, X Saves the World, Jeff Gordinier argues that Generation X'ers have witnessed and rejected the institutionalism of the Builders and the anti-institutional idealism of the Boomers. They've instead opted for an individualism that seeks very localized forms of community life. I think there's something to Gordinier's assessment. We're not individualists in the sense that we don't want the community of others, but we are individualists in the sense that we want our community to consist of people whose faces we know and whose lives are a part of our own. In that context, the idea of a denomination is simply too impersonal and lacking in relevance.

-- Second, the mainline denominations are still operating off of the cultural dominance that they enjoyed until the 1960s. Methodists are probably the worst about this. We have this institutional memory of the time when there were more of us than anyone, and we've never gotten over it. Think about the ways this gets played out: the General Conference passes legislation that weighs in on global problems and calls on our government to act in specific ways. The General Board of Church and Society serves as a lobbying force to the U.S. Congress. Groups of bishops relish the opportunity to get audiences with national political leaders. In a desperate move to get people to like us, we launch a multi-year, multi-million dollar advertising campaign to show the culture how harmless we are and that (contrary to what they've heard about Christian discipleship requiring a new way of life) in reality we're just 'open' about everything. This all amounts to a big cultural hangover, and because we are still suffering from it, our moves as a church in recent years have been toward a mushy pluralism in the vain hope that the culture will repent, start listening to us, and come back to church.

I recently wrote an article arguing that young clergy and lay leaders in the church need to learn to embrace both church-as-community and church-as-institution in order for big denominations like ours to have any kind of future. I believe that. But for us to embrace church-as-institution and make that workable over the long term, the church also needs to change. Here are three ways how:

First, we need to accept the fact that nobody gives a damn what we think. I'm serious about that. Neither the president, the Congress, nor the World Wildlife Federation is holding its breath for what any Methodist body is about to say regarding political issues. If we can stop wringing our collective hands over that stuff, and stop spending all the valuable time and money we have when we gather dealing with it, then perhaps we can re-commit ourselves to the work of ministry. And regardless of what you might say, passing a resolution that goes in a book that nobody reads is not ministry, whether it's the journal of your annual conference or the Book of Resolutions. We need to stop trying to speak to the rest of the world and instead get our own house in order.

Second, we need to reduce the bureaucratic complexity of the church as a whole. This will mean difficult decisions about cutting staff and funding at the level of both annual conferences and the general church. It will mean restructuring and redefining their mission. Conference ministry staffs and the staffs of our general boards and agencies do a lot of good things (and those should continue). They are filled by committed servants of the church who are doing their best in a flawed system. But all bureaucracies evolve over time into organisms that generate a lot of stuff in order to justify their own existence. Our own denominational bureaucracy needs to be pared down and given clearly defined 'equipping' functions and nothing more. By simple inertia, we've arrived at a ministry model that sees bureaucratic processes as the way to get things done rather than the Holy Spirit working in congregations. It's like a ship that has been at sea so long its hull is weighted down with barnacles. We've got to pull into port, scrape those suckers off, and allow the ship to function the way it was originally intended.

Third, we need to realize that the purpose of our mission is not to make middle and upper-middle class consumers feel better about the shallowness of their lives. That's chaplaincy, and it is what goes on in a lot of our congregations. But Jesus wants to gives all of us a whole new life. Methodists used to know that. Wesley's stated mission to his preachers was to "save souls," and his belief about the reason God had raised up the Methodists was to reform the larger church and spread scriptural holiness over the land. In modern times, we have defined that mission as making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. I can accept either version, but neither does us any good if it never gets put into practice. We've got a gospel to preach, but too often what ends up getting proclaimed in our churches is the gospel-of-how-to-live-a-more-fulfilling-materialist-existence.

I have been wanting to write a post on this subject for a long time, but it was something about the saga of GracePoint that made me finally do it. Part of the justification that people on the blogosphere have given for what happened was that we need to care about the work of the kingdom rather than the success of the denomination. Or put another way, we need to make more disciples rather than more Methodists. There is a way in which that sentiment is profoundly true and there is a way in which it is profoundly tragic.

The way in which it is true is obvious, since our own denominational mission statement is a call to discipleship.

But the way in which it is tragic is this: There was a time when Methodists really believed that the best way of making disciples of Jesus was to nurture that discipleship within the context of the Methodist Church. We believed we had a theology, an understanding of committed practice, and a Spirit-fired missionary drive that made our own church the best place to learn the faith.

It is no longer clear that that is the case, and both the GracePoint example and the reaction to it are testament to that. The future of the United Methodist Church as a viable church communion is dependent on our looking honestly at how we got here and taking the steps necessary to re-commit ourselves to our original raison d'etre.

Looking back over 33 years

Today I turn 33 years old. It's the so-called "Jesus year," because if you take the mention of Jesus' age in Luke 3:23 ("Now Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry") and combine that with the apparent three-year ministry depicted in the gospel of John, you come up with 33 for Jesus' age when he was crucified.

So it's perhaps a good time to look back and see what some notable figures in history had done by their Jesus year. Let's see:

Jesus: Atoned for the sins of humanity, initiated the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, reconciled the world to God's own self, died at 33 and rose again.

Alexander the Great: Conquered the known world, died of a fever at 32 after several days of heavy drinking.

John Keats: Established himself as the most brilliant of the Romantic poets, died in his 26th year of tuberculosis.

Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur defined 1990s gangsta rap in all its gritty reality and audacious excess, and were promptly killed within months of one another after engaging in their famous East Coast/West Coast feud. Both died in their mid-20s.

Joan of Arc saved France from England during the Hundred Years' War and established herself as a national heroine, died at the stake at 19 but named a saint in the 20th century.

Caesar Augustus (then known as Octavian) defeated Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. when he was 32 years old, thus consolidating his control over the Roman Empire. He actually lived to a ripe old age.

Me - Alive and well at 33. And still in graduate school.

Finally, Mississippi is #1

When I was growing up in small-town Arkansas, we had a saying about our neighbors to the east: "We're 49, they're 50. Thank God for Mississippi!"

Call it a school kid's coping mechanism. Every time some new national poll would come out measuring poverty, or education, or whatever, it always seemed like we Arkansans were back-to-back with our Mississippian brethren - right at the bottom of the heap. Hearing all the jokes about our hillbilly accents or our supposed lack of shoes was bad enough. But to see the stereotypes about our backwardness supported by statistical evidence was enough to give a kid an inferiority complex.

Well, a new poll is out and Mississippi is finally on top. A recent nationwide Gallup poll finds that Mississippi is the "most religious" state in the nation. 85% of Mississippians report that religion is an important part of their daily lives. Arkansas ain't too far behind at 78% (and tied for 5th overall). As the green-shaded graphic at the top of this post shows, the most religious states are found mostly in the South, whereas the least religious ones are in New England and the West Coast.

I seem to remember President Obama making an unfortunate comment during the presidential campaign about the small town poor clinging to their guns and their religion. He was rightly criticized for that remark (though he claimed it was misunderstood). Still, there is at least a broad correlation between poverty and adherence to religion, at least if you consider that the Southern states are amongst the poorest in the nation. And that makes sense: the Christian faith does indeed offer a message of hope to the poor, calling on them to be united with God and one another in the church and offering the promise of an eternal salvation that puts present suffering in perspective.

But let's flip the question on its head. Why are the wealthy so unreligious? Toward the end of his life, John Wesley wrote a sermon called, "Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity," where he bemoaned the failure of Methodists in that day to adhere to the faith of their predecessors. Wesley believed that the growing affluence of Methodists was a direct cause of their weakening faith. And perhaps most disturbingly, he does not seem to offer a convincing remedy to the problem in the text of the sermon.

Besides just looking at broad brushstroke correlations between per capita income and levels of religiosity in various states, we might also look at the example of our own church. Is it possible that the lukewarm discipleship so prevalent in the United Methodist Church is a direct result of the church's great wealth? And is there a remedy for that problem?

But hey, just so you don't misunderstand me - I'm as proud as I can be about my Arkansas roots. When I go home for a visit, I'm happy as a pig in slop. I root for the Razorbacks like a maniac on Saturdays in the fall, and I speak that lingering hillbilly accent with pride.

I'm also proud at the character of my fellow Arkansans. Though they're often poorer than their neighbors in other states, they are a resilient and hospitable people who typically exhibit a deep faith in God. Don't believe me? Just read the polls!

Shane Raynor's Revolution

For those who followed Shane Raynor's old Wesley Blog, his reemergence this past fall with a new online venture called Wesley Report was a breath of fresh air. In just a few months' time, Shane has proven that he wasn't spending his time away idly.

I review both the Wesley Report and Shane's place as a leader in the Methoblogosphere in my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. For those of you who are new to the community of blogs and bloggers that focus on Wesleyan theology and the United Methodist Church, you should know how great a role Shane played with Wesley Blog between 2004-2006. He blogged about anything and everything, and he had the grace to really listen to those who disagreed with them and give them a voice on his site. Through the Wesley Blog years, Shane did as much as anyone to build the community of bloggers who know inhabit the Methoblogosphere.

The new Wesley Report has already shown itself to be at or near the top among those blogs that cover UM issues. Shane not only does original commentary and interviews; he spends a great deal of time scouring the web to look for the best articles and blog posts from others. He highlights those daily, adds annotations, and even wraps it all up nicely in an e-mail summary for those who want to get it in their inbox everyday.

I've been wanting to profile Shane and WR for awhile now, and the reason is because I think he is doing something crucially important for the future of our church. Those of us who do this online thing each week are in a space that the old guard mostly isn't. We have the ability to reach sheep for Jesus that old methods and old approaches cannot. Shane has a real gift in creating an online presence that can serve as both clearinghouse of information and forum for discussion. That means that his work can amplify each of ours. He does that because he believes that the Wesleyan tradition still has contributions to make, in terms of spreading the gospel, growing the church, and bringing people into a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord.

So visit Wesley Report. Often. You'll be glad you did.

New Hymnal, Old Controversies

A new United Methodist Hymnal is currently under development. A hymnal revision committee was approved at the General Conference in 2008, and if all goes as planned, a new hymn book will come up for approval at the General Conference of 2012.

The hymnal is enormously influential in the life of the church, and so changes to it will be hotly contested by those who want to see particularly theological or political perspectives represented in it.

Controversy is already occurring, in fact. There's a Facebook group that's been set up to discuss various issues related to the new hymnal's development. Most of the questions that are asked are for informational purposes. But when the question turned to gender inclusive language for God, the discussion got heated.

I tend to think that most debates over God language do not take historic doctrine very seriously. Revisionists mostly tend to see God language as political and/or sociological, meaning that it is a product of time and place and should be adapted as often as needed to fit new situations. That kind of view doesn't look back into history much further than 1960. And that's a shame. It will be an even greater shame if the new hymnal waters down Trinitarian doctrine worse than the 1989 version did.

Here is a version of some comments I left on the discussion board about changing hymns and liturgies with each new edition of the hymnal:

When going about the process of altering historic hymns of the faith (or even contemporary ones), we need to take seriously our Trinitarian language for God. The persons of the Godhead have been revealed by as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - first in Scripture and then in definitive doctrinal form at Nicaea. This does not mean that God the Father is male, of course. But it does mean that we must use discipline in our language, and if Christian theological language/concepts do not agree with the political flavor du jour of society, then it is incumbent upon us to educate our people rather than descend into sloppiness in our theological grammar.

For instance, the Fatherhood of God is attested by Christ (e.g., Luke 10:21-22; John 10:29-30). The Son is the Son of the Father; when the Son became incarnate he was born to a mother - the Virgin Mary. Thus, attempts to rename God the Father as 'Mother' or as 'Parent' go directly against both the direct testimony of Scripture, the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead, and Calcedonian doctrine of the Incarnation. Moreover, attempts at non-gendered language (Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer) produce nothing but forms of the heresy of modalism.

Generally speaking, those who attempt to apply standards of the nouveau contextual theologies as a way to radically alter our God language do not take Trinitarian doctrine seriously. Words like 'justice' that are often thrown around to make revisionist arguments are used carelessly and speak more to the egalitarian aspirations of liberal democratic society than they do to our ecclesial existence. Justice as biblically-understood is a different, theological (rather than sociological) concept. It isn't that there's no overlap; of course there is at points. But to say that it is 'unjust' to women to refer to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is entirely non-biblical.

I hope the hymnal revision committee will take these points seriously. The advantage of revising a hymnal every 25 years is the possibility of including new and fresh hymns that speak to the exaltation of the triune God in creative ways. The disadvantage is the inevitable political pressure to conform to whatever the current political climate happens to be. I hope our revision committee will take the riches of the Christian tradition seriously - riches that are much deeper and more life-giving than the panicky impulses to appear politically correct vis-a-vis the secular intelligentsia of this country in the immediate present.