Let's talk about sex

Shannon Vowell has a remarkable article in the United Methodist Reporter this week where she calls the church to reappraise its teaching (or lack thereof) on sex and sexuality to its youth. She writes, "The bottom line on teenage sexual practice as far as our church is concerned is this: We've failed them by copping out on Scriptural teaching about sex, both institutionally and individually." She says that our desire to be relevant has led us to become relativistic, both in moral teaching and in fundamental doctrines such as the truth of salvation through Christ and the nature of God as Trinity.

She goes on to observe that "about sex, we stand silent - or simply echo a muted version of the ethos of culture: Anything goes, because we are too civilized and sophisticated to need God's boundaries."

Now, anyone who grew up in a United Methodist Church where the silence on sex was deafening can relate to what Shannon is saying. I grew up in a church like that, and while no one in the church - pastors included - would have thought they were doing anything wrong, neither did they consider that the church is the absolute best place for children and youth to learn about their sexuality.

In a seminar I'm currently taking on ethics in the early church, we spent a couple of weeks reading the church fathers on marriage and sex. Granted, the early church had some views on sexuality that we would rightly question. But what was significant to me is that these guys were preaching on sex and seeking to engage their congregations in the issue of how sex should be rightly understood. A colleague of mine in the class said that she had led a "good sex" retreat for her youth while a pastor in Arizona, which was oriented around helping adolescents understand sexuality in healthy and holy ways. But my colleague's courageous ministry aside, I think Shannon Vowell's view is the more common one in the church: Sexuality is considered so taboo that most churches won't engage their children on it at all.

Watching what this leads to in campus culture is as depressing as it is frightening. How many of us went to colleges or universities where, without any real formation around issues of sexuality in our faith communities, we were thrown into a culture where Bacchanalian revelry was the rule rather than the exception? And with no formation, what resources do such kids have to fall back on?

It is not as if there aren't brave individuals out there. Take Justin Noia, an undergraduate here at Duke who wrote this column last year on valuing sex and sexuality as a fundamental and inseparable component of love - something you would not want to trade in cheaply. Of course, Noia's column received angry letters to the editor (such as this one and this one) that insisted that his views were boring, Victorian, and misogynistic.

There is also a growing trend amongst Ivy League schools for abstinence organizations (or "chastity clubs"), such as the one described in this NY Times Magazine article on Janie Fredell and Harvard's True Love Revolution organization. It is a fascinating story, and one must appreciate the heroism of young adults who embrace chastity as a virtue in a culture that is often hostile to such a practice.

But we might ask, "How do we turn chastity from a virtue of the heroic minority to a viable or even preferred option for Christian college students?" I think the answer to that question has a lot to do with what Shannon is talking about in her article: it has to start at church.

Do you have any experiences of ministries on sex and sexuality in your own church context? Do you have any resources that you would recommend?

Why we need spiritual direction

Church growth strategies are based on the I wrote a column and accompanying blogpost a few weeks ago, where I described the way that the associate pastor at my church approached Lenten observance. She told us that she expected a certain practice out of us - a Friday fast - rather than giving us a buffet of choices and asking us to each select one.

In both my column and this blog, I expressed approval for her approach. By giving us a pastoral expectation, and giving it to the entire congregation, I thought she showed guts. And I thought she showed a mature understanding of the need for congregational (as well as individual) spiritual formation.

The responses I got from both the column and the blogpost were interesting. Some agreed with my point of view. But others thought that I was rejecting the need for personal discernment in favor of a sort of unthinking obedience to pastoral authority. I admit that I hadn't thought of it that way at all, although I could see where these folks were coming from.

On respondent on the Methoblog wrote:

"Wow, that's a new view for me, but I think it has some merit. While the point is powerful for those of us in the laity, it also has deep implications for those of us preparing to enter the ministry. I find it almost equally challenging to imagine myself asking my pastor what I must do to faithfully follow Christ ( and accept the answer without question) as to imagine a parishioner asking me the same question. This seems to assume that our pastors have a special knowledge and authority, rather than the model of pilgrims together on a journey which has become popular where I'm from. How does this traditional understanding ministerial authority jive with the emergent church?"

The interesting thing to me is that I wasn't trying to put forward anything like a "traditional understanding of ministerial authority" (a 'my way or the highway approach' approach, you might say). I was rather trying to suggest something along the lines of spiritual direction, which is not about towing the line, but is about viewing one's discipleship in such a way that admist the need for pastroal guidance and direction.

Another perspective will help. In Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor writes,

"I can better be comforted by my own considerations if another hand applies them, than if I do it myself; because the word of God does not work as a natural agent, but as a divine instrument: it does not prevail by the force of deduction and artificial discoursings only, but chiefly by way of blessing in the ordinance, and in the ministry[,] of an appointed person."

Taylor was a huge influence on John Wesley, by the way (and that is Taylor's portrait at the tope of this post). And I think his instructions here are helpful. We can read the word of God on our own, but it is only fully illumnated for us when it is explained by another person. The reason for this, of course, is that our sin gets in the way of our own interpretation.

This does not at all assume that pastors have all the answers. What it does assume is that each one of us is not really qualified to make all our choices about how to pursue the path of discipleship. The reason, of course, is that we are all shot through with sin and will tend to make selfish, sinful decisions. The pastor, too, needs someone giving her direction about her path of discipleship. Because pastors are not immune from sin and selfish choice, either.

So our very condition makes spiritual direction a need for all of us. And spiritual direction is exactly what I think my pastor was doing at the beginning of Lent. Not beating us over the head with authority, but giving us instruction and expectation for our own spiritual benefit.

"I am a church member"

Are you?

If so, what does that mean exactly? Are you committed to your membership in your local congregation through thick and thin? Do you confess your sins to brothers or sisters within that fellowship? Do you submit to the authority of your pastor? Do you engage in a discipleship that causes you to sacrifice your own desires in favor of service within the community?

A professor of mine at Duke is fond of saying that, in the early days, it was much easier to become a Methodist than to remain one. All one had to do to join a Methodist society was exhibit a "desire to flee from the wrath to come." But once in, that pilgrim had to show that he was walking the way of discipleship on a quarterly basis or else his name would be stricken from the rolls.

Some people today think that such a severe membership policy would be a good idea for the UMC. But we have to take into account what Wesley was kicking people out of - not the church, but a voluntary fellowship of believers who wanted to engage in a more intentional form of discipleship. For us to kick people out of the church, we are kicking them out of the church. So the case can be made that we would be hindering their access to the means of grace, whereas Wesley was not.

Of course, it is even more complicated. Because American Christianity is the land of denominations. So if a person is removed from membership in a United Methodist Church, she can always find another denomination down the street to take her in (whereas such was not the case in Wesley's England). So, to counter my above point, it is conceivable that Wesley would remove people from our church rolls with as much gusto as he did from society rolls in his own day. In either time, access to the means of grace (and hence, to salvation) is still present.

The issue of church membership has been front and center in our denomination since the incident in Virginia sometime back when a pastor refused membership to an openly homosexual man who refused to repent of his homosexual practice (and the distinction between orientation and practice is important). As I remember, the Judicial Council eventually ruled that the issue was one of pastoral authority and that it was the elder's duty to determine fitness for membership.

Now I know United Methodists are all over the map 0n the issue of homosexuality. But we should not let our differing views on that hot-button issue cloud our thinking on another very important one - that of pastoral authority and standards for church membership. Questioning whether to admit a person onto membership rolls is admittedly different than discerning whether to allow a backsliding member to remain.

But both beg the question of whether church membership means anything at all.

United Methodists wring their hands that we only have 8 million members in the U.S., but what difference does it make if 7 million of them care nothing about holiness of heart and life?

For the record, I do believe the elder in charge of a local church should determine fitness for membership. The church is not a place where anything goes. As a professor of mine back at Vandy used to say, "Jesus invites everyone to his table; but once you accept that invitation, you are expected to behave with the table manners of the host." That means that we must accept God's grace to be conformed to Christlikeness, repenting of our sin and walking the way of discipleship. And if a bishop, or a district superintendent, or an elder or deacon, or a lay member does not like the process of discernment that the elder in question goes through with the prospective member, then that process should be examined with prayer, holy conversation, and reference to our doctrinal standards as expressed in the Book of Discipline.

If the church was to take standards of membership seriously, we'd probably all be in trouble. But maybe feeling guilty about our lukewarm commitment to Jesus and his church is something we need to experience. And maybe we need to repent together, and start to learn what it means to live as real disciples.