Do you have a calling?

Do you have a calling? Have you thought about your daily work and tasks not just as your job or your hobby, but as your vocation?

This is a question that has been on my mind a lot lately. And for some reason, I find myself in a lot of conversations about it as well.

The English word vocation comes from the Latin verb vocare, which means to call, to summon, or to name. Thinking about what we do in terms of a vocation instead of just a job or an occupation makes a difference. It causes us to approach our daily work not from the standpoint of what we choose, but rather from the standpoint of how we are called by God.

One of the biggest obstacles for the church to overcome when thinking about vocation is the assumption on the part of many that it is only ministers who are called. But when you get a chance, read the material from the Apostle Paul on spiritual gifts: Romans 12:4-8; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31; Ephesians 4:1-16.

It's clear from the New Testament that spiritual gifts are given to all members of the body of Christ. They "are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each on individually just as the Spirit chooses" (1 Cor 12:11).

When I was in ministry in Searcy, Arkansas, I led our congregation through a study on spiritual gifts where the authors of the study tried to fit all Christians into one of the gifts specifically mentioned in those three Scripture passages. But I don't think Paul is trying to give us an exhaustive list at all. (That's part of the reason the lists differ in each place.) Instead, Paul is showing us a sample of the diversity of gifts that God gives to the church. That's why the Scripture mentions such things as encouraging, helping, and administration. These are expressions of gifts that admit of a great deal of particularity in expression, exactly because the Holy Spirit uses many different means to build up the church.

I firmly believe that God calls every woman and man. We see that visibly in baptism, but the promise of Jesus is that we will also receive a new birth through the Spirit. In that same Spirit, we can - with patience and discernment - discover the gifts that God gives each of us to bear witness to the gospel and build up the body of Christ.

Here's a prayer for discernment, from the United Methodist Book of Worship (p.510):

Almighty God, in a world of change you placed eternity in our hearts and gave us power to discern good from evil. Grant us sincerity, that we may persistently seek the things that endure, refusing those which perish, and that, amid things vanishing and deceptive, we may see the truth steadily, follow the light faithfully, and grow ever richer in that love which is the life of all people; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

I think sharing about our Christian vocation can be a fruitful form of mutual witness. I shared about my own sense of vocation a few days ago in this post. If you'd like to share about yours, please feel free to do so in the comments section.

Putting my vocation into words

I was filling out a 'profile' statement this morning, and I found myself wanting to name my sense of calling in a few short sentences. For me, that calling is both to academic research & writing and practical ministry. And the substance of the calling is the same in both areas, even if it gets expressed in somewhat different ways given the different contexts of university classroom and local church.

Here's what I settled on:

My vocation is centered around exploring and reflecting on how the church can live into a more faithful way of being through disciplined participation in the means of grace. I try to embrace that vocation personally through reading and study, writing for both academic and church audiences, teaching and preaching in both university and church settings, and - perhaps most importantly - through the practical ministry to which I am dedicated as a presbyter in the church of Jesus Christ.

I am drawn to this vocation out of a strong belief that it can help the church live into its calling to be the people of God. That is, I believe most challenges that Christians face in the present era - from the need to embrace fully our identity as disciples of Jesus to the calling to renew the church in its witness and ministry - are dependent on our willingness to pattern our lives in those graced practices given to us by God for our sanctification in faith and the mutual upbuilding of our common life.

I have known of people who spend their entire working lives in occupations they dislike but feel compelled to pursue for one reason or another. In fact, that might describe the majority of the population. And so I'm doubly grateful to be able to approach each day's work as a labor of love, finding great joy and fulfillment in that which God is giving me to do.

The Way of the Cross

I've been reading The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, a book that was important to John Wesley. As a part of that, I've been sharing some of Kempis' thoughts and reflections that are particularly striking to me. (For previous posts, check out here and here and here.)

Check out Kempis' thoughts on the Way of the Cross from the Imitation of Christ, Book II, Chapter 12:

"In the cross is salvation, in the cross is life, in the cross is protection from enemies, in the cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness, in the cross is strength of mind, in the cross is joy of spirit, in the cross is highest virtue, in the cross is perfect holiness. There is no salvation of soul nor hope of everlasting life but in the cross."

Kempis is reflecting on Jesus' teaching in Luke 9:23 (paralleled in Matthew 16:24), where Jesus speaks of denying yourself and taking up your cross in order to follow him.

Wesley focused on this passage as well. In fact, he thought the teaching it contains is crucial to our salvation. He also saw two distinct movements of discipleship in it - the first is denying yourself, and the second is taking up your cross.

In Wesley's sermon, "Self-denial," he draws the distinctions by explaining that denying yourself means saying 'no' to our own will in order to say 'yes' to the will of God: "It is the denying or refusing to follow our own will, from a conviction that the will of God is the only rule of action to us."

He goes on, "The will of God is a path leading straight to God. The will of man, which once ran parallel with it, is now another path, not only different from it, but in our present state, directly contrary to it: It leads from God. If, therefore, we walk in the one, we must necessarily quit the other. We cannot walk in both."

Wesley then explains what is meant by taking up our cross: "Now, in running 'the race that is set before us,' according to the will of God, there is often a cross lying in the way; that is, something which is not only not joyous, but grievous; something which is contrary to our will, which is displeasing to our nature. What then is to be done? The choice is plain: Either we must take up our cross, or we must turn aside from the way of God."

But Wesley is also clear that bearing the cross is not a suffering imposed by God to no end. In fact, it is quite the contrary. He writes, "It is prepared of God for him; it is given by God to him, as a token of his love. And if he receives it as such, and, after using such means to remove the pressure as Christian wisdom directs, lies as clay in the potter's hand; it is disposed and ordered by God for his good, both with regard tot he quality of it, and in respect to its quantity and degree, its duration, and every other circumstance."

Christ acts in this way "as the Physician of our souls." And if, "in searching our wounds, he puts us to pain, it is only in order to heal them."

Now read some concluding thoughts by Kempis on the Way of the Cross, again from Book II, Chapter 12, of the Imitation of Christ:

"Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you shall enter eternal life. He Himself opened the way before you in carrying His cross, and up0on it He4 died for you, that you, too, might take up your cross and long to die upon it. If you die with Him, you shall also live with Him, and if you share His suffering, you shall also share His glory."

In a world where the dominant cultural message we receive is to follow every urge and appetite within us, those are saving words, indeed.

The Church's first mission

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

That was H. Richard Niebuhr's comment in The Kingdom of God in America about the view of mainline Protestantism on the coming of the Kingdom of God. He was describing the belief that society's natural progress has pretty much done away with the need to understand sin, Jesus Christ, the atonement, and salvation in the ways they were understood in previous times.

Niebuhr wrote those words in the 1930s, but they pretty accurately describe wide swaths of the Protestant church in America today.

The belief in society's progress, held so firmly by Protestant liberals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was shattered by the devastation of World War I. But curiously enough, mainline Protestant denominations in the United States didn't seem to get the message (Niebuhr and others notwithstanding).

And whereas our Social Gospeling forebears still believed strongly in personal piety, the Protestant liberalism of the mainline church today has lost even the belief that something about salvation necessarily involves personal transformation. The optimism in human progress is still there, though, and our latter-day Protestant liberalism often sees the church itself as a hidebound organization that needs to 'catch up to the times.'

I've always been curious about how we could possibly look back over the last hundred years and see progress. Sure, there's been lots of technological progress - in science, medicine, engineering, etc. We've been to the moon, and we've stamped out smallpox.

But if you look at other measures, you can see how the very same technology that looks like progress in one place looks like regress in another. How about the 20th century's wars? Advances in technology allowed us to kill more people in war than had died in the wars of all other centuries combined. And what about the state of the environment - the plants, the animals, and even the atmosphere? At the rate we're going, we'll be lucky if there are any animals left in a few decades besides us and the ones we either eat or keep as pets. Our great technology is extinguishing animals, ecosystems, and glaciers in equal measure.

So are we really progressing?

The answer is 'no,' at least not in the way that really counts. Everyone is born a heathen, crippled by sin and in need of God's grace. And so God the Father calls all of us to walk the way of salvation shown to us through his Son, Jesus Christ. And the only real progress is the progress of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as we are healed by grace and made holy in heart and life. That is a progress that happens anew with every person, as he or she is gently healed by grace and restored through the ministry of the church and participation in the means of grace.

This is the Scripture Way of Salvation. I make the case in my recent UM Reporter column that proclaiming the reality of salvation through word and action is the very reason the Methodists were called into existence by God in the first place. And it remains our true calling still today.

The problem with us Methodists is not that some want to pursue social justice while others want to focus on spiritual formation. It is that all of us have an impoverished understanding of what salvation means. And we can begin to remedy that by searching deeply into our own tradition for the rich resources that await us there.

A Blueprint for Discipleship

Jesus' call to us is to a whole new way of life. That new way of life is called sanctification, and by grace it can become a reality for each of us.

As Christian men and women in the Wesleyan tradition, if we aren't serious about sanctification we might as well find something else to do. John Wesley always believed that the peculiar Methodist understanding of justifying grace expressed through the new birth together with a lifelong pursuit of sanctification through the means of grace was the main reason God had raised up the Methodist movement in the first place.

All this is why I'm glad to see A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley's General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living, just out from Methodist pastor and blogger Kevin Watson.

Kevin takes Wesley's General Rules and presents them as the best way to understand God's call on our lives to be deeply committed followers of Jesus. This is a particularly good book for those in the church who would like to understand why the Wesleyan approach to faith is still the best way to open our hearts and lives to be transformed by God's grace. If you are a pastor or small group leader looking for a resource to use in your congregation, I highly recommend this book (available through either Cokesbury or Amazon).

In my review of the book in the United Methodist Reporter, I point out particular strengths of Kevin's approach. Some of these include his emphasis on the central role of grace in our ability to be transformed into holy people, his lucid explanation of the three rules as practical ways to embody the biblical command to love God and neighbor, and his later chapters on the way the rules help us balance our faith lives and call us into relationships of mutual accountability in our discipleship.

I've gotten to know Kevin over the past couple of years as we have both entered doctoral programs to pursue Wesley Studies. (He blogs over at Deeply Committed, by the way.) It's exciting to me to see an aspiring scholar who also cares about the church and wants to 'equip the saints for ministry.' That's why A Blueprint for Discipleship is an important book, and I commend it to you for reading and study.

The trouble with 'Christian America'

Jon Meacham wrote a cover story in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago that was titled, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." A title like that is meant to be a little sensational. And Newsweek probably got just what it wanted when Meacham's piece sent Christians all over the country in a tizzy.

The article itself, though, really wasn't sensational at all. Meacham is a liberal Episcopalian, and he was mostly just relishing the decline of the so-called Religious Right - a catch-all term for the politicized evangelicalism that came to prominence under Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s. Meacham is also the editor-in-chief at Newsweek, and under his leadership over the past couple of years the magazine has drifted left noticeably. A part of that comes out in a particularly left-leaning religious view, which shows up in reporting of all types but is best seen on a regular basis through Lisa Miller's BeliefWatch column. So in that sense, Meacham's article was just standard Newsweek fare.

But Meacham did cite statistics that are troubling beyond his connection of them with the decline of a politically muscular Christianity. A recent survey shows that the number of professing Christians as a percentage of the U.S. population has decline from 86% in 1990 to 76% today. Any position piece is strengthened by hard numbers, and those were Meacham's. (For a different take on them, go to Michael Gerson's recent column in the Washington Post.)

So is 'Christian America' really dying? Is it not just the Religious Right that is fading away, but is the generally Christian character of our society fading as well?

With a little fear and trembling, I take this subject up in my current column in the United Methodist Reporter. My editor at the Reporter was gracious to give me more space than usual, and with the complexity of this topic I used every bit of it. I won't repeat my whole argument here but instead invite you to check out the column on the Reporter's site.

The gist of it is this: There never was such a thing as 'Christian America.' And the Christians in America shouldn't worry about that.

There cannot be such a 'Christian America,' in fact, because citizenship and discipleship can never be synonymous terms. Christians owe an allegiance to Jesus Christ above the allegiance to the nation. And that means that a Christian's primary frame of social reference is not society at large but rather the church.

If we, as Christians, are really worried about declining numbers of the faithful in this land, we should practice a more robust form of discipleship. Ultimately, it is not by baptizing secular institutions or passing 'Christian' laws that we practice fidelity to God. It is rather by preaching the word of God, celebrating the sacraments, forming disciples of Jesus Christ, and witnessing to the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through our works of piety and mercy in the world.

It is good when Christians exert an influence on the society in which they live. Their participation in the larger world can lead to greater civility in social life and more compassion in the legislation and execution of laws. But the telos of the practice of Christian faith is not to make the world Christian. That makes no Scriptural sense. It is instead to spread the gospel and build up the church. And yes, there is a real difference.

So we shouldn't worry about trying to Christianize America. We should just be concerned with Christianizing the church.

Economy's loss, our gain

The economy's current troubles seem to be so multi-layered. There's the credit crunch that makes it hard for businesses (and even individuals) to get loans. Then there's the bailout that is causing the national debt to skyrocket. The shrinking of the economy is threatening all kinds of small businesses that could never hope for a government rescue, of course. And finally, there's the rising level of unemployment that is threatening the livelihood of families all over the country.

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the recession is that nobody knows when it will end or how bad it will get. And that's a recipe for nation-wide anxiety.

With all the bad news we hear from the media everyday, it would be nice to hear a little good news for a change.

My column in the UM Reporter this week looks at the opportunity that living in the midst of this economic downturn can give to us as disciples of Jesus. Our consumer lifestyles don't have much patience for the teaching in the New Testament - from Jesus and elsewhere - that we should be very wary of over-indulgence in material luxuries. But the recession seems to be doing to us what Jesus is not, and that is causing us to re-evaluate lifestyles that focus way too much on mammon and way to little on God.

I don't think God makes a habit out of inflicting suffering on us very often. But God can certainly use the suffering we do experience for the good. And who knows? Maybe that's the good news that can come out of our current economic woes. If the recession draws us closer to Christ, then the economy's loss is our gain.

Sunday School = Christian Formation

A friend and colleague of mine in the Arkansas Conference was recently featured in the United Methodist Reporter for the creative ways his church is building its Sunday school program.

Blake Bradford, pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church in Russellville, Arkansas, has seen his church's worship attendance grow from 70 to 124 since 2005. Since the church started getting serious about finding ways to nurture Christian formation through a dynamic Sunday school ministry, the Sunday school attendance has climbed from 55 to 80.

The percentage increases for both worship and Sunday school are impressive, by anyone's calculation. How have Blake and his congregation done it?

As the story explains, it has involved getting around the idea that there is a single, sacrosanct "Sunday school hour" on Sunday morning. To accomodate the difficulties in people's schedules, Wesley UMC's Sunday schools now meet at different times on Sunday and throughout the week. One even meets in a tire shop owned by one of the church members.

I think this kind of creative, dynamic approach to Christian formation shows evangelism at its best. It shows that Blake's church is doing some real "out of the box" thinking and discerning the movement of the Holy Spirit in its midst. Thanks be to God for their witness!

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 buildlng 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 proclamation 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 patriotic 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.

No stress? No way!

Ever heard of a No-Stress Sunday?

Those are the events where people are invited to join the church after the worship service has ended.

They can take place in a couple of different ways. Sometimes the people wanting to join walk down to the chancel and meet with the pastor right after the service. Other times, they might go with him back to his office and have a chat there. But the point is the same: It provides people who get nervous or bashful about standing up in front of the congregation the option of professing their faith and answering the "prayers, presence, gifts, and service" question in private.

I think this is one of the worst things the church has come up with ever, and I write about it in my current column in the UM Reporter.

The church has always held that public witness is an essential part of Christian identity. We get that from Jesus himself: "Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven" (Matthew 10:33).

So how in the world did No-Stress Sunday ever come about? I suspect this has to do with the privatization of religion in our culture (or heck, the privatization of just about everything). When we start to assume that one's faith is just about a me-n-Jesus relationship, then joining the church the way you might sign up for the gym or subscribe to a magazine becomes okay.

Well, it ain't okay. And we should put a stop to it in our churches. If someone isn't willing to stand up in front of the body and openly declare his faith in Jesus Christ and a desire to join the congregation, then he probably isn't ready for the kind of discipleship the church will ask of him anyway.

The United Methodist Way

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letter to a reader

Sometimes it is interesting to compare what gets responses from a United Methodist Reporter column versus what gets responses on the ol' blog. My post last week on the "Cheating on your church" Reporter column got almost no response from blog readers.

But when the actual column went into the print edition of the Reporter itself, I was inundated with e-mails from readers of the newspaper. As always, some were positive and some were negative. But the difference was that the negative ones were from people who were genuinely upset with me. They perceived the column as threatening, intimidating, or harsh. This was a surprise to me (as it always is when I get that kind of response). My writing is intended to help others think constructively about important issues related to our common faith, and this column was no different.

Nevertheless, I make goofs. And sometimes language I use can be interpreted in ways I did not intend. So in case you read the column and didn't like it, I wanted to offer some explanatory comments. To do that, I will print an excerpt below from a response I sent to one reader's concerns. For the record, this wasn't one of the angry readers, but was rather one who was writing to ask about the implications of switching from one denomination to another. Here's the excerpt:

Dear _______,

... Let me say a bit about why I wrote the column: As a pastor in the UMC, I am concerned about the path our church travels. I want us to be faithful, and I want us to proclaim the gospel of salvation to the needy. Some people have written me concerned with a perceived harshness in tone with this column in particular. Of course, I would never write anything to try to intentionally frighten or intimidate those in the church. I do, however, think it is important to think critically about what church membership means. And I think it is especially important in our current cultural climate, when we are taught to think of ourselves first and foremost as consumers who deserve to have their 'felt needs' met on demand. The way of salvation that Jesus Christ offers us is a far cry from the shallow version of happiness offered by secular culture today. My principle worry about church shopping is that it ingrains the consumerist habits of the secular culture rather than replacing them with the discipleship habits of a follower of Christ.

In addition, we do make vows upon church membership, and those vows need to be taken seriously. My comparison of them with marriage vows was only intended to highlight that fact. In a sense, I wrote the column because of the very high view I have of the role of the church in our salvation: it is where we are taught about Jesus, it is where we hear the Word preached, it is where we receive the Sacraments, it is where we are formed as disciples, and it is where we learn to be in relationships of sisterhood and brotherhood with Jesus' friends. That's all really important stuff!

Thanks again for your letter. I am very happy to hear that you have found a home in the UMC that is nurturing your faith!

Yours in Christ,
Andrew Thompson

Cheating on your church

Sometime ago I began developing an idea for a UM Reporter column on church membership. I moved that idea off the backburner after reading this blog post by Amy Forbus on the Methoblog. Frankly, the understanding of United Methodist church membership is about as shallow as our ecclesiology in general. But it is also an issue with which many people can relate, and because of that, engaging it might be a helpful in getting Methodist folks to think more broadly about the doctrine of the church.

The central problem with the idea of church membership in a society of 10,000 denominations is that it inevitably takes on the characteristics of what social scientists call a 'voluntary association.' Like a civic club in many respects, people join churches today with few requirements and little expectation. You get out of it what you put into it, so to speak, and no one is going to bother you too much if you just get your name put on the rolls for social reasons. When the 'voluntary association' mentality is combined with a market economy where all like 'products' compete for 'customers,' it means that churches will tend toward treating their evangelism as a form of marketing veiled in religious language. And that only waters down the understanding of what commitment to the church through membership means even further.

This is true of American church membership in general, but of course United Methodist church membership is a leading example of this norm. Our anemic understanding of membership is ironic in many ways, particularly with respect to the language of current membership vows in the United Methodist Hymnal. In our Hymnal, the pledges of membership we take to both universal church and local congregation are true vows spoken in a public setting. The fact that people then feel free to disregard them in such a cavalier fashion is remarkable.

There are some legitimate reasons to leave a church once you join as a member, as I argue in my current Reporter column. But they are few in number. And most reasons people leave amount to nothing more than ecclesial adultery. When you promise fidelity to both Jesus and a congregation of his disciples and then break that promise over matters as simple as boredom with worship or frustration with a committee, you are running out on the bride of Christ. It's cheating on your church, folks.

I can tell you that my comments on Amy's blog post and my Reporter column have generated quite a few frustrated comments and e-mails. The response is always, "Yes, but..." As in, "Yes, but you don't understand that in my case, it was justified." And like I said, there are a few justifiable cases. But not many.

There is, of course, an underlying reason why people instinctively think that seeking out a church that meets all their felt needs is a God-given right. And it has to do with consumerism and the aforementioned market economy. Most Americans simply cannot conceive of the idea of not being able to choose their church the way they do their cell phone plan or where they'll get tonight's take-out. But think about what that mindset does to the Bride of Christ: it turns her into a cheap prostitute, who peddles her wares on street corners in the hopes that you'll condescend to choose her over all her similarly cheap competitors.

If you want to do something truly radical for Jesus (and 'radical' is a relative term in our historically weak era), commit to his bride the way you did to your own bride or groom on your wedding day. Stay with her through thick and thin. Help your fellow brothers and sisters there to grow in discipleship. And whenever you get mad at some perceived slight in your church, realize that you are committed to that community in such a way that you are called to reconciliation rather than self-chosen alienation.

Authenticity, not relevance

I have enjoyed the weeks off from writing I have had during my short Gen X Rising sabbatical in the United Methodist Reporter. It has also been nice to read the stuff from the guys who have filled in for me. This week the column is penned by a friend and fellow Th.D. student at Duke, Jeff Conklin-Miller.

Jeff looks at the distinction between relevance and authenticity in the church. We often focus on relevance, wanting to keep up with the culture and compete with what the world has to offer young adults. This is a losing proposition, of course. The church can't really compete with what the world offers, and we shouldn't want to. What the world is offering is a large part of the problem!

Instead, we should be focusing on living authentic Christian lives, as Jeff suggests. And we should be moving the church toward more authentic witness to the world. If we do that, the world might just realize that the true relevance it should be striving after is authenticity to the gospel. This is what God's children need to hear.

Where did we go wrong?

I write a lot - some might say too much - about the need for the church to be a place of truly intentional discipleship. Sometimes I catch myself falling into a mindset of "Church: love it or leave it!" And needless to say, that point of view can err on the side of a lack of compassion.

But what is supremely frustrating to me is the wide gulf that seems to separate early Methodism from the Methodism of our own day. In Wesley's day, the Methodists were regarded as dangerous "enthusiasts" who took their religion way too seriously (which begs the question, is it possible to take Jesus too seriously??). In our time, the Methodists are seen as the ultimate mainline Christians - neither hot nor cold, we are as comfortably lukewarm as the Laodiceans of Revelation 3. In between that time and this one, a whole lot of spiritual power has been lost.

The reasons for our spiritual decline are many, but perhaps looming over them all is the way that we Methodists sold our church's soul to the devil in return for cultural respectability. As a professor of mine pointed out recently, there was a time when the best way for politicians to take the national pulse on any given issue was to call the Methodist bishops. Methodism quite literally was American culture. And when you get to a position of that kind of dominance, it is all too easy to just assume that little matters like discipleship, accountability, and sanctification will take care of themselves.

Well, gentle reader, the point I would make to you is that I am not alone in my frustration. I get e-mails from pastors and layfolk from all over the connection who share in the desire to see renewal happen in the church. For instance, one laywoman from Illinois wrote me last week:

"Our dear, old UMC appears to be still stuck on making up programs and strategies and meaningless slogans, which mostly amount to fiddling while Rome burns. Of course we do good in the world, but what a church our size could really accomplish for the Kingdom only God knows. And He wants to lead us to do it. You're right, our member numbers are shocking, and I fear they'll soon be tragic if our church doesn't get seriously into the scriptures, humble ourselves before God, and beg Him to lead us once again..."

From the standpoint of the national church, our main stumbling block seems to be that we still think we are in that position of cultural dominance. I deeply respect our Council of Bishops, but I wish they would spend less time trying to get their photographs taken with famous politicians (and I wish they would ask themselves why such an effort is important). I also wish the church as a whole would ask itself what it thinks it is accomplishing by making a slogan like "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" as the church's chief public witness to the world (a slogan which is almost entirely devoid of meaning).

The quote from the reader above is as indicting as it is insightful. And so was the comment that a first year M.Div student at Duke made to me on Wednesday. She said, "You know, the more I learn about John Wesley, the more I realize that we don't do anything he said we should do."

If that doesn't make you want to fall on your knees and beg for forgiveness, I don't know what will.

Choosing your Church

My latest column in the UM Reporter is on the "Country Club Commitment" that so many of us make to our churches.

Choosing the church you attend is one of the hallmarks of American Christianity. Since competition among Protestant denominations has been going on since the founding of the country (a feature of national life supported by the lack of an established religion), the denominational smorgasbord that we have now is the natural result of a 230-year old process.

Here's the bad news: It might also be the single biggest factor working against your ability to become a real disciple of Jesus Christ.

Why?

Because in our culture, the number and variety of churches resembles the number and variety of fast-food restaurants or department stores. And since we live in a world that teaches us that we deserve to choose, and choose again, until we find the "product" that suits us best, we tend to treat the church the same way we treat any other consumer choice.

This has a lot to do with American culture. It has nothing to do with discipleship. And if we cannot be real disciples of Jesus, then we cannot come to know God. And if we do not come to know God, then we will never have a place in God's kingdom.

So have you ever thought that the issue of "church choice" could have a bearing on your salvation? It very well may.

A difficult, life-giving word from Jesus

This morning, I heard Ched Myers preach in the Duke Chapel. The title of his sermon was "The Kingdom of God as the Discipleship Practice of Commonwealth," and the text was Mark 10:17-31. If you have never read this text, or if you haven't read it in a long time, I suggest turning to it before you read the rest of this blog post.

This is the story of Jesus and the rich young man. I have read this story a hundred times. I have even read commentaries on it that explain how embarrassing it is for the church and how much energy preachers have spent over the years trying to explain it away. But I have never heard it, and I mean really heard it, the way Ched preached on it this morning.

He started by acknowledging what I just wrote, that this text is embarrassing to a church that has never (well, almost never) sought to live it out. He pointed out how theologians have traditionally wanted to interpret it to say that the rich should not be controlled by their possessions. Theologians have done this, Ched said, despite the fact that Jesus specifically rejects the piety of the rich in the text itself. And he said that this type of explanation is particularly dangerous in a country where so many good, upstanding churchgoers are among the wealthy.

He pointed out that the response of Jesus to the rich young man is far away from the typical response of either the liberal or the conservative wings of the contemporary church. Liberals want Jesus to open his arms to the rich man in a big, enfranchising hug of total acceptance (which he does not). Conservatives want Jesus to require assent to a set of doctrinal beliefs from the young man in order to attain eternal life (which he also does not).

Instead, Jesus invites the man into a new way of life. He invites the man into a fellowship where faith, the pursuit of justice, and economic arrangements are all deeply intertwined. I won't attempt to recreate Ched's sermon from this point on. There is no way I can do it justice. But if you want an approximation of it, I suggest that you go back to the text in Mark and read the story two or three times. Try reading it without the superificial spiritualism that the church has always tried to apply to it in order to tone it down. Try to read it on Jesus' terms.

And then ask yourself: Does my discipleship even come close to what Jesus asks of me? Am I still - despite Jesus' constant invitation to freedom - enslaved to the things of this world? How much of my daily routine have I shaped so that I can ignore the call of Jesus upon my life?

For me, the answers to these questions are, "No, Yes, and A whole lot." I have been somewhat unsettled since my wife and I moved to this new place. I have missed my old congregation, and I have felt unsure of my abilities in this program I am in at Duke. But I have been unsettled on a deeper level as well, sure that God is calling me to something that I just can't see yet. I think this morning may be the beginning of a process of lifting the veil from my eyes.

"This is the good news," Ched finally said to us, "that Jesus loves us so much that he speaks the truth to us."

The truth is difficult to hear. But I heard it today, and I am going to do what I can to respond. That begins with repentance: a personal repentance and commitment to walk in a new way of life. And after that, the walking begins.

Anyone care to join me?