Wednesday Miscellanies

A couple of weeks of end-of-semester grading, capped off by a quick trip to Houston to attend a conference, has kept me away from the blogosphere for awhile.

I've been jotting down lots of blog-worthy items over the past few days, though. Here are a few of them:

- I spent this past weekend at The Woodlands United Methodist Church near Houston. I was there for the annual AFTE Christmas Conference for John Wesley Fellows, which is a gathering of evangelical Wesleyan scholars and graduate students who are committed to the renewal of the Wesleyan tradition in the UMC. We were the guests of the  Rev. Ed Robb III, who is the chairman of the board at AFTE and senior pastor at the Woodlands UMC. My participation in the John Wesley Fellowship program has been one of the most rewarding of my graduate student career, and I was reminded of just why that is the case when Dr. Robb recounted the story of how AFTE came into being. At our gathering on Friday evening, Dec. 11th, he described AFTE's dual focus as, "A deep concern for spiritual renewal in the United Methodist Church, and a conviction that such renewal results from solid theology." I couldn't agree more.

- President Obama's acceptance speech for the Noble Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, has gotten a lot of attention. David Brooks of the New York Times believes it cements a foreign policy approach emblematic of Niebuhrian Christian realism. The Washington Post's Kathleen Parker calls Obama's speech his "most presidential," and describes it as "a triumphant expression of American values and character." My question: Assuming there is a point where Christian discipleship and American values diverge, what is that point?

- The United Methodist Council of Bishops has issued a pastoral letter entitled, "God's Renewed Creation: A Call to Hope and Action." Here's a link from my own bishop's website where you can download the letter. Its subjects include pandemic poverty & disease, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons & violence. I haven't read the letter yet but look forward to doing so over the Christmas holiday.

- A thought on doctrine in the UMC: It's not that the Church simply has disagreements on doctrine. It's much more dysfunctional than that. The real problem is that we don't even know how to have a conversation about the place of doctrine in the life of the Church.

- Yesterday I was diagnosed with ulnar neuropathy. It's highly uncomfortable. And it's apparently gonna take some physical therapy. Ulnar neuropathy is a common ailment of serious bicycle riders. Of course, I haven't been on a bicycle in years. It's also a common ailment of serious laptop users. My doctor said she calls it "graduate student syndrome." Blech.

Adam Hamilton speaks...

... and the United Methodist Church listens.

I don't think it is an overstatement to say that the Rev. Adam Hamilton has become a force within the United Methodist Church. Hamilton's Church of the Resurrection in suburban Kansas City, MO, has an average Sunday attendance of 7,500 worshipers (and a membership of almost twice that). His books - on topics as diverse as preaching, marriage preparation, church growth, and contemporary ethics - sell thousands of copies around the country. Hamilton's church also hosts a number of conferences throughout the year around areas like nurturing pastoral leadership and renewing the mainline church. There are a few bigger churches than Hamilton's in Methodism, but I doubt any have the influence that his has come to have.

On his blog this past June, Hamilton announced an intriguing project that will be carried out over the next six to seven years. He wants to visit all sixty-six annual conferences within the U.S. in order to present a three-part workshop series, covering the topics of: Essentials of Leadership, Improving Preaching and Worship, and Evangelism & Outreach in the United Methodist Tradition. Take note that this is essentially an episcopal function that Hamilton says he is going to claim. In the Christian tradition, the teaching office in the church is located most fully in the bishops. And in the Methodist tradition, those bishops are supposed to be true itinerants. So Hamilton is basically saying that he is going to exercise the itinerant episcopal office (though without the power to appoint, of course!) Don't think I'm exaggerating here; Hamilton invokes the itinerant episcopacy when discussing his plans on his blog post.

Clearly, Hamilton believes he's doing something right and he wants to share it with the rest of the connection. He came to Duke Divinity School a few days ago to share some of his views at the annual Pastor's School and Convocation, and I got to hear him. In my current UM Reporter column, I share some of my reflections on hearing him. Hamilton has the ability to come across as high-energy but with an intense focus and calm demeanor. As I say in the column, it is a bit like a combination of a preacher, CEO, practical theologian, and motivational speaker all rolled into one.

The part of Hamilton's talk at Duke that stuck with me the most was around the theme of "leading by example," where he talked about the need for pastors to be willing to go themselves where they wanted to lead their congregations. He talked about the need not only to inform when it comes to mission and outreach, but to inspire through story and personal example. Like any visible, large church pastor, Hamilton attracts both praise and criticism. For myself, I've always contended that he probably does mega-church ministry as well as it can be done. And I admire his willingness to pursue Wesley's original mission for Methodism: To reform the nation, and particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness over these lands.

Bishops gettin' elected

The official website of the United Methodist Church is tracking the ongoing episcopal elections at the Jurisdictional Conference sessions that are meeting around the country. If you'd like to check out your own jurisdiction, go to the "Episcopal Elections 2008" website.

I am a member of the South Central Jurisdiction, which has not yet elected a bishop (they're only on the third ballot). If you are a fellow SCJ'er, you can follow our elections here.

May God bless the voting in each jurisdiction as we choose the shepherds who will lead us forward.

UPDATE: It's Saturday morning, and Jurisdictional Conference sessions are wrapping up around the country. That means the church has a whole slew of new bishops. In the South Central Jurisdiction, we have elected W. Earl Blesdsoe, John Michael Lowry, and James (Jim) E. Dorff. Beka Miles, one of our Jurisdictional delegates, has been sending regular updates back to the annual conference. She said that the election of the third candidate (which ended up being Rev. Dorff) was a real roller coaster. He was eventually elected on the 23rd ballot overall. The Arkansas Conference's own endorsed candidate, Rodney Steele, did very well in the early balloting. He eventually fell behind Rev. Dorff and Rev. Cheryl Jefferson Bell, as it became a two-horse race. It would be been great to see Rodney elected, as I know he'd be a good bishop. Still, I have high hopes that our three new members of the episcopacy will lead us forward in faithful and courageous ways.

A wonderful evening

Yesterday evening, Emily and I had a few seminary students over to our home for an informal dinner conversation with Bishop Ken Carder about issues in ministry. Bishop Carder (pictured above with second year M.Div students Ben Johnson and Lynn Cross) previously served as bishop of the Tennessee and Mississippi Annual Conferences before his retirement from the active episcopacy. He is now the Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke.

In everyday ministry, bishops are pretty inaccessible people. You might see them a few times a year, but rarely in a situation where you can sit down at dinner and just have informal table talk. Even in a seminary, you are most likely to engage a bishop-professor in a seminar or a structured advisory session. That made last night especially memorable, as we were able to just let the conversation flow where it wanted as we scarfed down great pizza from a local eatery.

What was most interesting about the conversation to me was the way that it centered mostly on the importance of peer and mentoring relationships once a new pastor arrives in his or her first appointment. Bishop Carder spoke firsthand about this, relating his experiences in discovering just how important it was to have relationships of support and accountability in his own time as a local church pastor and later as a bishop. He is a big advocate of Covenant Discipleship Groups, and he even participated in one as a bishop when he was in Nashville.

Bishop Carder said two things that particularly stuck out to me. One was that a pastor absolutely has to carve out the time and space for sustaining relationships himself. A congregation almost always wants to be supportive, but congregations also have endless needs and - as large bodies of people - are not suited to setting healthy boundaries for their pastors. So the pastor has to take the responsibility, and this is an absolutely necessary task if the pastor is going to remain physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy.

The second thing that stuck out to me was in Bishop Carder's emphasis on friendships with exactly the kind of people Wesley would want us to seek out - those who are poor and on the margins of society. He described a friendship with a custodian in a church he served, who was poor but who would always point out to someone she thought was taking her for granted that she was a child of God and expected to be treated as such! He also described his close friendship with a man serving a life sentence in prison, with whom he has remained close despite moving around several times the past few years. Bishop Carder certainly stressed peer and mentoring relationships with other clergy, but he indicated that we can learn just as much, in different ways, from friendships with those who on the surface are not like us.

You can find an article on Bishop Carder's selection to his endowed professorship here.

New Bishop for North Texas

Since the death of Bishop Rhymes Moncure on Aug. 19th, the North Texas Conference has been without episcopal leadership. Today that changed with the appointment of Bishop Alfred Norris to serve out Bishop Moncure's term (which ends in 2008). The Rev. Robert Schnase, bishop of the Missiouri Conference, made the announcement of Bishop Norris' appointment in a pastoral letter earlier today.

Bishop Moncure died at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, several days after undergoing surgery on a brain tumor. Bishop Norris is a retired bishop, who served the New Mexico, Northwest Texas, and Texas Conferences.

Why is this important? Because bishops are the general superintendents of our connection, and we need their leadership. Their highly visible position as the leaders of the church gives them an unparalleled ability to articulate a vision of gospel faithfulness that the church can move toward. Bishop Moncure's death (like that of the recent death of the Rev. Done Peter Dabale, bishop of Nigeria) is a real loss to the body of Christ. But we can place our hope in the Holy Spirit, who will surely raise up new leadership to show us the way forward.