Friday Miscellanies

Here are a few notes that might interest you. Consider it suggestions for weekend reading! I wanted to highlight a few articles that touch on important issues in faith and discipleship -

Steve Rankin, the university chaplain at Southern Methodist University, has a great article in the United Methodist Reporter looking at the doctrine of Christian perfection, character formation, and contemporary higher education. As Steve rightly points out, higher education that aims only at increasing the knowledge of students and does not nurture formation in moral virtues is both impoverished and un-Wesleyan.

Two articles on leadership have caught my eye recently. One is this interview with Stanley Hauerwas which is available from Faith & Leadership. Hauerwas comments on whether "leadership" can be understood as a theological category, and he also makes some interesting insights into the role of leadership in institutions and the role of institutions in leadership.

The other article on leadership comes from Covenant Discipleship Connection, where Steve Manskar connects Wesleyan leadership with the deep Wesleyan understanding of faith in Jesus Christ and the ongoing process of sanctification. Steve wants to invite folks into an ongoing conversation about the character of Wesleyan leadership, and he has started a new blog to facilitate that.

Finally, after a writing sabbatical of several months, I'm back in the pages of the United Methodist Reporter. My new column - available at this link - starts a series on the means of grace in Christian practice. This is the subject of my academic research at Duke Divinity School. So I'm excited about presenting some material related to it in my regular column. I believe - as John Wesley did - that our growth in holiness of heart & life is impossible apart from disciplined participation in the means of grace. And I'll be explaining that conviction column by column over the coming weeks.

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.

Friday miscellanies

A few notes of interest on this Friday:

-- I didn't know about the GAFCON meeting in Jerusalem, made up of conservative Anglican bishops, until a friend told me about it at a wedding reception last weekend. GAFCON stands for Global Anglican Future Conference, and it is being attended by a lot of African bishops who will not attend the upcoming, once-per-decade Lambeth Conference later this year. (The New York Times has an informative article about it here.) I will be curious to read about what influence GAFCON will have on Lambeth later this year, but I cannot imagine that such a meeting is going for the long-term unity of the Anglican Communion. Even if schism is not what they are intending, holding such a large gathering in the way that they are certainly has schismatic overtones. Daniel McClain Hixon has started blogging about GAFCON, so check in on his Gloria Deo blog in the coming days to see what he has to say about it.

-- Luke Wetzel at the It's a Mad Mission ... Sign Me Up blog alerted me to Adam Hamilton's new project of planning to visit every Annual Conference in order to do training sessions in leadership, preaching, and evangelism over the next six or seven years. Adam tells about the plan on his own blog in this post. For those of you who don't know, Adam is the pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, one of the largest churches in the entire connection. (You can read his bio at the church's website here.) He is a great pastor within the UMC, and I think he does as good a job as anyone at showing how megachurches can be a positive force in the larger church. He's also written a number of books that have been influential over the past few years. This new project is one of the most interesting things I've ever seen him attempt, in that he is essentially seeking to exercise the teaching office connection-wide - a role that has historically been reserved for bishops. (Luke Wetzel deals with this issue explicitly in his blog post, pointing out that Adam's references to Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke suggest that his desire to exercise a general superintendency over the church is evident.) This could clearly be controversial. Regardless, I'm glad he's doing it and I hope every Annual Conference will invite him to attend. Our actual bishops do wonderful ministry, but by and large the structure of the church is such that they have to spend almost all their time administrating and very little time actually teaching. Perhaps Adam can offer a different model of episcopal leadership that will open up new possibilities for us. That alone would be sufficient fruit of his new project, but I suspect it will do a lot more good than just that.

-- That sleepy-looking cat over on the right-hand side of this post is Lulu. She may be one of the gentlest, most docile creatures God has ever put on this earth. But Emily and I have discovered something new and quite shocking about her in the past few weeks: She is a holy terror on the mole population of our backyard. Since the weather has started really getting warm, we haven't had a week go by without Lulu dispatching a mole or two. Since she has been raised by people from her kittenhood, she has no idea what to do with them once she kills them. But the ancient wildcat instinct she carries around deep inside of her is plenty to cause her to dispense justice on the little critters when she can get her paws on them. The upside: We have no more mole tracks in our yard. So I guess she's finally earning her Cat Chow.

Miscellanies

A few days ago, I posted about Lovett Weems and Ann Michel's new book, The Crisis of Younger Clergy. In addition to the related UMR column I wrote, I also did a book review on it for the Reporter which has now been posted online.

You also might be interested in this interview with Bishop Will Willimon, who leads the church's North Alabama Conference. The interview mostly covers Bishop Willimon's blogging and connections to both clergy and laity through the blogosphere and e-mail. But ironically, the article never gives the actual address to the bishop's blog! If you'd like to check it out, it is called A Peculiar Prophet and can be found here. Bishop Willimon has also recently gotten a Young Clergy Blog started, which I assume is maintained by the clergy of his annual conference. I don't know much about it though, so if anyone else knows more feel free to fill in the details.

Time enough, but none to spare

I think the past few days of my life have been as busy as any I've ever had. I had to grade a bunch of final exams at the beginning of last week as a part of my T.A. duties, finished a paper on Wednesday, took a Latin final exam on Thursday, and flew to Dallas early Friday morning for a John Wesley Fellows conference. I'm back in Durham now, but I've got a lot more paper writing to do over the break. Thus, my blogging may be a little spotty over the next few weeks. I'll post when I can, but it may be more like weekly instead of two times per week.

Hope everyone is having a happy Advent. Peace +