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.