Our practice of the Lord's Supper

I haven't linked to any columns I've written in the United Methodist Reporter recently. I'm in the middle of a column series on the means of grace, and I had planned to do one post that pointed to the whole series when I was finished with it.

Then I had to go and write about Holy Communion. It's a topic that gets me in trouble every time I take it up.

The column - which you can find here - is a call for reform of our Eucharistic practice in a number of ways. But a certain part near the end has caught some folks' attention (to, in my opinion, the neglect of the whole). It is my critique of that un-Scriptural, un-historical, un-ecumenical quasi-doctrine that so many Methodists just love: the "Open Table" practice of inviting anyone in earshot to receive the Lord's Supper with a "y'all come!" enthusiasm. The Open Table ethos as many pastors and congregations practice it today presents the Eucharist as a meal where anyone is welcome - Christians, non-Christians, confessed adherents of other religions, unbelievers, agnostics, and atheists.

That such an approach to the sacrament of our Lord's body and blood is an utter novelty in the history of the Christian Church, without any biblical foundation or support in Wesleyan theology or widespread support in the church catholic, does not seem to factor into the consideration of those who consider it to be amongst the fundamental marks of Methodism.

And so it is incumbent upon us to preach and defend the gospel. As the Church's shepherds, pastors and theologians are called to be faithful in their teaching and preaching regardless of the shifting temper of the times. As the Apostle Paul instructs Timothy and all presbyters of the Church,

"Preach the Word: be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. The will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry" (2 Timothy 4:2-5, NIV).

Regardless of how well-meaning its advocates might be, the truth of the so-called Open Table is this: it is, in the true sense of the term, false teaching. The radical version of the Methodist practice of Open Table does violence to the institution of the most holy act of worship we have been given and disregards the salvation of the unbaptized. And there is not one word of the preceding sentence that is an exaggeration.

If this doesn't seem to make sense to you, then read on. To better explain, I'm going to edit and splice in a big chunk of a lengthy comment I left on John Meunier's blog when he posted about my column yesterday:

Whenever I write a column or put up a blog post on this issue, I inevitably take a lot of flack. Sometimes people act as if there is a deep arrogance at work in even engaging the issue of participation in Holy Communion, as if exercising a holy discipline over the sacrament were the equivalent of making a value judgment the intrinsic worth of persons. And sometimes people will act aghast that the Church would ever make a statement suggesting a standard of ministry or discipleship in anyway, because we are all supposed to bow at the altar of "inclusivism" - a concept that apparently means we never say 'no' to anyone, at anytime, for any reason.

Here's what I would offer in response: There are about 2 billion Christians in the world, and probably 1,980,000,000 of them have an understanding of Eucharistic practice that suggests one should be baptized before coming to the Supper of the Lord. Throughout the two millennia of Christian history, practically all Christians have had that understanding. That means there are, at present, a few million Methodists (and, I assume, probably a few million more sacramentally lackadaisical Protestants in other ecclesiastical communions) who do what we do.

Now I would ask this of anyone who happens to be reading this post: What in the world do we have to show as evidence to suggest that our doctrine is right and the ecumenical and historical consensus of the rest of the church catholic is wrong? A misquoted Wesley citation that gets regularly pulled out of context? Incoherent statements about 'prevenient grace' that get applied to the Eucharist in ways that could literally define the term, 'non-sequitur'? Fruits? Does our Eucharistic practice bring glory to God and serve as a means of grace such that those who partake are demonstrably affected in their journey of sanctification? In this last question (which is the type of thing liable to get indignant "of course it does!" replies), I would only say that, if we think we're being faithful to God and to Christ's institution of the sacrament in the shabby way we practice it now, I think we would be amazed at what the Holy Spirit would do with us if we committed ourselves to a greater faithfulness in our practice of it.

I like the way John Meunier poses the questions about the propriety of the Open Table in his post because I think he poses it as a question of doctrine. And indeed, as a doctrinal question, it should be engaged via rigorous theological examination. Charles Rivera, one of his respondents, points to the seriousness with which the Apostle Paul instructs the Church to practice Eucharist in 1 Corinthians. I'd suggest three other Scriptural images in addition: First, in the Great Commission (Matthew 28), Jesus' instruction to the disciples is to go into all the world to make disciples of every nation, and his single teaching to describe the way by which disciples are made is through baptism in the name of the triune God. Second, in the book of Acts, the apostles' response to converts who hear the Word of God and believe is "Repent and be baptized" (Acts 2:37-38). And third, throughout the NT epistles (e.g., Romans 6, Colossians 2, 1 Peter 3), it is clear time and time again that the manner of incorporation into the body of Christ is through the sacrament of baptism.

Moreover, in the early Church, new believers never received Holy Communion until they had been baptized. Actually, they weren't even admitted into the presence of the Eucharistic celebration until after baptism. And despite all the doctrinal differences that arose in later centuries over exactly what happens at Holy Communion, in the matter of what was requisite for participation in the Eucharist the divided Church was in agreement: baptism and repentance of sin.

Now one of John's respondents cited the This Holy Mystery doctrinal statement (passed by our General Conference and currently to be found in the Book of Resolutions), and on the whole, I think that is a fine piece of sacramental theology for our Church. But in the matter of which we are speaking, I can tell you that some on the study committee that developed it were vexed at the larger Church's attitudes over the radically "Open Table" ethos. Prof. Ed Phillips, who chaired that committee, recounts this in his article, "Open Tables and Closed Minds," in the journal Liturgy back in 2005. He writes (on p.28):

"What becomes curious to me is that attempts by some of us on the committee to do careful biblical and historical reflection (both from the perspective of the church catholic and the Wesleyan tradition) was often strongly discounted. Here is a typical response to my own attempt to explain to one individual why a totally open table is neither biblical nor Wesleyan: 

'Of course, we can go round and round about what Paul or the Gospel writers meant, . . . I just think one can make a strong theological case for an open table using prevenient grace (a primary theological contribution by Wesley via Augustine). I also think that . . . an open table appeals to our American sense of inclusive democracy.'

This is a significant key to what contemporary United Methodists in the West find so problematic about a disciplined table: it is undemocratic. It flies in the face of liberal freedom."

I'm well aware that advocates of the Open Table are sincere and well-meaning, and in most cases, they probably think that the Open Table stance is compassionate. The problem is that it isn't compassionate at all. Baptism and Eucharist are the difference between life and death. And when we ignore the clear teaching of the Scriptures and the tradition of the Church so that we can make either into whatever we want it to be, we are doing violence to the gospel entrusted to us. When we practice the Lord's Supper in as non-chalant a way as the Open Table implies, then we deny the saving gifts of God that should be at the heart of our evangelistic ministry. Salvation is not a series of isolated acts from which we can pick and choose at will; it is, rather, a reality into which God beckons us and is made manifest in our lives through our submission to the Holy Spirit in Christ's Holy Church. Baptism is the way we are initiated - no, incorporated - into that blessed reality.

I'm as serious as I can be when I say this: When we find ourselves to be in sin, the realization of that sin is a gift of the Holy Spirit, insofar as it is an invitation to repent and return to Christ in faithfulness. And that is exactly where the people called Methodists find themselves with their practice of the Lord's Supper.

John Meunier's post speaks of "shooing the unwashed from the Lord's table," but that's truly not what the orthodox practice of Eucharist does. Located within a form of ministry that embraces all the means of grace, it rather pursues the lost with an evangelical love, beckoning them to come to the living waters of baptism that they might die and be raised. And through those life-giving waters, it draws them toward the great feast that awaits, so that - once incorporated into the body of Christ and catechized through the preaching and teaching of Christ's holy word - they might then receive the body of Christ and know that it is the bread of heaven given to them for their salvation. We have all been offered the life that is a way of life, and there is a deep & profound logic to that journey.

Anything less than this is a commodification of the sacrament. That's something we could rightly do if we owned it, but we don't. Vicit agnus noster.

Cokesbury Upgrade

Cokesbury has been sending out e-mails to let customers know about recent upgrades to its website. I checked out the upgraded site today, and I've got to say I'm impressed.

It's admittedly always going to be difficult to compete with an online retailing behemoth like Amazon, but Cokesbury wasn't doing itself a lot of favors with its old site. It was clunky and difficult to navigate. There were times I went to Cokesbury.com to look for a book that I knew had been published by one of the imprints of the United Methodist Publishing House and I still couldn't locate it.

I was in Nashville late last summer to take part in a focus group at the offices of the Publishing House. One of the things that editors and executives told us that day was that upgrading the Cokesbury website was high on their list of things they wanted to do. As you can see from navigating the improved website, they've really followed through on that.

"Cokesbury is more than just 
a Christian book retailer;
it's a ministry of the Church.
And that's important!"

My wife and I try to patronize locally-owned businesses here in Durham that are well-run and grounded in the local community, even when there is a "big box" store that might have slightly lower prices. I'm going to follow that logic when I buy books online from here on out, as a way to recognize the strides Cokesbury is making. Cokesbury is more than a Christian book retailer; it's a ministry of the United Methodist Church. And that's important!

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.

The Church and Higher Education

It's taking me a bit longer than I expected to try and catch up here in Durham after my recent mission trip to Chincha, Peru. I think that's a result of the time of year, both with respect to church life and university life.

I'm going to write more about our time in Peru in the coming days, but until then, I wanted to let you know about a new feature piece in the United Methodist Reporter, in which my friend and colleague Eric Van Meter and I sound off on the issue of higher education and the United Methodist Church.

The feature - which is titled, "Dialogue on higher education and faith," - gave Eric and me a chance to share ideas and examine the relationship of church and academy. It's a topic I've thought a lot about over my adult life, since I've spent more than 12 of the past 15 years either attending or working for various colleges and universities. Interestingly enough, every one of those schools was founded by Methodists: Hendrix College, Vanderbilt University, Lambuth University, and Duke University. Of the four, all but Vandy continue to maintain some affiliation with the UMC.

But the church's understanding of its educational mission has changed significantly from the late 19th- to early 20th-century founding of most of its institutions of higher learning. Administrators at Methodist schools will be quick to tell you that they are not "church schools." The very term makes admissions officers shudder with sectarian horror. Instead, they are at best "church-related," a term that is vague enough that it can mean a great deal or nothing at all.

Sometimes the Enlightenment desire to appear blessedly free of religion - which is very strong in campus culture - leads the uninformed to overreach in their speech. I have personally walked behind tour groups led by undergraduate students on Duke's campus on a couple of occasions, when the guide pointed up to the statues of John Wesley and Francis Asbury on the facade of Duke Chapel. The university was founded by Methodists, the guide explained each time, but we here at Duke haven't been affiliated with any church for a long, long time. That isn't true, of course. But to prospective students and parents who might be offended by the idea that the Christian faith should have a robust place in the academy, a little white lie is one way to apologize for the beautiful-yet-unmistakeably-Christian presence of a big church in the middle of campus.

Generally speaking, I think there are about three ways to think about Methodism's historic mission in higher ed. One is as an avenue for the education of the poor and the children of preachers. Varieties of that rationale were behind Methodist establishments of everything from John Wesley's school at Kingswood to the post-Civil War foundations of most Methodist colleges in the U.S. But take a look at the price tag of United Methodist-related colleges and universities today. Many still give discounts to PK's, but "half-off" tuition still is pretty pricey when your tuition is northward of $25,000 per year. And the poor? You're much more likely to find them in junior colleges and state universities than in private church-related schools.

A second way to think about the educational mission is as a way to form pastors for ministry. Since the M.Div is now required for ordained elders, and some master's-level degree is (almost always) required for deacons, that means the mission of theological education is mostly with the 13 UM-related seminaries. In my opinion, this is a continuing area where the church really needs to be involved in an educational mission. Unfortunately, there is just about zero consensus as to what theological education should look like. I happen to think Duke Divinity School is the best theological school in the connection, but someone educated at Claremont School of Theology or Iliff School of Theology would probably think they had landed on another planet if they spent much time around here. Is it okay for a church's seminaries to have widely divergent understandings of the church's own educational mission for its future clergy? And if not, how does the church bring about a consensus in its seminaries? Those seem to me to be open questions.

And then a third way to think about the church's mission in higher education is simply to say that it is the way the church contributes to a healthier, more robust, better educated society. That, I would argue, is the de facto reason the UMC continues to support undergraduate education at all. Though most UM-related schools have an active campus ministry affiliated with the denomination in some way, that is a far cry from the idea that the church has a vision for how higher education itself should be done. It is instead the secular paradigm of higher ed in a liberal democratic society that has won the day; it took the thought of Enlightenment-era French and German intellectuals about 250 years, but they have now successfully displaced the confessionally-oriented, communally Christian model of Methodist college life. And so the church's continuing support of its offspring can really only be justified with the affirmation that "our" schools are making a better society overall. But for my money, here's the really interesting question: What happens when the society we've bettered no longer has a use for something as odd and illiberal as the church?

These points really go beyond what Eric and I are doing in the feature piece, but I've been mulling them over since we finished it. He and I both focus a lot on the way the church can have a formative role in the lives of college students. And whether we're doing that in old ways or new, we simply must not let 18-22 year old men and women continue to fall through the cracks. If you get time to read the dialogue, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Old friends in a new venue

Before Emily and I moved to Durham so I could pursue a Doctor of Theology degree at Duke University, I served as an associate pastor back home in the Arkansas Conference.

My appointment was at the First United Methodist Church in Searcy, Arkansas. Our time in Searcy was way too short, but we made lots of great friends and have many wonderful memories from our years there. I saw a couple of days ago that my former church has launched a new website, which you can find here.

I did some work to help launch a new site when I arrived in Searcy at the end of 2003, but this is light years ahead of where we were then. It looks inviting, eye-catching, and user-friendly - which is exactly what a church website should be.

Kudos to FUMC Searcy!

Privileging People over Process

A few days ago I posted about how the church can often be its own worst enemy when it comes to the ordination process.

Posts about ordination candidacy tend to generate a lot of response - both in terms of e-mails and reader comments. I've always seen that as an indication of the level of frustration people often experience in the process itself. Having received a call from God to enter ministry, it can be exasperating to navigate a bureaucratic maze that seems designed to frustrate more than facilitate.

As I wrote about in my last column, there is a momentum in the UMC at large to reform the structure of the ordination process. That's good news! Significant changes were made at the 2008 General Conference, and I expect there to be more in 2012.

But we need more than just structural reform. We need a reform of personal attitudes as well. I take up this subject in my current column, where I talk about the importance of personal concern and attention on the part of candidacy mentors, DCOMs, and BOMs. You could add to that list, of course, with seminary professors, pastors, district superintendents, and bishops.

I firmly believe that any complicated process is made easier with the right attitudes on the part of the people in authority. The church as a whole should be constantly aware of the vulnerable and often uncertain position that ordination candidates find themselves in. They need the love, care, and wisdom that mentor figures can provide. And with that, I think a lot of the deep frustration that they often experience can be avoided.

The trend in our culture is, on the whole, toward greater bureaucracy. As that happens, we tend to think processes can take over in systems where people used to be the integral parts. That may work for shopping online and self-check outs at the grocery store, but I don't think it will ever work in the body of Christ.

We are members, one of the other! And as we try to respond faithfully to the Holy Spirit's work in raising up shepherds, we need to make sure that we're personally involved to help, assist, and encourage.

The Long Road to Ordination

What if the biggest obstacle in responding to God's call to ordained ministry turned out to be the church itself?

And what if, with the very best of intentions, the church was ironically hampering its own witness and compromising its own future in the way it had laid out the path to ordination?

For a lot of candidates for ordination in the United Methodist Church, this worst case scenario seems anything but far-fetched. I've heard scores of stories over the past few years about the difficulty of pursuing ordination as an elder or deacon in the UMC.

I am convinced the ordination process can be reformed. And the change that have been made in the past couple of years only reinforce that conviction.

In my current column in the UM Reporter, I look at reform of ordination candidacy in two forms: the need for a change in structure and the need for a change in personal attitudes.

The willingness to change our structure - as outlined in the Book of Discipline - seems to finally be underway. Last year's General Conference legislated a number of long-needed changes, some of which I mention in the column. There are more changes that need to be made, and it's my hope that the 2012 General Conference will continue that crucial work.

The willingness to change attitudes (which I'll look at in the next column) is no less needed but also a bit more difficult. We've allowed ourselves to shift focus from people to process, a move that largely reflects the wider culture's growing belief that virtues of bureaucracy. But layers of organization and piles of paperwork cannot do the very human work of discernment, and the Holy Spirit doesn't work as well through standardized tests and surveys as he does through personal mentoring relationships.

I know a lot of this blog's readers have personal experience with the UM ordination process. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on what is needed the most to improve our ordination candidacy.

Also, here are some other ordination-related articles and posts I've done in the past:

"Can't we simplify" (UM Reporter, September 9, 2009)

"Reflections on the ordination process" (blog post, July 9, 2008)

"The devil's in the details with ordination process" (UM Reporter, October 3, 2007)

"Ordination problems ... uh, process" (blog post, August 15, 2007)

What's in a mission statement?

In the Book of Discipline, the United Methodist Church's book of canon law and doctrine, the mission of the Church is described as follows:

"The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world" (par.120, p.87).

There are ways in which I think that statement is apt and helpful as local churches seek to focus their ministries to reflect the work of followers of Jesus charged with witnessing to his gospel through word and deed.

But in other ways I'm not such a big fan of the statement. For one, I'm not sure that an ecclesiastical communion like the United Methodist Church needs a mission statement. It seems simplistic and far too indebted to a marketing culture better at selling commodities than spreading the good news. I mean, why can't our mission statement simply be the Apostles' Creed?

Another way that I'm ambivalent about the Church's mission statement is the relatively recent prepositional phrase attached to the end of it: "... for the transformation of the world." This is difficult to explain fully in something the length of a blog post, so let me offer a Stanley Hauerwas aphorism instead: "The first task of the Church is not to make the world more just. It is to make the world, the world."

That is, God the Father has called a people together in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ. This people is known as the Church (1 Peter 2:4-10). And it is the community called Church that is serving as a light to the whole world, beckoning people to follow the way of salvation (Matthew 5:14-16). Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church is able to glorify God and mediate the saving grace of Jesus Christ to all those come within her bounds - namely, via the sacrament of baptism (Galatians 3:27-29). From within the covenant community, men and women are able to experience the transformation that brings them from sin to righteousness, from death to life!

The Church is charged with making the world see itself as the world, because only then can the world know a better form of life than the life that worships death. And through that very conviction, those who are lost in the wilderness of the world can be drawn to the salvation known in the Church.

So what does this have to do with the United Methodist statement? Simply put, I don't think we are charged with transforming the world. That's God's job, and God has promised to do it in God's own time (2 Peter 3:8-9).

We are charged with building the Church through the Holy Spirit's guidance, baptizing believers and forming them in holiness of heart and life.

Will those believers go out into the world and do works of justice and mercy, spreading the love of Jesus Christ in the world's institutions and structures? Absolutely! And thank God for it.

The teleological thrust of Christian discipleship, though, is not some kind of Pelagian transformation of the world into the kingdom of God. The belief that we can actually do such a thing is the tragedy of Protestant liberalism, which has led to a watering-down of both doctrine and the lived reality of the Church's life. It is an erroneous belief that still infects the Church, and I fear that our current mission statement doesn't help things in that area.

Colin Williams wrote John Wesley's Theology Today in 1960, at the height of the mid-20th century ecumenical movement. His presentation of Wesley's thought aims at providing Methodists with a theological basis from which to engage in dialogue with Christians of other traditions. The particular ecumenical moment in which people like Williams and Albert C. Outler were prominent Methodist actors has passed, but the heart of Williams' analysis holds up remarkably well.

At the end of a chapter on Wesley's nuanced understanding of justification by faith, Williams offers a passage that can serve as a corrective to our short-and-sweet mission statement:

"Our hope is in Jesus Christ, not in the transformation of the world or even of ourselves. Consequently our hope is not destroyed by the failure of the kingdom of God to become visible or even by our own failure to make visible progress to the goal of Christlikeness. Nevertheless, Wesley laid great stress on the fact that because our faith relation is in Christ, we live under the promise of present transformation and are able to move forward in creative, ethical endeavor because Christ continually offers his transforming presence to believers, and, through the Church, to the world" (p.73).

Williams' quote predates our current mission statement, of course, but it is superior to it in content and articulation.

Meeting Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa

Here in the United States, we often hear stories about the vibrant growth of the United Methodist Church in Africa. There is a desire on the part of many Methodists here to look to Africa for signs of the powerful work that the Holy Spirit is doing in the church. But for many of us, "the church in Africa" exists only in news stories and missionaries' blogs. [I've been to Africa twice - to South Africa in 2000 and to Egypt in 2006 - but neither trip was to be in ministry with UMC congregations.] As interested as many American Methodists are with what is going on in the African church, I think most congregations here find it easier, in terms of the time and expense necessary for establishing foreign ministry connections, to commit to mission and ministry partnerships with the church in Latin America.

The United Methodist Church in Africa took on real flesh and blood for me earlier this week when my wife, Emily, and I were honored to meet Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa from Zimbabwe. Bishop Nhiwatiwa is in North Carolina this summer, both to visit his daughter and to have a sabbatical retreat. He spent some time here on Duke Divinity School's campus, utilizing the library for study and meeting with various scholars on Duke's faculty.

Bishop Nhiwatiwa is the episcopal leader over both the East Zimbabwe Annual Conference and the West Zimbabwe Annual Conference, a part of the UMC that is growing by 10% per year. He was first elected bishop in 2004, before being re-elected last year (meaning, in the way the Central Conference episcopacy is organized, he is now considered a bishop for life).

Over lunch last week, we were able to engage Bishop Nhiwatiwa on topics as diverse as the current UMC constitutional amendments under consideration, Africa University, the economic situation in Zimbabwe, and the joy of getting to spend some restful time in study and reflection amidst a hectic episcopal ministry.

I got to be with Bishiop Nhiwatiwa again at the end of the week, when he visited the closing session of the Summer Wesley Seminar held here on Duke's campus. After a round table discussion where the scholars and graduate students engaged a number of topics related to theology, doctrine, and the current state of the church, Prof. Richard Heitzenrater turned to Bishop Nhiwatiwa to ask him for his own reflections on our discussion and how it relates to his experience of ministry in Zimbabwe.

Bishop Nhiwatiwa began by saying, "Wesley is alive in Africa. There is a hunger to know him."

He said he did not realize the truth of this statement until 2004, after he was elected bishop. Some of his preachers told him at that time about having a worship service outside a storefront in a particular village, and they told him that they felt they were carrying the gospel to people just as John Wesley did when he took to field preaching in order to reach needy hearers.

As he continued mentioning particularly Wesleyan characteristics of the church in Africa, Bishop Nhiwatiwa went on to add this: "Class meetings match up well with African society, because in Africa, life revolves around community. You cannot separate Africans into individuals and expect something good to happen. So the class meetings work well [as a practice of Christian formation.]"

In the context of some question-and-answer time, the bishop also mentioned two more notable facets of the UMC in Zimbabwe that tend to attract converts: first, he calls it a "teaching church," meaning that it tells you its origins and how it developed. It wants its adherents to understand the gospel by understanding the story of the church and how it came to focus on the ministries that it practices. And second, he said that the UMC in his homeland encourages an "experiential religion." It doesn't keep religion "out there" but instead insists that "religion is something that involves us."

These two opportuntities to visit with Bishop Nhiwatiwa and hear his thoughts on ministry and the church were priceless. For anyone who is interested, there are a number of good articles available online that focus on Bishop Nhiwatiwa's ministry and the church in Zimbabwe. Here are a few:

-- A great interview by Hendrik Pieterse with Bishop Nhiwatiwa, in which the bishop answers questions about both the blessings and challenges facing the church in Zimbabwe.

-- A story about the renewal of the covenant agreement between the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference and the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area at the 2008 General Conference.

-- A 2006 story focusing on the church in Zimbabwe as a place that has tremendous spiritual resources and steady growth, but which also faces tremendous challenges in terms of material resources.

A Voice for the Church

One of the strange things about being a columnist for the United Methodist Reporter is how little interaction I usually have with the staff and my fellow columnists. The Reporter is published by UMR Communications in Dallas, TX. I live in Durham, NC, and most of my interaction with the folks down in Dallas is via e-mail. That was why I mentioned how nice it was to get to see some of the Reporter staff at annual conference a few days ago in my last blog post.

So it was doubly nice last night when I got to have supper with the Rev. Don Haynes, who writes the Reporter's regular "Wesleyan Wisdom" column. Don is one of those Methodist preachers who retired years ago but has yet to stop working. He periodically serves as an interim pastor for churches who have gone through a mid-year move or retirement. And he also serves as the Director of United Methodist Studies at Hood Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (but which counts more than 50% of its student body as United Methodist).

Don lives in Salisbury, NC, but he is in Durham this month to participate in the annual Summer Wesley Seminar, which is hosted by Duke Divinity School and draws scholars from all over the connection to do research in Wesleyan theology and Methodist history. He is working on the manuscript of a book on John Wesley and early Methodism that would be geared at a pastor and lay reading audience.

If you haven't read Don's column before, you should check it out. This recent one on 'Rethink Church' argues that the UMC's current efforts to think creatively about what it means to be the church must include a commitment to evangelism. As he mentioned to me last night, doing good works without doing them in the name of Jesus makes us nothing more than a humanitarian agency. And of course, doing them in the name of Jesus also means a whole host of other things that Don points to in his column - growing in communion with God, growing in mission to our neighbors, and growing in our connection within the body of Christ.

Don's writing is creative and lucid. He focuses a lot on the basic tenets of Wesleyan theology. So his column can be a great way to learn more about the background of Methodist doctrine. I'm grateful he is sharing his gifts with the church!

What to do about our 'graying church'

Woody Allen once said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."

Ah, if only. But since Woody's desire doesn't seem to be a possibility for any of us, we have to make plans for what is going to happen to the people and the communities we love after we pass on. In the church, that means making sure that there are younger generations of people who will carry on the torch of the gospel and help to make disciples for Jesus Christ. But for many Protestant denominations in this culture, church members seem to be dying at a much faster rate than they are being replaced.

My own church is in this predicament. So I ask myself, "How can the United Methodist Church attract more younger members? How can we keep from being a 'graying church?'"

I've got some ideas on that, as I'm sure you do. But whatever solutions any of us thinks would work, we could all agree that having a toolkit with useful information about the church's demographic makeup - and trends - would be a big help.

As they have in the past, Lovett Weems and his staff at the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., have come through for the UMC. They have just released a new report that looks at the church's aging in the United States as compared to the overall population, which you can access here.

The methods in the report are creative and unorthodox, and they deliver results that I think are probably pretty accurate. The church is aging everywhere, though there are wide differences between regions of the country. And there are interesting differences in aging rates between annual conferences within the same jurisdiction as well. As you might imagine, the church is aging slowest in the South (i.e., in the Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions), which is also the region where some annual conferences report modest growth at times. It's aging most quickly in the West, Midwest, and Northeast regions of the country.

Just based on the statistical data, there is nothing to suggest that predictions about a precipitous decline in church membership over the next few decades is off the mark at all. So the question then becomes, "What do we do about it?"

I offer my own views on this report in my new column in the UM Reporter. Feel free to check it out and share your own views. I appreciate the section of the Lewis Center report that makes suggestions about starting new churches and growing existing congregations. But ultimately I think those suggestions are fairly useless until they are informed by prior theological work.

The church will not grow again until we proclaim a gospel that reflects the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. If we are willing to proclaim that gospel and embody it in our common life, I suspect the Holy Spirit will bless us with fruits. If we do not, then Jesus will do what he says he will do to the church at Laodicea. I for one believe that the proclamation of the true gospel was the very reason God raised up people called Methodists in the beginning. And God can use us still, if we are willing.

So the real question for us is not really how we get younger, not-so-gray heads in our pews. It is rather how we can once again preach and practice the gospel once entrusted to us to save souls, reform the church, and spread scriptural holiness across the land.

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.

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.

My vision for church reform

Okay, so this is a pretty long post. But if you were interested in what I wrote last week, you might be interested in this too.

My last blog post looked at the viability of the United Methodist Church's future as a denomination. That future is by no means certain. With declining numbers in the American church, an anemic sense of evangelism and mission, a lack of commitment to Wesleyan doctrine, and a movement afoot to split the church into regions based on national and regional boundaries, the church is at a crossroads. In addition to that, the stiflingly bureaucratic forms of church government we have adopted are seriously inhibiting our attempts to carry out our primary mission, which is to proclaim and practice the gospel so that we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

There were several questions directed to me in the comments section of that last blog post, so let me address them first:

1. One respondent asked why we would spend time and energy trying to repair a broken institution when we could be spending that time making disciples one-on-one. That is a great question, and it points to the driving issue I was trying to get at in my recent article in Faith & Leadership. Jesus has called us into his church. That means that the church is, first and foremost, the community of Jesus' disciples. But over time, the community gains an inescapably "institution aspect" to it. And that ain't a bad thing. Because we believe that the church witnesses to the gospel throughout history, we believe there is a continuity to the Christian community from the time of the apostles to the present. That continuity is evident in the church's historic doctrine, the church's ministry (including the ministry of both clergy and laity), and the church's mission. If you don't accept the church-as-institution, you very quickly begin to suffer from a form of historical amnesia that ungrounds you from the Christian tradition. That's bad for basic Christian theology and can lead to a shallow biblicism. It is also a peculiar temptation for Americans, who tend to see everything in "newer is better" terms and want to discard anything that appears not to work well.

2. Another respondent asked how viable I think the UMC is over the long term, and to what degree I am committed to stay in it. The first part of this question is, in a sense, THE question for Methodists. Clearly, the growth of the church in Africa and the Philippines (and in parts of Europe) shows that the Holy Spirit is working through our church. But the church in the U.S. is a different issue, where we seem to be tearing ourselves apart over differences in moral doctrine and seem to have lost the will to evangelize in a robust way. I can't answer the viability question with any certainty, although I'll make some suggestions later in this post. As far as the issue of my own commitment is concerned, I was baptized, confirmed, and ordained in the UMC. I took vows that commit me to a ministry of Word, Sacrament, Order, and Service in its midst. I believe our church has the resources within its tradition to be a powerful witness for Jesus Christ in the world. So I ain't going anywhere.

3. Yet another respondent asked about my views on the proposed constitutional amendments that would initiate a process of structural reform in the UMC as a whole. If you aren't aware of these proposed amendments, you need to read up on them. As a starter, see this post from Wesley Report. This is a complicated issue, and I am working on an essay that addresses it right now. I'll let you know when I'm finished. Until then, I would only say that I think the restructuring is a very bad idea. The issue most often raised to support it is that the General Conference is too "Americentric" (meaning too focused on the concerns of the U.S. church). But all that is needed to remedy that is discipline and patience. The discipline would come in the form of limiting the number of General Conference petitions submitted that focus on peculiarly American concerns and structuring the agenda more equitably. And the patience would come in simply waiting a few years as the size of the church outside the U.S. grows. Since delegations to the General Conference are proportionally-based, the dominance of the U.S. delegation will eventually even out. And that will happen sooner than you think. Restructuring of the church is overkill. And it would open the door to the separation of the church into national or regional constituencies, thus reinforcing the nationalism that has led to innumerable problems over the past few hundred years.

4. Finally, a question was asked about how to go about extricating ourselves from a bureaucratic approach to ministry and recommitting ourselves to the missional task of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That's what I want to take up in the remainder of this post, so consider what follows my humble attempt at addressing this most crucial issue.

First, there are quick changes we could make to the way we go about some our vital tasks that would make a huge difference. I'll mention two. One is to reshape the agenda of our annual conference sessions so that they are almost entirely centered on worship and equipping. Have all your awards and recognitions done at the bishop's office in the weeks leading up to conference. Film them and put them on a DVD, which you then distribute to the conference delegates. Also make the commitment not to spend time debating and voting on resolutions, which are among the most counterproductive activities that an annual conference does (with an exception made for the year before General Conference, of course, when the annual conferences have the ability to submit petitions). Then take all the new time you've got to worship (perhaps getting a 2 or 3 sermon series from your bishop casting a vision for the conference's ministry) and equip clergy and laity for ministry (through substantive workshops on doctrine, mission, evangelism, etc.). This may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the potential that annual conference culture change represents. Remember that there was actually a time when Methodists looked forward to annual conference as a time when the Holy Spirit renewed the church.

And as another easy change we can reclaim the ordination process as a personal experience rather than a bureaucratic nightmare. This can start immediately by a new attitude from clergy mentors, who often see themselves as cogs in the wheel rather than real contributors to spiritual formation. If mentors will commit to get involved in the lives of their candidates and stay involved, it can have an immediate humanizing effect on the process. (I'm not blowing hot air here. I have done that with a candidate of my own, and I think it made a difference.) Beyond that, annual conferences can do whatever possible (given the Book of Discipline regulations) to further humanize the ordination process by de-emphasizing the bureaucratic elements of it and accenting the human contact. Getting the candidates and the probationary clergy together with the Board of Ordained Ministry registrar (apart from the annual retreat) to go over processes and troubleshoot questions in a supportive setting would be a start. All of these things take time commitments from the clergy involved, but all of them are do-able without official action by a governing body. Again, it may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the difference young clergy can make when they are optimistic rather than cynical about the church and their place in it.

Second, we need to think carefully about what we want our annual conference ministry staffs and our general boards and agencies to do for us. And I want to be careful here, because I think the folks who make up these staffs are committed disciples who pour out their hearts for the church. But in general, I think the more we can reduce the size of the church bureaucracy, the better off we'l be. Take the issue of top-down programming, for instance. Because these staffs are expected to generate programming, and local church pastors and laity are expected to attend, it gives us the erroneous notion that "connectionalism" consists primarily of us all doing our duty by attending programmatic events that are often ineffective or inapplicable to our settings in ministry. Moreoever, the programming I have been most impressed with has never come from 'on high,' but has rather been the vision of a pastor or a church who have shared it with the rest of us. If the time and energy spent on conference and general church-level staffs doing programming was handed over to congregations, then it just might happen that congregations in geographical proximity to one another would reach out and join together in true connectionalism for common ministry and mission. But so long as your attention is focused on the next mandatory thing coming down the pike from your district superintendent or bishop, or from the conference ministry staff, then you will never think to look laterally for how you can cooperate with sister congregations near you.

I also believe we need to seriously re-think the role of general boards and agencies in setting the agenda at General Conference. I don't know this for a fact (and I would appreciate someone who does enlightening me), but my understanding is that the proportion of General Conference legislation that originates with general board and agency staffs is quite large [UPDATE: In the comments section of this post, Steve Manskar from the General Board of Discipleship offers some corrective comments on this point. I thank him, and welcome anyone else shedding further light on the extent to which general church structures 'set the agenda' at the General Conference]. I don't mean this harshly, but that amounts to the entire church's agenda being driven by bureaucrats who may not even be in touch with what is going on in the church 'on the ground.' And the result is that the church becomes committed through the legislation that passes to certain courses of action, which require lots of money and which are (not surprisingly) often carried out by the same general boards and agencies that originated the legislation in the first place. It is also no wonder that church bureaucrats would tend toward the belief that the church's problems could be legislated away. That's the mindset of someone who works in a bureaucracy, whereas I would argue that the church's problems are best solved through the Holy Spirit's work in local congregations. Like annual conference sessions, the General Conference could actually be something that people look forward to with something other than fear and dread. But change has to start somewhere.

Third, I believe reform has to entail a re-commitment to Wesleyan doctrine. Look, if we do not believe that our Wesleyan heritage offers something unique to the church catholic, then it becomes very difficult to make an argument that we should exist as a separate church at all. I wrote my current UM Reporter column about the importance of grounding ourselves in our doctrine. The trouble in the church now is two-fold. First, those who do invoke Wesley or Wesleyan teaching often betray a lack of serious reading in Wesley (and you can see this particularly in the way terms like 'catholic spirit' and 'social holiness' and 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' are misused). And second, many don't even bother with our particular doctrine and instead work from a combination of shallow pop theology and the therapeutic junk - which is easier but does nothing to form mature discipleship. Our congregations are starving for solid doctrinal content that could open up their lives to the reality of God's revolutionary work in the world, and we make them settle for hearing about how to be a nice person. It doesn't have to be this way. But it's going to require us to read seriously out of the tradition and stop trying to turn Wesleyan discipleship into a lukewarm mushy bowl of 'open hearts, open minds, open doors' oatmeal.

So that's it. A few practical changes. And a few changes in the way we approach ministry. It's not the total solution. But it would make a difference.

"Denomination" in the dock

We live in a pro-confessional, anti-denominational age. For large mainline denominations like the United Methodist Church, that could mean disaster. Follow with me on this:

Christians (particularly younger ones) are starting to realize that faithful discipleship and good citizenship do not mean the same thing. There was once a time when the phrase, "America is a Christian country" did not sound so nostalgic. Our culture was, broadly speaking, Christian. So you could count on the idea that teachers, politicians, and businessmen would take Christian convictions seriously (even if they did not subscribe to them themselves). But that era has passed. Our culture has become secularized and pluralized to a degree that calling America "a Christian country" strikes one as hopeful but unrealistic.

And Christians are starting to catch on to this reality. They are - perhaps for the first time in American history - beginning to understand that Jesus may have a call on their lives that differs from that of the nation. Even more important, they are realizing that Jesus' call and the nation's call are not just different, but also at points incompatible. So more Christians accept the challenge that self-identifying as "Christian" actually means something. It may put them at odds with their neighbors, their co-workers, and particularly with the broader culture. But this is what it means to be confessional. The New Testament promises us that it will, in some ways, make life more difficult. But it is a life in service to the living God.

Here's the irony: At the same time when Christians are starting to realize the need for a confessional identity, they are becoming increasingly resistant to the idea of a denominational identity. In my own tradition (the United Methodist Church), you see that all the time in new church plants, where the name of the local church will either minimize or wholly conceal the name of the larger denomination (such as: "THE RIVER CHURCH" in huge letters, with "a united methodist congregation" in tiny letters underneath, if it is present at all).

The recent decision by the pastor and staff of GracePoint United Methodist Church to separate from the UMC and launch GracePoint Community Church in Wichita, Kansas, is an excellent example of this trend. This is a complicated situation, to be sure, and it is not one I care to issue judgment about. Frankly, I don't know enough of the details. (To find out more, see Shane Raynor's investigative piece on his blog and the United Methodist News Service's recent press release.) Whatever the events over the last couple of years that resulted in the split, you have to recognize this: the leadership of the church believed it had a vision, and it did not have the patience or the willingness to allow that vision to be lived out within the context of the UMC's ministry.

My interest is not in the details, but rather in the underlying cultural situation that leads to such unfortunate incidents. Why the recent and widespread desire for congregational polity over other forms of church organization, such as the episcopal and connectional polity of the United Methodist Church? As the new GracePoint goes its own way and takes its place among the growing crowd of "community" and "bible" churches, I want to ask, "Why is it that we have come to have such little interest in the identity that a denominational label gives us?"

For those who have been ordained into an ecclesiastical communion like the UMC and have no intentions of leaving (like myself) this is a crucial question. Here are two thoughts:

-- First, our culture is becoming increasingly individualistic in general, which means we tend to see large institutions as impersonal, bureaucratic, and lacking relevance for our lives. Whenever anyone makes a statement about "increasing individualism," everyone tends to nod his head and go on. But I think we have to pause and consider this more carefully. In his recent book, X Saves the World, Jeff Gordinier argues that Generation X'ers have witnessed and rejected the institutionalism of the Builders and the anti-institutional idealism of the Boomers. They've instead opted for an individualism that seeks very localized forms of community life. I think there's something to Gordinier's assessment. We're not individualists in the sense that we don't want the community of others, but we are individualists in the sense that we want our community to consist of people whose faces we know and whose lives are a part of our own. In that context, the idea of a denomination is simply too impersonal and lacking in relevance.

-- Second, the mainline denominations are still operating off of the cultural dominance that they enjoyed until the 1960s. Methodists are probably the worst about this. We have this institutional memory of the time when there were more of us than anyone, and we've never gotten over it. Think about the ways this gets played out: the General Conference passes legislation that weighs in on global problems and calls on our government to act in specific ways. The General Board of Church and Society serves as a lobbying force to the U.S. Congress. Groups of bishops relish the opportunity to get audiences with national political leaders. In a desperate move to get people to like us, we launch a multi-year, multi-million dollar advertising campaign to show the culture how harmless we are and that (contrary to what they've heard about Christian discipleship requiring a new way of life) in reality we're just 'open' about everything. This all amounts to a big cultural hangover, and because we are still suffering from it, our moves as a church in recent years have been toward a mushy pluralism in the vain hope that the culture will repent, start listening to us, and come back to church.

I recently wrote an article arguing that young clergy and lay leaders in the church need to learn to embrace both church-as-community and church-as-institution in order for big denominations like ours to have any kind of future. I believe that. But for us to embrace church-as-institution and make that workable over the long term, the church also needs to change. Here are three ways how:

First, we need to accept the fact that nobody gives a damn what we think. I'm serious about that. Neither the president, the Congress, nor the World Wildlife Federation is holding its breath for what any Methodist body is about to say regarding political issues. If we can stop wringing our collective hands over that stuff, and stop spending all the valuable time and money we have when we gather dealing with it, then perhaps we can re-commit ourselves to the work of ministry. And regardless of what you might say, passing a resolution that goes in a book that nobody reads is not ministry, whether it's the journal of your annual conference or the Book of Resolutions. We need to stop trying to speak to the rest of the world and instead get our own house in order.

Second, we need to reduce the bureaucratic complexity of the church as a whole. This will mean difficult decisions about cutting staff and funding at the level of both annual conferences and the general church. It will mean restructuring and redefining their mission. Conference ministry staffs and the staffs of our general boards and agencies do a lot of good things (and those should continue). They are filled by committed servants of the church who are doing their best in a flawed system. But all bureaucracies evolve over time into organisms that generate a lot of stuff in order to justify their own existence. Our own denominational bureaucracy needs to be pared down and given clearly defined 'equipping' functions and nothing more. By simple inertia, we've arrived at a ministry model that sees bureaucratic processes as the way to get things done rather than the Holy Spirit working in congregations. It's like a ship that has been at sea so long its hull is weighted down with barnacles. We've got to pull into port, scrape those suckers off, and allow the ship to function the way it was originally intended.

Third, we need to realize that the purpose of our mission is not to make middle and upper-middle class consumers feel better about the shallowness of their lives. That's chaplaincy, and it is what goes on in a lot of our congregations. But Jesus wants to gives all of us a whole new life. Methodists used to know that. Wesley's stated mission to his preachers was to "save souls," and his belief about the reason God had raised up the Methodists was to reform the larger church and spread scriptural holiness over the land. In modern times, we have defined that mission as making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. I can accept either version, but neither does us any good if it never gets put into practice. We've got a gospel to preach, but too often what ends up getting proclaimed in our churches is the gospel-of-how-to-live-a-more-fulfilling-materialist-existence.

I have been wanting to write a post on this subject for a long time, but it was something about the saga of GracePoint that made me finally do it. Part of the justification that people on the blogosphere have given for what happened was that we need to care about the work of the kingdom rather than the success of the denomination. Or put another way, we need to make more disciples rather than more Methodists. There is a way in which that sentiment is profoundly true and there is a way in which it is profoundly tragic.

The way in which it is true is obvious, since our own denominational mission statement is a call to discipleship.

But the way in which it is tragic is this: There was a time when Methodists really believed that the best way of making disciples of Jesus was to nurture that discipleship within the context of the Methodist Church. We believed we had a theology, an understanding of committed practice, and a Spirit-fired missionary drive that made our own church the best place to learn the faith.

It is no longer clear that that is the case, and both the GracePoint example and the reaction to it are testament to that. The future of the United Methodist Church as a viable church communion is dependent on our looking honestly at how we got here and taking the steps necessary to re-commit ourselves to our original raison d'etre.

Crunching the numbers

At times, it seems like the United Methodist Church has a 'numbers obsession.' The statistics are familiar: when the church was formed in 1968, it had well over 10 million members in the U.S.. Today, just 40 years later, the numbers have dropped to below 8 million - all in a time when the population of the United States itself has risen from 200 million to over 300 million people.

That's right. While the population of the country has risen by 50%, the membership of the church has dropped by 20%. By any measure, that is a failure.

But what does it mean?

In the past, I have written disparagingly about the church's obsession with numbers. I've never had a problem with focusing on thriving, growing churches. I've just worried that an obsession with numbers would lead us to offering cheap grace, with an over-attention to adding warm bodies to the pews while watering down the gospel in order to get them there.

The Igniting Ministry campaign has always seemed to confirm that fear to me; its intent is to market the church - to 'raise awareness' and hopefully increase numbers - but it does so by offering a message so nebulous that it is essentially meaningless: "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." (I know and have read about the work Igniting Ministry does with target congregations and the training they have received, but that is a relatively small part of the way the campaign has affected the whole church. It is bad theology, and - I can't say this strongly enough - it is a crying shame that we have spent so much money on advertising that does not mention the name of Jesus Christ, all in the name of being sensitive to "spiritual seekers." I have no doubt that John Wesley does somersaults in his grave over this.)

Today I want to offer a mea culpa. I believe numbers are important, and I believe we need to focus on them. Two things have caused me to change my tune and openly embrace a focus on numerical growth in the church.

The first is that I've come to believe we have nothing to fear from the watered down message of marketing programs like Igniting Ministry. They don't work. Igniting Ministry has been around for years, and its results are as hollow as its message. UM Communications can offer press releases every time a new Barna study says that Igniting Ministry has increased the 'favorability' of the United Methodist 'brand' in the public at large, but that has done nothing to arrest our precipitous decline in numbers. Thus, I can only conclude that my fears about cheap grace were wrong. In our cultural climate, apparently even cheap grace doesn't draw a crowd.

The second point is really more important, and it's the subject of my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. In December, I was with Wesley Seminary's Lovett Weems at a conference in Washington D.C., and he presented on the importance of pastors and congregations that are serious about their numerical growth. The core of Lovett's message to us that day can be found in this article. It really boils down to this: Jesus called us to make disciples, and the church in Acts exhibited remarkable growth by boldly proclaiming the gospel of Christ. As the inheritors of that apostolic ministry, we are called to do the same.

I've got to admit that this has really shaped my thinking about my own ministry. The testimony of the Scripture is that, when the true gospel is proclaimed, people will respond.

Might this be a litmus test for faithful ministry?

Unfortunate, self-inflicted confusion

About the orders of ministry, that is.

If you have time, read this United Methodist News Service report along with this blog post. It explains the 2008 General Conference's decision to allow deacons, with their bishops' permission, to preside over the sacraments within the deacon's primary appointment.

Why is this a problem? Well, because historically deacons do not celebrate the sacraments. Whether they are "transitional" deacons meaning they are on their way to becoming elders (as in the UMC prior to 1996 and in many denominations today) or "permanent" deacons (as in both Roman Catholic and United Methodist practice in the present), the ministry of deacons has never been understood to encompass celebrating the sacraments.

Deacons have an important calling. As the Book of Discipline (2000) makes clear in Par.310, the deacon is called to servant ministry in the world, embodying "the interrelationship between worship in the gathered community and service to God in the world." Thus, you'll find deacons who are teachers, social workers, chaplains, youth ministers, music ministers, and activists.

Elders (or presbyters, priests, pastors, etc.) have a different calling. They are called as the shepherds of congregations of the faithful, leading them through teaching, preaching, guiding, and worshiping. And so it is to the elders of the church that the responsibility for celebrating the sacraments falls.

Note: this does not imply a superiority on the part of elders. Elders are not 'better' than deacons, just as the ordained clergy (elders and deacons) are not 'better' than laity. But all these categories have different callings as Christian disciples, callings which are derived from Scripture and the tradition of the church. And importantly for our purposes, they are callings that the UMC has spent a lot of time trying to reason through over the past few years.

It was the 1996 General Conference that separated the orders of ministry, defining the elder and the deacon as two distinct ordinations and phasing out the 'transitional' deacon. The GC made this move because it believed that it was faithfully Scriptural and that it provided for a more coherent account of the orders of ministry. Yet with the 2008 General Conference's decision to authorize bishops to allow deacons to celebrate sacraments in their primary appointments, it has begun to overturn what was developed 12 years prior.

From what I understand, the ostensible reason for the 2008 GC's action was to allow for the sacraments to be celebrated in areas where elders are not readily available. But does this mean that deacons will be serving as the pastoral leaders of congregations? That really makes no sense. If deacons are leading worship because they feel called to do so, then they should begin the process to be ordained as elders. And if there are still truly rural outposts out there without an elder for miles around, then surely our tradition has enough historical knowledge about how to circuit ride that we can get an elder to each local church on a regular basis.

I spoke with a young woman earlier this year who is a seminarian and (I believe) wants to be ordained a deacon. In arguing that deacons should be granted sacramental authority, she said something to the effect, "I have friends who are called to be deacons, but they also feel called to celebrate the sacraments."

The proper response to a statement like this is "No, actually your friends are mistaken. They cannot be called to be both deacons and celebrants. In the church's understanding, if they are called to preside at table, then they are called to the pastoral leadership of congregations. If, on the other hand, they are called to the servant leadership of a deacon, then our understanding of that does not include pastoral leadership."

Sacramental authority is not a commodity, to be claimed by those attracted to the stature it conveys and offered in a consumerist manner when and where one pleases. It is a means of grace, given to us by Christ and provided for our salvation. One of the chief reasons that the presbyteros exist at all is to safeguard the sacred mysteries, ensuring that they are taught faithfully and celebrated rightly. And when we go tinkering with the orders of ministry at each and every General Conference, we do violence to the ecclesial covenant God has given us and introduce unnecessary incoherence into our orders of ministry.

As they have always been, the bishops of the church are the last line of defense for orthodoxy. Let us hope each one of them declines to use the new authority that the General Conference recently offered them.

Love for Lambuth University

Lambuth University is an excellent, small liberal arts college located in Jackson, Tennessee. It is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, and it provides the kind of rigorous undergraduate education in a Christian setting that should make the UMC proud.

A few months ago, it also became clear that Lambuth is in some significant financial trouble. That has resulted in the turnover of a number of senior staff positions, and there has been some upheaval on the Board of Trustees as well. Recently, Bishop Dick Wills and the Memphis Conference of the UMC has become more active in trying to put steps into place to safeguard Lambuth's future.

I'll admit up front that I am very biased when it comes to Lambuth. I worked there for most of three years as an associate chaplain (my first appointment in ministry). My wife is an alumna of Lambuth, and my mother-in-law is on the English faculty there. So my Lambuth roots run deep.

I write this post because I know there are some Lambuth alumni out there who check in from time to time. I want to suggest that, in this season of giving, those with a connection to ol' LU don't forget to include the university in your end-of-year charitable giving.

With the hiring of Dr. Jerry Israel, Lambuth has announced the beginnings of a restructuring plan that will allow it to move forward and get back on the path of financial sound footing. But LU needs our help!

If you are an alumnus - or if you are just someone who believes in church-related higher education - please consider giving to Lambuth. You can do so here online.