Athletes and activism by Mike Poteet
Colin Kaepernick and athletic activism
Nike recently debuted an ad featuring former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick along with the tagline, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The tagline implies that Kaepernick’s continued unemployment following his early 2017 release is a consequence of his protest.
The ad, along with the accompanying tagline, quickly revived debate over Kaepernick’s decision during the National Football League’s 2016–17 season to kneel during pregame performances of the national anthem. Kaepernick said he knelt in protest of racial injustice and police brutality in the United States. However, many of his critics saw the gesture as disrespectful to the flag, the U.S. military, and the nation.
Nike
Just days before Nike’s ad was released, Kaepernick received a ruling granting him a full hearing regarding his employment claims against the NFL. Last fall, Kaepernick filed a grievance claiming that NFL teams and employees colluded “to deprive [him] of employment rights in retaliation for [his] leadership and advocacy for equality and social justice.” Such collusion would violate the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with its players. Eric Reid, a former safety for the 49ers who knelt alongside Kaepernick, has also gone unsigned and has filed a similar grievance.
The NFL collective bargaining agreement sets a high burden of proof for collusion. Despite this, Kaepernick and Reid are speaking out about what they see as unethical, illegal treatment. This speech comes with a price. As Jason Reid writes for ESPN’s website The Undefeated, Kaepernick’s grievance effectively forecloses his future in the NFL. “In a better world,” writes Reid, “Kaepernick wouldn’t face retaliation from owners for merely exercising his rights as a member of the NFL Players Association. In this universe, however, people hold grudges.”
Starting conversations
Kaepernick’s story is only one example of the many prominent athletes who have used their status in recent years to effect social change. The actions of these athletes illustrate several different forms that social activism can take and offer a lot to think about as we try to discern how God may be calling us to influence society as people of faith.
In 2016, Megan Rapinoe, midfielder for the Seattle Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League, became the first white athlete to take a knee during the national anthem. She says she knelt to show solidarity with Kaepernick and to provoke conversations that might raise more awareness and promote solutions to racial injustice. “If you are in a position of influence like I am,” she wrote in The Players’ Tribune, “you can use your platform to elevate the millions of voices being silenced.”
Rapinoe has also used her influence to combat homophobia and to seek equal pay for women in the US Soccer Federation (USSF), who earn about 25 percent of what male players earn, according to her wage-discrimination complaint against the USSF. “You can’t really speak out on one thing and not another without it not being the full picture,” she told The Guardian in 2017. “We need to talk about a larger conversation in this country about equality in general and respect.”
Conversation alone isn’t enough to bring about social change, but meaningful change can’t happen without it. “Having these kinds of conversations can be difficult and complex, but so what?” Rapinoe writes in her article in The Players’ Tribune. “This is not a ‘them’ problem — this is an ‘us’ problem.”
Strengthening the present and future community
When the school year started this fall in Akron, Ohio, 240 third- and fourth-graders from low-income families became the first class at the new I Promise School, a partnership between Akron Public Schools and NBA superstar LeBron James. The four-time MVP said on Twitter that opening the school in his hometown would be “one of the greatest moments (if not the greatest)” of his life.
I Promise provides students with what James’s charitable foundation calls “a complete wraparound for its students and their families.” This includes a challenging eight-hour school day, an on-site food bank, GED and job placement services for students’ parents, and guaranteed full tuition to the University of Akron for every student who graduates.
While other star athletes like Deion Sanders and Andre Agassi have started charter schools, I Promise is a public school. Writing for Slate, Jordan Weissmann says James is “sending the message that it’s worth investing in our traditional public education systems, and that they should be trusted to run socially and academically ambitious schools.”
The I Promise School shows how activism entails investing for the good of the community — not just as it currently is, but also as it can and should be. Activism also means seeing the good one can do and seizing the opportunity to do it. As quoted on The Root website, James said at the school’s opening, “For me to be in the position where I have the resources, the finance, the people, the structure and the city around me — why not?”
Stick to sports?
Earlier this year, Fox News host Laura Ingraham responded to LeBron James’s criticism of President Donald Trump by telling James that he should “shut up and dribble.” Ingraham’s attitude isn’t new, and activist athletes have often drawn complaints that they should “stick to sports.” But does this demand seek to make athletes choose between their roles as athletes and their identities as concerned citizens with ideas and beliefs about important social issues? Is that the kind of separation we can honestly ask someone to make?
Christians should be able to appreciate the difficulty of this demand. How easy or hard would you find it to separate your identity as a member of society from your identity as a follower of Jesus? Jesus himself reiterated the Torah’s command to love God single-mindedly and wholeheartedly (Matthew 22:37; see Deuteronomy 6:5). The apostle Paul exhorted believers, “Whatever you do . . . do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17). How, then, can we divide what we believe from what we do in society as we witness to God’s will and seek to enact that will?
Be sure to check out FaithLink, a weekly downloadable discussion guide for classes and small groups. FaithLinkmotivates Christians to consider their personal views on important contemporary issues, and it also encourages them to act on their beliefs.
I think this is a beautiful idea. I’m also intensely skeptical of it.
First, I need to affirm the truth of the multiplication concept: It’s true that disciples make disciples, and I do believe we need to think about faith, leadership development, and church planting in terms of mustard seeds. The Kingdom of God is supposed to grow more like yeast, kudzu, or dandelions (Matthew 13:31-33) instead of cedar trees (Ezekiel 31:3-13). We Jesus-followers should spread like a contagious disease. While “attractional” churches focus on adding people to an event, “missional” churches focus on sending people out to transform the world and multiply disciples.
But second, we need to disentangle our cultural trends and fascinations from our theological principles. In our current social moment, “going viral” is the aspiration of every political propagandist and every fame-seeking YouTube star. The church-industrial complex has so thoroughly bought into the theology of “mindshare” and “viral success” that we’ve lost sight of the equally-important concepts of pruning and subtraction. In church planting circles, the theology of success-by-multiplication is pervasive: Churches who grow fast are obviously blessed by God for having correct theology and loving Jesus. But how much of this multiplication mindset is inspired by the gospel, and how much by 21st-century capitalism? While I believe the Good News is attractive, is it true that popularity is a sign of divine favor?
Jesus’ own ministry gives us several examples of the limited marketability of the idea of “losing your life to save it.” After one particularly offensive sermon, Jesus shrank his entourage from thousands to a dozen, and he even worried he might lose his closest disciples (John 6:65-68). He told his followers that the path they chose would not be for everyone (Matthew 7:13-14).
I share this reflection on church growth because I often hear house churches lifted up as a multiplication strategy. In a denominational environment where people are desperate to stave off church decline, I do not want people to see house churches primarily through the lens of church growth. I also think we need to be realistic about the investment of time and energy in recruiting people and adding them as partners to house churches. In a house church, recruitment, discipleship, and member growth are slow. And there is nothing wrong with that.
All of the Math
One of my most important lessons in doing house churches is that all of the math is important: addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction.
Addition happens at the level of the individual house church. Since we are trying to reach folks who probably would otherwise not be in church at all, and since we use a community organizing model, one-to-one conversations are essential. As the pastor and church planter, I have multiple one-to-one conversations each week, both with partners (members) of our house church and with others in the community. I ask all of our partners to do the same. If we wind up inviting someone to visit one of our house churches, we do so with the expectation that it may be months—or even more than a year—before that person will follow through and visit. The folks we are trying to reach, the “nones and dones,” are just as set in their ways as church folks. Breaking the habit of not attending church, and creating a new habit, is a difficult task.
What has surprised me is how many people find our house churches just because they are looking for something different. A number of our new partners come to us by finding us on the internet, and simply showing up at one of our house churches. I think because we live in the age of Meetup, Lyft, and Airbnb, young people are especially less reluctant to show up at a stranger’s house than in decades prior. For this reason, it’s important to have a consistent and updated web presence. We’ve learned from experience that yard signs also help for people who are looking for the right private residence. Nobody likes knocking on a stranger’s door just to find out they are in the wrong place!
In a house church of ten people, if we add one person in a year, that’s ten percent growth! That would be huge at a mega-church. If we have multiple house churches, these simple acts of addition can represent huge numbers.
Multiplication happens at the network level. Two of our house churches have multiplied organically; that is, new partners felt a call to start a new house church in a different location or at a different time. When they split off from their previous home church (division), they recruited one or more households to form a new house church. When we start a new house church, we typically gain a few entirely new households as either core group or regular attenders. These open up new social networks and connections to new people.
While those house churches are growing organically, I’m still working at recruiting completely new groups of people into our network. If I can train new leaders to start new house churches, those leaders can bring nearly a dozen new people into the network by starting a house church.
New house churches are where the big growth comes from. While individual house churches add a few people each year, midwifing a new house church into existence creates new excitement and momentum.
Division is something we need to take seriously, though. When a house church multiplies organically, it can be a time of celebration. But any gestation or birth has a cost. Sometimes a house church needs to take “maternity leave” after giving up new partners to go and start a new house church. They can experience the separation as a loss of momentum or energy. “We brought these new people in,” they may lament, “and now we just send them away?”
I’ve heard growth-oriented pastors (usually men) speak callously about groups’ fears of dividing in order to grow. They ignore the biological principle that reproduction always takes energy, that birth is full of risk and often pain. I think any plan for organic growth reproduction needs to account for maternity leave for house churches that commission and send away leaders of new house churches.
Subtraction is just as much a part of growth as death is part of life. It is tempting, in a small church, to develop a scarcity mindset. We have so few people that the loss of just one or two hurts us disproportionately. A house church needs to have a clear enough sense of mission and ministry that these inevitable subtractions don’t get interpreted as “we must be doing something wrong.” As I mentioned above, Jesus lost thousands of followers between the time of his miraculous feeding and when he claimed that he was the Bread of Life which his followers must eat.
Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-9) is a classic example of growth by subtraction. The sower casts a huge amount of seed, and most of it gets crushed, eaten, burned, or strangled. When I think of this parable in terms of planting house churches, it suggests to me that we need to have an attitude of detachment about the “success” or “failure” of planting new ones. We should fling them into unlikely places instead of carefully trying to engineer their success according to our egocentric ways of measuring.
Invitation
In addition to weekly worship, I encourage our house churches to plan events that they would want to invite their friends to. This may be as simple as a cookout before or after the usual worship time, or a movie or game night on a different day of the week. The goal is simply to introduce people to each other, to create a low-commitment space in which the concept “house church” can be demystified.
House churches occupy an interesting space which can raise eyebrows from both conventional church folks and from the “nones and dones.” “Is it a real church? Do you have a real preacher? Is it like a cult?” can be the reaction from both church folks and from non-church folks.
All growth, of course, gets down to the simple act of invitation. House churches are about hospitality, and the advantage they have over conventional building-centered churches is that an invitation to a dinner table or small gathering is less fraught, in our age, than an invitation to a steeple church. Gathering in a house church feels naturally sacramental, and the act of sharing communion around a real dining table can be profoundly moving for those who have not set foot in a church building in a long time. As one of our partners said recently, “It felt less like going to church, and more like coming home.”
The center of our life in this world is the Passover of our mortal life with God, through death, into the eternal life ofGod.
It involves the work of intentional formation and repentance. And our formation isn’t just about this life, but internal to our formation is its goal beyond this life in God.
Our work of formation and repentance is a death to self, a forsaking our life that we might gain it.
The more we bury ourselves in the Passover, the transitus, the journey, the more God ceases to be primarily a distant intellectual object for us. We’re transitioning from life withGod into the life of God. We’re becoming internal to, and so in some sense indistinguishable from, the life we’re coming to share with the Father and in the Spirit. We’re also becoming aware that we’ve always been internal to the life of God in a way that’s prior to the sense in which we’ve become external to and alienated from it. We’re in and created through Christ precisely because we were chosen before the foundation of the world for this mortal vocation. (See Jn. 1:3, Eph. 1:4, Col. 1:16-18.) But in using the term vocation here I’m getting ahead of myself.
This life of transitus also involves not just receptive intellectual formation (i.e. reading and studying Scripture, spiritual disciplines, learning doctrine), but constructive intellectual work: doctrinal and theological meditation. We’re buried away with Christ beneath the surface of the tomb in order to meditate, think, reflect, criticize and get beyond the surfaces of things. We want to get beyond the surface of history and discover beneath it the light and life of God, just like we do with the Bible itself: we learn to interpret its allegorical and mystical depths. We interpret from the letter to the spirit. So Job is a figure of Christ. Abraham’s faithfulness, imperfect though it is, reflects the astonishing faithfulness of Mary and the perfect faithfulness of Jesus Christ.
So we begin by first learning Scripture as best we’re able, and studying it with the best historical tools we have. Second, we come to appreciate much more fully the divine depths of Scripture. And this is all oriented to, third, interpreting Scripture spiritually such that it helps us love, helps us grow in the active kindness or benignitas of God. Studying theology is ultimately practical since God ultimately wants to make us genuinely good, authentically and actively kind. Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096-1141) associates this goodness with the resurrection of Christ as an eschatological disclosure, such that our ethic in the world is both patterned on the way of Jesus Christ and reflects into time the light of eternity making possible, in some measure here below, the eschatological life of God and humanity in union and unison.
So how does this connect to vocation? Well, vocation has to do with calling. Our vocation in life, at base, is to follow Jesus, to be Jesus’ disciple. Think of Jesus calling the fisherman to follow him — so it is with us. Yet there’s also other layers of vocation. Gordon T. Smith talks about two other levels of vocation as well. The third, and most nitty-gritty daily sense deals directly with our particular circumstances: we need to show up at work, get the kids fed, etc. That’s a level of God-given calling too. But the middle level is what we often mean by vocation: it’s our “specific call — a defining purpose or mission, a reason for being. Each person has a unique calling in this second sense” (Courage and Calling, 10).
The connection I want to make is about this second sense of calling or vocation. As Smith explores, this specific calling transcends our paying job (even if our job is being a pastor or missionary, etc.) though we can sometimes wind up blessed with paying work that directly serves our transcendent calling or vocation. And — here’s my point — our specific calling is always itself going to be a calling into the paschal mystery. It’s always a calling into Jesus Christ’s Passover through death on the cross and into the eternal divine life of the Trinity. We seek out and engage in Christian and vocational formation in service to our specific calling in the world — and, often enough, to clarify what that specific calling is. That formation immerses us in Christ’s dying, burial and rising. And our pursuit of our specific vocation with its ideals and goals is itself — in its sufferings, its illuminations, its sharing and giving of divine kindness — a quest of deepening in the same Passover. That would apply no matter whether our specific calling is to make clean water available in places that lack it, or whether our specific call expresses itself in a quest to make the best breakfast taco in Austin, Texas.
A sense of our specific vocation in the world is like a reliable but imperfect map of how we’re to quest in order to participate in Jesus Christ’s dying, burial and rising. It’s an imperfect but reliable map of our mystical quest, our journey to union with God.
Jesus, like Socrates or Columbo, rarely pronounces definitive answers, but instead asks dizzying questions. The nameless man insists he has behaved well and adhered to the law. He’s good. But Jesus perceives a lack. Something’s missing. Something’s always missing.
The rich man has a pile of great things, a great life. But missing just one thing doesn’t mean he’s got 99 out of a 100 and just needs one to complete the set. The one he’s missing makes the 99 feel like only a little, not nearly enough. The one thing, the main thing, the only thing... this is precisely what even our finest people know they lack. It’s the grace — but really more than that, it’s the person. Others lay down their things not to get some grace, but to stick close to Jesus, who’s moving, travelling. Salvation is Jesus, being near him — which is hard to do while maintaining your plantations and investments.
Jesus, a genius diagnostician, sees deeply into this man and pinpoints the big blockage for him: it’s his stuff, his wealth, his things. We could (rightly) say Jesus wasn’t proposing all people give up all for the poor; it was just this one guy. Whew! But how many suffer this malady? As Morna Hooker pointed out, not many of Jesus’ listeners were rich. But the desire of riches can be the big blockage even for those who don’t have much. And we may recall John Wesley's rephrasing: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for those that have riches not to trust in them." For Wesley, the rich were those with more than the bare minimum to survive. Wealth destroys humility, wealth annihilates patience, and wealth produces vices and leads to idolatry (as explained in Theodore Jennings's amazing Good News to the Poor).
Nike recently debuted an ad featuring former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick along with the tagline, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The tagline implies that Kaepernick’s continued unemployment following his early 2017 release is a consequence of his protest.
The ad, along with the accompanying tagline, quickly revived debate over Kaepernick’s decision during the National Football League’s 2016–17 season to kneel during pregame performances of the national anthem. Kaepernick said he knelt in protest of racial injustice and police brutality in the United States. However, many of his critics saw the gesture as disrespectful to the flag, the U.S. military, and the nation.
NikeJust days before Nike’s ad was released, Kaepernick received a ruling granting him a full hearing regarding his employment claims against the NFL. Last fall, Kaepernick filed a grievance claiming that NFL teams and employees colluded “to deprive [him] of employment rights in retaliation for [his] leadership and advocacy for equality and social justice.” Such collusion would violate the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with its players. Eric Reid, a former safety for the 49ers who knelt alongside Kaepernick, has also gone unsigned and has filed a similar grievance.
The NFL collective bargaining agreement sets a high burden of proof for collusion. Despite this, Kaepernick and Reid are speaking out about what they see as unethical, illegal treatment. This speech comes with a price. As Jason Reid writes for ESPN’s website The Undefeated, Kaepernick’s grievance effectively forecloses his future in the NFL. “In a better world,” writes Reid, “Kaepernick wouldn’t face retaliation from owners for merely exercising his rights as a member of the NFL Players Association. In this universe, however, people hold grudges.”
Starting conversations
Kaepernick’s story is only one example of the many prominent athletes who have used their status in recent years to effect social change. The actions of these athletes illustrate several different forms that social activism can take and offer a lot to think about as we try to discern how God may be calling us to influence society as people of faith.
In 2016, Megan Rapinoe, midfielder for the Seattle Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League, became the first white athlete to take a knee during the national anthem. She says she knelt to show solidarity with Kaepernick and to provoke conversations that might raise more awareness and promote solutions to racial injustice. “If you are in a position of influence like I am,” she wrote in The Players’ Tribune, “you can use your platform to elevate the millions of voices being silenced.”
Rapinoe has also used her influence to combat homophobia and to seek equal pay for women in the US Soccer Federation (USSF), who earn about 25 percent of what male players earn, according to her wage-discrimination complaint against the USSF. “You can’t really speak out on one thing and not another without it not being the full picture,” she told The Guardian in 2017. “We need to talk about a larger conversation in this country about equality in general and respect.”
Conversation alone isn’t enough to bring about social change, but meaningful change can’t happen without it. “Having these kinds of conversations can be difficult and complex, but so what?” Rapinoe writes in her article in The Players’ Tribune. “This is not a ‘them’ problem — this is an ‘us’ problem.”
Strengthening the present and future community
When the school year started this fall in Akron, Ohio, 240 third- and fourth-graders from low-income families became the first class at the new I Promise School, a partnership between Akron Public Schools and NBA superstar LeBron James. The four-time MVP said on Twitter that opening the school in his hometown would be “one of the greatest moments (if not the greatest)” of his life.
I Promise provides students with what James’s charitable foundation calls “a complete wraparound for its students and their families.” This includes a challenging eight-hour school day, an on-site food bank, GED and job placement services for students’ parents, and guaranteed full tuition to the University of Akron for every student who graduates.
While other star athletes like Deion Sanders and Andre Agassi have started charter schools, I Promise is a public school. Writing for Slate, Jordan Weissmann says James is “sending the message that it’s worth investing in our traditional public education systems, and that they should be trusted to run socially and academically ambitious schools.”
The I Promise School shows how activism entails investing for the good of the community — not just as it currently is, but also as it can and should be. Activism also means seeing the good one can do and seizing the opportunity to do it. As quoted on The Root website, James said at the school’s opening, “For me to be in the position where I have the resources, the finance, the people, the structure and the city around me — why not?”
Stick to sports?
Earlier this year, Fox News host Laura Ingraham responded to LeBron James’s criticism of President Donald Trump by telling James that he should “shut up and dribble.” Ingraham’s attitude isn’t new, and activist athletes have often drawn complaints that they should “stick to sports.” But does this demand seek to make athletes choose between their roles as athletes and their identities as concerned citizens with ideas and beliefs about important social issues? Is that the kind of separation we can honestly ask someone to make?
Christians should be able to appreciate the difficulty of this demand. How easy or hard would you find it to separate your identity as a member of society from your identity as a follower of Jesus? Jesus himself reiterated the Torah’s command to love God single-mindedly and wholeheartedly (Matthew 22:37; see Deuteronomy 6:5). The apostle Paul exhorted believers, “Whatever you do . . . do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17). How, then, can we divide what we believe from what we do in society as we witness to God’s will and seek to enact that will?
Be sure to check out FaithLink, a weekly downloadable discussion guide for classes and small groups. FaithLinkmotivates Christians to consider their personal views on important contemporary issues, and it also encourages them to act on their beliefs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Poteet
Mike Poteet, writer of the teaching articles, is a Presbyterian minister (PCUSA), currently serving the larger church read more…
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The following article is part six of a ten-part series exploring all aspects of organizing, worshipping, and growing as a house church community. Read the previous parts here.
Methodist house churches: Inviting and recruiting by Dave Barnhart
If you’ve talked to anyone about growing church numbers in the last decades, you’ve probably heard about the importance of making disciples who make disciples. We should not be focused on adding people to our group, the thinking goes, but setting free the power of multiplication. Tony and Felicity Dale’s book about house churches, The Rabbit and the Elephant, makes the point with a simple analogy: small, fertile rabbits reproduce much faster than large elephants. Reducing the gestational period for churches is one way to speed up the church-planting process. “Simple,” “organic,” and even “viral” are terms I’ve heard used to describe this growth strategy.I think this is a beautiful idea. I’m also intensely skeptical of it.
First, I need to affirm the truth of the multiplication concept: It’s true that disciples make disciples, and I do believe we need to think about faith, leadership development, and church planting in terms of mustard seeds. The Kingdom of God is supposed to grow more like yeast, kudzu, or dandelions (Matthew 13:31-33) instead of cedar trees (Ezekiel 31:3-13). We Jesus-followers should spread like a contagious disease. While “attractional” churches focus on adding people to an event, “missional” churches focus on sending people out to transform the world and multiply disciples.
But second, we need to disentangle our cultural trends and fascinations from our theological principles. In our current social moment, “going viral” is the aspiration of every political propagandist and every fame-seeking YouTube star. The church-industrial complex has so thoroughly bought into the theology of “mindshare” and “viral success” that we’ve lost sight of the equally-important concepts of pruning and subtraction. In church planting circles, the theology of success-by-multiplication is pervasive: Churches who grow fast are obviously blessed by God for having correct theology and loving Jesus. But how much of this multiplication mindset is inspired by the gospel, and how much by 21st-century capitalism? While I believe the Good News is attractive, is it true that popularity is a sign of divine favor?
Jesus’ own ministry gives us several examples of the limited marketability of the idea of “losing your life to save it.” After one particularly offensive sermon, Jesus shrank his entourage from thousands to a dozen, and he even worried he might lose his closest disciples (John 6:65-68). He told his followers that the path they chose would not be for everyone (Matthew 7:13-14).
I share this reflection on church growth because I often hear house churches lifted up as a multiplication strategy. In a denominational environment where people are desperate to stave off church decline, I do not want people to see house churches primarily through the lens of church growth. I also think we need to be realistic about the investment of time and energy in recruiting people and adding them as partners to house churches. In a house church, recruitment, discipleship, and member growth are slow. And there is nothing wrong with that.
All of the Math
One of my most important lessons in doing house churches is that all of the math is important: addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction.
Addition happens at the level of the individual house church. Since we are trying to reach folks who probably would otherwise not be in church at all, and since we use a community organizing model, one-to-one conversations are essential. As the pastor and church planter, I have multiple one-to-one conversations each week, both with partners (members) of our house church and with others in the community. I ask all of our partners to do the same. If we wind up inviting someone to visit one of our house churches, we do so with the expectation that it may be months—or even more than a year—before that person will follow through and visit. The folks we are trying to reach, the “nones and dones,” are just as set in their ways as church folks. Breaking the habit of not attending church, and creating a new habit, is a difficult task.
What has surprised me is how many people find our house churches just because they are looking for something different. A number of our new partners come to us by finding us on the internet, and simply showing up at one of our house churches. I think because we live in the age of Meetup, Lyft, and Airbnb, young people are especially less reluctant to show up at a stranger’s house than in decades prior. For this reason, it’s important to have a consistent and updated web presence. We’ve learned from experience that yard signs also help for people who are looking for the right private residence. Nobody likes knocking on a stranger’s door just to find out they are in the wrong place!
In a house church of ten people, if we add one person in a year, that’s ten percent growth! That would be huge at a mega-church. If we have multiple house churches, these simple acts of addition can represent huge numbers.
Multiplication happens at the network level. Two of our house churches have multiplied organically; that is, new partners felt a call to start a new house church in a different location or at a different time. When they split off from their previous home church (division), they recruited one or more households to form a new house church. When we start a new house church, we typically gain a few entirely new households as either core group or regular attenders. These open up new social networks and connections to new people.
While those house churches are growing organically, I’m still working at recruiting completely new groups of people into our network. If I can train new leaders to start new house churches, those leaders can bring nearly a dozen new people into the network by starting a house church.
New house churches are where the big growth comes from. While individual house churches add a few people each year, midwifing a new house church into existence creates new excitement and momentum.
Division is something we need to take seriously, though. When a house church multiplies organically, it can be a time of celebration. But any gestation or birth has a cost. Sometimes a house church needs to take “maternity leave” after giving up new partners to go and start a new house church. They can experience the separation as a loss of momentum or energy. “We brought these new people in,” they may lament, “and now we just send them away?”
I’ve heard growth-oriented pastors (usually men) speak callously about groups’ fears of dividing in order to grow. They ignore the biological principle that reproduction always takes energy, that birth is full of risk and often pain. I think any plan for organic growth reproduction needs to account for maternity leave for house churches that commission and send away leaders of new house churches.
Subtraction is just as much a part of growth as death is part of life. It is tempting, in a small church, to develop a scarcity mindset. We have so few people that the loss of just one or two hurts us disproportionately. A house church needs to have a clear enough sense of mission and ministry that these inevitable subtractions don’t get interpreted as “we must be doing something wrong.” As I mentioned above, Jesus lost thousands of followers between the time of his miraculous feeding and when he claimed that he was the Bread of Life which his followers must eat.
Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-9) is a classic example of growth by subtraction. The sower casts a huge amount of seed, and most of it gets crushed, eaten, burned, or strangled. When I think of this parable in terms of planting house churches, it suggests to me that we need to have an attitude of detachment about the “success” or “failure” of planting new ones. We should fling them into unlikely places instead of carefully trying to engineer their success according to our egocentric ways of measuring.
Invitation
In addition to weekly worship, I encourage our house churches to plan events that they would want to invite their friends to. This may be as simple as a cookout before or after the usual worship time, or a movie or game night on a different day of the week. The goal is simply to introduce people to each other, to create a low-commitment space in which the concept “house church” can be demystified.
House churches occupy an interesting space which can raise eyebrows from both conventional church folks and from the “nones and dones.” “Is it a real church? Do you have a real preacher? Is it like a cult?” can be the reaction from both church folks and from non-church folks.
All growth, of course, gets down to the simple act of invitation. House churches are about hospitality, and the advantage they have over conventional building-centered churches is that an invitation to a dinner table or small gathering is less fraught, in our age, than an invitation to a steeple church. Gathering in a house church feels naturally sacramental, and the act of sharing communion around a real dining table can be profoundly moving for those who have not set foot in a church building in a long time. As one of our partners said recently, “It felt less like going to church, and more like coming home.”
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Connecting vocation and spiritual formation by Clifton Stringer
Jesus Christ, in his dying, burial and rising, is the center of all things, the summary or unification of the story of the world within the oneness of God. (c.f. Eph. 1:10.) Robert Jenson (1930-2017) defines the oneness of God as the oneness of the story or life God shares with his people. That means that the process of Christian spiritual formation is a process of immersing oneself into the comprehensive, world-and-history-enfolding depths of Jesus’ dying, burial and rising. The center of our life in this world is the Passover of our mortal life with God, through death, into the eternal life ofGod.
It involves the work of intentional formation and repentance. And our formation isn’t just about this life, but internal to our formation is its goal beyond this life in God.
Our work of formation and repentance is a death to self, a forsaking our life that we might gain it.
The more we bury ourselves in the Passover, the transitus, the journey, the more God ceases to be primarily a distant intellectual object for us. We’re transitioning from life withGod into the life of God. We’re becoming internal to, and so in some sense indistinguishable from, the life we’re coming to share with the Father and in the Spirit. We’re also becoming aware that we’ve always been internal to the life of God in a way that’s prior to the sense in which we’ve become external to and alienated from it. We’re in and created through Christ precisely because we were chosen before the foundation of the world for this mortal vocation. (See Jn. 1:3, Eph. 1:4, Col. 1:16-18.) But in using the term vocation here I’m getting ahead of myself.
This life of transitus also involves not just receptive intellectual formation (i.e. reading and studying Scripture, spiritual disciplines, learning doctrine), but constructive intellectual work: doctrinal and theological meditation. We’re buried away with Christ beneath the surface of the tomb in order to meditate, think, reflect, criticize and get beyond the surfaces of things. We want to get beyond the surface of history and discover beneath it the light and life of God, just like we do with the Bible itself: we learn to interpret its allegorical and mystical depths. We interpret from the letter to the spirit. So Job is a figure of Christ. Abraham’s faithfulness, imperfect though it is, reflects the astonishing faithfulness of Mary and the perfect faithfulness of Jesus Christ.
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And all this formation and deep thinking isn’t just aimed at clarifying the truth of things, not even the divine truth of Jesus’ identity. It’s all aimed, ultimately, at love and goodness — the kindness and goodness of God that motivated the incarnation in order to sweep us off our feet with love in the first place. It’s aimed at sharing in the life of the Holy Spirit in order to be made spiritual. When it’s approached rightly, Truth always has an inner dynamism towards its consummation in Love. To be made truly wise, such that you reflect divine Wisdom, isn’t just to know the truth of Jesus’ identity. It’s to live out the loving way of Jesus on the basis of that identity. That’s wisdom.So we begin by first learning Scripture as best we’re able, and studying it with the best historical tools we have. Second, we come to appreciate much more fully the divine depths of Scripture. And this is all oriented to, third, interpreting Scripture spiritually such that it helps us love, helps us grow in the active kindness or benignitas of God. Studying theology is ultimately practical since God ultimately wants to make us genuinely good, authentically and actively kind. Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096-1141) associates this goodness with the resurrection of Christ as an eschatological disclosure, such that our ethic in the world is both patterned on the way of Jesus Christ and reflects into time the light of eternity making possible, in some measure here below, the eschatological life of God and humanity in union and unison.
We can see this if we look at the life of a Francis or a Macrina, or even a Phoebe Palmer, a Bonaventure, a Frances Elizabeth Willard. God gives us whatever intellectual and doctrinal formation we get in order to confer goodness on and through us, so that we begin to actively communicate God’s own goodness. If the good is diffusive of itself, as Dionysius the Areopagite wrote, it means that to the extent that we’re really immersed in divine light and goodness we’ll be communicating that, diffusing it, giving it away, reflecting it, sharing it with others. Speculation serves both union with God, or mystical union, and love of neighbor indistinguishably.
The connection I want to make is about this second sense of calling or vocation. As Smith explores, this specific calling transcends our paying job (even if our job is being a pastor or missionary, etc.) though we can sometimes wind up blessed with paying work that directly serves our transcendent calling or vocation. And — here’s my point — our specific calling is always itself going to be a calling into the paschal mystery. It’s always a calling into Jesus Christ’s Passover through death on the cross and into the eternal divine life of the Trinity. We seek out and engage in Christian and vocational formation in service to our specific calling in the world — and, often enough, to clarify what that specific calling is. That formation immerses us in Christ’s dying, burial and rising. And our pursuit of our specific vocation with its ideals and goals is itself — in its sufferings, its illuminations, its sharing and giving of divine kindness — a quest of deepening in the same Passover. That would apply no matter whether our specific calling is to make clean water available in places that lack it, or whether our specific call expresses itself in a quest to make the best breakfast taco in Austin, Texas.
A sense of our specific vocation in the world is like a reliable but imperfect map of how we’re to quest in order to participate in Jesus Christ’s dying, burial and rising. It’s an imperfect but reliable map of our mystical quest, our journey to union with God.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clifton Stringer
Clifton Stringer is based in Austin, Texas and holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Boston College. He previously read more…
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Let’s look at this week’s lections in reverse order. Mark 10:17-31 (here's a sermon I did on this recently) opens a window for us into an encounter Jesus has with a man of “great possessions.” He’s a jobs producer! — and a commandment keeper. Verse 17 reminds us it’s not a still life. Jesus is “on a journey.” I picture him the way Pasolini did in his fabulous Italian film, “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” with Jesus walking urgently from place to place, speaking over his shoulder to breathless disciples trying to keep up. This wealthy man runs to catch up, kneels, and inquires about eternal life. He has so much, and now wants even more.Jesus, like Socrates or Columbo, rarely pronounces definitive answers, but instead asks dizzying questions. The nameless man insists he has behaved well and adhered to the law. He’s good. But Jesus perceives a lack. Something’s missing. Something’s always missing.
The rich man has a pile of great things, a great life. But missing just one thing doesn’t mean he’s got 99 out of a 100 and just needs one to complete the set. The one he’s missing makes the 99 feel like only a little, not nearly enough. The one thing, the main thing, the only thing... this is precisely what even our finest people know they lack. It’s the grace — but really more than that, it’s the person. Others lay down their things not to get some grace, but to stick close to Jesus, who’s moving, travelling. Salvation is Jesus, being near him — which is hard to do while maintaining your plantations and investments.
Jesus, a genius diagnostician, sees deeply into this man and pinpoints the big blockage for him: it’s his stuff, his wealth, his things. We could (rightly) say Jesus wasn’t proposing all people give up all for the poor; it was just this one guy. Whew! But how many suffer this malady? As Morna Hooker pointed out, not many of Jesus’ listeners were rich. But the desire of riches can be the big blockage even for those who don’t have much. And we may recall John Wesley's rephrasing: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for those that have riches not to trust in them." For Wesley, the rich were those with more than the bare minimum to survive. Wealth destroys humility, wealth annihilates patience, and wealth produces vices and leads to idolatry (as explained in Theodore Jennings's amazing Good News to the Poor).
St. Francis heard Jesus' words in worship, and took the Bible literally; the rest is history. Others have approximated this radical divestment. Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, gave up his millions to build affordable houses for and with the poor. Who else can you find who has fundamentally taken a massive downward step on the economic ladder in order to empower others and change the world to be more in sync with God’s kingdom? Don’t forget that John Wesley suggested that laying up treasure on earth, keeping more than the minimum needed for survival, amounts to theft — from the poor, and from God.
"Weak Enough to Lead: What the Bible Tells Us about Powerful Leadership" (Abingdon Press, 2017). Order here: http://bit.ly/2rYxHac
What a lovely touch, Mark noting the man’s sadness. Genuinely, he’s sad; he’s missing out, as sticking with the blockage does create sorrow. Jesus feels sad for him as well, and points out to his friends just how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom. That medieval fiction about camels crawling on their knees to get through the gate called “the eye of the needle” has zero basis in fact and is worse theologically, as it implies it’s really hard, or it’s only through prayer you enter the kingdom. No, Jesus picturesquely reveals it’s absurdly impossible, just as you can’t shove a 6-foot tall, 1000-pound camel through a tiny single-millimeter hole.Clergy should pause and recall Karl Barth’s worry. “Can even the clergy be saved? With the clergy, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Salvation is not just getting into heaven, but living into the kingdom of God here and now: it’s not hard, or really hard. It’s impossible. It’s all gift, all miracle. The same phrase punctuates the story of over-aged Sarah’s pregnancy with Isaac, and Mary’s virginal pregnancy with Jesus.
When I was pastor in Davidson, one of our Disciple groups studied this text and engaged in the usual ducking and weaving: Jesus means for us to be willing to sell all we have — but you really shouldn’t. You have to provide for your family! And if everybody did that, civilization would collapse, etc., etc., etc. The following week, they were serving homeless guests, and had thought it a good idea to invite them to study with them. Doubling back to this story, after reading it with the homeless, no one had the guts to say in front of them Jesus only means you should be willing… I mean, you have to provide for your family, blah blah blah.
We dare not overspiritualize Jesus here. Ched Myers (Binding the Strong Man) pointedly reminds us that Jesus envisioned a real and radical shakeup of the social and economic order. Myers is probably right: “Jesus contends that the only way to salvation for the rich is by the redistribution of their wealth — that is, the eradication of class oppression.” And Jesus didn’t envision an impersonal give-away or transfer of funds. As Jürgen Moltmann put it, "The opposite of poverty isn’t property, but community." We share what we have with others so no one is in need, so all have enough (like in Acts chapters 2 and 4).
* * *
Hebrews 4:12-16 is a compact and powerful text, bursting with urgency and tenderness. God’s Word is personified: it’s the message, the messenger, the whole Christian dispensation. And it’s alive, not chiseled in aging stone. It’s the proverbial two-edged sword... but we should not feel it’s a threatening weapon (as some wish to use the Bible). Think scalpel: sharp, cutting away what is awry, piercing deep into the soul, or paring away what is not of God, what if left unattended will be your undoing. For God’s Word cuts deeply, the way Jesus does in Matthew 5. God cares not merely about outward behavior but also inner motivations, moods and feelings.Jesus is amazing. He’s the high priest. He is the sacrifice. He offers the sacrifice. He sympathizes with us. What a profound, hopeful, tender depiction of God, comes to us in this Jesus. What such a God does for us is he gives us good cause for “boldness” — parresia in the Greek, meaning frankness, or free speech. We can speak up candidly to God; we can’t help but open our gut and pour it all out to such a God, as we are granted access to his gracious throne of mercy.
I love the notion that this God is a help to us “in time of need.” Isaac Bashevis Singer once said “I only pray when I am in trouble. The problem is, I am in trouble all the time.” We are in need, not just in those 911 moments, but all the time — perhaps most pointedly in those times we think all is well and we don’t need God so much.
* * *
Job. The lectionary offers us chapter 23 as part two of their four-week series, which is more directly accusatory of God than chapter 3. God is hiding, inaccessible… an experience all too real for the sufferers to whom we preach. For me, as part two of a Job series, I’ll look at the response of Job’s so-called “friends.”After Job’s startling tirade in chapter 3, enter his three friends. They had been doing what friends do in times of crisis: they came, they sat, they loved, they were simply present. Unfortunately, they then decided to speak. William Blake depicted them flawlessly. Words are appropriate if they speak of love, if they offer solidarity in prayer. But theological “answers” designed to reckon with why bad things happen, or to make the other feel better, are what James Russell Lowell called after the death of his daughter, “a well-meant alms of breath.” His response is spot-on: “But not all the preaching since Adam has made death other than death."
What is a friend? We might think a friend is someone you enjoy hanging around with, someone you might even trust with your private self. Aristotle said the opposite of a friend is a flatterer. And Søren Kierkegaard wrote that a friend is someone who helps you to love God. Job’s friends would ringingly claim they were helping Job toward God. But like so much bad theology, they only isolate him from God at the hour Job needs God the most. The book of Job dares to ponder the possibility that a true friend will actually take your side against God.
Beginning in chapter 4, the book of Job offers us an extended glimpse into failed friendship, right in the thick of immensely needed friendship. They quote scripture to Job, but insensitively and out of context. Immanuel Kant suggested that Job’s friends talk as if God is listening, and they are eager to cull favor with God instead of weighing the immense horror of the sorrow of their friend. The problem of evil, why bad things happen, isn’t an intellectual exercise for friends to solve for one another. Let the wound remain open. It needs the air, the space, instead of a blistering medicine of theological half-truths.
We hear this so very often. Friends, half wanting to help, half terrified that the pain of a friend has crowded them so closely that they too might lose everything, mutter trite falsehoods that only isolate the sufferer from others and from God. “Everything happens for a reason.” “God doesn’t give you more than you can bear.” “He’s in a better place.”On and on go the laughable but tragic remarks that are nearly snarky from the point of view of the one who has loved, lost, sought God, and come up empty. Emmanuel Levinas pointed out that, if we ever for a moment justify a neighbor’s pain, we open up a road to all kinds of immorality. Pain is never justifiable. We always, if we are friends, shudder, weep, and cry out with the beloved who has lost their beloved.
The book of Job’s larger lesson is that God is known in Job’s blistering, relentless, savage questioning, not in the simple, vapid answers of the friends. The moving scene in Steel Magnolias says it all. M’Lynn, played deftly by Sally Field, is at the cemetery where her daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts) has just been buried. Her friends come to comfort. Annelle, kookily played by Daryl Hannah, attempts pious comfort, telling M’Lynn she “should be rejoicing” because “she is with her king.” M’Lynn takes exception, and launches into a Why? Why? Why? Tirade of immense emotional power. Who spoke more truly theologically? M’Lynn, clearly. Annelle even acknowledges that her thoughts about eternal life “make her feel better in situations like this.” Indeed. Pious comfort is for... the comforted, who aren’t comforted? Or the comforters?
We say God speaks in Scripture, but God speaks here by not speaking. It’s baffling, exasperating, and true to life. Intruding into the mystifying but elegant silence is the racket of the friends' talk and then in the mortified shouts of Job in reply. Three rounds of interchanges with three ex-friends. Karl Barth said that they purvey falsehood, they spread deceit; they are like false prophets, spouting theological truisms but not understanding the situation or the need.
Thomas Aquinas wisely declared that they need to make Job look bad so God will look good. But their God is too small and is too easily manipulated. Job is reaching out to find a God who is bigger than theirs, who is not boxable, not trivialized — a God who will at least show up and speak with Job, be present with him in his hour of agony.
Eliphaz, perhaps the senior friend, begins politely, asking if he can venture in before speaking with Job. He explains that he can’t restrain himself, perhaps as Jeremiah could not help but belch out God’s Word. But why? Good theology is at stake for him. Or is it his own fear? Order must be restored! For, if Job is right, nobody (including Eliphaz himself) can dwell safely in simplistic comfort with God. We may sympathize with him as he tries valiantly to sympathize with Job.
He begins with a bit of a backhanded compliment. There is always a fine line between encouragement and disparagement; judgment can sneak its way inside comfort when nobody’s looking. Reminding him he has comforted others who were suffering, and hasn’t been shy about reproving those who had sinned, Eliphaz turns the tables and quizzes him on why, now that the pain has come his way, he’s struggling so. Hidden in his harsh suggestion is a helpful truth for us: sometimes we have our chipper counsel ready to spoonfeed others, but when the sorrow comes our way, we realize how trite, how unhelpful, how nearly sadistic it can be.
Eliphaz verges on claims of being divinely inspired: “A word sneaked up on me… A breeze swept by my face” (4:12, 15). Was God’s Spirit moving? Or was God “not in the wind,” as Elijah learned on Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:11). Did Eliphaz breathe God’s breath? Or was it nothing but hot air?
And so, feeling the rush of apparently holy wind, Eliphaz offers a little array of truthiness, speaking true things, sort of, but too thin, too trivial to sway Job or account for the horrors of severe trauma. He remonstrates with Job, declaring that if he sticks with his integrity, all will be well (4:6). Can a human being be more righteous than God (4:17)? Of course not — but Job isn’t vaunting himself above God. Rather, he is drilling God for failure to be righteous.
As if anticipating the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (life is nasty, brutish and short), he muses that humanity is born to trouble (5:7), which isn't much solace and is hardly a fit for Job’s exasperation. Achilles said as much to Priam, grieving the death of his son Hector (in the Iliad): “The gods have woven pain into mortal lives, while they are free from care.” Or remember Gloucester, in King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”
Eliphaz asks if the truly innocent have ever suffered (4:7, echoing the ridiculous Psalm 37:25), implying Job may not be so clean, clinging to the fake notion that God shelters those who are holy. Have the innocent ever suffered? Have you ever read a history book, or paid attention to the world around you? Naïve, blind, and perversely adhering to theological lies is this Eliphaz. He basically tells Job, Try praying! Mind you, Job hasn’t tried praying yet. It’s all too raw; he’s not quite on speaking terms with God just yet. Job knows he had been a man of immense prayer right up to the onslaught, and thus quite rightly suspects that bowing his head and asking for help won’t work; it certainly won’t bring his children back to life.
A laundry list of biblical thoughts are voiced in 5:8-16. God does great things: he sends the rain and lifts up the lowly, he foils the deceitful, he saves the needy, echoing many Psalms. Yes, these are true confessions about our God, but they are not suitable for this occasion; they only grind Job’s soul into ever greater misery as this God isn’t being the God Job had hoped for.
Eliphaz’s worst effort to calm or correct Job screams across the centuries from 5:17: “Look, happy is the person whom God corrects, so don’t reject the Almighty’s instruction” (or as the RSV puts it, “Despise not the chastening of the Almighty”). Here is the most distasteful pablum we hear in times of misery: God is teaching you something, God is disciplining you, God is afflicting you so you will… Well, complete the sentence any way you like. God is wielding a divine paddle, God is giving you a thrashing so you’ll behave next time, God is smiting us so we’ll toe the line. C.S. Lewis famously wrote in The Problem of Pain that, “God whispers to us in our pleasures… but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” But after Lewis lost his wife Joy to cancer, he relented on this.
The God of grace is no harsh taskmaster. The God of grace lures us with love and compassion, not beatings and pinpricks. God teaches us through the goodness of Scripture, through the voice of our savior Jesus. Yes, we may learn from suffering. We may wake up from our sinful slumber when our world is rocked and racked with pain. But the notion that God afflicts to instruct is out of character with the God of mercy. Such a god would be no better than the one wagering with the satan, looking on like a fan as a bloodthirsty lion circles a barely-armed gladiator.
Hebrews 12 only seems to prop up Eliphaz’s thinking. “Don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline, or give up when you are corrected by him, because the Lord disciplines whomever he loved… Bear hardship for the sake of discipline. God is treating you like sons and daughters!” (12:5-7). The God of Hebrews is the one who suffers for us in Jesus, the one who cries out loudly in agony (5:7), who knows our weakness and sympathizes (4:16).
Isn’t there a way of conceiving God’s discipline that is less smiting and more nurturing? God created the world in such a way that living out of sync with God does have its consequences. Constant alcohol consumption will ruin your health, and recovery is about learning the discipline of a sober life. But this is very different from concocting a God who is very angry you’ve been drinking, and dips a divine finger down into your liver so you’ll learn your lesson.
In response to this approach, Job’s uncharitable, angry, and wounded raging in chapter 6 tells us what we need to know about failed friendship…
"What can we say October 14? 21st after Pentecost" originally appeared at James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Reprinted with permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James C. Howell
Dr. James C. Howell has been senior pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church since 2003, and has served read more…
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As a delegate to the United Methodist General Conferences in 1984 and 1988, I voted to reaffirm and expand the restrictive language regarding homosexuality. I did so out of sincere conviction as the right thing to do, even though the issue was an abstraction to me. I knew no one who was admittedly gay, and the notion of same-sex attraction was foreign to my experience.I now deeply regret those votes! Over the intervening thirty years, I have changed my mind and now support the removal of all restrictive language in the United Methodist Book of Discipline here. The following are the factors that contribute to my change of mind.
First, I got to know people who fall into the category of “homosexual.” I came to realize that many of them had long been in my circle of relationships but were afraid to share this important component of their identity. Some are beloved members of my own family!
Many are faithful, devoted, life-long church members who can’t be open within the body of Christ for fear of rejection and condemnation. Some are parents of LGBTQ children who shared stories of bullying and abuse of their kids.
A few were colleagues on the staff of congregations I served, and their ministries reflected the qualifications identified by John Wesley—grace, gifts, and fruits. Many were exceptionally gifted, devoted seminary students whose call to ordained ministry seemed evident to me.
Some are people in same-sex marriages who are committed Christians and faithful to the church, faithful to one another, and faithful to Christ, and who possess “the gifts of the Spirit.”
Hearing the painful stories of these beloved children of God cut me to the quick. The issue of sexual orientation was no longer a theological or ethical abstraction. It became embodied in people I loved, from whom I learned, in whom I experienced God’s grace-filled presence!
Secondly, the evidence is overwhelming that sexual orientation is not a choice. I have yet to meet a heterosexual who can tell me when he/she decided to be attracted to the opposite sex; nor have I met a gay person who decided to be attracted to persons of the same sex.
Sexual identity and desire are complex realities with biological, social, environmental, and psychological components. While the Discipline labels “the practice” of homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching,” the implication is that a person’s being is contrary to the Christian gospel. That is incompatible with our doctrine of creation.
Thirdly, by the 1992 General Conference I had not only begun to change my mind about the language of incompatibility and exclusion, I had become convinced that legislation is the wrong way to deal with the issue.
The pivotal decision was made in 1972 when the language of incompatibility was added to the Social Principles Study Commission Report, by an amendment from the floor with limited debate.
The consequence of that political parliamentary action has disproportionately dominated subsequent General Conference agendas and expanded legislative restrictions. It now threatens to split the denomination.
We have legislated ourselves into a box, maybe into a regrettable schism. Whatever our position on this issue, legislative action will not resolve it!
Fourthly, I came to realize more fully the meaning of Martin Luther King’s words in his letter from the Birmingham jail:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
During my first eight years as a member of the Council of Bishops, I was deeply immersed in the Initiative on Children and Poverty. I felt that the persistent discussion of homosexuality within the Council and other denominational circles was distracting us from fully addressing economic injustice.
I shared my concern with a friend, a theological consultant to the Initiative. His response lodged my conscience: “But, Ken, you can’t portion God’s justice for one group and ignore it for another.”
I realize that some injustices are beyond our ability to remedy immediately, but to ignore those that are within our immediate sphere of influence cannot be excused. By removing the discriminatory language, we can take an immediate step toward correcting an injustice inflicted on our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.
Fifthly, I’m convinced that the discrimination against LGBTQ people is being justified by inadequate biblical interpretation. I’ve read arguments from the Bible used by southern preachers to justify slavery, and I see a similar hermeneutic operating in support exclusion of gay persons.
Using the Bible to support misguided causes is a long-standing scandal in the church. Scripture has been used to justify such evils as the Crusades, genocide, slavery, the subordination of women, persecution of scientists, and burning of “heretics.”
I firmly, unapologetically believe in the primacy and authority of Scripture! What we mean by “the authority of Scripture” determines how we use it.
Here is my understanding: The authority of Scripture lies in its authentic witness to God’s mighty acts of salvation supremely in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in its power through the Holy Spirit within community to transform individuals, communities, nations, and the entire cosmos into the likeness of Christ.
The test of commitment to the authority of Scripture is this: Is it shaping us into the likeness of Jesus Christ and enabling us to love as Christ loves and to witness to his present and coming reign of compassion, justice, generosity, hospitality, and joy?
The influence of the Gospel over the centuries has enabled us to see Scripture through the lens of the Word-Made-Flesh, Jesus Christ. Such a lens enables us to avoid misusing some troubling passages in the Bible.
Three glaring examples: massacring of religious opponents as did Elijah with the prophets of Baal (I Kings 18:40); slavery which was taken for granted in many Old and New Testament narratives; and women keeping silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34).
Finally, my understanding and experience of what it means to love as Christ loves has deepened and widened over the years. People whom society relegates to the margins have taught me about the nature, depth, and expanse of God’s love. I have experienced profound faith among the incarcerated, the homeless, the frail elderly, orphans, immigrants, the poor, and LGBTQ persons.
I have met the Crucified and Risen Christ in my relationships with those whom society treats as “outcasts.” I know from experiences with them that Christ has broken down ALL dividing walls between us. Paul makes it clear:
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
ALL includes gays and straights, LGBTQ and heterosexuals, “progressives” and “traditionalists.” Christ died for ALL, includes ALL, and invites ALL to “love one another as I have loved you.”
It is the quality of our love and its imitation of Christ’s love that is definitive, not gender or sexual orientation. As committed couples, our LGBTQ brothers and sisters should be able to love each other in ways mutually fulfilling to them, as surely as we who are heterosexual.
I’m still growing in my understanding and my ability to love as Christ loves. God grant me the humility to keep learning and growing toward the fullness of God’s perfect love!
"Why I Changed My Mind about Homosexuality and the Church" originally appeared at Shifting Margins. Reprinted with permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kenneth L. Carder
Bishop Kenneth L. Carder is the Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Practice of read more…
This article is featured in the Decision 2019: One with Christ, One with each other, One in ministry to all the world (Aug/Sep/Oct 2018) issue of Circuit Rider
As administrator of plan benefits for The United Methodist Church, Wespath Benefits and Investments[1](Wespath) is responsible for investing plan assets and sustaining benefit payments long into the future. Wespath has been caring for those who serve since 1908—sixty years before this church was “United.” We intend to continue caring for those who serve for generations to come—by making whatever adjustments are necessary to pension plan design, administration, and investments in our role as a prudent fiduciary of the church.
Our mission of caring for those who serve is rooted in the earliest days of Methodism, with the Easter offering in 1774 for “preachers in want.” The first formalized support for itinerant ministers was the Preacher’s Fund—created in 1784 for “worn-out preachers, widows and children,” and based on John Wesley’s guidance. Wespath’s history as a general agency started with the General Conference 1908 authorization to create the Board of Conference Claimants, a denomination-wide agency to help support retired clergy and their families.
Adapting to Changes
Over the span of more than two hundred years, benefits for retired clergy and their families have adapted to meet changing times and needs.
Today our pension plans are at a crossroads—not only because of the impending vote by General Conference 2019 and its potential impact on the future of the church, but also because of demographic trends that have nothing to do with the special General Conference. Trends such as declining membership in US churches, decreasing numbers of ordained elders, and increasing part-time local pastors and lay ministers also drive long-term plan design considerations.
Reviewing plan designs periodically is a normal course of business. From time to time, Wespath’s board of directors recommends changes to address denominational, demographic, and economic factors. Proposed changes are subject to General Conference approval, so we are typically planning at least a quadrennium ahead. In weighing long-term sustainability of retirement benefits, we are looking ten, twenty, and even fifty years into the future.
Our church faces uncertain times in the near future. What remains certain is Wespath’s commitment to securing benefits over the long haul for United Methodist clergy and other plan beneficiaries.
Managing through a Changing Church Structure
While none of us can accurately predict the outcome of General Conference 2019 and its aftermath, many of us have closely followed the work of the Commission on a Way Forward. We have contemplated the Commission’s proposals and considered how potential rearrangement or avenues for exit of clergy, churches, or annual conferences might impact UMC structure—and specifically pensions.
As part of their thoughtful discernment process, both the Commission and the Council of Bishops asked Wespath for analyses to help them better understand how restructure scenarios could impact pension benefits, funding, and administration. Wespath has been in discussion with both groups regarding the impact on individual clergy benefits, local church contributions, and annual conferences’ financial liabilities. Wespath formed a scenario planning team to study restructure consequences in depth.
Notwithstanding potential changes in the church, Wespath is focused on assuring that the plans we manage for clergy and the funds we invest are sustainable.However, while benefits for retired clergy are secured—and accrued benefits for active clergy also are secured—we believe that pension plan designs must be modified toward a more account-based design to protect the long-term viability of benefits for future generations of clergy.
Church restructure scenarios could accelerate the need to modify pension plan designs for a long-term outlook; however, restructure in itself would not create this need.
Understanding Your Pension Plan
Each clergyperson has a unique combination of benefits based on one’s specific years of service and the plan designs in place at that time of service. Most active clergy now also contribute to their own retirement savings, and thus are more engaged than prior generations in assuring their personal financial readiness for retirement.
However, annual conferences ultimately assume responsibility for paying benefits promised to retirees. Annual conferences and local churches (through the conference) fund the lion’s share of retirement benefits. As we think about any future church changes, this responsibility of benefit payments is one of many questions that Wespath is reviewing. Specifically, we are examining what would happen to funding if a local church leaves The UMC.
The connectional nature of our denomination means that departure by one church affects others. Churches that leave The UMC should be responsible for paying “their fair share” of pension funding, as part of the annual conference’s aggregate unfunded pension liability.
Case Study—Past Informs Future
Keeping track of service records, itineracies, and funding for each clergyperson’s unique benefits profile is challenging as is. Add in potential realignment of conferences or exits of churches, and “challenging” expands to “extremely complicated.”
The 2010 merger of four conferences into the Upper New York, Susquehanna, and New England annual conferences offers a case in point when thinking about UMC restructure. This merger required carefully tracking and reallocating pension obligations from more than 1,200 churches, and appropriately correlating with individual clergy. Wespath spent two years and seven thousand labor hours on facilitating the pension-related administrative requirements for this merger.
Fulfilling Our Mission—for Generations to Come
Regardless of the GC2019 outcome, Wespath remains committed to our mission: caring for those who serve by providing investment and benefit services that honor the mission and principles of The United Methodist Church. We are planning for the long-term sustainability of your benefits, and those of generations to come, as we look to plan designs that are increasingly account-based and portable.
Through our scenario planning and over one hundred years of serving the church, Wespath is well-positioned to continue fulfilling our mission well into the future. We have carried on through times of change, challenge, and divisiveness in the past. Our commitment to those who serve won’t waiver, even amid the church’s current storms.
[1] Wespath Benefits and Investments (Wespath) is the name under which the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits of The United Methodist Church conducts business. As a general agency of The UMC, Wespath is administrator for UMC benefit plans and the investment manager of plan assets, as described in ¶1504.1, The Book of Discipline.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barbara A. Boigegrain
Barbara A. Boigegrain is general secretary of Wespath Benefits and Investments, the largest reporting faith-based read more… 
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172.
That is how many times I have donated blood. My first donation was through a blood drive when I was in college. It was a relatively painless experience and homemade cookies were offered as motivation! I started donating after that, but for years I did so sporadically. At some point, I learned my blood type was O negative, a classification fitting only 7% of the population. As a universal blood donor, anyone in a medical emergency could receive my blood. After a brief uptick in my donations, life interfered and my motivation to donate waned.When I was making my 50th or so donation, I learned something else. In addition to being O negative, I am also CMV negative. Blood with these two qualities is the only type that can be given to newborn babies. As a donor, I am referred to as a “baby quad” because one pint of my blood can be divided and given to four different babies! After I knew this, I began to make the effort to donate every six weeks. I did this for a time until life got busy again.
Eventually, donating felt more like a duty than a joy and my motivation dwindled.
Months would pass without a donation. Finally, after several reminder phone calls from the blood center, I scheduled a time to donate. On the morning before my donation, I spoke with someone on the phone and happened to mention I was giving blood later that day. When I revealed, I am a “baby quad,” the voice on the other end got quiet. After a brief pause, through tears, she said, “Thank you.” She explained that a few months earlier she had given birth and her baby daughter had required over a dozen blood transfusions. And then she said, “My daughter is alive today because people like you are willing to donate their blood.”
That moment reminded me of the reason I donate: Giving blood truly is the “gift of life.”
Regardless of the type of donation, the primary motivation for giving is belief in the mission the gift supports. Knowing that my blood donation could help save the lives of newborn babies inspired me to donate again! It is up to church leaders to help donors connect the dots between their gift to the church and the church’s ability to do life-changing ministry. Showing your donors how their gifts are making a difference in the world will motivate them to give again.
Here are some ways to increase donor motivation.
- Keep your mission front and center as a reminder of the importance of giving. The mission of your church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Do not assume everyone understands this single purpose. A recent study by Barna found that 51% of churchgoers state they have never heard of the Great Commission.
- Have a clear and compelling vision that lifts up the unique ways your church is living out its mission in your context. Without a clear vision, the church can become inwardly focused and self-serving. A clear vision has the power to shape and connect everything that the church does, both uniting and energizing the congregation in its life and purpose.
- Create a vision statement that is simple and easy to memorize. State it regularly in sermons, in the liturgy, on communication platforms and on the website. In 10 Prescriptions for a Healthy Church, author Bishop Bob Farr says “I have never seen a church grow by hanging a mission and vision statement on the wall. On the other hand, I have never seen a growing congregation that didn’t deeply understand their mission and vision.”
- Share stories of lives impacted and changed through your ministries. It is interesting to learn that 15 or 30 or 100 students went on a mission trip. But it is inspiring to hear one story of how a student’s faith was impacted by that experience. It is rousing to hear a story from someone whose life was changed forever by those students. Facts and data inform the mind but stories touch the heart. Donor motivation requires both.
It was just a simple, heartfelt “Thank you,” but it reminded me of the importance of my donation and reconnected me to the joy of giving. Maybe those who support your church need a reminder as well.
Donation #173 is already on my calendar.
This post first appeared at Horizons Stewardship.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dustin Cooper
The Rev. Dustin Cooper has been in ministry for over thirty-five years. For the first twenty-five years, he read more…
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Season 6 of Fortnite released a little over a week ago. While everyone has their own opinions about the new skins, what became of Loot Lake, and the ever-curious llamas, the hold Fortnite has on pop culture right now is ferocious and undeniable. This videogame is barely more than one year old, but it has skyrocketed to the top of the interactive-gaming market for kids and adults. It is a first-person shooter game, but it has very little real-life circumstance and zero gore, so it is more about the action than the violence itself.Blending of life and virtual life
When families struggle over topics like popular videogames, it is as much about the time spent playing the game as it is about the way the game takes over the mind and life of those who play it. Conversations become dominated by talk of the game. Changes in typical behavior occur when children, tweens, and teens choose not to play outside or create or read but instead choose to play the game over and over. When alarms are set in the middle of the night to play while parents are sleeping, there is critical damage to a teen’s body and spirit.
Breaks, habits, addictions
The critical fear about something as seemingly mundane as Fortnite is that it morphs from a quick break in a busy schedule into a daily habit — and from that it can quickly become an addiction. The designers of the game purposely create something that is challenging but somewhat winnable. It’s always just beyond a player’s reach. It resets quickly, and there is no grand prize to signal the end of a level or the game. There is always more to achieve. Like other addictions, such as gambling, pornography, drugs or alcohol, gaming creates positive feelings at first — but those feelings soon lead to a need to numb the world around you by adding more and more. As in all addictions, the item or activity or substance is not the problem until your ability to control its use becomes one.
Question of the day: What monopolizes your time?
Focal scriptures: 2 Samuel 7:4-16; Jonah 1:9–2:9; Matthew 17:14-202 Samuel 7:4 But that same night the word of Adonai came to Natan: 5 “Go and tell my servant David that this is what Adonai says: ‘You are going to build me a house to live in? 6 Since the day I brought the people of Isra’el out of Egypt until today, I never lived in a house; rather, I traveled in a tent and a tabernacle. 7 Everywhere I traveled with all the people of Isra’el, did I ever speak a word to any of the tribes of Isra’el, whom I ordered to shepherd my people Isra’el, asking, “Why haven’t you built me a cedar-wood house?”
8 “Therefore say this to my servant David that this is what Adonai-Tzva’ot says: ‘I took you from the sheep-yards, from following the sheep, to make you chief over my people, over Isra’el. 9 I have been with you wherever you went; I have destroyed all your enemies ahead of you; and I am making your reputation great, like the reputations of the greatest people on earth. 10 I will assign a place to my people Isra’el; I will plant them there, so that they can live in their own place without being disturbed any more. The wicked will no longer oppress them, as they did at the beginning, 11 and as they did from the time I ordered judges to be over my people Isra’el; instead, I will give you rest from all your enemies.
“‘Moreover, Adonai tells you that Adonai will make you a house. 12 When your days come to an end and you sleep with your ancestors, I will establish one of your descendants to succeed you, one of your own flesh and blood; and I will set up his rulership. 13 He will build a house for my name, and I will establish his royal throne forever. 14 I will be a father for him, and he will be a son for me. If he does something wrong, I will punish him with a rod and blows, just as everyone gets punished; 15 nevertheless, my grace will not leave him, as I took it away from Sha’ul, whom I removed from before you. 16 Thus your house and your kingdom will be made secure forever before you; your throne will be set up forever.’”; Jonah 1:9 He answered them, “I am a Hebrew; and I fear Adonai, the God of heaven, who made both the sea and the dry land.” 10 At this the men grew very afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done?” For the men knew he was trying to get away from Adonai, since he had told them. 11 They asked him, “What should we do to you, so that the sea will be calm for us?” — for the sea was getting rougher all the time. 12 “Pick me up,” he told them, “and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will be calm for you; because I know it’s my fault that this terrible storm has come over you.”
13 Nevertheless, the men rowed hard, trying to reach the shore. But they couldn’t, because the sea kept growing wilder against them. 14 Finally they cried to Adonai, “Please, Adonai, please! Don’t let us perish for causing the death of this man, and don’t hold us to account for shedding innocent blood; because you, Adonai, have done what you saw fit.” 15 Then they picked up Yonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped raging. 16 Seized with great fear of Adonai, they offered a sacrifice to Adonai and made vows.
2:1 (1:17) Adonai prepared a huge fish to swallow Yonah; and Yonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. 2 (1) From the belly of the fish Yonah prayed to Adonai his God; 3 (2) he said,
“Out of my distress I called to Adonai,
and he answered me;
from the belly of Sh’ol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
4 (3) For you threw me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas;
and the flood enveloped me;
all your surging waves passed over me.
5 (4) I thought, ‘I have been banished from your sight.’
But I will again look at your holy temple.
6 (5) The water surrounded me, threatened my life;
the deep closed over me, seaweed twined around my head.
7 (6) I was going down to the bottoms of the mountains,
to a land whose bars would close me in forever;
but you brought me up alive from the pit,
Adonai, my God!
8 (7) As my life was ebbing away,
I remembered Adonai;
and my prayer came in to you,
into your holy temple.
9 (8) “Those who worship vain idols
give up their source of mercy;
10 (9) but I, speaking my thanks aloud,
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed, I will pay.
Salvation comes from Adonai!”; Matthew 17:14 As they came up to the crowd, a man approached Yeshua, kneeled down in front of him, 15 and said, “Sir, have mercy on my son, because he is an epileptic and has such terrible fits that he often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your talmidim, but they couldn’t heal him.” 17 Yeshua answered, “Perverted people, without any trust! How long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me!” 18 Yeshua rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, so that from that moment he was healed.
19 Then the talmidim went to him privately and said, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” 20 He said to them, “Because you have such little trust! Yes! I tell you that if you have trust as tiny as a mustard seed, you will be able to say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there!’ and it will move; indeed, nothing will be impossible for you!” (Complete Jewish Bible).
For a complete lesson on this topic visit LinC.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Murdock
Andrea Roth Murdock is a writer and contributor to Bible Lessons for Youth and LinC (Living in Christ) both are youth read more…
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The common objects of our American love
Jon Meacham brought his insight as one of our leading historians, to a brilliant (and brief!) commencement address to the 2017 graduates of Middlebury College. The author of The Soul of America referred to St. Augustine who defined a nation as “a multitude of rational beings united by the common objects of our love.”
Meacham repeated that phrase, the common objects of our love and asked the question for our nation, “What do we love in common?” Then he said, “The painful but unavoidable answer is: not enough.” He went on to affirm the way the story of our nation’s history has the power to bring us together. “We have always grown in strength the wider we have opened our arms — and the more we have opened our hearts … From Lexington and Concord to Lewis and Clark … from Seneca Falls to Selma, we have sought to perfect our Union.”
It’s an understatement to say that we live in a moment when our nation is terribly torn by the conflicting crosscurrents of polarized politics which are the outward sign of a deeper rending of the the fabric of our life together by tribal instincts that are often rooted in fear or resentment rather than reason or truth.
Perhaps we can find our way through the morass of our times by being reminded of “the objects of our love.” Without blind denial of the importance of the issues that divide us, can we at the same time reclaim the things that could unite us? The big ideas of human dignity and worth (all people are created equal), liberty (the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th ammendments), and the compelling and uncompleted vision of “liberty and justice for all.”
Meacham told the graduates:
“The founders expected seasons of anger and frustration; they anticipated hours of unhappiness and unrest. The country was thus constructed with an awareness of sin and a determination to protect the larger republican enterprise from the furies of the moment.”
The common object of our United Methodist love
I’ve long been fascinated by the way whatever is going on in the country is also going on in the Methodist family and vice versa. In fact, when the Methodist Episcopal Church divided over slavery in 1844, some writers predicted that if the Methodists couldn’t stay together, the nation never could.
One problem was that, like General Conferences before and since, the delegates depended on the rules of parliamentary procedure. One Methodist historian wrote:
There was among the Methodists none of the Quaker sense of consensus, of aiming at or moving toward agreement. Rather the whole principle of action was to create division, to draw sharp lines, ask that men [there were no women delegates] declare themselves for or against…At the most trying hour of their history the Methodist preachers [there were no lay delegates) in conference assembled used the tactics of conflict and the methods of the state. (Organizing to Beat the Devil, p. 221-222)
Stephen Olin, delegate from the North, said, “If we push our principles so far to break up the connection, this may be the last time we meet. I fear it! I see no way of escape.” (p. 223) There was no escape. The church divided and remained that way until 1939.
Some say that we are at that place again; that there is no way for the United Methodist Church to remain united because of our differences of biblical interpretation and conviction regarding human sexuality. But is division inescapable?
Perhaps we could find our way through this difficult time by being reminded of the common objects of our love.
Some of us continue to believe that the things that we love are strong enough to overcome the things that divide us — our Wesleyan theology, our compelling mission, our spiritual tradition and the strength of our shared ministry around the world. That’s the vision and hope of the Uniting Methodists movement. We dare to believe that in the love of Jesus Christ there is “Room for All.”
Might what Meacham said of the nation, in a much deeper sense, be true of the church?
The point of America is not for all of us to think alike; that’s impossible and undesirable … Autocracies are about total agreement, or at least total submission; the American republic is founded on the notion that even the person with whom I most stridently disagree might have something to say worth hearing and heeding…The shame only comes when we take refuge in unjustified certitude rather than fearless openness of mind and soul.”
I would edit his final words to read, “fearless openness of mind, heart and soul in the love of God in Christ.”
It’s worth praying, hoping and working for both our nation and our church to be “united in the common objects of our love.”
Jon Meacham brought his insight as one of our leading historians, to a brilliant (and brief!) commencement address to the 2017 graduates of Middlebury College. The author of The Soul of America referred to St. Augustine who defined a nation as “a multitude of rational beings united by the common objects of our love.”
Meacham repeated that phrase, the common objects of our love and asked the question for our nation, “What do we love in common?” Then he said, “The painful but unavoidable answer is: not enough.” He went on to affirm the way the story of our nation’s history has the power to bring us together. “We have always grown in strength the wider we have opened our arms — and the more we have opened our hearts … From Lexington and Concord to Lewis and Clark … from Seneca Falls to Selma, we have sought to perfect our Union.”
It’s an understatement to say that we live in a moment when our nation is terribly torn by the conflicting crosscurrents of polarized politics which are the outward sign of a deeper rending of the the fabric of our life together by tribal instincts that are often rooted in fear or resentment rather than reason or truth.
Perhaps we can find our way through the morass of our times by being reminded of “the objects of our love.” Without blind denial of the importance of the issues that divide us, can we at the same time reclaim the things that could unite us? The big ideas of human dignity and worth (all people are created equal), liberty (the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th ammendments), and the compelling and uncompleted vision of “liberty and justice for all.”
Meacham told the graduates:
“The founders expected seasons of anger and frustration; they anticipated hours of unhappiness and unrest. The country was thus constructed with an awareness of sin and a determination to protect the larger republican enterprise from the furies of the moment.”
The common object of our United Methodist love
I’ve long been fascinated by the way whatever is going on in the country is also going on in the Methodist family and vice versa. In fact, when the Methodist Episcopal Church divided over slavery in 1844, some writers predicted that if the Methodists couldn’t stay together, the nation never could.
One problem was that, like General Conferences before and since, the delegates depended on the rules of parliamentary procedure. One Methodist historian wrote:
There was among the Methodists none of the Quaker sense of consensus, of aiming at or moving toward agreement. Rather the whole principle of action was to create division, to draw sharp lines, ask that men [there were no women delegates] declare themselves for or against…At the most trying hour of their history the Methodist preachers [there were no lay delegates) in conference assembled used the tactics of conflict and the methods of the state. (Organizing to Beat the Devil, p. 221-222)
Stephen Olin, delegate from the North, said, “If we push our principles so far to break up the connection, this may be the last time we meet. I fear it! I see no way of escape.” (p. 223) There was no escape. The church divided and remained that way until 1939.
Some say that we are at that place again; that there is no way for the United Methodist Church to remain united because of our differences of biblical interpretation and conviction regarding human sexuality. But is division inescapable?
Perhaps we could find our way through this difficult time by being reminded of the common objects of our love.
Some of us continue to believe that the things that we love are strong enough to overcome the things that divide us — our Wesleyan theology, our compelling mission, our spiritual tradition and the strength of our shared ministry around the world. That’s the vision and hope of the Uniting Methodists movement. We dare to believe that in the love of Jesus Christ there is “Room for All.”
Might what Meacham said of the nation, in a much deeper sense, be true of the church?
The point of America is not for all of us to think alike; that’s impossible and undesirable … Autocracies are about total agreement, or at least total submission; the American republic is founded on the notion that even the person with whom I most stridently disagree might have something to say worth hearing and heeding…The shame only comes when we take refuge in unjustified certitude rather than fearless openness of mind and soul.”
I would edit his final words to read, “fearless openness of mind, heart and soul in the love of God in Christ.”
It’s worth praying, hoping and working for both our nation and our church to be “united in the common objects of our love.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James A. Harnish
James A. Harnish is a retired United Methodist pastor who most recently served Hyde Park United Methodist Church read more…
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