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Thriving rural congregations by Allen T. Stanton
Recently, I had dinner with a group of rural pastors to hear about their ministries. One by one, the pastors stood, gave their name, their church, and their years of service. Then, invariably, each pastor’s face dropped. "Our church only worships about twenty,” the first pastor said. The dismay and anxiety rippled throughout the room as each pastor shared their worship attendance. ***Recently, I had dinner with a group of rural pastors to hear about their ministries. One by one, the pastors stood, gave their name, their church, and their years of service. Then, invariably, each pastor’s face dropped.
"Our church only worships about twenty,” the first pastor said. The dismay and anxiety rippled throughout the room as each pastor shared their worship attendance. The next church reported an aging congregation of sixty. Another pastor serving on a multi-church charge reported that one of their churches only had about twelve people on a Sunday morning.
The pastors were understandably frustrated. They had tried the latest church growth strategies. They’d read the numerous blogs about leadership and had attended the best continuing education events, none of which really spoke to their contexts. Regardless, the enviable metric of “growth” seemed to elude them.
While these pastors all serve rural areas, their contexts are distinct. Some serve in communities that have entered into a period of seeming stagnation, a perception driven in equal parts by changes in the economy and the prevailing narratives about what it means to be rural. It has been decades since agriculture had been a leading industry in their communities, and now its replacement, manufacturing, is declining as well.
For others, though, rural ministry requires managing rapid change. Drawn by the allure of affordable property, a willingness to commute, and proximity to natural attractions, retirees are flocking from cities to these rural communities. This new population brings a shifting culture, and, in some places, an impending change from the designation of rural to suburban.
Conversations on church vitality usually hold up a few key metrics, emphasizing an increase in worship attendance and a large number of youth and young adults.[i] But there are obvious questions about how rural congregations can utilize these measures of vitality within their changing communities. How should a congregation whose growth is spurred by an influx of retirees respond when told they need to have more children involved? Or, when a congregation of twenty has a strong missional presence in a declining community, how are they to answer the critique that their church is stagnant or even dying?
In my office, I keep a post-it with a short phrase that I often hear from my colleagues in rural economic development: “If you’ve seen one rural county, you’ve seen one rural county.” Because rural communities are complex, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It stands to reason, then, that rural congregations need an equally flexible marker for their vitality. Rural congregations occupy the centers of busy town squares and dot the sides of unpopulated state roads. Bound together only by the label “rural,” vitality must look different in these different spaces.
In working with churches and other rural leaders, I have found that thriving rural congregations share three key pillars of vitality.[ii] These are not metrics in and of themselves, but areas in which rural congregations should strive to develop context-specific measurements in order to set clear goals.
First, thriving rural congregations demonstrate a clear theological identity. These congregations conduct worship services and foster conversations that connect their parishioners’ faith with their weekly lives.
This theological identity also carries a deep theology of place. They know their own history, and in their own language they can tell the story of what God is doing in their community. They remember both pain and joy and hold together the tension that runs between sorrow, repentance, and hope.
This theology of place serves as more than idle memory. Instead, it builds the foundation for the second key trait: thriving rural congregations understand their local communities as a place to cultivate, announce, and invite others to participate in the Kingdom of God. They understand that they have a responsibility to the surrounding community.
This may look different in each congregation. In some places, this may be organic as members hear and respond to what they see in the community. Or, churches may develop ongoing missional programming. The result is that the congregation strives to face outward, yearning to see how they might be a part of God’s new creation.
Lastly, thriving rural congregations are sustainable. At its most basic level, congregations are able to pay their bills and keep the lights on. This presents a unique challenge—and opportunity—for many churches as giving patterns continue to change. It’s commonly reported that younger generations have less disposable income and a skepticism of institutions, resulting in lower tithes. Meanwhile, the 2018 tax reforms are likely to spur an overall reduction in charitable giving.[iii]
In many rural areas, bi-vocational pastors are becoming standard, creating opportunities to deepen the congregation’s commitment to their place. Programming budgets are also decreasing, which means that pastors will need to be more adept at cultivating partnerships with other organizations and funders. These are challenges, but they are also opportunities for new modes of ministry.
At the end our dinner, I asked our rural pastors to share stories of where God was at work through them. With excitement, they shared stories of their small congregations raising money for community-based literacy programs. They shared their commitment to preserving and sharing the history of their 150-year-old, one-room church that once doubled as the schoolhouse for African-American students. They shared stories of their few high school students who had become active leaders. These are places of important and life-giving ministry.
Church vitality is not simply about growing a church, though that may be a natural outcome. Neither are these vital churches limited to the growing suburbs that surround our major cities. Thriving rural congregations have a deep commitment to seeing and being a part of what God is doing in the world around them. They offer a reminder that the narrative we often tell about rural ministry is misinformed. Being a rural church does not mean being a church on life support. Instead, they are places of meaningful and impactful transformation.
[i] Take, for instance, the UMC Call to Action: Vital Congregations Research Project. De Wetter, David, et al.. Towers Watson, 2010.
[ii] These cores represent a commonality in several reports, including the Thriving Rural Communities Summative Evaluation Report and work compiled by GBHEM.
[iii] Fox, Richard, and Joshua Headly. “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—What Nonprofits Need to Know," Philanthropy Journal News, 29 Jan. 2018.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allen Stanton
Rev. Allen T. Stanton is the Executive Director of the Turner Center at Martin Methodist College. Before coming to read 
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The three tell-tale signs it's time for a new vision by Rebekah Simon-Peter
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How do you know if it’s time for a new vision in your congregation? Or your denomination, for that matter? It’s not as hard to discern as you might think. I want to share with you three tell-tale signs. And one important next step to take.***
How do you know if it’s time for a new vision in your congregation? Or your denomination, for that matter? It’s not as hard to discern as you might think. I want to share with you three tell-tale signs. And one important next step to take.
Watch for these three key dynamics first identified by church life-cycle specialist George Bullard. If you see them at play in your setting, then it’s time for a new vision.
Blame: Watch for finger pointing. If it’s easy to identify the problem person, dynamic or influence that’s at fault — and it’s not you — then you are witnessing the dynamic of blame. Listen for statements such as: there aren’t enough young people coming to church; no one tithes anymore; we don’t have enough visitors and it’s all the pastor’s fault.
Sacrificial commitment required: Everyone is asked to give more, more, more. More money, more time, and more service to the organization. This would seem to solve the problem of waning energy and attendance. But the problem is lack of vision, not lack of commitment. And I suspect the actual underlying problem is something else. There isn’t something big to commit to!
Nostalgia or anger: Nostalgia about the way things were quickly turns to anger when it becomes apparent that the good old days aren’t coming back. And they’re not getting resurrected easily. Bullard points out that a focus on teenagers is a focus on the past. A focus on senior adults is a focus on the present. A focus on 25-40-year-olds and their kids is a focus on the future.
These three tell-tale signs are evident not only in individual churches but in denominations as a whole. I’ve spotted these three dynamics at play within the United Methodist Church. Consider that we have been in the blame-each-other mode for a while. Both progressives and conservatives point fingers at each other when it comes to church decline. In fact, many of our denominational fights have been framed as a lack of commitment. Some say that we have a lack of commitment to biblical authority. Others say we have a lack of commitment to inclusivity. I suspect that the issue isn’t so much a lack of commitment as it is a lack of vision. These fights are further fueled by both nostalgia and anger. Can’t we go back to the way we used to believe, used to organize ourselves, used to live? This nostalgia is countered with anger that our denomination isn’t more inclusive or farther along in the world.
It’s time for the leaders of the denomination to muster a new vision. I am in favor of the One Church Plan. However, deep down inside I know that it won’t make much difference if we don’t have a new vision driving us. If the denomination were to split it would be worth it if each new movement was led by a vision giving us fresh energy and leading us in new directions. A vision based on blame, nostalgia or anger, however, won’t cut it. We’ll stay stuck in the same old patterns of decline.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebekah Simon-Peter
Rebekah Simon-Peter is passionate about transforming church leaders and the congregations they serve. She’sread more… 
Preaching as an outsider by Lisa L. Thompson
This article is featured in the Preaching from the Margins (Nov/Dec/Jan 2018-19) issue of Circuit Rider
Each hashtag, even their attempted cooptation, underscores both the fragility of black women’s lives and the sin of systems that afford black life to constantly hang in the balance at the discretion of others. What is most intriguing is the fact that faith communities were not at the forefront of these social movements, or their actions were often met with suspicion. The fault is none but our own, as faith communities are often culpable of rendering the same crimes in our houses of worship.
***#PerceievedOutsider
In 2013, we saw the rise of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter (BLM). By the fall of 2017, we saw the rise of the hashtag #MeToo, although its inception came in 2006, long before its climb to the forefront of the media. In between both of these hashtags were the cries of #SayHerName, which is a part of the campaign of the African American Policy Forum.
The monikers were not just pithy sayings, social media capital, or signifiers of “woke” status. To the contrary, the hashtags claimed a particular type of shorthand for the violence and invisibility rendered to black bodies, not exclusively black women, as these violent acts intersect with the historical, social, economic, racial, and gendered location of women of the black labyrinth in North America and beyond. In short, the undervaluing of and disregard for black life and black women’s lives in particular lead to the grotesque treatment or ignoring of black women’s lives. Our ignoring such atrocities is being called to task.
The aforementioned hashtags represent movements created and led by black women. Two of the movements were quickly coopted and credited to people who were not black women. #BlackLivesMatter was started by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. The very compilation of their trifecta exemplifies the labyrinth of black identity in the US. Two of the women self-describe as queer-identifying, and one of the women comes from a Nigerian immigrant family. Despite the founders’ identities, BLM was quickly misaccredited to men of the movement.
Likewise, #MeToo was dubbed by Tarana Burke in 2006, intending to draw attention to survivors of sexual violence experienced by women of color and those belonging to lower socioeconomic classes. The movement was quickly credited to white, wealthy women of Hollywood, to the extent that the creator herself was not included in the cover photo for Time magazine’s 2017 Person of the Year campaign entitled “The Silence Breakers,” which paid homage to #MeToo. Black women being cut out of their own herstory and the rewriting of history are not new practices.
In 2013, we saw the rise of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter (BLM). By the fall of 2017, we saw the rise of the hashtag #MeToo, although its inception came in 2006, long before its climb to the forefront of the media. In between both of these hashtags were the cries of #SayHerName, which is a part of the campaign of the African American Policy Forum.
The monikers were not just pithy sayings, social media capital, or signifiers of “woke” status. To the contrary, the hashtags claimed a particular type of shorthand for the violence and invisibility rendered to black bodies, not exclusively black women, as these violent acts intersect with the historical, social, economic, racial, and gendered location of women of the black labyrinth in North America and beyond. In short, the undervaluing of and disregard for black life and black women’s lives in particular lead to the grotesque treatment or ignoring of black women’s lives. Our ignoring such atrocities is being called to task.
The aforementioned hashtags represent movements created and led by black women. Two of the movements were quickly coopted and credited to people who were not black women. #BlackLivesMatter was started by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. The very compilation of their trifecta exemplifies the labyrinth of black identity in the US. Two of the women self-describe as queer-identifying, and one of the women comes from a Nigerian immigrant family. Despite the founders’ identities, BLM was quickly misaccredited to men of the movement.
Likewise, #MeToo was dubbed by Tarana Burke in 2006, intending to draw attention to survivors of sexual violence experienced by women of color and those belonging to lower socioeconomic classes. The movement was quickly credited to white, wealthy women of Hollywood, to the extent that the creator herself was not included in the cover photo for Time magazine’s 2017 Person of the Year campaign entitled “The Silence Breakers,” which paid homage to #MeToo. Black women being cut out of their own herstory and the rewriting of history are not new practices.
"Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider" (Abingdon Press, 2018). Order here: http://bit.ly/2RqEB23
Each hashtag, even their attempted cooptation, underscores both the fragility of black women’s lives and the sin of systems that afford black life to constantly hang in the balance at the discretion of others. What is most intriguing is the fact that faith communities were not at the forefront of these social movements, or their actions were often met with suspicion. The fault is none but our own, as faith communities are often culpable of rendering the same crimes in our houses of worship. We’ve committed these sins in ways that make it impossible to tell if we have let the crimes of the world seep under our door or if our crimes have seeped out into the world.The question that begs to be answered is: how does our religious discourse reinforce or disrupt such ideas around black personhood and black womanhood in particular? A more important question is: how do we listen to those in the forced positions of marginality? How do we proclaim and declare faith in ways that disrupt such death-dealing assumptions?
#MeToo, #SayHerName, and #BlackLivesMatter call the pulpit back to a faith-filled responsibility that attends to the deepest ills of society, and in their best practices, faith communities call the world to task about its crimes against the creation of God. However, before faith communities can move outward, we must first look inward to the places where we ourselves have stumbled on the gospel. We must look inward to the places where we discredit the belonging, credibility, and personhood of black women on a regular basis.
Personhood and Pulpit Personas
I am reminded of our crimes from the words of colleagues, students, encounters with random strangers, and those I know well. Doing or not doing whatever some think they mean by black preaching or even women’s preaching is risky business. Black women are always subject to the assumption made by other people that they have the power to accept or reject black women’s ways of moving about in the world. White students have walked up to me to report what my white colleagues have told them, such as, “Professor XYZ said the sermon you preached in chapel was good, but it wasn’t like your last sermon; and in the last one you did black preaching.” The perceptions of listeners are often warped by gendered and racist stereotypes of both performance and one’s personhood or lack thereof. These biases are not limited to white spaces and white bodies, neither are they limited to good or ill intention.
“I don’t like women preachers.” A senior and well-respected woman in the community spoke these words directly to me as I exited the pulpit. She was one of several people who enveloped me in curiosity, encouragement, and prayer during that time of ministry in Los Angeles. The congregation was historically traditional and African American. The community had never ordained a woman and did not afford women the opportunity to preach proper, although women did plenty of preaching via testimony and speaking. Therefore, “women preachers” did not exist much around those parts.
This well-intentioned church mother followed her short and sharp statement with a slight grin of approval, saying, “But I like you. You don’t sound like a man, but you don’t sound like a woman either.” Somehow I had managed to accommodate her subconscious and yet-to-be-named assessment of an appropriate balance between femininity and masculinity, for bodies that looked like mine and offered their voices from pulpit spaces.
I have yet to decide if I feel more offended, flattered, or indifferent about her complexly androgynous description of my pulpit persona. Regardless of my personal feelings, the words were a genuine account of her experience. Her words also illustrate the connectedness between marvel and offense when we attempt to account for the presence of black women in relation to preaching. Questions of the ability, place, and authority of a black woman to name something significant on behalf of a community are often the backdrop for the delight taken in the word experienced and proclaimed. Internal discord surfaces within us when an unexpected something happens: “I don’t like women preachers. But I like you.”
In these instances, as listeners, we now have to reconcile our experience with our latent assumptions. And as those who proclaim, we have to sit with the reminder that people do not readily believe our voices belong at the table; our status is often that of forced outsider.
Excerpted from Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider by Lisa L. Thompson. Copyright © 2018 Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa L. Thompson
Lisa L. Thompson is assistant professor of homiletics at Union Theological Seminary in New York, New York. read more… 
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It's an interesting Sunday, with Thanksgiving four days later and Christ the King falling afterward this year. It's hard not to select 1 Samuel 1:4-20, which explicates what giving thanks to God is all about. Hebrews 10:11-25, which I’ll touch on briefly, does remind us again of why we give thanks, not for things or “blessings” but for the infinitely precious work of Christ — and then how we love each other. Mark 13:1-8 is more of a segue into the kingship of Christ sequence we are approaching, not to mention how Jesus speaks of what his mother underwent: the pangs of childbirth.
* * *
So, Hannah. You feel for Elkanah, doubling his sacrifices for her and pleading romantically with her: “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” No answer is provided. Sometimes we don’t get the anguish of the other person, even a spouse.And there’s more psychological insight here. Peninnah’s taunting... isn’t it the case that our agony, our lack, is inevitably made so much worse because we compare ourselves to others, are unflatteringly compared, or are even pitied? The worst plague of social media is you see everyone else seemingly having a blast while you’re hurting. We have to ask how we (by posting on social media, or by bland talk about being blessed) inflict this comparative pain on others.
Three months after writing this blog, I found myself at a Memorial Service at my rabbi friend's synagogue: Kristallnacht, that night of horrors 80 years ago that ignited the Holocaust. Survivors, who live near me, entered the room to the playing of the "Schindler's List" theme. So moving. I cried, and I don't generally cry at such things.
This got me to thinking about how we treasure gifts perhaps only in light of intense loss; we love only against the foil of so much hate; we are tender in the web of so much harshness. Hannah treasures her gift because she has been without the gift for so very long.
Again, to Peninnah's taunting. Months after the blog was written, I witnessed 2018 election results and noted evangelical Christians giving Jesus a bad name by judging others. Peninnah has hers and then taunts, judges, and shuts out Hannah, who doesn't have anything at all. A Facebook friend, someone I don't really know, posted a harsh item about Muslim women being elected to Congress, and she titled her repost "Disgusting." She then posted a pro-Trump diatribe about immigrants not deserving the goods America has to offer. But her previous post was a cutesy one about Grace being getting what we don't deserve from God. It occurred to me she wants what she doesn't deserve from God (although I bet she believes she's very much deserving), but then others shouldn't get theirs. I will preach on this thought.
There is a theological quandary in the writer’s assertion that “the Lord had closed her womb.” The preacher may or may not engage the question, but it’s well worth pondering even in the background. Ask an infertility doctor why a woman hasn’t conceived, and she can explain to you facts about sperm counts, fallopian tubes and more. Did God so arrange such things to frustrate couples? Or do we see, again, the lovely faith of Bible people whose lives and realities were so hinged to God that they could not imagine anything apart from God? Is it not that God blocks the pregnancy (which God should do a bunch of other times when God seemingly doesn’t…), but that she just hadn’t gotten pregnant?
The text reminds us that Hannah’s hollow exasperation went on “year by year.” She wept — a lot. Finally, Eli saw her praying and thought her to be drunk (anticipating the Day of Pentecost, Acts 2:15). This is true prayer: total weakness, vulnerability, inability, desperation, nowhere else to turn. We need not wait for dire straits to get there, either. Isaac Bashevis Singer once said “I only pray when I am in trouble. The problem is, I am in trouble all the time.”
"Weak Enough to Lead: What the Bible Tells Us about Powerful Leadership" (Abingdon Press, 2017). Order here: http://bit.ly/2rYxHac
Realizing her deep prayerfulness, he blessed her. The plot smoothes itself out quickly, and she becomes pregnant. In my book, Weak Enough to Lead, I wrote this about what happens next:
“What staggers us is that she kept an outlandish promise she had made in her desperation. Trying to coax God into giving her a child, she pledged to give that child right back to God. She could easily have reneged on the deal once she cradled her precious son in her arms, nursing him and giggling with glee over his arrival. He was all she’d ever wanted. And in those days, a son was your social security, the one a woman needed to care for her in old age.
But she took the boy to Shiloh and left him there to serve in the temple as an apprentice to Eli. What more poignant words are there in all of scripture than these? “She left him there for the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:28). The world says grab the gifts you can, hang on to them, accumulate strength and resources. But Hannah, instead of clinging tightly, opened her hands and let go of the best gift ever. She chose to return to her weak, vulnerable state. “She left him there for the Lord.”
After his election, Pope Francis handed back the powers of the papacy he’d just won by riding in a Ford Focus instead of the papal limousine, by moving into a guesthouse instead of the Apostolic Palace, and by wearing a simple cassock instead of regal finery. Henri Nouwen left a faculty position at Harvard to live in a L’Arche community in Canada, where his job was to care for a single, severely handicapped young man named Adam. Maybe the most effective pastor I’ve ever known declined multiple promotions, quietly mentored dozens of young clergy, and, in her parishes, happily beamed offstage as her laity excelled as they never had before.
Maybe you know such an obscure person you can describe in your sermon. There’s a little textual confusion in 1 Samuel 1, I think. Were her child named Saul, her pun would be perfect: she asked (sha’al) for a child, and got what she asked for (sha’ul). Hmm. Also, if you studied lament Psalms in seminary, you’ll recall this is the parade example of what happens when the Psalm shifts from lament to confidence: the idea that a priest hears your prayer, blesses you, and then there's a shift to hope. Be sure to notice that the week’s Psalter isn’t a Psalm but Hannah’s song (anticipating Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1:49-56) in 1 Samuel 1:1-10!
In keeping with all this, as it’s Thanksgiving, I will use this lovely quote from Wendell Berry’s novel about a Kentucky farm mother (named Hannah, too!), Hannah Coulter, who muses,
"The chance you had in life is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be someone else. What you must do is this: Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”
But she took the boy to Shiloh and left him there to serve in the temple as an apprentice to Eli. What more poignant words are there in all of scripture than these? “She left him there for the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:28). The world says grab the gifts you can, hang on to them, accumulate strength and resources. But Hannah, instead of clinging tightly, opened her hands and let go of the best gift ever. She chose to return to her weak, vulnerable state. “She left him there for the Lord.”
After his election, Pope Francis handed back the powers of the papacy he’d just won by riding in a Ford Focus instead of the papal limousine, by moving into a guesthouse instead of the Apostolic Palace, and by wearing a simple cassock instead of regal finery. Henri Nouwen left a faculty position at Harvard to live in a L’Arche community in Canada, where his job was to care for a single, severely handicapped young man named Adam. Maybe the most effective pastor I’ve ever known declined multiple promotions, quietly mentored dozens of young clergy, and, in her parishes, happily beamed offstage as her laity excelled as they never had before.
Maybe you know such an obscure person you can describe in your sermon. There’s a little textual confusion in 1 Samuel 1, I think. Were her child named Saul, her pun would be perfect: she asked (sha’al) for a child, and got what she asked for (sha’ul). Hmm. Also, if you studied lament Psalms in seminary, you’ll recall this is the parade example of what happens when the Psalm shifts from lament to confidence: the idea that a priest hears your prayer, blesses you, and then there's a shift to hope. Be sure to notice that the week’s Psalter isn’t a Psalm but Hannah’s song (anticipating Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1:49-56) in 1 Samuel 1:1-10!
In keeping with all this, as it’s Thanksgiving, I will use this lovely quote from Wendell Berry’s novel about a Kentucky farm mother (named Hannah, too!), Hannah Coulter, who muses,
"The chance you had in life is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be someone else. What you must do is this: Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”
* * *
Hebrews 10:11-25 reiterates (again) themes of Christ’s once-for-all work, and our freedom to enter the sanctuary. The opened curtain here is Jesus’ pierced flesh. Most interestingly, in verse 24 we read (in the RSV) “Let us consider how to provoke (Greek = κατανοῶμεν) one another to love and good deeds." With so much provoking to anger out there,what if we used or provoking skills to prod others to love and good deeds?
* * *
I love the opening of Mark 13:1-8. If you’ve seen the tumbled over (and some still in places) massive stones from Herod’s temple in Jerusalem, you can imagine the awed, gawking disciples exclaiming, “What large stones and what large buildings!” I like to describe the details of the massive, beautiful stones (like that one ashlar you can inspect on the Western Wall Tunnel tour that is 40 feet long and weighs 600 tons). This is crucial, as Jesus forecasts they will not remain standing one upon another. The crowd must have laughed their heads off, and yet, 40 years later, the temple was rubble.Preachers have to be careful not to sound anti-Semitic or supersessionist. Three centuries later, when Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they intentionally left the temple mount in ruins so they could point and boast that Judaism was toast. We grieve the temple's destruction, and we hear the point Jesus makes that the high and mighty wind up devastated.
Jesus, more pointedly in John’s Gospel and Hebrews, theologizes that he, not any building, is the true temple, the connection between God and life down here. For Mark 13, Jesus moodily ponders a harsh, daunting future. When I hear any prognosticator of the end times pointing to current history and saying “Wars and rumors of wars” are upon us, I have to ask How many times in history have there been “wars and rumors of wars”?
Were I preaching on Mark 13, I’d focus on the image of “birthpangs.” Birth, as Dr. Mark Sloan points out (in his wonderful Birth Day), is the only time pain is regarded as good, and we debate whether it should be alleviated or not. Pain is the necessary prelude to new life. On our end, yes. On God’s side, surely. The pangs of bearing with the constant insanity of human history strikes agony into God’s heart.
I also think of the lovely narrative Henri Nouwen shared with us (in Our Greatest Gift) about fraternal twins in their mother’s womb. The sister is trying to convince her brother of the existence of a mother and a life beyond the womb. She eventually asks,
"'Don't you feel these squeezes every once in a while? They're quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful.' 'Yes,' he answered. 'What's special about that?' 'Well,' the sister said, 'I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother face-to-face. Don't you think that's exciting?'"
"What can we say November 18? 26th after Pentecost" orginally 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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My conversations with pastors over the years have revealed that the feeling of not having enough time is a major cause of both frustration and freneticism. The nagging feeling that there is too much to do and too little time to do it never seems to go away. It is exacerbated by the increasingly fast-paced world we all live in, along with the increasing expectations of others that we should be omni-available.One pastor described the feeling to me as “the unceasing round of feverish activities.” It is described by some psychologists as ” hurry sickness.” And more than a functional matter, it is clearly a spiritual problem too. Thomas Merton viewed it thus, calling activism a form of violence. [1] It is a violence we inflict on ourselves … and others. In whatever ways we can, we must become better stewards of our time.
Let me affirm the obvious: learning and practicing time management techniques is helpful. I would never counsel against anything that provides some relief. But I have tried some of these things myself (to good effect) long enough to realize that the world continues to turn faster than I can keep up with it. And besides that, even when I am “managing time” fairly well, that accomplish does not cover all the bases of my dilemma, leaving me to believe that the challenge is more a matter of the heart than the calendar.
The starting point is not practice, it is intention. It is responding to the question we pose in prayer: “God, how do you want me to live?” asked in combination with a second question — the question of our heart’s desire: “How do I want to live?” The two questions likely overlap; indeed, they may meld into one. They are two vantage points for discerning a way of life deeper than techniques, and for making key decisions that will guide our practices.
But for that to happen, we must face the greatest challenge as leaders with respect to our use of time: We must be prepared to disappoint others. [Read this as many times as you need to for it to sink in.]
This recognition moves across our soul with the screeching sound a fingernail makes across the surface of a chalkboard. Our first reaction is to put our hands over our ears and say, “Stop!” But the recognition does not stop because it is true. If we decide to live differently with respect to time, we are going to disappoint some people.
Years ago, Richard Foster spoke to this relative to his own struggle with time. I heard him say, “I had to come to the place where I realized there are more good things to do than I can or should do.” He rooted his realization in two places. The first was in a devotional classic by Thomas Kelly entitled ‘A Testament of Devotion.’ Kelly has a blockbuster statement in this book. Thinking about the multitude of good things that need doing, he wrote, “We cannot die on every cross, nor are we expected to.” [2]
But even more than that, Foster found it in the example of Jesus, who would go away and his disciples would have to go looking for him, and upon finding him they would say, “Everyone is searching for you” (Mark 1:37). Both examples create disappointment in others who want you to die on their cross, disappointment in those who feel we should have been where they expected us to be.
For the next couple of months, we will explore time in relation to ministry. Whatever else we will discover will be against the backdrop of the inescapable fact: to live and minister well with respect to time, we must prepare to be misunderstood.
[1] Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander(Image Books, 1965), 86.
[2] Keith Beasley-Topliffe, ed. Sanctuary of the Soul: Selected Writings of Thomas Kelly (Upper Room Books, 1997), 61. An excerpt from Kelly’s book, A Testament of Devotion (Harper & Row, 1941).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Harper
Steve Harper taught spiritual formation and Wesley studies to Christian divinity students for more than thirty years read more… 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Schnase
Robert Schnase serves as Bishop of the Rio Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church, and is the author of read more…
The Rev. Matthew Richard Schlimm, author of "70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know." Photo by Nick Story, the University of Dubuque.
(UMNS) — If seminary students and others want to dive into studying Hebrew, that’s wonderful, says the Rev. Matthew Richard Schlimm.But he believes that just getting into the wading pool with that language leads to deeper understanding of the Old Testament.
Schlimm, a United Methodist elder and professor of Old Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, is the author of the new book 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know.
Even understanding that fraction of the Old Testament’s original language can make a big difference, Schlimm maintains. In his book, he sweetens the deal by providing lots of historical and cultural background, as well as theological commentary.
“My hope is that I’m giving students of the Bible a new tool so that they spot new things in the biblical texts,” Schlimm, 41, said by phone from Iowa. “Being able to access the depth that Hebrew brings is a huge gift.”
The book came out in August from Abingdon Press and already is in its second printing. The Rev. Joel B. Green, a United Methodist elder and professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, touted it in Catalyst, an online journal for United Methodist seminarians.
“From start to finish, Schlimm offers a veritable feast of theological reflection and exegetical insight,” Green wrote. “His readers are bound to have frequent Aha! moments.”
In the book, Schlimm gives full explanations of the few Hebrew words that have entered the English language in transliterated form.
“Amen,” for example, doesn’t in its Hebrew understanding just mean the prayer is over. It comes from a cluster of Hebrew words meaning what’s true, trustworthy, reliable, faithful.
“When we say this word at the end of prayers, we’re signaling not only that we agree with the prayer but also that we’ll do what’s needed on our part for the prayer to come true,” Schlimm writes.
Many people in the pews and choir loft sing “hallelujah” without knowing what it means. Schlimm notes that the word appears 25 times in the Bible, exclusively in the book of Psalms, and simply means “praise the Lord.”
The book’s back cover reminds that “English isn’t God’s first language,” and Schlimm shares various Hebrew words and concepts that are, to one degree or another, lost in English translation.
The consequences can be major.
For example, English translations of Genesis have focused on the sound of its key Hebrew words and given us “Adam” and “Eve” and “Eden.” But a focus on the meaning of the Hebrew words in question would instead have the words translated as “humankind” and “life” and “delight.”
So, as Schlimm shares, a meaning-first English account would have Humankind and Life in the Garden of Delight, not Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
“The English translation sounds like an account of ancestors the farthest removed from us,” he says in the book’s first chapter. “The Hebrew sounds more like an account of human nature: what we’re like. The names’ meanings suggest we may have less a historical account and more a parable about God, humanity, our world and the loss of innocence.”
Schlimm writes that some of his seminary students, who feel a tension between science (particularly Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection) and faith, are angry that no one told them this earlier.
As an undergraduate at Asbury University, Schlimm first encountered Hebrew. He was enthralled when Bible professors translated a word or phrase to put light on an Old Testament text.
Schlimm went on to study at United Methodist-related Duke University, earning a Ph.D. in Hebrew/Old Testament. As a graduate assistant, he was asked to take over teaching a Hebrew course when the professor became too ill to continue.
Suddenly, Schlimm was an understudy thrust onto the stage and struggling to engage his students. He decided to try beginning each session with a brief, dual-purpose devotional.
“I’d pick a different (Hebrew) vocabulary word they’d studied that week, and make connections, showing why it’s relevant to ministry and the life of the church,” he said. “They loved it, and I loved doing it. Those theological reflections were sort of the genesis of the book, though that was at least 15 years ago.”
Schlimm would eventually join the faculty of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian Church (USA) school approved for training United Methodist clergy. His wife is the Rev. Stephanie Schlimm, pastor of Epworth United Methodist Church, in Epworth, Iowa.
At Dubuque, Schlimm gets his Hebrew students into translating as soon as possible, using the book of Ruth because it’s only four chapters yet offers lots for discussion.
The innovative approach to teaching continues in “70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know,” with Schlimm adding an appendix about the Hebrew alphabet that uses Star Wars words to demonstrate the sounds. His website has his own recorded pronunciation of Hebrew words discussed in his book.
Schlimm knows that many church folks find the Old Testament baffling and even off-putting, given its level of violence. He recalls from his pastor days hearing a parishioner say she loved the God of the New Testament more than the one in the Old Testament.
Throughout his writings, including many scholarly articles and the earlier book This Strange and Sacred Scripture, Schlimm has championed the Old Testament. He sees it as a work of teaching more than law, offering abundant insight and wisdom.
“It’s a very important friend in our faith,” he said.
And knowing a little Hebrew can make it a better one.
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Sam Hodges / United Methodist News Service
Sam Hodges is a writer for United Methodist News Service. read more… 
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I have a confession: earlier in my ministerial career I treated any conversation about church mission statements with the dreaded eye roll.Not again, I thought. There goes someone pontificating about mission and vision, which if you ask me is just a lot of talk that compensates for not doing much work.
Now: I did help Mt. Carmel Church devise a mission statement sometime in the mid-90s. In retrospect, it was entirely too long and said something about open Bibles and open hearts. I suspect no one there knows what it is or even where it came from anymore, either.
And then upon my arrival at Good Shepherd in 1999, I inherited a good one: To know, follow, and make known Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.
But I was too young in my ministry and too unfocused as a leader (and maybe too prideful that I hadn’t played a role in it?) to make much use of that statement. I certainly didn’t say it as part of the welcome every Sunday, nor did I find ways to work it into virtually every sermon.
And then, in a period of congregational uncertainty in 2008, we adopted a new slogan: Walking Together. Where? We didn’t specify. We had a temporary case of foolishness and felt that open-endedness and ambiguity spoke to emerging generations.
Actually, the only thing it said to emerging generations or those that had done emerged was “this church doesn’t know who it is or where it is going.” God was most merciful to us in those years as we simply plateaued and suffered no decline.
So our strategic murkiness in 2010 led us to begin work with our friends at Auxano, who took our staff and board through a process they call “the tunnel of chaos.” But there was light at the end of that tunnel — great light, as it turned out — for we arrived at a place that seem to define perfectly not only who we are but who we want to be:
Inviting All People Into A Living Relationship With Jesus Christ.
A verb: Inviting. Not forcing, begging, manipulating, or cajoling. Inviting. Like God does.
An object: All People. Not our target demographic. Not people “just like us.” But the full-color, multi-national, multi-generational collection of sinners and saints who both attend and surround our church.
A destination: A Living Relationship. Not dead religion with a sentimental relic, but a living relationship with a living Savior. And living things always grow, stretch, and chan be. So it will be with us.
And a Savior: With Jesus Christ. We’re not vague in our theism. We believe that Jesus is not one of many; he is the One and Only. We rejoice when people recognize that their higher power is in fact the Highest Power.
Concise, compelling, memorable, and measurable. And most importantly to me, not derivative. It doesn’t sound like a thousand other churches who are “making fully devoted followers” of Christ, nor does it mimic the United Methodist Church’s making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. As an added bonus, the two strong “v” words — “inviting” and “living” sound to the ear like they fit with each other.
So since we adopted and unveiled that new mission statement, five key benefits have emerged. Here they are:
1. Comprehensive usage. We repeat our statement from the platform, in our LifeGroups, in student and children’s ministry, and even in our Out ‘N About Seniors programs (“all people includes retirement age people.”). There simply is no venue where it’s not appropriate to remind people who we are and what we are about.
2. People repeat it back to you. Nothing strangely warms my heart as quickly as someone from the church repeating the mission statement back to me. Sometimes it’s part of conversation, other times it’s in electronic communication, and two weeks ago it was one of our “testifiers” who spontaneously let the phrase escape her lips during her talk.
3. Clarity of purpose. There’s no doubt about what we want people to have: a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
4. Words make worlds. If you say something often enough, people begin to live into it. Because the language we use shapes our habits, more and more people are growing into that living relationship.
5. Hiring new staff. This may seem minor, but it’s not. When interviewing, recruiting and training new staff members a strong mission statement brings great clarity regarding candidates you want and those who want you.
And here’s how I know it’s all worth it. While writing this blog I received an email from a woman at Good Shepherd regarding someone she invited to church this past Sunday. Here’s what she said (deleting names):
We’ve been friends with [them] for several years…[She] could hardly believe how well I’m connected at Good Shepherd during the Ladies Life event! I explained to her that it’s simply the culture of the people of Good Shepherd — together we invite ALL people into a relationship with Jesus Christ and that we experience that living relationship EVERY time we are together in community!
Talbot blogs at TalbotDavis.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Talbot Davis
Talbot Davis is pastor of Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, a modern congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina. He read more… 
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Mockingbirds perch on our roof line, at the top of our backyard fence, and in the pines surrounding our house. They gaze at the sky and into the trees and down toward the fields. Some would say that they’re watching for hawks or snakes or lunch.Not me.
I say that they’re taking it all in. Sitting quietly with the beauty of it all, neither anxiously scanning for threats nor hungrily spying for the next meal. And when they are filled to overflowing, the mockingbirds sing.
Mockingbirds don’t merely trill or chirp. They compose melodies. That’s why one of Harper Lee’s characters said that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird; all they do is sing their hearts out.
Mary Oliver has taught me to listen for the divine word that nature whispers. It should come as no surprise that Jesus’s lessons convey the same word.
With the help of Oliver, these mockingbirds have shown me something about living in a world of material things. It’s the lesson that Jesus shares with us as he reflects on the contrast between how rich donors and an impoverished widow give alms.
People of means are tossing relatively large sums into the alms basin. The widow drops in a few coins. In most of our translations, will read that Jesus says that the rich people gave from their abundance and that the widow gave from her poverty. (Mark 12:38-44)
Loads of preachers will take hold of that word “abundance” and tell their congregations that God is a God of abundance. Don’t live by the toxic myth of scarcity. You have enough. Be generous. This will feel like a gimme during congregational annual drive season.
While Jesus has plenty to say about God’s abundance elsewhere, he’s on to something quite different this time. My reading of the passage shifted when I realized that the Greek word rendered as “abundance” here can also be translated as “excess.”
"A Resurrection Shaped Life: Dying and Rising on Planet Earth" (Abingdon Press, 2018). Pre-order here: http://bit.ly/2K2M3wB
Let’s take another look at the contrast substituting the alternative translation. The privileged have given from their excess. The widow from her poverty. And, according to Jesus, the widow has given more than the others even though the monetary size of her offering is tiny by comparison.Poverty is clearly her economic state. This is important and should be explored in another context. But in this space I want to focus on the idea that poverty is also her spiritual posture. It is her habitual way of navigating a world of material objects.
Mary’s Oliver’s poem “Catbird” conveys my meaning:
Will I ever understand him?
Certainly he will never understand me, or the world
I come from.
For he will never sing for the kingdom of dollars.
For he will never grow pockets in his gray wings.
Catbirds—and their songbird cousin the mockingbird—do not need pockets. Accumulating more than they need never occurs to them. So, they would never have a place to store their excess and to keep it safe from others. The very notion of that sort of wealth is foreign to them.
Likewise, the widow has no need of pockets. There is no evidence that she holds material things in disdain or advocates an ascetic lifestyle. Rather, she simply never accumulates more than she needs.
The widow could have held back her coins for tomorrow’s supper or for next week’s prescription refill. Instead, she responded with what she had to the hunger and the sickness and the homelessness of her neighbor. In her view, everything we have has been given to us so that we can use it to love our neighbor, not to make ourselves more comfortable or secure or important.
At this point you may be thinking, “No wonder the widow is poor! We have to put aside what we need for tomorrow. We have to make sure we will have enough to cover our expenses and to handle unforeseen circumstances.”
In other words, many of us assume that what we get through our hard work is ours and ours alone to keep and to spend however we like. We earned it. We don’t owe anybody anything. Nobody owes us anything. Maybe Ayn Rand is your patron saint. Maybe it’s Adam Smith.
But Jesus challenges us to live with material things in an entirely different way.
Imagine that the world actually resembles the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom where we love God with every fiber of our being and love our neighbor as ourselves. I mean really love our neighbor. Our neighbor’s sorrow breaks our heart. Our neighbor’s hunger leaves us famished. Our neighbor’s joy makes us giddy.
In that world, nobody needs pockets. Each of us gives from whatever we have to feed, clothe, and educate every kid. To house and to tend to the elderly. To treat the sick and to heal the wounded.
Okay, I know this is a dream. But it’s God’s dream — the dream of a world where we no longer need pockets. Some of my dreams won’t come true, but like I said, this is God’s dream and God’s dreams come true. Eventually.
In the meantime, take heart when the mockingbird sings. Let’s do the good we can with what we have.
"When the Mockingbird Sings" originally appeared at Looking for God in Messy Places. Reprinted with permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jake Owensby
Jake Owensby is the fourth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana. Jake is the author of several books read more…
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