I’m trying out a new year’s resolution: listen to a recorded sermon on Sundays so I get the same attempt at spiritual inspiration that my congregation gets with me in the pulpit. My pick this week was MLK Jr.’s sermon “A Knock At Midnight” (mp3link) given in 1957. While listening and puttering around, one section towards the end of the sermon caught my imagination. It was Dr. King saying this:

“The church can die as a result of the judgment of God as a result of refusing to stand up against evil.”

MLK Jr “A Knock At Midnight” 21:00

What poppycock. The church can’t die. Clearly Dr. King hasn’t read the blogs and especially the Call To Action.

• It’s our categorical imperative to sustain the Church and to reverse the Mainline Decline.
• It’s an immoral choice to focus on “side issues” like civil rights when our coffers and our pews are plunging.  What kind of socialist justice-loving church would that be?
• It’s a bad choice at General Conference to talk about distracting “hot topics” when we need to build up “vital congregations.”

Clearly, Dr. King’s priorities were all out of whack. What kind of church would focus on social issues when we need to be focusing on church growth and institutional preservation? We are destined to survive and we know that “God is not finished with us yet.” Right?

Right?

I kept listening as Dr. King railed against churches that freeze up or burn up. Turns out Dr. King was exactly on point with his sermon preached 55 years ago. I couldn’t find a full-text of this sermon, so I transcribed it below from minute 24 to minute 29. Any errors are my own.

We have two types of Negro churches that leave people disappointed at midnight. One freezes up and the other one burns up. The one that freezes up is that church that says it’s a dignified church. Preacher preaches a nice essay on Sunday, he tries to mean it. The choir tries to sing with meaning and power, but they don’t sing negro spirituals or gospel songs because it reminds them of their heritage. They are ashamed they are black and their ancestral home is Africa…They build a church that has no relationship whatsoever with their past…

I see this tendency in the Anglo-centric churches. They are the churches that build college-size campuses and walled gardens away from the neighborhoods. They are the ones who move out of the inner city to plant their church in the suburbs, with the unfortunate effect that homeless people don’t often make the trek out that far. The ones who are ashamed of their wealth (on some level) that they celebrate in semi-private cocoons and create a parallel culture to the one that they are called to serve. I’ve seen these frozen-up churches who have no relationship with their culture around them.

There’s another church that burns up. In this church, the emphasis is on muscle-ality rather than spirituality. In this kind of church, people have more religions in their hands and feet than they have in their hearts and soul. In this church, sometimes even the pastor depends on his voice, on volume not content. And the people leave on Sunday saying “we had a great service today and the preacher just preached this morning” and somebody say “what did he say” “I don’t know what he said, but he preached this morning!” (congregation guffaws)

Now the danger of this kind of church is that people will play with God. The danger of this kind of church is that people will make religion irrelevant, becomes mere emotionalism. Now religion when is real it is emotional, but the danger of this kind of religion is that they will have a zeal of God not according to knowledge. “Not only love the Lord thy God with all thy heart but with all thy mind.”

The other danger of this kind of church is that everybody will become so caught up in the irrelevant that they will not be concerned about the day-to-day problems.

The other kind of church is sadly on the rise in American Anglo churches as well, one that depends “on volume not content.” They are exemplified in either the feel-good sermons of Joel Osteen or the condemning-the-gays-and-women-and-hipster-men rants of Mark Driscoll. The refernce to churches that have a “zeal of God not according to knowledge” is my fear for the UMC as well. I fear we will have those types of churches that have a lack of value for theological education as a side-effect when our church leadership focuses on efficiency not effectiveness. Finally, if you read any of the conversations on the UM Clergy facebook group, you’ll see a perfect example of “being caught up in the irrelevant” fine points of doctrine that are used as weapons to condemn other pastors rather than as important articulations of values. The burned-up church is smoldering and it’s creeping this way.

Finally, in true Dr. King style, we get to the crescendo where the congregation is on its feet. It’s best listened to but here’s the transcript for conversation:

King: It seems that I can hear the God of the Universe saying “Don’t play with me and don’t play with my people.” It seems I can hear the God of the Universe saying to the Negro church and the white church also “People are hungry, they are in need of bread. Don’t play with me and don’t play with them. They come at midnight seeking bread, provide it for them.

“You don’t do that…I won’t hear your beautiful anthem. You can preach your eloquent sermons, you can pray your powerful prayers, but I won’t hear any of it because your hands are full of blood for the things that I am concerned about that you would let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

“If you want to know what it is I require of you, it is simply this: do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.”

The Call To Action wants us to spend the next decade of church resources on navel-gazing, on bettering our churches and worship experience and coffers so that we can reverse the mainline decline. But that is the utter antithesis of King’s writings and sermons, as the Church he envisions is an outward-facing church that wastes its money on the poor and wastes its political capital opposing unjust laws rather than building parallel empires to the culture around us.

A church that doesn’t seek racial justice, that doesn’t provide for the marginalized in society, that doesn’t work for equality of all people regardless of their heritage or biology…that church will be left at the door at midnight, left in the darkness at midnight, left to be a zombie trudging forward with the image of movement but without the life behind it…at midnight.

While our church consultants and renewal groups tell us to stop talking about the hot topics, an echo from the past tells us today that if we aren’t in the business of equality and hot topics, then we are a church that has either burned up or frozen up.

My prayer for our General Conference delegates today is that they heed the call from Dr. King from 55 years ago and keep us as an outward-facing church: one that works on its discipleship, yes, but does so not divorced from the culture around us. Like the burned-up churches that are emotional without connection to intellect, we are in danger of being a spiritual practices church without connection to the practice of spiritual concern for others in both our structure and action.

So keep on working toward justice, Church. Keep on pursuing it for all of God’s creation, even when the church itself tells you that you are wasting your time, that that money won’t count towards being a “vital congregation.” Keep on doing it, and when all is said and done, the churches around you may burn up or freeze up or they may hopefully step up and be on the path towards the land where justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Keep that dream alive today.

Thoughts?

From my day with Leonard Sweet that I blogged about last week, one of his base concepts is that the language of the church is changing. He calls the shift the most important since Gutenberg created the printing press and that indeed the times we are in require a shift in perception and a willingness of the church to learn the language of the culture. The Gutenberg culture thinks in words and verses; the Google culture thinks in stories and narratives. And right at this moment both cultures are getting closer and closer to parity and both need to be taken seriously.

Sweet describes the paradigm shift from the Gutenberg World to the Google World well in this video:

Guiding questions:

1. How is your church learning the language of the culture?
2. How is your ministry context connecting with the images and narratives of the culture?
3. How do you retain the Gutenberg generation while reaching the Google generation?

I think the most important concept is that Missionaries either taught the people English to explain their concepts or they learned the people’s language and re-framed the Christian concepts. In the former, the natives had to translate foreign concepts in an odd tongue. In the latter, the missionaries had to be the agents of translation from an English culture to the native culture.

Is your ministry context providing the translation services or are you expecting the culture to do the translation?

Thoughts?

Consider this post a call for rebellion against the church metrics movement.

First, you should know the worst part about being a preacher is that we tend to be critical of other preacher’s sermons. When I was in seminary, I heard a sermon on Mark 14 (CEB) where a woman breaks a jar of expensive perfume and pours it over Jesus’ head, and the . The preacher talked about Jesus’ love being extravagant, overflowing, without regard for other people. I remember thinking “Who cares that it’s extravagant? We get it. Jesus loved everyone. Grace loves everyone. Can we talk about the misogyny or the reversal of condemnation or something more relevant, please?”

It’s been in recent months that I’ve began to better realize the importance of emphasizing how extravagant grace really is.

A few weeks back, I learned a new word when I was in close proximity to Amy Laura Hall, a Duke Divinity professor and UM Elder. Her blog and twitter account are named “Profligate Grace” which was a new word for me, worth 4000 points in Scrabble (or if you are under 25, Words with Friends).

Profligate means:

recklessly prodigal or extravagant

And “profligate grace” means to Rev. Hall:

I resist the market-driven, cheesy business-model ways of the United Methodist Church these days in part because both parents taught me that there is no way to “count” people and the means or effects of grace.  Each life is a gift, a joy, and incalculably treasured by God.  So, I am against applying quantified, count-the-numbers methods in public school and church, in organizing and in parenting.

[Profligate Grace] is just a fancy way to say that grace may be hard-won, but it is also not measurable.  Solidarity, growth, and human flourishing require thought and care and tending, but that work withers when the results are put to a quantified test.

These quotes really started me thinking about “what are we measuring in the church?”

In a sermon by my Bishop a month ago at a clergy meeting, my Bishop clued us into Jim Noble’s “The King’s Kitchen” which is a not-for-profit restaurant that donates all its profits to charity–$50k last year! Plus it offers on-the-job training and skillset enhancement for homeless or transitional people. Awesome sauce.

Here’s a quick blog post with a CNN video that has the following quote that the Bishop used in his sermon:

Sometimes in life you have to make a distinction between success and significance.

Jim Noble

It is exactly this distinction that makes me wary of the Call to Action and the Vital Congregations movement of church metrics. It’s easy to measure success with dashboards, metrics, comparisons of budget. If the numbers go up, you are successful. If the numbers for a program go down, it needs retooling or scrapping.

The problem is measuring significance. As Rev. Hall emphasizes and the woman with the perfume exhibits, grace is profligate.

• It is not measurable. It flows out without regard for the boundaries.
• It is slow and quiet, immeasurable, trusting in the slow work of God.
• It is extravagant like the woman pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’ head. The church leadership of Jesus’ day (oh *SNAP* yes I went there!) criticized the quantitative success of the perfume but couldn’t measure the significance of the action.

When the emphasis is on success not significance, we lose sight of what we are really called to do. And if we focus on success, we could miss out on being significant.

Last story:

I was talking with a clergy mentor and told her about a pastoral situation where I offered grace and help to a youth in the midst of a rural Bible Belt culture that offers neither grace nor help for the situation. I can’t be more specific than that in this public blog post. The mentor’s response?

“You can know what you said is more significant to that youth than anything you’ve done up until now in ministry.”

Boom.

Here it is:

The Hacking Christianity Call to Action.

Rebel.

Tell the stories of significance in your community, of how you changed lives. Forget the financial report for the missions committee, tell about who you helped and how it changed you. Get rid of the Year To Date report in the bulletin and include a story of how faithful giving changed someone’s life. Let the only money talked about is how the Pastor emptied her Discretionary account helping the poor. This isn’t an ostrich sticking your head in the sand, it is focusing on significance not success.

Rebel.

Talk about the social holiness work you’ve done, holiness which resists metrics. Tell stories of how you extravagantly wasted money on helping people, kicked out big givers who were poisonous to the body, ended successful programs because they were just rote actions, and stayed in ministry with people who could never pay it back.

Rebel.

Seek life in the face of death. You can watch that video of the declining UMC and listen to the heartbeat machine on the Vital Congregations website (ick!). Or you can preach relevant hope to the difficult situation. Yes, we should downsize and prioritize and we have to face reality. But even if we are close to closing our doors, we can still be significant to people in our community. If numerical success does not come, the church doors can be closed in celebration of significant ministry rather than lament of a fallen church.

Rebel.

Seek significance rather than success.

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I write this in protest of the church metrics movement that I don’t believe gives a mission or hope to congregations who WILL most likely close. Stop beating them down and give them something to live for even in their twilight years.

I write this from a place of privilege, as I’m in a successful church and have had a great year in terms of giving, professions of faith, and new disciples in our youth group.

But know that when I’m filling out my end of year reports, my charge conference numbers…I will talk about the significance of our ministry rather than the success.

But the church metrics movement…when we get right down to its emphasis and what the websites report…will really only care about one.

Which one will you?

Discuss.

Recently, Hacking Christianity’s favorite Mark Driscoll instructed the media to no longer refer to his church’s multiple campuses as…oops…campuses. Instead, they are to be called churches. Here’s one of their pastors Jamie Munson explaining:

During our June meeting, the Mars Hill Board of Directors agreed to replace “Mars Hill campuses” with “Mars Hill churches.” This is more than a shift in semantics…Referring to our locations as churches rather than campuses helps articulate our theology (what we believe about God and his Word), our ecclesiology (what we believe about church), our ministry, and our mission.

In other words, instead of describing Mars Hill as “one church, many locations, one message” they now refer to them as “many churches, many locations, one message.” One message is broadcast to many sites, but each site should be seen as its own church even though the most distinctive part of it being a church is the same across the board.

But here’s the question: is a local congregation its own church if its sermon is outsourced to an outside entity?

Like most Wal-Mart or Franchise Churches (discussed on this blog previously), video broadcast allows the local parishes to have local pastors or “lead pastors” with local laity…but the Sunday message is most-often given over to the mothership church.  This phenomenon is not limited to churches that expand their roots, it also encompasses churches that absorb other churches or take over the message at other churches.

Andrew Conard recently posted on his blog that Church of the Resurrection, the largest UMC church in America, was looking for a few good men, er, a few student or lay pastors who would be willing to hand over their sermon time to Resurrection. He writes:

I am on a strategic project team at Resurrection that is looking for three small churches, currently led by lay speakers, local pastors, or student local pastors, who would be interested in testing a new model for ministry – these churches would, for one year, become a part of a multi-point circuit with Resurrection. The aim is to see what we might do together to strengthen small churches. Resurrection would provide 36 weeks of sermons via video, coaching, and other resources.

Senior Pastor Adam Hamilton’s brief writeup is similar:

There are over 15,000 United Methodist Churches with less than 50 people in worship each week. Many are vital and vibrant faith churches; others are struggling. We’ve wondered what might happen if large churches partner with smaller churches in a model that looks something like what happens with our campuses, though, under this new model, each smaller church remains its own congregation. We would provide coaching, marketing resources; training and Resurrection’s sermons would be used in these churches via video 75% of the time. We’re testing this with three churches in the next year. If it is successful, we’ll offer this model to other large and small churches to look at creating similar partnerships called “circuits.”

My comment (unresponded to as of this writing) is thus:

• Firstly, I’m personally opposed to franchising a particular church and for local churches to cede their message to people outside their community. I will watch with interest the ways how COR’s partner churches reflect on this experience.
• Secondly, with franchised churches (at least the half-dozen case studies I’ve seen) the predominant number of people you get are not converts but disenfranchised Christians from other churches. So I wonder what CoR’s goal is in offering a franchise to a local church?
• Finally, I’m particularly shocked at an outright desire to “take over” the message of student, local, and lay pastors…the ones most likely to need coaching, yes, but also the most vulnerable to the temptation to cede the message. I’m honestly concerned at why CoR is targeting not troubled churches but vulnerable pastors?

Having said all that, I don’t expect Rev. Conard to respond, given that he’s leaving his oversight of this project to go to Resurrection West this week (congrats by the way!), but these are still relevant questions, particularly why they are focusing on churches without full clergy at them. Odd.

Regardless, the rising phenomenon now is to outsource the message of a local church to outsiders so that clergy can focus on other aspects of ministry. We’ve talked about this before in a previous blog conversation, which included an intern and a staff person at CoR, so read more there.

But the question still remains: if the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached from afar, not informed by the receiver, is that congregation an individual church or is it an extension of a mother church? If the sermons come from the top-down and community comes from the bottom-up, are they their own churches or the same church in different contexts?

Discuss.

At a clergy meeting a few months back (before the 2010 release of the Call to Action report), a very senior pastor of a large congregation talked to a few of us young clergy. He told us to beware of “church growth bubbles,” as he called them. He said that every few years, some consultant or methodology is built up, diffused over all the clergy as “the way”, and then it flitters away a few years later or bursts into unremarkable results. These cycles happened over and over and while the pastor said he got ideas from it, he didn’t revolutionize his whole ministry plan to them…and ended up just fine by preaching the Gospel.

To this sentiment, while valid, there is little doubt that a concerted effort by the church global and local is necessary to self-examine failures and successes to find a better way to support one another through the declining presence of the United Methodist Church. But the question is: are we asking the right questions? And is the advice being given one that is grounded in the Gospel or is it grounded in pop-business principles?

Via a friend on facebook, I was clued into this section of a sermon given by Dr. Robert Hunt, the Director of Global Theological Education at Perkins School of Theology. It references the United Methodist’s Call to Action report that we’ve discussed here at length.

Following is a full-text excerpt of the sermon found here. This sermon was preached at this year’s Perkins Theological School for the Laity at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.

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Clever Myths

Peter, in [2 Peter 1:16], says, “we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” This reminds me of second kind of distraction we have been drawn to – the contemporary version of “cleverly designed myths.”

In Peter’s time these were the old Greek and Egyptian myths that provided such a colorful basis for cultist ritual, secret societies, and temple processions. And of course quasi-metaphysical costume dramas are popular today. We have folks that find some vague religious meaning in dressing up like characters out of the Star Wars saga, or the Lord of the Rings. How much more comfortable to find one’s meaning in the mythical world of Frodo and Bilbo fighting the Dark Lord than actually engaging the prince of darkness at work in a crack house or the U.S. Congress. Peter is reminding his readers that their faith is about real-world encounters, not mythic fantasies.

Speaking of which, these days the clever myth currently vying for our attention is the “Call to Action” published in October of 2010. It appears that many United Methodist church leaders like to dress up as corporate CEO’s heading for the board-room to live out the myth of American corporation as savior. Instead of Bibles they now carry under their arms laptops full of spreadsheets with statistics and demographic surveys of potential religious markets. The result? Although the “Call” is based on an expensive analysis performed by an outside consultant it does nothing more than regurgitate into a PowerPoint presentation and Executive Summary the church growth doctrines of Donald McGavran from the 1960’s, followed by the seeker church gospel of Willowcreek from the 1990’s, and most recently the power of positively thinking about how to build an “onramp” church from a 21st century Joel Olsteen.

The recommendations, and I take these directly from the document, are:

• Many small groups particularly for youth,
• A mixture of contemporary and classical worship with the use of multi-media,
• Topical rather than lectionary based sermons,
• Strong lay leadership,
• And pastors who do not need theological education but do need to be good managers and inspiring preachers. (Of course this last interests us at Perkins, since apparently the best way to train pastors in the view of the Call is the get them a subscription to the Harvard Business Review and a membership in Toastmasters.)

These things, we are told, are the definitive characteristics of “vital congregations.” Well they are not necessarily bad things. They just aren’t worth paying a consultant for, since they’ve been repeated in dozens of church self-help books over decades. But most importantly nowhere in this list, or the document as a whole, is there any mention of the presence of the Holy Spirit, the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or fidelity to the witness of scripture and the traditional teaching of the church. None of these are apparently regarded as signs of a vital congregation. Yet without these things our church is living in the fantasyland of a market driven business plan to sell spiritual junk food.

And that is why the entire document is a distraction, a clever myth – directing us away from the message to which Peter was an eyewitness toward a group of management and PR tricks designed to increase our share in a declining market for overt religiosity. It is pandering to a market for which we do not and should not have anything to offer. It measures success without reference to the gospel, and therefore has no grounding in reality.

==========================

I also have expressed wariness at the Call to Action report, both in its methods and its conclusions. And while I’m not about to throw it out wholesale, the way how the “business of church” has gotten so bad that it supplants the Gospel message as our first concern is disheartening.

Thoughts?

(Image credit: Desiree Palmen, 1x4x9)

Full disclosure: I am uncomfortable with targeted church growth conversations. So any impersonal language or poor word choices in this article probably reflect my discomfort. Feel free to point them out, but please don’t dwell on them.

I’ve had three exchanges with large-church pastors in the past few months that really bother me when it comes to the way the UMC seeks church growth in the 18-30 demographic. These are anecdotal but are from large-church pastors, speaking inside-the-ballpark to other clergy (an important note).

1. One pastor recounted that when the pastor was 20 in the 1960s with tattoos and listening to Led Zepplin, everyone said that age group would never be in the church. They were rebels, they saw church as irrelevant, they didn’t attend. And yet, now, the Baby Boomers are the biggest demographic in the church and possibly the last generation to heavily support the church (proportionately). The Busters and Gen-X are trickling back too. The pastors’ take? “Don’t worry about the 18-30s, they will come back when they get older.”
2. A second pastor said in a staff meeting that even though this particular church was next to a college, the church shouldn’t focus on college students. Instead, they ought to focus on the 30s-40s demographic, as they are more likely have children (potential for growth) and more likely to have money (potential for ministry support). The pastor’s take? “Don’t worry about the 18-30s, they can’t support the church ministries yet.”
3. Finally, we see across annual conferences that ministry budgets of campus ministries are being cut. Ministries that used to have full elders now get part-time local pastors or student pastors (who are undoubtedly gifted but the lack of support for a full elder indicates a lack of funds/initiative). And while large churches in proximity to colleges can have college ministries, they are rarely as effective as on-site ministry that can fit into the rhythm and flow of college life. The church’s assumed take? “Don’t worry about the 18-30s, they don’t have time to attend church anyway.”

Now for the surprising fact: None of those churches lack in outreach to 18-30s. All have great numbers in that demographic, but all three indicate that focusing on “success” in that demographic is setting oneself up for failure. And yet at every charge conference the churches are judged at their outreach to that age group (as they should be).

So on one hand we promote this outreach to this group, but on the other hand we wish away the problem by saying “they’ll come back later in life.” It may be true, but it’s not addressing the problem. It’s almost like the approach is “give them good memories so when they realize the hole in their lives they will come back to church.” Is this effective? I don’t know. Is it right? Not to my gut.

I’ve been wrestling with how I feel about this “realist” take on outreach to 18-30s. I think at the moment, I’ve taken two lessons from this:

1. 18-30s is the demographic where you will fail in quantity and succeed in quality. This demographic may not come in the numbers of the other demographics. But the ones who do come likely will be on fire and enthusiastic members of your church. And where do you think the young clergy (under 35yo) come from? This demographic, of course. So the clergy and dedicated laity you get from this demographic might be lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. Thus, avenues of leadership and empowerment are highly important in this age group.
2. 18-30s is the demographic where churches will spend more resources than they take in. By the nature of their age, their tithes and offerings will not be numerically high enough to put mission and ministry and dedicated staff above the redline. Dan Dick explores this further. And that’s okay. They are a mission field, and any sensible church should realize that the money going out won’t come back in. That’s, of course, not a primary reason for cutting back on 18-30 ministries, but I’m sure there are some pastors who take into account cost-benefit ratios, to their shame. Thus, commitment by the finance team of a church to spend more than you take in is highly important in this age group.

As the UMC prepares for a decade of navel-gazing and focusing on church growth to reverse the trends, on this MLK Jr day we are to reminded that such a focus on church growth is set in tension with the prophetic words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here’s MLK Jr in his speech “A Knock at Midnight” (audio version here)

An increase in quantity does not automatically bring an increase in quality. A larger membership does not necessarily represent a correspondingly increased commitment to Christ. Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better.”

Let this be a reminder that while church growth is required and excellent and needed and a result of dedicated discipleship, if we truly embrace the call to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” then disciples are always less in number than the worship attendance, always less in number than the membership, and transformation is done through a dedicated minority not a hyped up, worship-as-a-drug-induced frenzied majority.

Thoughts?

The United Methodist Church commissioned a committee to look at the big problems and difficulties in the church and issue recommendations in November 2009, building on a previous committee’s work. They’ve published their findings yesterday. I’ve read the 44 page summary over lunch (a long lunch) and you can read the basic recommendations on the UMNS article. I won’t repeat them here, you can read them there.

The basic recommendation can be summed up in a single sentence: “For a minimum of 10 years” the UMC is to commit to “sustained and intense concentration on building effective practices in local churches” (page 20). There’s plenty more, but the gist is moving connectional money away from connectional entities and to the local churches that are effective.

I agree with this in principle. In Natural Church Development classes, they use the image of a barrel filling with water. It doesn’t matter where the holes are or how big they are…it matters where the bottom hole is. If in the UMC the part that is leaking the most is the local church, then it must be dealt with before the rest. In advocacy we use a similar image: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” In principle, this is fine. The problem is balancing attention to the bottom hole with making sure the rest of the barrel isn’t on fire so there’s something left to work for.

Things I like at first glance:

1. I enjoyed that my #1 question in my mind about retreating from the world parish to fix our own problems was a FAQ entry (page 33).
2. I like how the CTA report takes caucus groups on both sides to task. On page 14, it says that we should “spend less time…stressing ‘renewal’ as if to restore past achievements” which is a clear reference to the conservative Renewal Groups (Good News, Confessing, IRD). On page 19, it also says that “making this change requires…setting aside many passionate causes in order to focus instead on overarching goals” which is an argument often used against Reconciling Ministries Network’s work for full inclusion of LGBT folks. So while we may disagree with their assessments, at least both sides are getting it.
3. I like a lot of the language being used to change bureaucracy is forward-thinking and an overhaul of the systems not just incremental change.
4. I liked the strong dedication to Wesleyan ideals, even if I worry about prooftexting them from 18th century to apply to the 21st century.

There’s more but that’s first glance.

Here’s what I’m wary of that I’ll write more about later in blog posts coming up soon.

1. I’m wary of turning the General Agencies into grant-based entities. Any way you read it, basically they want to get rid of the staff and structure and turn them into barebones Lily Foundation-esque distributors of money that groups, missions, advocates ask for rather than pursue initiatives itself.
2. I worry about trimming ineffective programs and giving more money to successful programs. It seems like a “No Church Left Behind” kind of model where you take money away from struggling programs rather than put more money at it to be effective. [In fact, that's a great blog post. Look for it soon, no one had better steal that line!]
3. I’m critically concerned with the move toward “outcome-based ministry” that is concerned with numbers at every area of the church. I know that’s a reality, I have a business education, I’m not some “peace and puppy dogs” hippie, and yes, my church is growing fine, thank you. But I’m really concerned about it. Advocacy programs and community education programs won’t have people on the “saved souls” column but they are doing the slow work of ministry. Sigh. I’m still looking for how to put it into words though.
4. Finally, the slow creep of congregationalism is apparent. From giving more autonomy to local churches and negating the influence of the general agencies, I noted no less than 5 areas where the church will be more congregational and less connectional than before. And I don’t believe that’s a Wesleyan or Methodist way of doing things.

There’s more, but again…first glance!

In closing, I loved the final comment by the co-chair in the UMNS article:

“The Gospel and our Wesleyan view of the way God’s grace goes before us and beckons us to God is of such critical importance that it must not be ignored,” he said. “The integration of personal and social holiness is a way of being in the world that can redeem a broken and hurting world. That is no less true today than when the circuit riders set out to spread scriptural holiness across the land.”

Amen.

Thanks and blessings to the Call to Action Steering Committee, and we offer critique and concern out of connectional love and concern. You are welcome, and thank you.

Thoughts?

Oklahoma clergy have been assigned to read “Restoring Methodism“ by Drs. Molly & James Scott in preparation for a retreat with them in late September. Given that I was previously from a different area of the country, I happen to have attended the Scotts’ seminar before and am familiar with their arguments and recommendations.

In re-reading the book during some idle moments today, I noted one argument that I’m unsure is valid.

On page 31, the Scotts write about why it is important to restore Methodism to its roots and originating practices:

Restoration is the answer because it is unthinkable that God would abandon the institutionalized churches in America, as they compromise the vast majority – up to 90% – of the Christians in this country.

I am unsure this as “unthinkable.” God has done this before.  God had abandoned the Chosen People to decades of attrition (the 40 years post-Exodus), disowned the stubborn nations (Jeremiah 3:8), and allowed its assimilation into other cultures (Pharisaic Judaism v. Roman Hellenism).  God also allowed the destruction of the Temple and the Jews found much meaning and refocus in the Diaspora that they wouldn’t likely have found otherwise.

God has done this before, taken away what we thought was “too big to fail.”  Can we really dismiss the horrifying thought that the Church as an institution has a time limit as well?

Perhaps the Scotts meant that numerical decline is not in God’s plan for the Church. That’s a valid interpretation, I think.  But Jesus had multitudes following him, was an icon for church growth…but after his hard sermons, he was left with 12. Failure, right?

Further, the Scotts counter their own argument themselves on page 53:

It was not unusual for Mr. Wesley to examine a Society with 800 members and leave them with 400 members.

So it is OK for the institutional church to shrink but not be destroyed? But isn’t restoring Methodism about reversing the shrinking trend? Huh.

To be clear, I’m not advocating a burn-it-down-and-start-over reform…this blog would be called “Reformatting Christianity” if I did. I’m as committed to righting the institutional church as the next pastor.

But I do have to assume that it could be God’s plan that the church burn to the ground and be risen from the ashes in a fiery Phoenix. And I have to wonder how best I could be an instrument of grace in the interim.

God is sovereign. Let’s not place anything (even the unthinkable) beyond God’s possibilities, and seek instead to be instruments of God’s grace no matter what may come next.

Thoughts?

One of the phenomenon that I didn’t plan to study but has increasingly become a part of the HX critique is Wal-Mart churches: churches that spawn multiple campuses that are near-clones of itself.  Now that I’m pastoring in the Plains, Lifechurch.tv is all around me: three of its 12 campuses are within an hour’s drive of me.  The pastor is simulcast via digital streaming or DVD to all the campuses.  While each have their own local flair/personality, the pastoral headquarters operates all the satellites…much like Wal-mart headquarters operates all its Wal-mart stores that drive the smaller chains out of business by its well-honed machinery.

Wal-mart Churches are churches with multiple locations, like a franchise.

In our conversations, we’ve focused on what happens when a big well-financed church moves into a rural area, as well as the dangers of planting Wal-mart churches in gated communities, but so far I’ve left out UM churches either by my own bias or lack of material to comment on.

Until now.  Rev. Adam Hamilton is the pastor of the largest UM congregation with several satellite campuses and an online campus (he is also a Methoblogger along with his online associate pastor…impressive).  However great Adam is for theological conversation and the church, I felt a deep sense of foreboding when I read Adam’s eNote this past week:

Resurrection Blue Springs?  

Two months ago the leadership of North Springs United Methodist Church in Blue Springs, Missouri (located on the north side of I-70 between 7 Hwy and Adams’ Dairy Parkway) contacted our church to ask if we would have any interest in allowing their church to become a campus of The Church of the Resurrection like Resurrection West and Resurrection Downtown. They are an 18-year-old congregation with about 150 committed members who have been unable to grow and who have struggled to become the church they hoped to become when they began.

Further conversations with the District Superintendent, the head of Congregational Development for Missouri, and others convinced us that the Missouri Annual Conference and its bishop supported this idea. We explored the demographics of the community, looked at the debt obligations on its current building, sought to understand what would be involved in adopting this congregation, and we considered the potential of this location, building and people as a new campus of Resurrection. Recently the North Spring’s Church Council voted unanimously in favor of this idea. Last week our Church Council voted unanimously in favor of moving forward with further conversations.

In a few weeks ahead, I’ll share more about this with you during weekend worship and invite you to vote on this proposal.

Let’s be clear: these campuses clearly lead people to a relationship with the Body of Christ. I’m not doubting the integrity of the pastoral or lay leadership of these campuses.  I’m not critiquing the ends; I’m fearful of the means and what this might mean for the kingdom.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

What happens if we put the pieces on the table without any religious terms?

• A struggling (or at least flat in growth) entity decides they are unable to compete in their area of specialty
• Facing extinction or reduced viability, they contact a larger, more established corporate entity and offer to be absorbed
• The corporate entity accepts and absorbs the initial entity into the whole, retaining some local customs but decisions ultimately come from the corporate head.

In short, this local congregation has decided to bring in the creative talent of a corporate church to (presumably) lead its worship. Resurrection has a fantastic staff and tightly crafted message and (since they have multiple locations) they already know how to bottle, transport, pop open and enjoy.  So from the small church’s perspective, why not get really good worship in their space that might jump-start their community?

I would posit this is a connectional church phenomenon (ie. Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, etc).  There’s an attraction to retaining a United Methodist identity.  Thus, outsourcing the worship message to another UM church or even becoming a satellite of a UM church will most likely be a connectional-church phenomenon rather than a non-denom outsourcing to Willowcreek or something.

I could see a lot more of this happening as local churches that struggle to grow and yet have great ministries decide to focus their energy on their active ministries and outsource their worship to a corporate church. I’m not saying this is going to happen with Blue Springs/Resurrection, but I wonder what might happen if more churches decide to turn their worship, the heart of the Body of Christ, over to the professionals (who do GREAT worship, let’s not kid ourselves, but disturbing nonetheless).

Resistance may be Futile.

I can see the temptation. I’m a clergyperson who crafts worship, curriculum, and ministry every week and I wonder how I would respond if we did this.  If we gave over our worship time to a corporate church (in whole or part), then look at the benefits:

• I could spend more time doing discipleship ministries (my primary interest) and less time preaching/leading worship. More time = more effective.
• The preaching would be less personal in message but more tightly crafted by fantastic worship leaders.
• People already watch TV all the time, they can clearly be mezmorized by handle a streamed message.
• The parish can accept ministers with more gifts in discipleship/congregational growth rather than simply great preachers/worship leaders.

So yes, I can see the temptation to do this. The benefits are clear.  But what might the concerns be?  Since this is my first pass at it, I don’t have any data to call on for support, but there’s a few inklings that I have on my heart:

• Dude, you just outsourced the primary thing that separates the church from the world: worship of Jesus Christ. Outsourcing the theological task just doesn’t seem right to me, no matter how great the product is you are buying.
• I can see more denominational splintering as multiple churches align themselves with various charismatic preachers, so in one town you have the Adam Hamilton UM church and the Tom Harrison UM church and so on.  These sort of alliances can only spell more schizmatic force and the temptation to influence the political process.
• Further marginalization of ethnic preachers and women. Why have the guy who talks funny or the woman when you could have a white male preacher in a bottle?  Let’s face it: the super-majority of  megachurches have white male pastors!  While Resurrection has female campus ministers to offer worship leadership, I could see this happen as congregations vote to marginalize their pastors’ leadership and ability to craft worship.