#GC12book Study 02: Back To Zero [Discussion]

Hello and welcome to our Book Study for Lent. We are reading through the books suggested to General Conference delegates to get an idea of what will be in the delegates’ minds and to help us make sense of the meta-and-local issues facing the United Methodist Church. Read more about this book study here.

Guiding Framework:

1. Try to reference the books by CHAPTER not by page number. Some of us are on Kindles and Nooks and page numbers do not always translate across devices. So try to reference the chapter titles rather than the page numbers ie. ‘In the “New Wesleyan Movement” chapter near the end, Rendle says…’
2. Feel free to comment and reply to other’s comments.
3. This conversation is cross-posted to the UM Clergy Facebook Group where other UM clergy will have conversations. You can read these conversations by clicking the link.

Guiding Discussion:

This our second book study (here’s the first) so we turn now to conversation about ‘Back to Zero’ by Gil Rendle.

This is an open thread, meaning you can post your thoughts, musings, and respond to others’ posts as well.

Here’s some questions that you can respond to or :

1. The adaptive challenge for The United Methodist Church is “To redirect the flow of attention, energy, and resources to an intense concentration on fostering and sustaining an increase in the number of vital congregations effective in making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” How does Rendle best approach this challenge in your view?
2. What comments or recommendations were most shocking to you? What comments or recommendations did you find yourself ‘nodding your head’ or ‘shaking your fist‘ at?
3. Rendle has some great systems theory integrated deeply into his comments. Here’s one comment where he talks about the paradigm shift necessary for the UMC. What do you think of it?

Members, clergy, and congregations [should now be] displaced as the object of attention and recipient of denominational resources to being the expendable resources of the system needed to make the critical difference of changed people who will change the world.

Chapter “It’s Time To Testify” page 41.

Next Step: Synchblog on March 6th

• On Tuesday, March 6th, we invite bloggers to synchblog (that is, everyone blog on the same day about ‘Back to Zero’) together. I’ll blog as well, and if you send your links either as comments or as emails to ‘umjeremy@gmail.com’ we will include a list of all the blogs so we can read each other’s writings (and get good cross-publicity!). We had five bloggers for our last synchblog and hope for more this time too!

Thoughts? Post below!