My Experience at Emerging UMC2: Friday Afternoon: What Happened to the Methodists?

I hope to blog out my thoughts about EmergingUmc2: Restoring Missional Methodism over the next several days.  Here is my second attempt to summarize my experience at the conference. Here is my blog post from yesterday about the conference.

After our walking/missional tour of downtown Indianapolis, we returned to the church, had lunch, and finished up the official part of our Friday at EmergingUMC2.

We spent that afternoon talking about the early Methodists and the church structure that had developed since then.  Ultimately, it was this way of doing church that got us into the ditch  that we United Methodists now find ourselves in. 

One thing is clear; John Wesley and the early Methodists were the Shane Claibornes and ordinary radicals of their time and place.  Their ministries started in prisons, coal fields, factories, in the farm fields, etc.  They spoke out against injustice like slavery and industrial reform and primarily worked through small groups called classes.  Along with the social activism and small gatherings, these early Methodists also put emphasis on personal piety and discipline. 

According to Taylor Burton-Edwards, the EmergingUMC2 conference leader, the prevailing  spirit and structure of the early Methodists started to dissipate with the creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784, especially as the church gained economic and political power and became part of the dominant, mainstream culture by its 100th birthday in 1884. 

The numbers lie sometimes but the United Methodist church is fading.  We are about to be passed by the Mormons for third place on the largest American denominations list, continue to lose hundreds of thousands of members each decade, and now the percentage of Americans who consider themselves United Methodist  have nearly been cut in half over the last forty years. (6% in 1970, 3% today).

Burton-Edwards argument on this Friday afternoon made a lot of sense; The church as congregation model hasn’t worked out very well and its well worth looking at what those early Methodists were up to! You cannot recreate the past, of course, but there is much to learn  from the pre-Methodist Episcopal Church Wesleyan movement.  

Much more could be said, but most importantly, returning to a model that emphasises the small group/class could add the vitality needed to Keep Wesley’s hope that the Methodist movement “[would] not only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.…” He wrote that two years after the formation of the Methodist Episcopal church.  

To back this up, Burton-Edwards quoted the following in his presentation:

•GBOD research– discipleship grows and deepens  primarily through an experience or a group outside the congregation (Dan Dick)

•Missiological observation– “communitas”–a “band of brothers and sisters who have each other’s backs struggling through a common ordeal– is the environment most conducive to missional action and multiplication (Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways)

Filed under: Christians, Indiana, Indiana history, Indianapolis, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, bible, church, community, community organizing, emergent church, jesus, prison, prison justice, prison ministry, tradition, united methodist , 1784, 1884, Allen Hirsch, band of brothers, coal mines, communitas, Dan Dick, decline, dominant culture, early methodists, emergingumc2, farms, growth, john wesley, mainstream culture, methodism, methodist classes, Methodist decline, Methodist Episcopal church, methodist history, mines, missional, missonal methodism, Mormon, open air, ordinary radicals, powerpoint, prisons, ranking, shane claiborne, small groups, Taylor Burton Edwards, united methodist, united methodist church

My experience at EmergingUMC2: Thursday Night and Friday Morning

I hope to blog out my thoughts about EmeringUmc2: Restoring Missional Methodism over the next several days.  Here is my first attempt to summarize my experience at the conference.

EmergingUMC2 has come and gone. You can see the twitter conversation (#emergingumc2)  here.

 It was an event that my congregation, Lockerbie Central United Methodist, had lobbied hard to get.  We were a small congregation that had been left for dead but had found new life in the emergent/missonal way.   We wanted to show and tell our story. 

I went into the conference feeling a little bit out of it though.  In this season of the H1N1, I woke up Thursday morning–12 hours before the conference started–puking my guts out.  Lucky for me, it wasn’t the flu and I made it through the weekend. 

Thursday Night:

We screened the movie The Ordinary Radicals to start the conference  and as part of our normal Thursday night film series. We had about 1o0 people in attendance.  Director Jamie Moffett was in town and it was exciting to see Lockerbie Central’s brief appearance in the movie.  The film tells the story of “Ordinary Radicals”– everyday people whose faith and commitment to community have begun to provide an alternative to what it means to be a North American Christian.   Imagine a Christianity that actually took Jesus seriously–that is what the Ordinary Radicals are. The film follows Shane Claiborne and his merry band of Christian troublemakers (in the best of that word) and jesters (in the best sense of that word) across the country  in a grease powered bus during the summer of 2008 as part of  the Jesus For President (book] tour.

The movie was inspiring but I could tell that for many conference attendees, the Ordinary Radicals’ movement wouldn’t quite translate to the county seat churches.  Well, lets just say it wouldn’t happen over night. 

Friday Morning:  

After a worship gathering, we took a three hour walk across downtown Indianapolis.  We wanted to give conference goers a sense of our missional context. 

We headed from the church, across Lockerbie Square, and over to Mass. Ave. , where we met Pauline Moffett at the Indy Fringe Building.  Pauline is executive director of the Indianapolis Fringe Festival, a 10 day uncensored and unjuried theater and arts festival, where all ticket sales go to the performers.  Our church has worked with Indy Fringe for the last four years and last year hosted the festival’s dance performances.  I’ll talk about it more in a later post, but it was quite amazing how much the mission of Indy Fringe met up with the ideal of the conference. 

From there, we walked towards downtown, talking about Indianapolis history—the good, the bad, and the ugly– and then met with the Justice For Janitors campaign on the steps of  Monument Circle.  A half decade into the struggle, janitors won their first union contact last year with the help of clergy leaders.  If the campaign continues to succeed, 2,000 lowpaying  jobs will be tranformed into living wage jobs that can support a family.  From there, we walked a few more blocks, saw the state house, and then met with Stuart Mora, a hotel worker and Lockerbie Central member, who is working with his coworkers to organize a union at downtown hotels.  Like the janitors, if the hotel workers suceed thousands of jobs will become living wage jobs.  If clergy and the church get involved in real and meaningful ways in these types of struggles, our economy will be transformed and perhaps the church might have a future.

Having walked three miles or so, the group headed back to Lockerbie Central UMC and had lunch.  We read this qoute off of our church sign:    

It may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; in that case we will gladly stop working toward a better future. But not before. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Filed under: Christians, Earth House, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, Thursday Night Film Festival, church, community, community organizing, economy, flu pandemic, united methodist , bonhoeffer, community organzing, contract, county seat, day of judgement, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Earth House, emergent, emergingumc2, friday, Fringe, fringe festival, H1N1, history, hotel workers, indianapolis fringe festival, jamie moffett, janitors, judgement day, Justice for jANITORS, living wage, living wage jobs, local history, lockerbie central united methodist, Lockerbie square, Mass. Ave, methodist, missional, ordinary radicals, shane claiborne, stuart mora, thursday, unions, united methodist

Dorothy Day was almost a Methodist…

As strange as it may seem, Dorothy Day might have been a Methodist.  I just started reading The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the legendary Catholic Social Activist, and what has been surprising is about how often she talks about John Wesley and  her experience with the Methodist Church. 

Ultimatley, one of the most important Chrisitan figures of 20th century America began her faith journey by rejecting the Methodist church. 

…I had to choose the world to what I wanted to belong. I did not want to belong to the Epworth League which some of my classmates joined.   As a little child, the happy peace of the Methodists who lived next door to me appealed to me deeply.   Now, the same happiness seemed to be a disregard of the misery of the world (page 41).

I find this passage important for the future of the United Methodist Church.  The argument has been made and continues to be made that the Methodist Church is in decline because of its liberalism.  Though more of a hunch than a thesis, Dorothy Day’s epxerience tells us that something else is at play; the Methodist’s “disregard of the misery of the world.”

Filed under: bible, chicago, church, emergent church, united methodist , aldersgate, dorothy day, IRD, John Welsey, john wesley, Mark Tooley, methodist, misery, social activist, suffering, The Long Loneliness, united methodist