10 Things for emergent/missional United Methodists to Be thankful For…

1.  Thank you to John Wesley. We missionals/emergents like to stir things up a bit, raise  some hell, speak out boldly against injustice, reach neglected communities, and open the church doors in real ways to those who wouldn’t step foot in to a church in a million years.  I think the life and works of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, grants us that permission even if the established church frowns on or is disinterested in such  activities.

2.  Thank you to the early church. Despite the overwhelming violence and power of the Roman empire, these earlier followers of Christ  persisted and still show us 2,000 years later that love wins and that another way is possible.

3.  Thank You  to the prophetic church. Yeah, somewhere along the way (think Constantine but probably way before that as the church became more and more succesful) the church lost its way.  But the link between  mainstream religion and injustice is an age old problem ( the need for social propehtics like  Micah, Amos, Isiaiah in the first place).

Instead of liberation and community, the churches began to preach and practice and protect the status quo.   Whether it was St. Francis of Asissi, Dorothy Day, John Wesley, Dr. Martin Luther King, or countless others whose names history has forgotten, these communities figured out creative ways to be faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ, in spite of violent threats and raw military and economic power or just plain ole’ apathy.

4.  Thank You to EmergingUMC2 and beyond. Much thanks to the 30 or so United Methodists who gathered this November to talk about the possibilities of restoring missional methodism.  As a participant, it was inspiring to hear all the amazing things going on across the country as Methodists struggle to rethink church. Let’s hope this conversation keeps going.

5.  Thank You to the Emergent Conversation. I first started hearing about the emergent conversation a few years ago and it saved my faith or at least my participation in a church.

6. Thank You to no More George W. Bush in public office. Yeah, this is a cheap shot, but it is a little disconcerting that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both claimed to be United Methodists.  That presidency might say more about the failures of the United Methodist church than anything else.

7. Thank You to the GBOD worship website. If you ever find yourself needing help with a worship service, check out the General Board of Discipleship’s worship webpage. Consistently updated and always helpful.

8.  Thank You for some good Methodist blogs. Check this blog’s home page for them.

9.  Thank You to The Future. More and more, it looks like the future of the church  will be missional and emergent.  Here is Phyllis Tickle’s take on it.

10. Thank You to Jesus Christ.  Not in that cheezy I just won the super-bowl kid of way, but for not letting fear or the quest for prestige and power get in the way of God’s plan.

Filed under: Christians, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, church , dorothy day, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, early church, emergent, emergent village, emergingumc2, GBOD, General Board of Discipleship, George W. Bush, jesus, Jesus Christ, john wesley, methodist blogs, missioal methodism, mission, missional, missional methodism, Phyllis Tickle, prophetic church, rethink church, Roman Empire, rome, Saint Francis of Asissi, super bowl, Thanksgiving, Wesley, worship

My Experience at EmergingUMC2: Friday night and Saturday Morning

It has been over a week now since EmergingUMC2: Restoring Missional Methodism finished up.  At  high noon, Saturday, November 14, our gathering headed back into the world.  Some having a 700 mile ride back home on a minibus. 

Where do we go from here?  That was the big question for me. 

We spent Thursday night watching and discussing The Ordinary Radicals, a beautiful film about what Christians are doing across the country to reclaim the faith from both apathy and the dark years of the Christian right era.  On Friday morning we walked through downtown Indianapolis and met  with arts leaders, janitors, and hotel workers, and got some context for how Lockerbie Central UMC developed and is developing its missional focus.   We spent Friday afternoon thinking about Methodist history and the current story of the United Methodist Church, especially the history of class and society meetings and their relationship to congregations.  

On Friday night some of us went to nearby Englewood Christian Church and saw Shane Claiborne speak as part of another conference going on that week, Through the Consuming Fire.

So, where do we go from here? 

A week out, that Saturday- morning seems like a blur.  I am sure I am leaving some things out.  

First off, we talked about our experience Friday night watching Shane Claiborne speak.  I showed up late Friday night  and just in time to hear Shane speak. For those who haven’t seen Shane speak before, the guy is a rock star.  When he spoke at our church, we had nearly as 1,000 people show up–the biggest crowd we probably have ever had in the 125 year history of the church. 

I know our group wa s a bit annoyed because the music prior to Shane went on and on and on and on.  And on. It went so long that the scheduled Q and A session had to be cancelled.  The thing that stuck out to me though was the power of Shane’s story–even though I had already read his books and have seen him speak before.   Here, a small group of people dedicated themselves to living out the Gospels and they launched a movement.  Nine people living together in community and in friendship and solidarity with the broader community.  That’s it.  And they are changing the world through their witness, activism, and Christian discipline.  Last year, UMC youth in Carmel, IN–the wealthiest city in the state were so moved by Shane’s Irresistable Revolution that they begged the church’s leadership to invite Shane to lead worship on a Sunday morning.  (He accepted their invite.)

Still, I feel that for some of us Methodists, Shane’s  Irresistable Revolution gets lost in translation. It might be called the Impossible Revolution for us United Methodists.  But for me, that was the great hope of EmergingUMC2.  In our own ways, given our deep traditions, we United Methodists could begin to restore missional Methodism. 

As the conference concluded and before our final worship gathering together, we broke up into small groups to talk about how we might begin to work together.  I talked with two UMC clergy from central Indiana.  It was exciting  to begin to dream about how local congregations and individual Methodists could work together in real ways. 

We finished up with a powerful  worship service that sent us back into our communities  hopefully ready to restore missional methodism.

Filed under: Christians, Earth House, Indiana, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, Thursday Night Film Festival, church, emergent church, shane claiborne , art, Carmel, Christians, class meetings, emergingumc2, Englewood Christian Church, fringe festival, hotel worker' uprising, hotel workers, IN, Indiana, Indianapolis, Irresistible Revolution, janitors, Justice for jANITORS, lockerbie central, lockerbie central united methodist, methodist, methodist history, missional, missional church, missional methodism, music, ordinary radicals, shane claiborne, society meetings, Through the Consuming Fire, united methodist

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 , united methodist church, john wesley, shane claiborne, ordinary radicals, united methodist, missional, prisons, Dan Dick, Taylor Burton Edwards, early methodists, farms, emergingumc2, methodism, small groups, methodist classes, band of brothers, Allen Hirsch, Methodist Episcopal church, methodist history, powerpoint, Methodist decline, Mormon, ranking, growth, decline, missonal methodism, open air, coal mines, mines, 1784, 1884, dominant culture, mainstream culture, communitas