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

Press Release: The Gospel According To Vonnegut

 

EARTH HOUSE TO HONOR KURT VONNEGUT’S THEOLOGY–BOTH AS AN AGNOSTIC AND A FAN OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

 

Indianapolis, Ind - October 30, 2009 -Kurt Vonnegut fans will gather to honor the Hoosier author on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 7:00 p.m. at the Earth House Collective, 237 N. East St., located inside Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, on what would have been  Vonnegut’s 87^thbirthday. 

The third annual Gospel According to Vonnegut celebration will honor the life, theology, politics, humor and local roots of Indianapolis’ most important postwar writer.   There will also be birthday cake.

“Vonnegut focused on the absurd and he found a lot of absurdity in religion,” Mike Oles, organizer for the event, said.  “He comes from a long line of religious skeptics and atheists but his hostility towards religion allowed him to write powerfully-perhaps more so than any other Indiana voice– about the historical Jesus.”

Along with Vonnegut’s riffs on God and Christianity, the gathering will also focus on the writer’s Indiana roots.  It was at Indianapolis’ Shortridge High School where Vonnegut wrote for the only daily high school newspaper in the country.  Meanwhile, Vonnegut attributed much of his moral vision to fellow Hoosier radicals like Eugene Debs and Powers Hapgood. 

Julia Whitehead, President, Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Foundation, will be giving the keynote presentation.  Attendees will also hear the music of local songwriter Kate Lamont and see a video clip of Vonnegut’s appearance on  The Daily Show wit John Stewart.

Earth House is located inside Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, on the corner of New Yorkand East Streets in downtown Indianapolis. 

 For more information, please contact Mike Oles, 317-354-3207.

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Filed under: Indiana history, Indianapolis, community, jesus , agnostic, birthday, church, earth hosue, eugene debs, gospel according to vonnegut, hoosier, hoosiers, Indiana, Indianapolis, julia whitehead, kurt vonnegut, library, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, methodist church, powers hapgood, press release, sermon on the mount, vonnegut, vonnegut memorial library