I spent a little of my ‘continuing education’ budget on the short books for the General Conference delegates. Which should I start with first? Is there a recommended order?

I asked GBHEM, Abingdon, and Cokesbury, to no avail. So, your suggestions?

Also…anyone interested in a book study? We can do it over twitter or blog conversation. Comment below if you are in.

The list is here

The stereotype is that bloggers must be sitting shirtless in their parent’s basements typing under a red haze of outrage, disconnected from reality, eating Cheetos. While that is true for some, I’ll admit to only one at this moment: the red haze of outrage. We’ll try to be as non-reactionary as possible from here on out.

Bishop Hopkins from East Ohio, who chairs the Connectional Table, has written a blog post on the new Vital Congregations website. While I respect the man and blessings on his ministry, every point that he’s made to “counter” the supposed claims about the Call To Action seems to spin the reality into something unrecognizable. The piece is entitled “Speak Now” and it sounds  like he’s asking for a response. You got it.

As a preacher, I recognize my role is occasionally to be a cheerleader and encourage regardless of the reality because I have a vision I believe in. I get it. However, to whitewash over these counterpoints without addressing the issues behind each may be a concise contribution, but not a helpful contribution to this debate at this late stage.

Let’s go point by point (the bold italic parts are Hopkins’ exact section headers from the blog post)

10.  The Call to Action is NOT being voted on at General Conference!

• Claim: Hopkins claims it has already begun and all the GC is voting on is to align the structure of the church to increase vital congregations.
• Reality: The express purpose of the CTA was “to conduct an assessment and offer recommendations leading to reordering the life of the Church for greater effectiveness and vitality in mission.” And the Interim Operations Team says that “the next steps for many of these recommendations will be legislative proposals for the 2012 General Conference to consider.” Thus the arc of the Call To Action necessitates GC action; ergo, the CTA is being voted on.
• Thoughts: Have we already affirmed the need for vital congregations? Yes. Are we doing church metrics? Yes. But with the bulk of the changes being legislative-based…well, I would call that “being voted on” as there’s no significant change without changes in our polity. We are not to make mid-stream changes in our polity like that, and the CTA team was created to analyze and propose, not initiate legislative change. To say it is not being voted on, it is inevitable, it has already begun, strikes me as incongruous with UM polity.

9.  The Call to Action is NOT a “top-down” initiative!

• Claim: “The most important changes will not result from legislative action but instead will require different actions and patterns of leadership by each one of us.”
• Reality: Legislative action is what will remove the guaranteed appointment so that Bishops can remove pastors whose church metrics are not on the up-and-up. Legislative action will change the boards from centers of ministry to dispersal units of money. Legislative action will remove the requirements that annual conferences have monitoring agencies (like Religion and Race and COSROW) that remind annual conferences of the values of diversity. It even creates not one but two church executive positions (Executive General Secretary over the board and the non-residential Bishop).
• Thoughts: As any corporate culture theorist would tell you, change that is legislated from the top (even in non-binding ways) creates changes at the bottom that the leadership can point to and say “see the culture is changing!” We call that leadership. So either the CTA is about better leadership (from the top-down) or it is about being better followers (which have no metric for accountability). So…which is it?

8.  The Call to Action is NOT about restructuring general agencies!

• Claim: “The proposed legislation to put most of the program general agencies on one board will align resources, unify staff work and provide holistic strategic planning to support a sustained focus on vital congregations.”
• Reality: OMGoodness, are you serious? The first bullet point of the CTA proposed legislation is, entitled, “General Agency Realignment.” The Pre-GC audio tapes are called “General Church Restructure” and received the biggest reactions. How on earth is it NOT about restructuring?
• Thoughts: I understand the Bishop’s expressed point: yes, the local church successes are to be lifted up and possibly emulated, though I wonder if we resonate differently. With a focus on vital congregations, yes, a large portion is focused on that. But a significant amount of money and resources is about to be redistributed and avenues to dispense that money to annual conferences is about to narrow, so to diminish it as “not about the general agencies” strikes me as really disingenuous.

7.  The Call to Action is NOT about giving more power to the Council of Bishops!

• Claim: “With fewer governance boards, resident bishops will have more time to work and be accountable for the fruits of the congregations in their annual conferences.”
• Reality: One of the recommendations is to remove Guaranteed Appointment so that clergy do not have to be appointed. Thus, it gives more power to the Bishops to not give them appointments. I would love someone to explain to me how this is not about more power to the Bishops.
• Thoughts: To say that the Council of Bishops will not get more power ignores the CTA recommendations about guaranteed appointment (the Bishop’s power of appointment) and the non-residential Bishop relocates the voice of the UMC from General Conference to the Bishops (the power of voice and position). Even the Good News movement agrees with me that the Bishops will get more power, and when that happens, you know it’s closer to reality.

6.  The Call to Action is NOT from a small “rump group”!

• Claim: ”General Conference delegates represent their fellow annual conference constituents. Bishops represent the whole church, their region, and their respective annual conference.”
• Reality: Ben Gosden pointed out  this section to me asking: ”Since when did General Conference become nothing more than a collection of geographical representatives and the bishops become the voice of the whole church? I do believe the good Bishop has it backwards.” I agree.
• Thoughts: In addition, the Connectional Table is diverse and well-proportioned and not a ‘rump group.’ However, the CTA will leave a small “rump group” leading the denomination in the form of the Board of Directors, unlike the Alternative Proposal that makes the group much bigger…than a rump, apparently!
• Disclaimer: I would love a definition of “rump group” so we are talking about the same thing…

5.  The Call to Action is NOT just about churches in the United States!

• Claim: “A unified general program board will provide easier access to agency services for every annual conference around the world.”
• Thoughts: Actually, the Bishop and I agree on this one. I haven’t seen many claims come across my radar that claim it is just about US-based changes. Changes to the General Boards, the power of Bishops, and money given specifically to young people worldwide and central conference legislation do involve the whole church and we should take seriously these implications not only in our backyards but around the world.

4.  The Call to Action is NOT to save money!

• Claim: “Although General Conference is responsible for the entire church, it actually makes decisions for less than 2% of our financial resources.”
• Reality: I really really need to see this one detailed out. General Conference is only about 2% of the financial resources? Doesn’t GC have some say over the entire pension program? All our properties are held by the UMC. If the GC voted to do away with all connectional entities, that would be a lot of money. I don’t get it…
• Thoughts: I’m not going to go into this one too much as the numbers just don’t add up for me. But we are talking about redistributing $60 million dollars…that is not a small amount. By saying that the General Conference is “no big deal” seems really contrary to our polity and the work that the delegates do for two weeks.

3.  The Call to Action will NOT reduce diversity within The United Methodist Church!

• Claim: “The Call to Action recommends that we have fewer people involved in governance and more in ministry without reducing our commitment to diversity and inclusiveness.   The fruits of a more aligned general church will result in more diversity at the grass roots level.”
• Reality: It is the claim of the Alternative Proposal that the CTA will be less diverse, by removing the boards and centralizing the authority of the church too much with a disproportional representation on the council. The Ethnic Caucuses have claimed the same thing: that the highest bodies of the church, as written, cannot be representational of ethnic diversity.
• Thoughts: It is one of my claims that by turning the Boards into grant-dispersing units that they will tend to favor proposals that match their own makeup. This mirrors the concerns above.

2.  The Call to Action does NOT replace our mission and Four Areas of Focus!

• Claim: “The same is true of our focus on developing leaders, starting new congregations, engaging in ministry with the poor and improving global health.”
• Reality: Our mission statement is a perfect marriage of inner-focus (make disciples) and outer-focus (transformation of the world). The four areas of focus are 3/4 inner-focus and 1/4 outer-focus. By contrast, the 16 drivers expressed in the CTA (page 12) are all inner-focus. The church metrics is 4/5  inner-focus with 1/5 outer-focus.
• Thoughts: As I wrote almost a year ago now, the Call To Action calls for a decade of navel-gazing, of inner-focus rather than a balance of both. I am fearful of an inward-facing church for the next decade that doesn’t give a metric for evaluating how we are transforming the world.

1. The Call to Action is NOT about changing someone else!

• Claim: “The Connectional Table and its staff are willing to step aside to make way for God’s new thing.”
• Reality: The Connectional Table gets to choose the next Board of Directors and nothing stops them from choosing themselves. While this legislation will undoubtedly be changed during General Conference, the statement above seems out-of-step with the actual legislation.
• Thoughts: I’m a bit confused about this point. Yes, we confess we have fallen short. Yes, we are proposing changes to make us better. That’s terrific. But where we differ is that these are important changes, legislatively and at the local level, and to say that the most important changes are in your backyard ignores the connectional ethos and spirit of the United Methodist Church.

Look, there’s a difference between being a critic and being a champion: critics tear down without putting up an alternative vision that the champions do. This blog post seems focused on the critics of the Call To Action who offer unsubstantial criticism. That’s fine. But it utterly ignores the reasonable voices and white-washes over us like we are champions of alternative proposals  that also contain Methodist values. It lumps all criticism together without recognizing that some of us are in this for the long haul. By God’s grace, I’ll be a clergyperson for 40 more years in the UMC: please don’t treat us with kid gloves.

Let’s be clear: The #CallToAction conversation will not be drowned out by declarations of inevitability or saying General Conference is no big deal. It’s been said again and again that the CTA was meant to start the conversation and the conversation is in full-swing. The facets of the Call to Action report that are voted on at General Conference are highly important, and to say otherwise is incongruous with the conversation. We can do better.

I welcome any official or unofficial responses to this post. Thanks for reading. Thoughts?

The Confessing Movement is an unofficial caucus within the United Methodist Church that seeks to maintain or revert the doctrine and practice of the UMC to traditional/orthodox perspectives.

One of the CM’s constant criticisms is of the seminaries (the academy) because all that pesky knowledge past the 17th century, interaction with other valid ways of believing, and varieties of theological tools seem to get in the way of doctrinal rigidity. Oddly enough.

Their attack line in the past few years has been to focus on the cost per graduating seminarian with the framework that some seminaries don’t graduate as many Methodist clergy as others and yet they get the same funding as the ones that graduate a lot. They seem to often take aim at the two UM seminaries who are closest to my heart: Boston University (BU), my alma mater, and Claremont (CST), the California seminary that does lots of interfaith work and indeed now is a multi-faith initiative.

Here’s one of the CM’s articles from 2011.

 In 2009 Boston School of Theology received $863,235 dollars from the Ministerial Education Fund (MEF). For this investment a grand total of seven students in 2008 received United Methodist ordination at the cost of $123,319 per student. The School of Theology at Claremont did a bit better; ten students from Claremont were in the newly ordained elders and deacons 2008 class in the various conferences. The church’s investment per Claremont ordained student totaled $84,967.

And now this week’s article from 2012:

Last year the United Methodist Church gave Claremont $869,000 in funding. During that year a total of eight United Methodist students graduated. Figure that cost per student! Just imagine what that $869,000 could have produced if it had been designated for seminary training in Africa!

So their basic point is that the UMC is investing over $100k per student who graduates from these two particular heathen seminaries. Why are we wasting so much money on them? The “good” Methodist seminaries (as if there is such a thing to the CM) churn out preachers more efficiently and the cost-per-graduate is half the above in some cases.

If I was a bit arrogant, I would say this:

• Both seminaries are in the American mission fields of United Methodism: BU in New England, CST in the Western Jurisdiction. Both of these annual conferences have had significant membership losses during the past few decades and are now practically considered to be mission fields due to their high numbers of non-Christians and, moreso, non-Methodists. Is there any wonder that less UMs go to these mission outposts than the other seminaries who have it easy and are reflecting their predominantly Christian culture? So do we abandon the mission posts to Satan (rhetorically or literally)? And how many Southern pastors are applying to move to these mission fields, anyway?

If I was rather arrogant, I would say this:

• Both seminaries train more religious specialists than pastors. I’m in the minority as a pastor in my class as most were going onto higher education or social services positions. Doesn’t it take more money and training to be a specialist? Ones who can be a Protest Chaplain with Occupy Wall Street and know how to use nonviolent rhetoric and action? Ones who can advocate with Interfaith Worker Justice and know how to reinforce workers self-worth to God and to each other? Ones who can create novel approaches to interfaith dialogue so they can share a common mission to serve others even as they keep their own values and identites. Ones who…you get my drift? Little wonder that it takes less money per student at some other seminaries: they train primarily pastors. Even though each individual pastor has obviously amazing gifts and graces and can customize their advanced classes, the approach is more broad than specialized. Just as it costs more to become a specialist surgeon than a family practice doctor, religious specialists cost more money but hopefully give back knowledge and practices that benefit the whole. Don’t mistake my meaning with this paragraph: It doesn’t make them better, but it does make them more expensive.

And if I was really arrogant, I would say this:

• Look, I’m worth $100,000 dollars. I could have taken my presumed gifts to other venues. I could have applied my computer skills and be earning $100k as a computer specialist. I could have applied my writing skills and be earning $100k a year from journalistic endeavors. I can pantomime as well. Instead I’m serving a church that I won’t even earn half those wages until I’m probably 40, much less $100k a year unless I go the mega-church route (doubtful). Some of my friends are powerful singers and writers and technical specialists but instead of going the way of fame and money, they became pastors, to our benefit. Are we worth it?
• Here’s the kicker: even if I paid a full tithe on my $100k a year, it would be far less than the amount I encourage my church to pay its full apportionment each year (which they do) as a pastor. And given that each clergyperson costs the denomination 2.1 million dollars if they have a 40 year tenure, my full personal tithe of that would be $210,000. Back to the church that contributed to my education. So really, I’m worth $100k and so are hundreds of seminarians like me. [restart humility]

Luckily, I’m not really that arrogant so I’m not going to say those things….oops.

Can we do better? Can we make the cost-per-student ratio better? Of course. I just fail to see how $100k per seminary student is not a good investment, even if other seminaries manage a smaller cost-per-student ratio. Are we seeking efficient graduations or effective graduates? My hope is the latter, and if so, then a variety of gifts, the many parts of the Body of Christ…some parts just cost more. And that’s okay.

Thoughts?

One of the recommendations from the Call To Action is the re-distribution of funds to young adults (those under 35 years old), $5million dollars of the first amount of money saved to go to them. That’s a great gesture and will certainly be put to good use. It makes me wonder, though, if the Call To Action values ministry to young adults rather than ministry with young adults. Are we included in the conversation or are we just being “ministered to?”

Young adult delegate Rachel Birkhahn-Rommelfanger from Northern Illinois and I took a look and here’s the disturbing numbers that we found.

The Connectional Table, which populated the Call To Action teams, has three young adult members on the team. That’s awesome and I’m glad they are involved in the highest perpetual body in the church alongside the Council of Bishops. So, excluding staff, three out of 49 members would make the Young Adult percentage on the Connectional Table as 6.12%. We’ll set that as a baseline.

So the Call To Action committee, which did the primary work of the Call to Action movement, has one young adult member on the team (Ben B.) with 15 other members. That’s pretty good,  not representative of the actual number of young adults, but still respectable under the small size of the team. That would make the Young Adult percentage on the Call To Action steering team at 6.25%.

Now’s the bad news. The Interim Operations Team, which crafted the majority of the Call to Action legislation, has zero young adult members out of 12. So for the actual crafting of the legislation, putting all the vision into play, the young adult input and decision-making ability is exactly zero.

So Young Adults are seen, heard, but not involved in the writing of the actual legislation for the Call To Action. Bummer.

Now the good news: You have a choice! The response to the CallToAction put together by the Alternative Structure team has four young-adult co-signers to the legislation, out of 13. Thus, 30% of the Alternative Structure co-signers are Young Adults. Even when you include the extended team that co-wrote it but didn’t co-sign the legislation, you gain one young adult and make it five out of 32, or 15.62%.

I think there’s little wonder then that the Alternative Structure appeals to me as a young adult:

• It has a cautionary approach to authority by removing the Board of Directors
• it includes a diversity of voices by reducing the number of boards but still including at least 30 people on them.
• it keep the Methodist values of accountability in our strong connectional structure

All of which (a suspicion of authority, an appreciation of diversity, and enforcement of accountability…not to mention rebelliousness to bad ideas) are certainly United Methodist values in general but are also hallmarks of my generation of young adults in particular.

Where are the Young Adult voices in the Call To Action? When it comes to putting pen onto paper, the Alternative Structure includes their voices at every level of theory to organizing to writing. The Call To Action legislation has young adult voices at a lower percentage at the theory and organizing levels, but not the actual writing of the legislation.

It may or may not matter. From our research and head-counting, there is only ONE young adult on the General Administration committee at General Conference, which is the committee that handles the bulk of the CTA legislation. Out of 54 members, that’s 1.85% which is far less than the representation on either the Connectional Table or the Call To Action committee. So while young adult delegates will get to participate on the floor, in the back-and-forth consideration of the two proposals their involvement will be limited.

• Consideration:  While I recognize this can be due to self-selection (both of the young adults from my annual conference delegation chose other committees), young adults are usually lower on the list and thus the General Administration committee would have been taken by other delegates beforehand.
• Consideration: the one young-adult is Rachel, and she’ll be louder and more articulate than half the committee, so it may even out.

Now we can go down the line and point out how many people are ethnic on each team, how many women, how many central conference people, how many hipster mac users, and that would cause some back-and-forth between which team is more representative of that particular group. But if the voices of young adults are most important to you, the Alternative Proposal includes them at every level and it shows in the values reflected in the proposal.

Thoughts?

Notes:

• Special thanks to Rachel and another good friend for helping with the facts and figures and inspiration.
• Full disclosure: I am one of the co-signers to the Alternative Proposal and include myself (I’m 32 years old) in the above numbers.

Matthew Paul Turner of Jesus Needs New PR has a rough story that just rips at my heart. A member of Mars Hill church was confronted about some of his actions by the MH leadership. And what follows is commonplace in rural fundamentalist Calvinistic churches…but I didn’t realize how intrinsic it was to the Neo-Calvinist resurgence.

Part 1 of the story is essentially this: A church member Andrew was engaged with another church member, cheated on her, the relationship ended and Andrew confessed his sin to his accountability group friend. After the church leadership got involved with many meetings, each time Andrew felt more and more ground under their feet. Andrew learned he was “under church discipline” and what that meant:

Something in his spirit told him not to trust them. Something caused him to believe that the men sitting in front of him were far less interested in restoring him than they were in having control, feeling powerful, throwing their spiritual weight around. Beating down a sinner like Andrew.

Andrew says that many of Mars Hill’s men feel beaten down. “Because that’s what happens there, especially when you question a pastor. You get beaten down. Until you submit.”

Andrew was offered a discipline statement to sign. Jesus Needs New PR has it on their blog post, but it entails (edits by MPT, CG = small accountability group):

Andrew will attend XXX’s CG and meet with XXX on a regular basis (define).
Andrew will not be involved in serving at MH.
Andrew will not pursue or date any woman inside or outside of MH.
Andrew will write out in detail his sexual and emotional attachment history withwomen and share it with XXX.
Andrew will write out in detail the chronology of events and sexual/emotional sinwith XXX and share it with XXX and Pastor X.
Andrew will write out a list of all people he has sinned against during this timeframe, either by sexual/emotional sin, lying or deceiving, share it with XXX and develop a plan to confess sin and ask for forgiveness.

So far, this is okay. I’ve done a behavior covenant before with a parishioner who needed it. That’s okay if a individual needs it and in your pastoral concern it would seem helpful. Fine.

Part 2 of the story gets REALLY scary: Andrew declined to sign it and told the pastoral leadership that he was leaving the church. The leadership wrote back that he would still be “under discipline” if he left and it would be “escalated.” Andrew had no idea what that would entail: Mars Hill posted on the church’s private social network an extensive letter about Andrew’s sins and how the church parishioners should act with Andrew in public in “permissible” and “impermissible” ways. For example:

What is not permissible? Refrain from associating with Andrew in social settings, such as eating a meal, attending a concert or movie together [Scripture references]. Such disassociation from Christian Community is designed by God to help him realize the seriousness of his sin and need for repentence (gospel shame – 2 Thess 3:14)

Read it all here. Amazing.

While others have written that this type of church discipline is closer to John Wesley than the UMC might be, I’m more interested in the term “gospel shame”

The term “gospel shame” is taken from 2 Thess 3:14 which says in the Common English Bible:

 Take note of anyone who doesn’t obey what we have said in this letter. Don’t associate with them so they will be ashamed of themselves.

But how often do the Church Discipline crafters go on to the next verse 15:

Don’t treat them like enemies, but warn them like you would do for a brother or sister.

As the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary states:

On the one hand, the larger church has the authority to shame the erring ones because of the latter’s deviation from the writer’s word as given in the letter (v.  14). On the other hand, the parameters of the reform are clearly prescribed: The larger church must not regard the erring ones as enemies, but (as in 1 Thess 5:14) they must “warn” or “admonish” them as believers.

Maybe I’m from the University of Phoenix of religions, but I think that refraining from social contact, posting a warning to other churchgoers about a forsworn former member, always reminding him in every social interaction that he is “unrepentent” sure is treating the individual more like an enemy than a brother or sister.

So…Gospel shame? Is this the Gospel? I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure it’s mainly shame, or the relying on psychological and sociological pressure to enforce biblical rigidity rather than relying on the Gospel and the love of Christ to transform hearts and minds.

I think this is a situation that reminds us all to examine our church disciplinary norms and procedures and see if we are treating the other with love or with rancor, with a twisting of Scripture to exert control.

As MPH closes his blog series with:

When I first read this letter, I was sitting in Starbucks, and I was shaking. Shaking because I was hurting for Andrew. And too, I was shaking because I was so angry that somebody (heck, a lot of somebodies–not just Mark) would use the words and messages of Jesus in such away.

And if this is how they plan to treat Andrew–as an “unbeliever”? How in the world do they treat people who really are non-Christian? (And not to mention the fact that Jesus hung out with Gentiles, tax-collectors, etc.)

Fine. If they don’t want Andrew to be a member of their church, take his name off the list! But this? I mean, seriously, did any of this letter, except for perhaps the “heavy heart”, infer that Mars Hill loves Andrew? Oh I know they think their actions represent love. But really, many of us have experienced firsthand that kind of “love,” and we know very well that it’s an abuse of the term.

I honestly wouldn’t wish this so-called “gospel shame” on Mark Driscoll, let alone somebody I know personally, somebody I’m called to love, somebody I am hoping to help restore.

And you know what’s sad? Many (not all) of Andrew’s friends (from Mars Hill) are “obeying” the advice in this letter. While every one of them has implied that they believe Mars Hill is completely out of line and blowing this out of proportion, they all end up using some variation of the words that Mars Hill told them to say.

Indeed. Thoughts?

I cannot tell you how excited I got when I opened my feed reader this morning and saw the writeup on a young adult-led initiative in the United Methodist Church. At first I was excited that I’m friends with 3/4 of the leadership team…and then when I saw what they were doing, I realized I didn’t need to be biased towards my friends; their actions and project speaks for itself.

It’s called Spark12:

From the UMNS article: The United Methodist Church is taking a page from the tech startup world, and the resulting initiative enables young adults to be leaders in ministry.

Called Spark12, it is an incubator for social justice ministries developed and implemented by young adults. It is one way the denomination is working to develop principled Christian leaders, one of four areas of focus adopted by the 2008 General Conference, the church’s top legislative body.

From their website: Spark12 is designed to help to support the most promising ideas and individuals as they strive to bring innovative solutions to a world in need of transformation. Those selected as Spark12 fellows will receive funding. They will also have their ideas vetted by mentors with expertise in a related field and by peers eager to perfect the work of the team. Spiritual coaches will help them to remain grounded and oriented toward doing the most good. Our fellows will be challenged to refine their vision, learn how to express their goals, and be networked with people/organizations that might be inclined to support an idea like theirs.

We believe our process will allow participants of Spark12 to be more successful than if they had to go it alone. We suspect that their innovations will have a greater impact on more people more efficiently. We know that the world will be a better place when their spark is allowed to ignite.

Read the full article at UMNS here: Young adults lead social justice startups by Tita Parham.

As the Call To Action is (for better or for worse) moving us from boards who lead initiatives to grant-dispersing entities that support local or global ministry initiatives,  it seems that the young adults are leading the church in modeling how such a move might look. Here’s how it works:

Teams of one to three young adults ages 18 to 35 will submit ministry proposals to an executive design team…as well as representatives from general agencies, profit and nonprofit advisers and young adults. The design team will determine which ministries they will fund during each cycle.

The young adults leading the ministries have 12 weeks to launch, using funding from various investors, including general agencies, local churches, existing ministries and individuals.

“Twelve weeks is just long enough for a young adult to take a semester off (from college or seminary) without penalty and long enough to get a foothold in a project,” Casperson said. Spark12 “is meant to be a catalyst — (to) create a good, solid foundation.”

The projects must be innovative, with a social justice focus. The motivation must be the team members’ response to their faith and the belief that God is calling them to undertake the ministry. Team members need not be candidates for ordained ministry.

Regarding the types of programs to be funded, Casperson said the design team has left that “deliberately open and deliberately vague” because they don’t want to limit ideas.

“The goal is making a difference in the world,” Casperson said. “The focus is to do something truly sustainable.”

Even though spark12 is not merely a grant-dispering group but is a full breadth of ministry support team, the spark12 approach does address many of my concerns with grant-dispersing entities:

• The Leadership and Design team represent a commitment to diversity. It’s really nice to not look across the table and see a bunch of white males like me.
• The scope of programs is “deliberately vague” to allow for the full spectrum of possibilities to be considered, not dismissed because they don’t fit into rigid outlines.
• The evaluators ARE young adults and ARE working with young adults so the evaluators have more in common with the applicants.
• Their approach to guidance is more about coaching than directing, more about supporting the internal strengths of the applicants and context than directing from top-down the direction. This is a shift becoming more popular in counseling, spiritual direction, and ministry consultants, and I’m glad to see it here as well.

Finally, as with anything associated with del Rosario, Casperson, Joe Kim, or Scriven, Spark12 is extremely social media connected with Twitter and Facebook pages.

I hope the Hacking Christianity community passes this on to social justice-lovin’ young adults who might take advantage of this and apply to be one of the first initiatives. Check out their website to apply (deadline is the end of June but seriously: get on it) or to donate to the cause.

Thoughts?

Guiding Question: “If delegates are charged to go to General Conference to confer (Holy Conferencing) with one another about what is best for the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church; how can they be signing statements taking a position before they have been involved in the process of conferring (Holy Conferencing) with others?”

In Heather Hahn’s UMNS report on the Alternative Plan to the Call To Action, I saw this:

General Conference delegations from at least three annual (regional) conferences have endorsed restructuring. Two endorsed the Council of Bishops’s document, “For the Sake of a New World, We See a New Church: A Call to Action,” which outlines suggested changes including the proposed church restructure. A third, the North Texas Conference, has endorsed the Call to Action recommendations.

Wait…what? I had seen these announcements but I hadn’t really put together that they were endorsing specific policy changes ahead of General Conference. While Hahn is careful to say that they have merely endorsed “restructuring” it seems like three large delegations have “officially endorsed” the Call To Action set forth by the Interim Operations Team and other affiliated bodies of the United Methodist Church. Let’s see what they mean:

First, the Iowa delegation did not endorse the CTA specifically…it endorsed the Bishop’s letter for study and discussion.

Our delegation specifically endorsed the document for study and discussion in the wider Church and wishes to challenge all General Conference delegates to thoughtfully and prayerfully consider this document and its implications for our denomination…The Iowa delegation recognizes that there will likely be many changes to The Call to Action proposals from the Council of Bishops but found this document to be very helpful in describing the need for significant changes in structure and alignment of the United Methodist Church.

That is a far cry from “endorsing the Call To Action” as it has been framed by the umcalltoaction.org website. Iowa endorses the letter that outlines the situation, while not endorsing the specific policy changes. They have left that to General Conference where there will be “likely changes” that come from Holy Conferencing. That’s fine, endorse a letter for their annual conference to study and discuss. No problems from this armchair.

But from my friends on other delegations, it seems that Iowa’s action was referenced in other delegation meetings and they were encouraged to endorse the CTA because “look, Iowa is doing it.” And if we look at the reciprocating statements, they’ve gone beyond what Iowa did:

Louisiana

The Rev. Ellen Alston, head of the Louisiana delegation said, “While our members have many ideas about specific actions and structural details, our delegation is in complete accord that the Church needs to refine our focus for mission and effectiveness.  We are not currently seeing the results the world needs and our Church aspires to achieve, but we are profoundly encouraged by a new spirit that is emerging with passion for outreach that will make a positive difference.”

Louisiana thus endorsed the Bishop’s Letter “in spirit” but not in “specific actions and structural details.” Again: they have not endorsed the Call To Action’s specific recommendations. But they went beyond “endorsing for study and discussion” and endorsed the document. Still pretty fair. The Bishops have said it. They have authority. No problems, again, from this armchair.

North Texas

“[T]he delegation is also of one mind that the recommendations for general church structure and governance changes, including the merger of nine of the general agencies led by an Executive General Secretary, are “essential”…

Really? So North Texas not only affirms the Call To Action but has already decided before General Conference that the structure should go through? They are endorsing the specific policy proposals as a group. Even as they endorse it, they admit that changes will be made:

[T]he 30 member delegation from the North Texas Annual Conference voted unanimously to support the basic recommendations of the Connectional Table, knowing that the related legislation will be perfected with some changes made at General Conference.

Zzzzzzzz…For readers up til now, it seems mundane. “So what that elected delegations are voicing their support?” Yeah, pretty boring post so far, right? And if we were Congress that would be fine. We elect people to voice their convictions, right? Snoozer of a post here! Where’s your usual “rants” (to put in the language of a clergy colleague earlier this week)?

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Here’s where it gets interesting. A delegate from another conference asked me:

“If delegates are charged to go to General Conference to confer (Holy Conferencing) with one another about what is best for the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church; how can they be signing statements taking a position before they have been involved in the process of conferring (Holy Conferencing) with others?”

We are not electing representatives to Congress. These are not people sent to represent our already-laid-out interests and are there to advocate for us. If we were emulating the outside world, then we should expect our battle lines to be drawn beforehand: there’s a winning side and a losing side, and we hope that our side wins.

But as I’ve written before, that’s not the Church. Because we elect delegates not representatives:

You are not representing our conference. You are a delegate. That means we have delegated our collective authority to you. You vote your conscience as a delegate and pay no heed to “representing” your state. Authority has been delegated to you, take it and vote as a United Methodist who loves [his/her] church.

When we send our delegates, they are sent for two weeks to BE the church, to engage in holy conferencing, to discern what is best for the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church.  Holy Conferencing is not mere perfecting the documents, as the above delegations imply. It means that we come with all we are and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, engage with each other and come out after two weeks with a living document that guides millions of Methodists for four years.

As retired Bishop Pennel related back in 2007:

Conferencing is our way of being engaged with spirituality, mission, governance and fraternity. It is a time when we, as United Methodists, come together for worship, prayer, Bible study and the conduct of our business in a grace-filled manner. We believe that truth emerges when we, as a priesthood of believers, come together to listen to one another and to be open to the nudging of the Holy Spirit.

How can we be in Holy Conferencing if our delegations are “unanimous” in their approval of specific policy decisions beforehand? How can we be in Holy Conferencing if we come with our tinted glasses already on, with groupthink giving us additional inertia?

This lonesome pastor out in rural America wonders if delegation endorsements of specific policies is in error and if it is in violation of the call to be in Holy Conferencing and, if I may go further, if it is an obstacle to the Holy Spirit guiding our hearts and minds.

What say you? Discuss.

• Part 01: Lost Value of Humility
• Part 02: Lost Value of Togetherness

As we said in our last blog post, we are a little under 100 days from the beginning of General Conference 2012, some would say one of the most important GCs in the past two decades. Why? Because the whole church is buzzing about radical realignment, about the restructuring of the church from the top-down from the Call To Action movement. And as we said last week, it’s time to stop criticizing it as too business-y (which it is) and instead show how its theological affirmations and foundations are in error and not in the United Methodist vein. And it’s time to champion ideas of how to fix it.

In three blog posts, posted each week in January, I offer the following critique of the theological foundations of the CTA movement. I find that the Call To Action moves us away from our Methodist roots and current reality by tending towards values and sins that have no place in the United Methodist Church that we love. I’m basing these posts on a sermon by an Episcopal brother in the faith who articulates a similar drift that the Anglican Communion is having and I fear the UMC is heading towards as well.

Thanks for reading.

The second of three blog posts revolves around the misplacement of the basic unit of the church. We see this difficulty clearly when we consider the question “What is the basic unit of the church?”

• Is it the local church? If that is the case, then each basic unit should be self-sustaining. Is every church self-sustaining? No. They get educated and qualified clergy sent to it, they do not pick their own. They get minimum compensation support for the clergy when they cannot pay for their own. So the basic unit cannot exist without the others.
• Is it the Annual Conference? While they educate and qualify and do beyond what local churches can accomplish on their own, they are dependent on churches for Apportionment moneys, staff, prayers and service. When we close annual conferences and merge their space with others, we show that the AC cannot be the basic unit of the church.
• Is it the General Conference? While they determine doctrine and structure for the UMC, they do not fill it perpetually and meet only every four years. The legislative branch cannot be the basic unit of the church.

Answering this question leads to the third and fourth theological errors (here are the first two) in the Call to Action and its affiliated proposals.  The third theological error is the placement of the basic unit of the church at the top of the hierarchy, ie. Centralism. Centralism means that the highest hierarchical rung of the church is the most important and should have the most power. Part and parcel with this is a centralizing of our mission and focus.

The Call To Action has released a Study Guide (PDF) for individuals and small groups to study its proposals. On page 22, it outlines two of the new positions created by the CTA legislation as

1. An Executive Secretary (laity/clergy) over the highest perpetual legislative body in the UMC and
2. A super-bishop (aka Dumbledore) to preside over the College of Bishops and speak on behalf of the entire church.

Both of these centralize authority and power in response to change. Even if their roles are “nuanced” by GC into being figureheads, they both will still speak with authority over the United Methodist Church and guide the efforts of their groups. In addition, the groups also are replacing hundreds of board members with 15 people who will be the Board of Directors, chosen based on competency not representativeness. So we could have 15 people predominantly from the Southern Jurisdictions running the entire United Methodist Church, as they control the largest voting bloc on the nominating committee as the Alternative Proposal points out:

Although over 36% of the members of the UMC live outside the United States, with the Call to Action proposal the central conferences would only be allocated 11% of the seats on the proposed General Council for Strategy and Oversight. The formula for the remaining seats includes a bias that favors the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the US. Even though the Southeastern Jurisdiction has 24 % of the members of the UMC, it would be allocated more seats than all of the central conferences combined. This approach isn’t consistent with our democratic heritage, it isn’t inclusive of the entire denomination, and it isn’t helpful in growing our church.

So we have executives that may represent a smaller slice of the UMC. Is that the Church we believe in?

Finally, in our previous blog post, we talked also about the Call To Action’s focus on alignment, that is narrowing the focus of the church to vital congregations:

Provide base funding to the reduced number and size of agencies, with competitive access to substantial performance-based financial grants, and specifically using criteria that is tightly aligned with increasing congregational vitality

(Call To Action Report, 28)

In short, there will be fewer people who narrow the focus and if you don’t fall into the narrower focus of fewer people, then your funding gets cut. Executive authority narrows the scope of potential outreach by the church because there is less diversity for funding applicants to appeal to and to see value in. Even as boards try to be as diverse as possible, there’s no shaking the monoculture of privilege that board members tend to represent when we drastically reduce their numbers.

By narrowing the number of people at the top and by narrowing the focus of the UMC, we are centralizing an organization. My problem is that my generation has not seen any segment of society become more centralized. For example, music distribution went from the Big Records to Napster to Gnutella to Limewire (becoming more decentralized at each step). I honestly cannot think of any other organization in the world that is moving toward a “top-down” system rather than away from it…other than corporations and 20th century power bases. And yet this move towards centralization is exactly the direction the UMC seems to be heading with the Call to Action movement.

The error then is that the Call To Action report determines that centralizing authority at the top of the church will “trickle down” to better efficiency and mission focus at the bottom.

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The fourth theological error in the Call to Action is the drift towards Provincial Autonomy, what we would call Congregationalism. Autonomy means all the power lies in the local church; Provincial Autonomy expands this to include the Annual Conference.

Here we get to one of the primary claims of the CTA. On page 10 of the Study Guide, it states:

Our denominational resources and attention will need to be refocused on the congregation as the central mission body of the church…[A]ccording to the CTA Report we are challenged to “redirect the flow of attention, energy, and resources to an intense concentration to foster and sustain an increase in the number of vital congregations.”

Here the CTA makes the claim that seems in-line with the Book of Discipline that states in paragraph 120 that “Local churches provide the most significant arena through which disciple-making occurs.” But as we noted above, local churches depend a lot on resources (clergy, training, awareness) from other bodies. To eviscerate those meta-church bodies so that we could have more money for the local church would be counter-productive.

As well, do we continue to read the rest of that paragraph in the Book of Discipline?

Whenever United Methodism has had a clear sense of mission, God has used our Church to save persons, heal relationships, transform social structures, and spread scriptural holiness, thereby changing the world. In order to be truly alive, we embrace Jesus’ mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and to make disciples of all peoples.

I ask you:

• Would individual churches be as effective in saving persons without the General Board of Global Missions that is responsible for at least part of our skyrocketing success in saving souls in Africa and the Central Conferences?
• Would individual churches be as effective in healing relationships without the Religion and Race and COSROW agencies that keep us accountable to mutual respect in word and deed?
• Would individual churches be as effective in transforming social structures without the collective responses of the Church and Society (at the general board and annual conference levels) amplifying our voices into one coherent whole?

We are not a collective of autonomous churches (like the Baptist Conventions) or provinces (like the Episcopal Church). But that sense of autonomy (also called creeping congregationalism, which is also a good band name) is being codified in the Call To Action.

• By removing the Guaranteed Appointment (which it isn’t guaranteed right now anyways, but why let facts get in the way of more power?) Bishops will be allowed to relieve pastors at-will without recourse, just as they are not allowed to determine appointments at-will.
• At GC 2008 and the JC 1032, we see that church pastors are able to determine membership of gay parish participants without accountability. I’m honestly fine with clergy determining membership, but I’m not fine with it being done without accountability. This is not CTA-focused but it’s a side issue that shows this creeping congregationalism.
• Annual Conferences would be allowed to not have the various monitoring boards (COSROW, History, Religion and Race, Church and Society) that keep us connectional (The proposed language change is from “shall” to “should” to you polity geeks out there). Sure is nice to check our own pockets.

We also see this drift towards congregationalism as we place the blame of our failures on higher rungs of the church. The one point when I stood up and almost shouted “NO!” at Panera Bread while reading the CTA Study Guide was on page 21 where it says “When the thirteen agencies were created, congregations and conferences sought agencies to create resources for them and to do mission for them.” That is an outright mischaracterization of the agencies. They do not replace ministry or mission, they do what individual churches cannot: they collect resources to support missionaries; they undertake huge projects; they respond to disasters in professional ways; they publish books; they help make curriculum that is not localized or theologically narrow…they amplify the tinny voices that only Horton could hear otherwise.

Are they wasteful and erroneous in some ways? Yes. Are more missions and ministries done through the AC and CC level? Yes. But they cannot replicate the impact of the General Agencies. To blunt them is to fall into the sin of Autonomy by assuming the local church can handle everything better than the rest of the Connection.

The error then is that the Call To Action report redirects resources to reinforce a sense of autonomous provinces in the UMC, further exacerbating the regionalism that the jurisdictions create in the US side of the UMC. By codifying power in congregations and provinces, the CTA effectively neutralizes the connection.

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Hear the good news: The United Methodist Church resides in neither Centralism or Provincial Autonomy, resides in neither the concentration of power at the top or the discordant wanderings of the unorganized bottom of the ladder. Rather, the UMC’s theological claim is to a system of Togetherness called Connectionalism.

From the earlier question “What is the basic unit of the church?” the truth is that the basic unit of the church is nonexistent.There is no basic unit.  The entirety of the church is dependent on each other. Churches are dependent on Annual conferences for clergy and education and support. No Annual Conference can have a bishop unless a majority of the surrounding jurisdiction votes for it. Annual Conferences cannot even determine their borders without the consent of a majority of the other annual conferences at the jurisdiction level. It is often said that the UMC has a parallel structure to the USA government with executive, legislative, judicial branches…but can you imagine Arkansas and Missouri voting on who should be Oklahoma’s governor? Ludicrous! But it is exactly what we have in our UMC: interdependency and mutuality in our connectional church.

As we see, the CTA places power at the top and at the bottom of the UMC, further distancing those who fund the top from the top who make decisions for the bottom. While that looks like connectionalism, it isn’t such when it strains the lines between the two ends. And that’s not the Methodist way. Methodism lies between Centralism and Provincialism. Neither of these is a defining part of United Methodism but both are theological affirmations of the Call To Action movement. Togetherness lies in the middle of the pendulum swing between these two seductive tendencies.

The irony is that the CTA identifies exactly the problem these proposals will exacerbate: the issue of trust. If you further remove the communication and representation of the top of the United Methodist Church from the local congregations, then you create more distrust between the kings and the serfs. My biggest pet peeve is when our largest churches call apportionments “franchise taxes”…how many more churches will they call them that when their leadership looks and acts differently than them when we realize that 15 people cannot represent the diversity of the UMC.

Our claim to Methodism is togetherness: from the first accountability groups to the Class Meetings to today, we lean into each other and support each other. It is hard to do that when the people seem further away, both from the top and the bottom. It is for this reason that I continue to support the Alternative Structure proposed by progressive caucus groups that re-aligns the realignment proposed by the CTA:

1. To negate the Centralism of 15 Directors leading the UMC, the Alternative Proposal creates smaller-than-existing boards for each agency with representational requirements, placing more people (and more diverse people) as the heads of the UMC. There is no Super Bishop. By including more representatives from the jurisdictions and the central conferences, the notion of centrality has a more worldwide face.
2. To negate the Provincialism shifts, monitoring agencies are still required of the annual conferences, and guaranteed appointment is placed in the hands of the Boards of Ordained Ministries, not the bishops. By making these changes, they bring the leadership and the local church closer together.

As I’ve written before, the key thing is the “Methodist” way of doing things, even in the midst of crisis. Every faith organization has this identity and structure. For example, when our Catholic friends have crisis in their communities, they turn to the monks. When Cardinal Law presided over the Boston Child Abuse scandal and stepped aside, the RCC went to the Capuchin (a monastic order) Cardinal O’Malley. O’Malley sold the opulent mansion and cleaned house, as far as I can tell.  My worship professor at the time said that has been their process through the ages: when the priestly order falls short (I forget the proper term for Law’s vocational lineage), they turn to the monks whose order is more bottom-up than top-down.

That’s the Catholic way of handling crises. Criticize the results how you may want, but it’s the Catholic way. The Methodist way is through democracy: elected executives, diversity of opinion, big-tent Methodism, social action in varied stratum of society, committees, boards, and mutual accountability. This has been the Methodist way ever since we lost our chief executive in John Wesley and we haven’t replaced him until, perhaps, now. It is through this Methodist unwieldy connectional system that we find both our bane of slow to respond and our strength of holding together diverse groups. Even though I really can’t stand the abuses of the democratic system by the caucus groups, it’s more acceptable than increased executive power, in my opinion.

In short, there is a praxis of togetherness that we call Connectionalism that is in grave danger of being torn asunder at General Conference. By centralizing authority and removing connectional structures and entities, the very way we work together, or as Paul tells us, to “have the same care for one another” (1 Cor 12:25). Our networks of mutuality, of relying on each other for interdependent ministry, and of connectional reliance are in danger of being replaced by the idols of streamlining and efficiency. And that’s not the practice of a church I would recognize at the meta-church level.

Change is coming to the United Methodist Church. The only question for our delegates, whom I pray and hope you do too, is whether the Church that emerges better resembles the church worldwide or represents a business mega-conglomoration. One will be efficient in maintaining the institution, and one will be an authentic response to the call of God to create disciples and transform the world. Delegates: For better or for worse, in our representative democratic church…the choice is in your hands.

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?

I have a beef with my generation. In fact, I almost want to claim that I’m not of the generation in which I’ve been assigned.

I was born in 1979, which by most accounts is in the last 3 years of Generation X. I share a lot of character traits with my generation and have a lot of cultural experiences that Generation Y doesn’t share with me…so I know I’m in the right category.

One shared experience is that the latter third of Generation X grew up around digital relationships. The last 10 years of GenX are mostly “Digital Natives.” I was in 7th grade in 1994 playing Dune 2 until the early morning hours. I was in the first keyboarding class in my middle school. Many of the rest of my generation shares these first experiences from middle school to college, so having a digital experience is a shared relationship with this segment of my generation.

But here’s the key difference: While a large chunk are probably digital natives, it is probably only a three-year period encompassing my birth year that my section of Generation X would be considered “Social Media Natives.” I was in 11th grade in 1997 when I got on the NEW AOL Instant Messenger with one of the worst screen names imaginable. My formative high school, and college years have been around digital interactions and digital relationships that the elder arc of my generation didn’t have, and in fact, critiques.

So my beef is with my fellow generation’s writers and thinkers who de-value online relationships like Rev. Andrew C. Thompson who writes in his most recent UM Portal article the following:

As a Gen-Xer who has lived through the dramatic social and technological changes of the past 35 years, I’ve become convinced that the large-scale forces at work around us have a fragmenting effect on local churches. Technology has an “individualizing” impact, as new devices and media cause people to become connected as much to screens as to other people. And the influence of pop culture is almost imperial in its ability to co-opt people and communities into a story not their own.

I’ll admit, I’m with him. I go to my town’s football games and the youth are sitting in the stands texting each other rather than talking to each other. I’ve written before that I have a problem with parishioners texting not talking with me. And being critical of media messages is a constant drumbeat with my lessons with my youth and my sermons. So the two of us Gen-Xers are on the same page here.

But the next paragraph indicates the Social Media Native/Immigrant divide that contrasts my end of the Gen-Xers with the other 90% of my generation:

From time to time I’ll encounter people who think my read on the culture is a bit too critical. They’ll counter that social media actually make us more connected to one another. And they sometimes argue that the effects of globalization are making the world smaller and more intimate rather than the converse.

I understand these arguments, but I don’t buy into them. Social media and the devices that we use to engage such media are disembodied. To be a “friend” with someone on Facebook (to use one example) doesn’t require personally sharing the joys and pains of that person in any kind of face-to-face way. And to be connected with other people (culturally or economically) halfway around the world requires . . . what? Whatever the requirements, sitting with others in my living room isn’t one of them.

I couldn’t disagree more. Digital relationships can be embodied and personal in many ways that do not require face-to-face relationships. I speak out of some life experiences which are really really really nerdy but that’s the point:

1. When I was in college I was part of an online “clan” of Unreal Tournament gamers. The 12 of us never met in real life. I was the “chaplain” of the group as I was studying religion. We gamed together but also kept in community with each other, talked about our families, our work, our school, helped each other with homework, taught each other nunchuk skills (I learned HTML from one of them), and one member tracked another down when they were trying to commit suicide and stopped him. Could we drop out at any time? Yes and we did. But for that period of time, we kept together.
2. When I was between college and seminary, I started an online religion forum with 2 other people whom I never met. We expanded to 10 administrators/moderators from USA, England, Australia, only one of which I knew in real life. For five years we were in communication almost every day. We evangelized and brought in other people who were struggling with Christianity and brought them on a different path. We talked through divorces, through infidelity, through faith crises, through graduating college, through death of loved ones, through the death of one of our forum members. We broke the anonymity divide and called each other on the phone (Aussies sound weird). I was likely more present and accountable to this community in my time of transition than anyone in real life.
3. Now as a clergyperson, I’m a part of four online clergy or religious professionals groups with private forums and memberships. We lament together, we share best practices, we answer each other’s questions, we tease each other, we hold each other accountable, we go through pastoral transitions together, we celebrate joys and concerns. We see each other face-to-face maybe once every 6 months to two years. Or we’ve never met. It doesn’t matter: we have a shared identity and that alone is enough to allow us to enter into deeply personal and spiritual relationships with each other.

So the key question, it seems, is “Can digital relationships have the same depth and impact as real-life relationships?” My answer, as a Social Media Native, is yes. I’ve been doing it for ten years now. And I can’t be alone in this.

When I have this conversation, I often hear these top two arguments against this position (in my experience) and here’s my responses:

• “Online, we can be whoever we want to be.” That’s right, we can. We can be inauthentic, we can lie, we can be completely different people than we are in real life. Or we can be ourselves, be authentic, tell the truth about ourselves because saying the truth online is easier than face-to-face. I use the same approach I take with my youth. I tell them “you can lie to me and I will accept it and the lie is what we will talk about. Or you can tell the truth and we can talk about it. Either way, we’re going to talk, but one wastes our time, the other really helps.” If both parties choose to be authentic, then authentic relationships are possible.
• “Online relationships are shallow and more about convenience than intentionality.” That can be true. We can logoff when we don’t want to confront people, we can troll when we want to tear other people down, we can stop reading dissonant voices as we recede into our echo-chambers. We can walk away from relationships, create a new username, and start over. Of course, we can never do this in real life. We never switch churches when we are challenged, we never move when our life situation changes, we never change our circles of friends when growing up in high school and college. The truth is that our spheres are as fluid in real life as they can be online. I don’t see them as more or less about “convenience” than real life.

Are there negative effects of technology on our sense of community? Yes, but that’s taken place ever since the air conditioner moved families from their breezy porches to inside their homes with the doors shut. It just takes people who seek what non-natives have, who value what non-natives value, who want something in another realm that they seek out novel ways to create it in their realms. Those people exist and those movements happen now.

Someone asked me recently if I looked back 10 years from now and what would I have wanted to have accomplished for the Church. I replied that I would want to have figured out how to cross the social media / church divide. How to have online relationships that augment real-life relationships or, perhaps, even replicate them. How to be the church in the digital spheres in some ways, and how to move that energy to the real-life spheres, and back again (I’m still not convinced you can be a digital church completely: the incarnation requires some level of face-to-face time, but I place a higher value on digital relationships than most). You and this blog are a big step in that direction as we comment and discuss back and forth and find the answers somewhere in the middle.

Whether it was the air conditioner or the radio or television or subways enabling long commutes or Facebook, technology will always be challenging our definitions of what community is. And I’m thankful for well-intentioned people who love God and love people who can disagree and perhaps in our debates may find the middle way that honors the values of both sides of this digital/analog divide. Thanks for being a part of this big experiment.

Thoughts?