Local pastors and three-point charges

A Facebook group for licensed local pastors had a couple posts in the last day that give a peak inside the life of LLPs. The group is open to the public, so I am copying the content here to make it easier for my readers to read it.

Here is the life of a half-time appointment:

I have a three-point charge with three services on Sunday morning, 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., and 11:00 a.m. My churches are only about ten miles apart but it is still rushed on Sundays. It is a half-tiime appointment and I am still in school. It is my first appointment and the people are very caring and understanding of my time constraints. The biggest challenge for me is that I want to do so much more than I have time for. I call on God for help constantly, and God is always faithful. I know that many pastors are dealing with multiple point charges. I talked with one who had a six-point charge. May God give grace to all.

And here is one of the responses to the initial post:

God’s grace is what gets you through. I do a 9, 10 & 11:15 with no travel time built in…start the 9 early, hope to get to the 10 about on time, and then do not hurry from the 11 service. The middle church is always shortchanged unless the last church is OK with you being late… we tried to change times but the first church wouldn’t back up to 8:45 but the 11 was flexible to move 15 minutes later to build a little time in–that church also said, we’ll wait for you – do what you need to; I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t be able to stick to the schedule and do what I was supposed to do – MINISTER TO THE PEOPLE…Especially on communion Sunday. My husband and I actually do a 6 point charge together, each preaching 3 on a Sunday – he’s full-time, I’m quarter time – yep we both work full time in ministry to the people! God’s grace and mercy and lots of prayer will get it done. Pray for the hearts of your people to also be centered out instead of in – if so, they will be concerned about you rather than what you are not doing for them and looking for ways to help you.

As an LLP, I’ve never served more than a one-point charge, so have no experience with such situations. I am grateful for the ministry of these pastors, but ask how can the church expect vitality when it puts people into such situations?

Pornography and the UMC

So, let’s talk about pornography.

When I was a teenager, I discovered magazines that show pictures of naked women. When I was an adult, I found the same pictures on the Internet.

Most Christians consider viewing such pictures a sin. As a Christian, I do as well for reasons that have to do with Scripture and the meaning of holiness. (I am going to skip biblical references because this is a long post.)

And yet, even though I have faith in Christ and the assurance that my sins are forgiven, I do still find temptation raging up from time to time. Sin remains in me even though it does not — by the grace of God — reign. When I flee to God in prayer, temptation is conquered by grace.

If I am to believe Mr. Wesley, entire sanctification, or “perfection in love,” will not eliminate the source of such temptations, although I may by God’s grace reach a state in which they are so easily resisted that it does not feel like resistance at all.

Until  then, being in the flesh is to face temptation. Indeed, in our culture, it can be hard to avoid triggers for such temptation. I have no doubt, however, that giving into that temptation is a sin, and not just for married people.

Not everyone agrees, of course. According to the Gallup organization 3 in 10 adult Americans consider pornography morally acceptable. It appears there is a significant age gap on this. Young people are more than twice as likely as older Americans to say pornography is morally acceptable. The size and reach of the pornography industry is staggering.

In the face of all this, I turned to The Social Principles of The United Methodist Church expecting to find clear statements about pornography. (These pages are the 2004 version.) I did find a somewhat general statement in the page on Human Sexuality:

We deplore all forms of the commercialization and exploitation of sex, with their consequent cheapening and degradation of human personality.

This sounds to my ear to be more concerned with production rather than consumption, but you can certainly read into this strong disapproval of pornography if you are willing to work at it a bit. It certainly is not as clear as “Making and using pornography is sinful.” Avoiding plain English, however, appears to be a common characteristic of the writing in The Social Principles.

A bit more troubling is the General Board of Church and Society’s definition of pornography:

A commonly accepted definition of pornography is sexually explicit material that portrays violence, abuse, coercion, domination, humiliation or degradation for the purpose of arousal.

This definition may be “common,” but it is not the one in the dictionary, which would include much more material than the GBCS would. Reading the page that the quote above comes from, the GBCS appears concerned primarily with the harm done to people in producing pornography and the harm to relationships that is caused by distorted understandings of sexuality — especially violence and degradation — caused by viewing it.

These evils are real and should be opposed, but I want to argue more broadly than GBCS. Even if no women were exploited or harmed by pornographers and even if all the representations of women were “artistic” and “tasteful,” it would still be contrary to God’s will for men to view it.

I don’t think this is a controversial view of things among Christians or United Methodists, right? We all can agree about this, yes?

The identity, mission, and method of the UMC

From the Constitution of the United Methodist Church:

The church is a community of all true believers under the Lordship of Christ. It is the redeemed and redeeming fellowship in which the Word of God is preached by persons divinely called, and the sacraments are duly administered according to Christ’s own appointment. Under the discipline of the Holy Spirit the church seeks to provide for the maintenance of worship, the edification of believers, and the redemption of the world.

Our mission is found in ¶120 of the Book of Discipline:

The Mission — The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Local churches provide the most significant arena through which disciple-making occurs.

The process by which we do that work is spelled out in ¶122 of the Book of Discipline:

The Process for Carrying Out Our Mission — We make disciplies as we:

– proclaim the gospel, seek, welcome, and gather persons into the body of Christ;

– lead persons to commit their lives to God through baptism by water and the spirit and profession of faith in Jesus Christ;

– nurture persons in Christian living through worship, the sacraments, spiritual disciplines, and other means of grace, such as Wesley’s Christian conferencing;

– send persons into the world to live lovingly and justly as servants of Christ by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, freeing the oppressed, being and becoming a compassionate, caring, presence, and working to develop social structures that are consistent with the gospel; and

– continue the mission of seeking, welcoming and gathering persons into the community of the body of Christ.

Other than that passing mention of Wesleyan Christian conferencing, I am reminded in reading this how little my study of John Wesley relates to the identity, mission, and methods of our denomination.

The mission of “disciple-making” might set off echoes of John Wesley, but the specific process we establish by which disciples are made has little to do with the holiness of heart and life that he preached. It is outward religion.

This realization provokes a crisis. One I will not likely resolve soon.

Learning to be the church from Weight Watchers

Regular comment writer on this blog Betsy has some wonderful insight about what fosters transformation in people:

It is entirely possible to create an atmosphere of transformation in which each person is on their individual journey and also create an atmosphere of trust where it is OK to talk about failures and successes.

One of the things that has most affected my view of church has been my encounter with Weight Watchers. I was a rank and file member, lost 70 pounds, went through leader training and am now currently a rank and file member going after it “one more time” because the initial transformation wasn’t deep enough. I’ve changed some aspects of my life in regards to eating, but others are going to take a “little more work”. It is easy to lose the weight–keeping it off and not falling back into relying on food as “my drug of choice” is the hard part. It is easy to confess Jesus as Lord and Saviour, but to follow Him into a transformed life is another matter.

Weight Watchers provides tools and fellowship on the journey; everyone has something to contribute to the group’s “knowledge”–I equate that with spiritual gifts. One of the mantras/creeds is “There are no failures, only learning experiences. Examine any failure to learn from it, then let it go, turn the page and start again. Dwelling on it only results in more failure.” A spot is provided for transformation one person at a time and each person is on their own unique journey, dealing with their own unique set of bagage–ultimatiely, the whole world could be transformed . And it is very much OK to “mess up” and have to come back and take another shot at it. It takes more than once to “get it right” and the journey never truly ends–my amazing leader testifies to that. This jives with Morgan’s comment above: “why I’ve been saved at least three different times. I couldn’t tell you today which time was when I really got it, and it seems ridiculous to try to do so.” Based on my experience with Weight Watchers, in any journey of transformation there will be multiple times of “feelings of justification and sanctification”.

Probably the worst thing that happened within the Methodist Church was when a person’s spiritual life became a private/personal matter–there can be no transformation without owning up to “I need help”/”I obviously don’t have all the answers”. I can’t describe how hard it was for me to walk into that very first WW meeting which was tantamount to making a confession of “I have messed up and I need help.” And it was hard to go back for round two and own up that I didn’t get it right the first time. And how hard it is to go weigh in when I know things did not “go well”. But in that setting, it is all OK–it is what they want you to do. By weighing in following a disappointing week, I can not ignore the fact that things did not go as well as I would have liked–there is more work to be done and it is my responsibility to work on it. The current itteration of the WW program involves forcing members to take ownership and responsibility for their own jouney; they have learned “spoon feeding” is not as successful. One of my biggest realizations in taking the Disciple 1 Bible Study was how often “action” was required on the part of the individual in their spiritual journey–I now circle “action verbs”–particularly in Paul’s writings.

I have found myself comparing my experience at Weight Watchers to what I have encountered at church. Weight Watchers wins hands down. Every church leader needs to go through WW Leader training! Having a good leader/mentor/role model that believes in what they are teaching and practices it 7 days a week is crucial. It is the reason for my “success” at WW; it is what has spurred my recent spiritual growth resulting in feeling saved for the first time in my church-going life at the age of 58; but I also took the initiative and went “looking/seeking/expecting God’s grace.”

Invasive pastors as the key to Methodism

This is not a new observation, but I am struck today by how — for lack of a better word — invasive pastoral relationships were in the Methodism of John Wesley.

Just look at the way of salvation that we can discern in his writing and practice. An unawakened sinner is brought to conviction of sin by the preaching of the law. The awakened sinner struggles in this legal state and seeks after the pardon and assurance of justifying grace and new birth. During all this time, the sinner waits in the means of grace and produces works suitable to repentance. When God justifies the sinner the growth in grace and seeking God’s justifying grace begins in the life of the newborn Christian.

That is a sketch.

How can any pastor — or class leader — know where each member of his or her congregation is in this process without regular contact and fairly detailed and intimate conversations about the state of a person’s soul? The investment in time and energy and the level of trust required staggers my mind.

The temptation is to say that people do not require such paternalistic oversight. Can’t we just create an iPhone app that people can use to track their own spiritual life? But 50 to 100 years of hands-off thinking about discipleship has not gotten us great results. More important, I don’t see how Christians in the 18th century had less access to the Holy Spirit than we do. If they required shepherding to grow, why wouldn’t we?

Of course, it being necessary does not mean people will take to it or clergy and lay leaders know how to do it. But as I consider and try to learn more about the Methodist understanding of the way of salvation, I am struck by how useless it is to have a clear vision of the way without the ability to guide people along it.

Book recommendation: ‘Scripture Way of Salvation’

I’ve been reading Kenneth J. Collins‘ wonderful book on John Wesley’s theology of salvation, The Scripture Way of Salvation. I highly recommend it for those who want a detailed look a the depth and nuance of Wesley’s theology. My one caution is that he assumes a fair amount of familiarity with Wesley and the theological issues at stake in his book. It is not a beginner’s book.

Collins presents the unity of Wesley’s theology over his life, arguing against some interpreters who pit the “late” Wesley against the “early” Wesley, while at the same time noticing and holding up the ways in which his thinking changed. He also sketches in very helpful ways the similarities and differences between Wesley and other significant figures such as John Calvin, Martin Luther, and even Jacob Arminius.

Collins also helps navigate through seeming contradictions in Wesley’s theology and helps the reader see how multiple facets or dimensions of Wesley’s theology fit together. He resists the urge to simplify and thereby distort Wesley.

Here is a typical paragraph, this one on the doctrine of justification:

In summary, then, justifying faith embraces several vital factors: On a notional level, it entails an assent to the truth revealed in Scripture that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself; on a personal level, it includes a hearty trust (fiducia) in the person and work of Christ; and on a sensate or experiential level, it embraces a trust that is nothing less than a supernatural work, a “divine evidence and conviction” that Christ “loved me, and gave himself for me.” Consequently, justifying faith cannot be conceived in any full sense apart from the redemptive nature of life, death, and ministry of Jesus Christ, or apart from the experiential trust and conviction graciously received by believers through the ministrations of the Holy Spirit. In 1787, in a letter to Theophilus Lesser, Wesley highlights the distinctions of Christian faith: “To believe the being and attributes of God is the faith of an heathen. To believe the Old Testament and trust in Him that was to come was the faith of a Jew. To believe Christ gave Himself for me is the faith of a Christian.”

The great strength and weakness of this book is that it is hard to quote. It is a dense, yet accessible, dive into the full richness of Wesley’s writings about grace and the way of salvation. I recommend it.

‘Look what we did!’

The Parson shares his best advice for the pastoral success:

The parson smiled. He remembered the best advice he’d ever received. “I do, Bruce. I do. You know, the best advice I ever got was when I was backing the car out of the driveway of my parent’s house to head for my first appointment. My dad was retrieving the mail from the mailbox. He came over, leaned down, and said to me: “You’ll be a success if, when you leave that church, the people say, ‘Look what we did!’”