Salvation UMC-style

From the Confession of Faith of the United Methodist Church:

We believe man is fallen from righteousness and, apart from the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, is destitute of holiness and inclined to evil. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.

Since we also believe that grace has been poured out on all people, that means people we meet are not, in fact, destitute of holiness. Or rather they will not be if they respond to the work the grace of God has already done in their lives.

But this grace itself is not saving grace. The new birth lies beyond the preservation from total wretchedness. And it lies beyond our own power or ability.

We believe we are never accounted righteous before God through our works or merit, but that penitent sinners are justified or accounted righteous before God only by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

These are our doctrinal standards.

What does that mean?

Sex and holiness

Rachel Held Evans and her prolific comment posters have a fascinating conversation going on sexuality and holiness.

Perhaps instead of virginity…or even purity (which carries something of an either/or connotation, I think)…we ought to talk about the path of holiness.  Holiness, to me, means committing every area of my life— from sex, to food, to time, to work—to the lordship of Jesus. It means asking how I might love God and love my neighbors in those areas so that the Spirit can grow love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in the sacred soil of everyday life.

Holiness isn’t about sticking to a list of rules. It isn’t something you either have or don’t have, keep or lose. It’s a way of life, filled with twists and turns, mistakes and growth, uncertainty and reward. And, (to make matters even worse for the fundamentalists), a holy lifestyle often looks different from person to person, though the fruit of the Spirit is the same.

3 steps to save a denomination

A Southern Baptist writes about the decline of his denomination:

In recent years, I’ve watched my denomination fight vicious battles over issues of little importance. I’ve seen them dive head first into divisive partisan politics. And I’ve witnessed how anyone who doesn’t bow down to the institutional machine or even dares to question the status quo is not-so-kindly shown the door. No wonder the denomination is shrinking.

A new day is dawning in American religious life in which Christians of many stripes seem to be running fast and hard from denominations, particularly those whose behavior mirrors the descriptions listed above. If the Southern Baptist Convention wants to survive in this era, I believe they must learn to do at least three things:

See what those three things are by reading the original post.

What we can learn from Africa

Indiana Bishop Mike Coyner has some great reflections about the observations made by a group of young African Christians who came to tour Indiana as a choir. At the end of the column, the bishop shares a conversation he had once with an African bishop about the African bishop’s views of what the American church needed:

1. Prayer – he said “The American church is not a praying church. You say lots of prayers, but you don’t pray deeply and listen to God. If you really want your church to be more alive, you need to pray for your church, your pastors, and your leaders.”
2. Love – he said, “You Americans love one another in your churches, but you don’t extend love beyond your close group of friends in the church. In Africa, we love people into the church, we don’t just love other church people.”
3. Indigenous Worship – he said, “In Africa the church only began to grow dramatically after we were freed from the colonial style of worship from France, Portugal, and Britain. We brought our drums into worship and we learned to sing the Gospel in the languages of the people.” He went on to advise, “Your pastors need to learn the culture of those outside your old churches and bring worship to them in words, music, and style that they understand.”

Preaching with the Spirit’s power?

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Corinthian 2:1-5, NIV)

I have not been pleased with my preaching recently, so my morning devotional reading today caught my attention. When I feel as if my ministry is muddled in the mire, my first instinct is often to turn to human wisdom and technique. I start pulling books off the shelf by experts and successful preachers to look for ideas and methods.

This is not wrong, but Paul reminds me that it is not exactly right either. Paul preached only Christ and preached with the Spirit’s power.

So, here is the question. What does the Spirit’s power look like when it attends your preaching?

Signs of life in the small church

Pastoring a small church, I am reminded this week, is full of wonderful signs of life.

One church spent the week hosting Vacation Bible School. It was not as large a VBS as your church, probably, but the attendance of children and adults was higher than our average Sunday worship attendance. I bet Church of the Resurrection can’t say that! You can see some photo evidence of the week over at the church’s web site (if you like looking at other people’s vacation photos).

At the other church today we gathered around at the end of the worship service and laid hands on two members who were going off to South Dakota for a mission trip organized by the conference. The congregation had spent the last couple of weeks gathering up supplies and money to support their trip.

If there has been any weakness of late at the two little churches it has been the pastor. My sermons have been sub-par the last few weeks. It is good to know that life comes from places other than the pulpit.

A third form of liberal Christianity

David Watson, academic dean at United Theological Seminary, writes — in a much more theologically robust way — about the same topic in my last post.

In responding to an article that describes two kinds of liberal (or progressive) Christianity, Watson adds a third category:

There is, however, another type of Christianity that has attached itself to progressivism. I will call it “issues-based” Christianity. This type of Christianity leads with issues and couches the issues in God-talk. The goal of our faith is to transform society in such a way as to meet particular ideas of social justice. Salvation is primarily, then, a this-worldly social category. Issues of conversion, personal transformation, the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit, and eternal life are simply left out of the discussion. …

To be clear, as a Wesleyan I am thoroughly committed to the Church’s role in transforming society. My own passions in this area are mainly around people with disabilities. Our work in society, however, must be grounded in a full-bodied conception of the nature and work of the Holy Trinity. Our claims about God lead to our understanding of how we should live and what the world should look like, not the other way around. Theology must first and foremost be about God.

As I have begun to explore the issues of disability and theology, I have seen some of what Watson writes about here. The temptation is to start with people and let our conclusions about them shape or limit what are willing to say about God. I hear Watson calling for an inversion of this movement. That God-first approach is what I am trying to do in my own faith and spirituality.

A liberal, Yoderian, biblical, Wesleyan chorus

A pair of stories I linked to a few days ago has been rumbling around in my head. The British writer of the stories was diagnosing the problems of liberal Christianity and providing his prescription for a cure for what ails it.

The articles keep bouncing around in my head because of all the other voices they set to chattering as I was reading them.

The writer argues for a form of Christianity that affirms the liberal nation-state: particularly the separation of church and state and the notion that government exists to preserve and extend human liberty. But he argues that the form of Christianity that affirmed this political philosophy took a wrong turn when it tried to divest itself of “cultic” practices.

The second pillar of the new liberal Christianity is a bit more surprising. For in the past, liberal Christianity has downplayed the ritual side of religion, often seeing it as a road leading to Rome. I prefer the term “cultic” to “ritual”. Of course, I’m not advocating creepy cults that brainwash people. The word “cult” just means worship; I like it because it has a strong and rather exotic aura (whereas “worship” suggests the blandness of Songs of Praise, and “ritual” is redolent of Catholic and Anglo-Catholic tradition). The word has, in fact, a primitive aura, which is appropriate, for Christianity must step away from claiming to be the religion of rational civilisation and accept its affinity with primitive religious practice (this was Wittgenstein’s great contribution to theology).

His great hope is for liberal Christianity to recapture its cultural relevance and influence. He does not really discuss how this form of liberal Christianity would escape the Arianism or Deism that characterizes so much contemporary liberal Christianity. Somehow, it seems, cultic practices would take care of that.

I do not know if other proponents of liberal Christianity would affirm this writer’s thesis, but I did find it an interesting argument. It is one that set off other voices in my head.

As I read his piece, I could hear Stanley Hauerwas jeering in the background. A self-described high-church Mennonite, Hauerwas likes to tell Christians that if they celebrate Mother’s Day or have an American flag in the church they are practicing a form of Baalism. They thing this writer affirms as foundational, Hauerwas names a disease.

As I read, I was also thinking of those problematic passages in the New Testament where Paul and Peter urge the fledgling church to give honor to the emperor. Often these parts of the New Testament are dismissed as overtures by a persecuted church to keep the storm-troopers at bay. But I do wonder if giving honor to the emperor and affirming the liberal nation state might be more or less the same kind of move. Is the church called the way Jeremiah called Israel to settle down and work for the good of Babylon during its days of exile?

And here the third voice emerges. American Methodists have always been put in an awkward position by John Wesley’s Toryism. He wrote in strong language against the American Revolution and was a firm defender of the king and the close bond between the Church of England and the state. (Jason Vickers has written a poorly titled but interesting book on Wesley as an establishment Anglican.)

If liberal Christianity is at all what the writer in the British newspaper argues it is, it is no wonder that John Wesley fits so awkwardly into contemporary United Methodism. We are a denomination created to be a stalwart of liberal Christianity — just when all forms of Christianity were losing their cultural ascendancy. Wesley can’t be shoved into the liberal Christian box without making a bloody mess of him. This does not stop some people from doing it, of course. That they then parade around the bloody corpse of Wesley as a banner for liberal Christianity is either tragedy or farce.

These are the voices I carry around most of the time.

I came to the church through liberal Christianity. I was introduced to post-liberalism by Will Williion and Stanley Hauerwas. I discovered the Bible only well into this process, and I met John Wesley when I discerned a call to ministry. This chorus of voices still spend a lot of time in my head. There are others, but these are the loudest.

And here endeth the tour for today. Please stop by the gift shop on your way out to pick up a T-shirt or postcard.

Superman not ‘Jesus I prefer’

Posted in a public place by about a review of the new Superman movie. The review puts an emphasis on the Messiah themes and images from the film.

I think this is why I have never liked Superman. He is a Jesus figure who is not really like the Jesus I prefer at all. He’s the Jesus that most dominionist Christians want- bumbling around saving people but not really relating to people at all-an alien. The Jesus I prefer is more human (but still divine).

I’ve been trying recently to hear the way people talk about their faith. This caught my attention because of that.

My first sermon

I stumbled upon the text of the first sermon I ever preached. It was at licensing school five years ago. You’ll figure out the text pretty quickly.

Join me now on a hillside in Judah. It is summer. The sun beats down through the humid air. We sweat and look in vain for a cooling cloud or even a gentle breeze. For forty days we have stood here on this hill. We wake up after a restless night on the hard ground. We eat a breakfast of dry bread and cheese. We take up our wooden shields and our spears, and slide helmets on our heads. And we stand in the sun staring across the valley at another army drawn up to oppose us.

We stand every day and listen to the Philistine giant rant and taunt us. Goliath is his name. He stands nine feet tall! His shield is so heavy, one of us could barely lift it. His spear is a bigger around than a normal person’s arm. He stands there in front of his army, in front of our army, and demands a champion come forward to fight him.

Yeah, right.