John Meunier

Matt Judkins has been wondering if we have the wrong verb in our mission statement: The mission of the United Methodist Chuch is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

“To make” rings too much of industrial process and the assembly line. It gives him pause to wonder if we need a more organic mind set. Perhaps the mission is less to make disciples and more to create conditions that allow disciples to flourish. As opposed to the assembly line, he suggests the metaphor of the landscape artist or environmentalist.

Of course, all metaphors are limited. Rather than ask whether this metaphor or that metaphor is more apt, we are wiser to ask how each metaphor helps see something in a new light.

• How is disciple making like an assembly line?
• How is disciple making like a garden?
• How is disciple making like a rock concert?
• How is disciple making like child birth?
• How is disciple making like a romance?
• How is disciple making like death?

Okay, these are all similies not metaphors. But I bet sitting around and talking about these – and others – would give us some interesting insights on what disciple making is and what it does.

Kansas Bishop Scott Jones explains why they bother to read each appiontment at the end of annual conference.

Richard Heyduck reports on a Q&A session with John Ortberg at a conference Heyduck attended. One of Ortberg’s answers triggered this reflection from Heyduck:

It seems like a luxury of larger church environments to be able to allow job specialization along lines of gifting. As pastor of a small church, I have to do many things – some I’m good (gifted) at, some I’m not. Otherwise essential functions won’t get done. Perhaps as our smaller churches migrate from the engrained clergy/laity dichotomy to a spiritual gifts understanding of ministry, we’ll be able to do more specialization.

I’ve been taught about the differences in church size and what each means for pastoral leadership. Someone told me recently that a 200-300 member church is known as a clergy killer because it is usually too small for two pastors but too big for one.

Heyduck’s comments call to my mind a conversation I heard on the radio last week while driving to annual conference. Tim Legler was talking about playing in the NBA. He said that there are only a handful of players at that level of basketball who can “do it all.” Everyone else, he said, is in the NBA because they are very good at one or two specific things. They are brought to teams because they excel in one or two areas – and that is primarily what they are supposed to do.

In other words, the NBA is full of narrow specialists who get slotted into tasks related to their particular gifts. A few phenoms are given the freedom and the responsibility to “do it all.”

In the church world, we do this just the opposite way. Most of our churches are led by people who are asked to do it all, despite their particular weaknesses and gifts. They are also usually asked to do this without any discernable support or “coaching” to assist them.

Only in the rarified air of big churches are pastors slotted into paritcular roles that – when the system works properly – play to their particular strengths.

This may not be something that can be changed, but the contrast leaped out at me when I heard Legler talking.

We have the mission statement: Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

But how do you do that?

Randy Maddox wrote a helpful paper about what he imagines a Wesleyan answer to that question might be. He said a congregation that makes disciples will focus on Christian doctrine, Christian discipline, and self-denial.

He flushes that out with some more detail in the paper, but it all boils down to five basic pieces of advice for congregations.

Doctrine
*Cultivate a biblically based and theologically balanced understanding of what it means to be a Christian

Discipline
*Experience the enlivening presence of the Spirit
*Appreciate the progressive freeing impact of formative disciplines
*Participate in well-rounded and balanced set of means of grace – including specifically works of mercy

Denial
*Understand that true happiness comes from progressive denial of our distorted dispositions

I am greatly drawn to Maddox’s framework and this particular list. They seem very practical – if in need of more elaboration and specific detail.

How do you handle this situation: Word gets to you that people are saying things – negative things – about another pastor.

You caution the specific source of the gossip about gossip, but the mere fact it came to you means it is widespread.

What do you do? Do you talk to that pastor? Even if you don’t know each other well?

WARNING: Heavy nerd zone ahead. If’ you’ve never played role playing games or watched Lord of the Rings, this will sound like gibberish. Might sound like that even if you are a fellow nerd.

There is this very nerd-funny web comic that presents the story of Lord of the Rings as if it were a session of a role playing game. (See, I warned you.)

In one of the many panels, the author ends the panel with a good point:

Remember, nothing will spice up your campaign quicker than long descriptions of NPC’s doing spectacular stuff while the players sit around and watch.

Isn’t that part of the challenge of all our God-talk? We cleave so hard to “justification by faith alone” that we basically reduce much of this grand adventure with God to sitting around and watching Jesus do everything. Indeed, we say all the really important stuff is done already and certainly is not done by us.

There are good theological reasons for this, but don’t we run the risk of making people feel as if they have no role? They are passive recipients of salvation.

Yes, I know we talk about holiness and sanctification as the work that comes as a result of faith. But doesn’t that end up being a bit like having your older brother push out of the way to build the cool new model ship you got for Christmas, and then when he finishes it say it is okay because you get to look at it and dust it off?

Maybe not that bad, but faith – to be an adventure – needs to be about doing, not watching. If the big, crucial things have already been done, then rather than talk about those, we should focus our attention – and our talk – on the things that we can do and need to do to make faith live.

Just a thought from a nerd.

If only I had a video screen at church – and a budget big enough to license everything I’d like to show.

I’m playing around with images about dancing and following Christ for my sermon. That reminded me of this video.

Former GE CEO Jack Welch says there are four types of managers in private business.

Type 1 – Makes the numbers you want. Has all the values you want.

Type 2 – Makes none of the numbers. Has none of the values.

Type 3 – Does not make he numbers. Has all the values.

Type 4 – Makes the numbers. Has none of the values.

We have a tricky time with numbers. Bishop Willimon has recently argued that everything we do is about numbers. Some disagree, but most believe that being a Christian should create some change in people and having Christians around should change the world in some ways, so we expect there to be consequences or results from successful ministry – even if we can’t easily count many of them.

This evening, though, I have been thinking some about the values side of things.

Do we have a clear idea what “values” we want the leaders in the United Methodist Church to exhibit? Welch does not like the word values, he prefers “behaviors.” He wants us to be able to name the specific behaviors we want from people. As a denomination, do we do that? As annual conferences?

Can you list the specific behaviors that are expected of clergy?

We have a list of duties in the Book of Discipline. Cutting out all the subpoints, it looks like this:

• To preach the Word of God, lead in worship, read and teach the Scriptures, and engage the people in study and witness.
• To counsel persons with personal, ethical, or spiritual struggles.
• To perform ecclesial acts of marriage and burial.
• To visit in the homes of the church and the community, especially among the sick, aged, imprisoned, and others in need.
• To maintain confidences inviolate, including confessional confidences except …
• To administer the sacraments of baptism and the Supper of the Lord according to Christ’s ordinance.
• To encourage the private and congregational use of the other means of grace.
• To be the administrative officer of the local church and to assure that the organizational concerns of the congregation are adequately provided for.
• To administer the temporal affairs of the church in their appointment, the annual conference, and the general church.
• To participate in denominational and conference programs and training opportunities.
• To lead the congregation in racial and ethnic inclusiveness.
• To embody the teachings of Jesus in servant ministries and servant leadership.
• To give diligent pastoral leadership in ordering the life of the congregation for discipleship in the world.
• To build the body of Christ as a caring and giving community, extending the ministry of Christ to the world.
• To participate in community, ecumenical and inter-religious concerns …

This is quite an intimidating list of responsibilites – especially as I am a part-time local pastor. But this list does not really boil down to a set of values and behaviors.

The issue is central for Welch because he says the worst possible person in a company is the Type 4 manager – the one who gets all the results you want but does not exhibit the behaviors you want. The disconnect between the aspirational values of the organization and the actual behaviors of individuals – who are held up as heroes and role models – saps the organization of energy and purpose. People learn that the values do not matter, only results, and stop taking all talk of those values seriously.

In the absence of any clear sense of shared values, clergy are left to work things out for themselves. And there is not standard by which we can say whether Pastor X is advancing the mission of the UMC or hurting it. Couple this with queasiness about numbers and don’t we create a system in which it is hard to know what is expected and even harder to spot those who meet expectations.

I’m slowly getting over my man crush on Adam Hamilton after his sessions at the Indiana Annual Conference. But I hope I don’t get cured all the way.

In a couple years of discernment and pulpit service in the UMC, I’ve encountered a lot of black humor and just plain fatalism about the future – both at the local church level and in the wider denomination. There is a grim resignation and even a hopelessness.

Hamilton is among the voices reminding us we serve the God of new life, not the God of death.

One of the things he has said is that it could be that God is done with the United Methodist Church. It may be that God no longer has any use for us. Perhaps the trends pointing to our death as a denomination in the decades ahead are inexorable.

But, Hamilton said, if that is his will, we are going to be fighting against God every step of the way.

He went on to say he did not believe the best days of the UMC are behind it, but it is his initial fighting spirit that sticks with me.

In the face of resignation and shoulder shrugging and calming words that say, “You know, some churches just need to die,” I am reminded that we are in the business of life not death – and if God wants a church to die, the pastor should spend all his or her energy fighting God every inch of the way. We should not work out a good death and get our affairs in order. We should go down swinging because the work we were put on Earth to do is too important to walk away from because of a little thing like death.

Hamilton helped remind me of this.

I am grateful to him for that.

Scripture Adam Hamilton used while making the case that the church exists to seek out the lost:

Ezekiel 34

Luke 15:11-32

Luke 19:1-10

Hamilton mentioned his favorite gospel is Luke, which he called the gospel of the lost.