John Meunier

One of my Christmas book purchases was Dan Dick’s Equipped for Every Good Work. It is a really interesting and comprehensive approach to building a gifts-based church. I am really looking forward to using it with the church I serve.

Here’s the bad news, though.

I found out that I am pretty much the status quo of United Methodism. My primary spiritual gift is Teaching, followed closely by Discernment. My other secondary gifts are Shepherding, Wisdom and Knowledge. My leadership/interaction style is Pleaser. My primary spiritual orientation is Head.

On at least the last two of those, Dan points out that my styles are right smack down the main street of the UMC. In other words, I am the problem. Every time someone says, “The church is doomed to die if it remains as it is. I’m the ‘as it is.’”

My apologies to all my United Methodist brothers and sisters who are trying to save the church and reach out in new and bold ways. I am the problem. You should drive me from your midst before God sends the snakes.

Here are the most read posts of 2009. I’m not stunned to see lectionary reflections dominate the list. Weeks I do not post lectionary reflections, the visitor count always dips.

This is my telescope. The universe is what it says it is
This post is number one because a lot of people Google “telescope” and end up on my blog. Since this post is about the Bible, I bet they are disappointed.

Lectionary reflections – Mark 13:1-8

Lectionary help – Mark 10:2-16

Are the Three Simple Rules Anti-Wesley?

Lectionary reflections – John 18:33-37

Dr. Oz talks with a woman about the steps to getting healthy. First, look at yourself and see your true state. Second, decide to do something different. Third, track your progress toward your goal.

He just described the evangelical project.

That first step is the one we tend to skimp on the most in the church these days. Dr. Oz took a woman and weighed her, took her vital signs, tested her blood sugar, and told her how old her body thought she was compared to her chronological age. The hard, truth of how unhealthy she was struck her hard.

Isn’t this what John Wesley called repenting? Wesley talked of repentance not as “turning around” as we often do, but in terms of looking at our true state and seeing ourselves as we truly are. Until people felt a true and deep need for the gospel, they would not grasp on to it with joy.

I don’ t think this requires shame or telling people to dwell on lists of sins, but it does mean people need – really need – to experience the absence of God in their lives. We have a lot of defense mechanisms against this experience. Shallow piety might be one response. Loud but hollow atheism might be another. Sedation and distraction might be another. There are many ways to avoid the truth.

Old-style hell-fire preaching is not the answer. It often plays right into our defenses. But that does not change the need for the first step.

If it is good enough for Dr. Oz, why should the church leave it to the past.

I could not find a YouTube clip of this scene from Steve Martin’s The Jerk, but this is how I feel today because my new copy of the United Methodist Book of Discipline 2008 arrived today.

Yes, I’m that big a Methonerd.

Time to start reading it side-by-side with my 2004 edition so I can spot all the crucial differences inserted by the wise and all-powerful General Conference.

Scott Jones’ book United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center argues for the importance of doctrine in the life of the United Methodist Church an provides his summary of the shape and specific content of that doctrine. He also argues that ordained clergy be held to their ordination vows to teach and maintain the doctrine of the UMC.

In the closing section of the book, he discusses the difficulty in deciding the bounds for honest dissent with doctrine. He suggests the church cannot tolerate dissent on issues that are central to the denomination’s teaching. Jones uses the example of unitarian teaching as something that hits close to the center. A preacher who cannot persuade the denomination to change its doctrine on such an issue, Jones writes, should turn in his or her credentials and withdraw from the connection.

The book has me wondering about what lies at the doctrinal center of the UMC.

Clearly homosexuality and abortion are not such issues. Theological liberals disagree strongly with church doctrine on homosexuality, yet remain in the denomination. Theological conservatives go well beyond church teaching on the issue of abortion, which calls for access to safe abortions in all but a few cases. So far, few clergy have left the denomination over these differences and none – so far as I know – have been brought up on charges for teaching doctrines contrary to the UMC. (A few pastors have gotten in trouble for being homosexuals, but none – so far as I know – have been charged with church crimes for teaching contrary to church doctrine about homosexuality.)

So, on the theory that you know what matters to an organization by what it is willing to kick people out for, I wonder what lies so close to the heart of United Methodist doctrine that we’d draw a line in the sand.

What doctrinal issues should get a clergy person in trouble with the denomination? Are there any? If not, why do we bother to talk about accountability with the laity?

Matthew 2:1-12

Jesus causes different people to react in quite different ways.

Herod feared the child. He used trickery to try to learn of him – but never himself sought to be in the child’s presence. He feared him from afar and tried to destroy him.

The three wise men traveled over great distances based on an uncertain hope. They searched. They left their lives and their homes behind. They were in a way a foreshadow of the disciples who would drop their nets to follow Jesus. They came not to get anything from Jesus, but to give him gifts and pay him honor.

Does trying to read into the biographies of these men give us a clue to their reactions? Or does that reduce faith to sociology and psychology? At it heart, we have two possible reactions to Jesus in this story. A desire to pay him homage and fear. What causes these different reactions to well up in us? Why do some of us react like Herod and others like the magi?

It looks like a movie review, but it also a good discussion of the differences between pantheism and theism.

Heaven and Nature

I confess I did not read the bishops’ letter during Advent at the church I serve.

I wonder how others treated this request or used the document.

Just to remind those who do not remember the letter, here is the text of it: Read the rest of this entry »

One day a few weeks ago, I was reading the Barmen Declaration as part of sermon prep. Then I found in my news stream word of a new Christian declaration of principles coming from – of all places – Manhattan.

The Manhattan Declaration is a rather narrow document compared to the words from Barmen. The collection of clergy, theologians, media personalities, and others who signed the Manhattan Declaration find the world in crisis over abortion and gay marriage. All in all, it reads to me as a much smaller vision of faith than those words penned by Karl Barth.

Then I found this NY Times profile of a Princeton professor who is the intellectual godfather of the Manhattan Declaration. Robert George, a Catholic, has been influential in shaping conservative Catholic and Christian thought for a number of years.

Last spring, George was invited to address an audience that included many bishops at a conference in Washington. He told them with typical bluntness that they should stop talking so much about the many policy issues they have taken up in the name of social justice. They should concentrate their authority on “the moral social” issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, where, he argued, the natural law and Gospel principles were clear. To be sure, he said, he had no objections to bishops’ “making utter nuisances of themselves” about poverty and injustice, like the Old Testament prophets, as long as they did not advocate specific remedies. They should stop lobbying for detailed economic policies like progressive tax rates, higher minimum wage and, presumably, the expansion of health care — “matters of public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve differences of opinion among reasonable and well-informed people of good will,” as George put it.

As the profile makes clear, George is self-conscious about pushing politics and faith into closer union.

George instead is plunging deeper into partisan politics. Alarmed at signs that the Republican Party was moving away from cultural issues, he recently founded a new group called the American Principles Project, which aims to build a grass-roots movement around his ideas. “His new venture will make him a major political player,” the conservative writer Fred Barnes predicted in The Weekly Standard.

The Manhattan Declaration was conceived as a clear part of this overall effort.

With such an overtly political motivation behind it, I find the Manhattan Declaration disappointing on two grounds. On its face, it is a pale shadow of the Barmen Declaration that it tries to claim as a source of inspiration and model. On deeper analysis, it is a sad attempt to dress up partisan politics in clerical robes.

When I saw only one clearly identified United Methodist on the list of signatories, I was happy. When I saw that The Confessing Movement is promoting the declaration on its web site, I was disappointed. I did not think The Confessing Movement was interested in being part of a partisan political gesture.

The New York Times reports on technology making it easier to bet on sporting events.

Gamblers can also for the first time wager on the outcomes of events as the events transpire. When a football team lines up for a field goal, for example, bettors can bet on whether the kicker will make it or miss.

Not surprisingly, casino operators like it. They are always trying to make their books more profitable. While annual casino revenue in Nevada hovers around $10 billion, last year revenue from sports bets was only $125 million, or 1.25 percent of that amount.

“All of a sudden, these same people who were betting once or twice a game at the beginning of a sporting event can place wagers every minute if they want,” says Anthony A. Marnell III, chief executive of the M Resort. “Having this technology changes the entire equation for everyone involved.”

Yes. Great news.

A Pew web site that tracks news from the states, notes that in response to the recession states are expanding gambling as a way to increase state revenue without raising taxes. The article says that one of the most obvious legacies of  the current recession will be a massive expansion in legalized gambling in the United States.

I read all the time the concern and worries of conservative Methodists who feel the General Board of Church and Society is full of liberals who misrepresent the church. I’d feel better about the agency if I could think of a single issue where its efforts and witness had had a tangible impact in the face of a culture trending the opposite direction.

We seem to do well a cheer leading the culture when it goes the way it is already going. Is there any indication that church opposition to cultural tides has had any influence in the last 50 years?

It reminds me of the argument by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon that trying to have such influence is a misuse of energy and resources.

If you are curious, here is the GBCS web site on gambling.