John Meunier

I love used bookstores. I picked up a copy of Russell E. Richey’s Early American Methodism today. I just got started, but it looks like an interesting read.

Fresh off annual conference, I was intrigued to read about an additional meeting that Methodists used to have.

The early American Methodists staged quarterly meetings that were part business meeting, part revival.

All the Methodists in a given area would gather for two days. On Saturday, they’d do whatever business had to be done and hold a preaching service aimed at improving the internal order of the community. Then on Sunday they’d have a love feast, communion, public preaching, memorial services, marriages, and baptisms, throughout the morning and afternoon.

As I was reading this, I had this vision of United Methodists in a county or a few counties getting together three or four times a year in one big group for worship and sharing. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Not all the Annual Conference reports are in yet, but so far only two conferences of significant size are showing an increase in membership over the last year: North Georgia and Central Texas.

Even those increases are rather small on a percentage basis, but it is better than a decline.

So, what are they doing?

EDIT: Jay tells me that Tennessee also had an increase in membership. So, I’ll add them to the list. What are North Georgia, Central Texas, and Tennessee doing that the rest of us are not? How to we clone what they are doing right?

Chip and Dan Heath’s newest book Switch is all about creating change. This is something that many pastors try to do.

The book draws on psychological research to sketch a framework to help those who wish to improve the chances of change. The authors are quick to point out that their framework is too simply to cover all cases and that nothing can guarantee change. People are free to refuse to change, as God knows so well.

But, that said, they argue for a three-part model. The model is based on a metaphor that sees the rational, planning part of our minds as a rider on an elephant, which represents the emotional, passionate, acting part of us. The last part of the model is based on the insight that our situation, rather than any choice on our part, shapes much of our behavior.

The three parts are:

Direct the Rider: Provide crystal clear and specific guidance. Don’t tell someone to work on their spiritual growth, tell them to read 3 Psalms every morning when they wake up. Often, people look like they are resisting change when in reality they are just not sure what to do.

Motivate the Elephant: Engage emotions. People can change through willpower for only a limited time. Our ability to force ourselves to do something is limited. Eventually, if the elephant does not want to go, the rider won’t be able to force him. Connect at a visceral level with people if you want them to have the endurance to keep with change. This is surely why fear appeals about escaping Hell are such powerful motivators of action. Colorful description of the torments of Hell connect to the elephant. So do promises of miracle cures and wealth.

Shape the Path: The environment around people has a huge influence on behavior. Create a situation around people that makes change more likely. Isn’t this a large part of John Wesley’s method with the early societies? He put people in close and constant contact with each other for mutual reinforcement and accountability. He also created a set of general rules meant to keep people out of situations that would lead to trouble.

Like their previous book, Made to Stick, the brothers Heath write in an engaging way and give us lots of interesting food for thought. Much of what the book argues has a “well, no kidding” quality about it, but it is clear that adopting and adapting the framework they offer will – if nothing else – help us think more clearly about what we do and why we do it.

Debra Arca Mooney at Patheos has a lengthy Q&A with Kenda Creasy Dean, the author of a book based on a comprehensive of the faith of youth. Dean, a United Methodist, uses a title of a John Wesley sermon, “The Almost Christian,” for the book and study.

The interview and the study itself deserve careful reading and thought.

Dean is distressed by the “watered down” faith mainline churches pass down to young people. Dean describes the dominant spirituality of mainline youth as “moralistic therapeutic deist.” This view is defined by:

• A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
• God does not need to be involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to Heaven when they die.

Dean critiques this viewpoint.

So my view is that the self-centered nature of moralistic therapeutic deism is simply contrary to what the purpose of the church is. Theologically, the church is supposed to exist for the world. We don’t exist to perpetuate ourselves or to make ourselves happy. It’s nice if that can happen, but that’s not the purpose. If anything, that might be a fringe benefit. The Gospel story that animates the church is about self-giving love and dying in order to live.

As with so many smart things I read about youth ministry, I Dean’s observations apply across many generations. She points out that young people pick up this faith from their parents and elders in the church.

But Dean finds a cause for hope in the apathy she found among youth.

But if we don’t tell a story that’s worth going to the mat for, then I don’t know why you would necessarily give yourself over to it. So I actually think it’s a good thing teenagers are ho-hum about what they think of Christianity — because that’s notChristianity. It’s a distorted vestige of what Christianity once was. But if the Gospel is presented in full — and by presented I don’t mean just verbally, but lived, in all of its radical implications — I think that will get young people’s attention in ways that moralistic therapeutic deism doesn’t.

The prayer of Solomon from 1 Kings 3:

Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.

Solomon is an interesting figure. As someone who admires Walter Brueggemann, I find reading 1 Kings a curious experience. Brueggemann casts Solomon as the start of what went wrong with Israel. The forced labor, the temple itself, and the glorification of the monarchy all for Brueggemann point to toward the conditions that give rise to prophetic condemnation. With more than an incidental nod to the United States, he sees imperial power itself s the root cause of Israel’s apostasy. The mingling of God’s people and national power are even more offensive than marriage with Moabite women.

And yet, I struggle to find any signs of that when I read 1 Kings. Solomon is the height of Israel. He completes the work David could not accomplish. His initial act as monarch – after wiping out all of David’s enemies and settling all of David’s unsettled scores – is to forge an alliance with Pharaoh by marrying an Egyptian princess. The flight from Egypt begun when Moses rejected his status as a son of Pharaoh comes full circle.

This is all interesting to me because American Christians seem particularly conflicted over the relationship between the people of faith and the machinery of state power. We find Romans 13 hard to read. And we often find Amos and Hosea more to our taste than Solomon’s days of glory. When Solomon gets his come uppance, Bruggemann ties it back to the glory of national power and aggrandizement.

But the Bible does not appear to be nearly as suspicious of power as we are. It rather appears to condemn power detached from obedience to God’s purposes. Is our contemporary blanket distaste for state power a reflection of the Bible or something else?

Two thoughtful writers about Untied Methodism have written their own proposals for reform of United Methodist polity.

Andrew Thompson and Donald Haynes both see a need for change and give us some interesting ideas to ponder.

Both come from the June 25 UM Reporter.

As a United Methodist pastor, I am charged with – among other things – teaching and upholding United Methodist doctrine. As a result, I find myself seeking to understand it. And for me, the sermons of John Wesley serve as an important guide to what we mean as United Methodists when we use words like “faith” or “salvation.”

We should never substitute reading John Wesley for reading Scripture, of course. He was a man and prone to errors and faults. But if we serve in a tradition that is committed to read the Bible the way he did, then knowing how he interpreted and taught Scripture is important. We can always reject John Wesley as a spiritual and doctrinal guide if we like. Many pastors plant non-denominational churches and do just fine.

If we do not reject Wesley’s teaching and example, though, it is good to know what he preached.

When he collected together his sermons for distribution to Methodists, Wesley arranged them consciously to touch upon what he considered the most important and central issues of the faith first. And so, as I wrestle with my own ministry, I open up my book of Wesley sermons to see where he started.

I open to this sermon on Ephesians 2:8, “Salvation by Faith.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Skye Jethani has some objections to the way The NINES is selecting speakers.

The nut of the issue has to do with whether popularity contests and Internet voting are a good way to select speakers.

We have all come to expect such juvenile popularity contests from folks like TMZ, MTV, and others in the outrageous and exhibitionist popular media, but to see the leaders of the church behaving this way reveals how far we’ve allowed the values of Rome to infiltrate the kingdom of God. Of all people, pastors and church leaders should be modeling a different way, a different set of values. Fame is not a measure of maturity or godliness. Popularity is not what ought to determine who is heard and who is shunned. And we would be wise to remember that popular opinion is what sent Jesus to the cross and set Barabbas free.

I’ve played around before with the idea of using John Wesley’s first 53 sermons as source for sermon texts.

It would come to about a year’s worth of sermons when you remove the duplicated texts. One problem, of course, would be that Wesley often preached from a single verse as opposed to a pericope, which is standard practice now.

Just for entertainment, I’ll list the first seven (all NRSV):

Ephesians 2:8 – For by grace you have been saved though faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God …

Acts 26:28 – Agrippa said to Paul, “Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?”

Ephesians 5:14 – for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Acts 4:31 – When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

Romans 4:5 – But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.

Romans 10:5-8 – Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heave?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);

Mark 1:15 – and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Just listing the texts – and having read the sermons that Wesley preached from them – it is apparent how different Wesley’s method of sermon development was from my own. He rarely goes into lengthy and close exposition of the text. He tells no stories. He generally uses a pretty straight-forward development reducible to a three-point outline or similar.

I wonder what effect there would be to preach Wesley’s texts after him.

Kevin Watson responded to a comment I made on his blog with a great and thoughtful post about a Wesleyan method of empowering and equipping disciples.