John Meunier

One of the great things about writing this blog are the comments I get.

I read some blogs that seem to collect nothing but cheering fans. I read others that attract savage attacks and screaming matches. I’ve been blessed by the people who comment here. They deepen my thinking and push back against my flabby ideas. They open angles I had not seen or considered. They point out mistakes.

All that is preamble to highlight a recent comment by Mike Mather, pastor of Broadway UMC in Indianapolis. In his comment on my post “Barth on a billboard,” he writes this:

I do know that so much of the liturgy and practice of the church seems to be something that says in one way or another: 1) God can’t do this if we won’t (wrong, I think); or, 2) We are God’s hands and feet in the world (wrong again, I think). My sense of our evangelistic call is not to be God (which we, obviously can’t be) but to recognize and celebrate God’s presence and power in the world. God doesn’t need us to do that. God is doing just fine, it seems to me. … God doesn’t need us to open homeless shelters and soup kitchens – but if we recognized God’s presence in the homeless and hungry – as individuals whose names we know – we might find ourselves doing what Isaiah says and taking the homeless into our homes and sharing dinner around the tables in our homes. I can hardly think of anything that would more dramatically show that we believe in God’s power and presence.

I cut a good chunk out of Mike’s comment to keep it short, but the whole thing is worth reading in context.

Meet Pastor Jones.

He’s been at his church for a few years. He has done some things well. He’s struggled in some areas. But mostly he tries to be a good pastor and a faithful servant of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Jones is human. Five years ago, he got caught soliciting a prostitute. The charges were dropped because of a technicality. He was never convicted. But it put his family into a tailspin. He recovered. Got counseling. And has entered the ministry.

Now he has come to the realization that many in his church struggle with sexual sins of various kinds. He thinks it is important for the church to discuss. He thinks it is important for him to discuss his personal history as part of this conversation. His goal is to create an environment where men and women caught in sexual sin can confess that sin, find help, and heal.

He comes to you for some advice. How would you deal with this? What steps should he take? What conversations should he have?

Chad Holtz and some others have dropped by my blog and shared their disagreements with a post I wrote about the way pastors handle hard truths about themselves and fraught topics in church.

Their comments have added a lot to the discussion. You might want to revisit that post if you have not been there since it first went up.

Bishop Timothy Whitaker on the closing of churches, which I gather is a inspired by the closing of Tampa First UMC, which I blogged about recently.

The main reason today to discontinue a congregation is that it can no longer fulfill the mission of the United Methodist Church. This is a different time than a generation ago. In the past, as long as a congregation could pay its bills, including its connectional giving, it was allowed to continue. Today, the Church expects every congregation to possess missional vitality. If the congregation is no longer able or willing to accomplish the mission of the United Methodist Church to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, then the Church has a responsibility to discontinue that congregation and seek new ways to fulfill its mission in that location.

In our polity, the decision to discontinue a congregation is made by the annual conference.  The authority for making this decision does not reside in the Charge Conference of the congregation.  It is true that District Superintendents call a Charge Conference to permit the members to vote to discontinue voluntarily.  However, this is done for pastoral reasons because it is better for the members to acknowledge and to accept the necessity and wisdom of the discontinuance.  Occasionally, members lack the perspective to make this acknowledgment or to accept discontinuance, and they may even try to convince the annual conference not to vote for discontinuance.  The wisdom of our system is that the authority for discontinuing a congregation resides in the annual conference, whose members are able to see the bigger picture, rather than in the congregation, whose members sometimes have difficulty being realistic or keeping a focus on the missional responsibility of the Church.

In his Commencement Address of 2011, The Translatability of the Christian Gospel, Dr. Timothy Tennant, the President of Asbury Theological Seminary, stated, “North America is on the verge of the most stunning collapst of churches in the history of the country.”  But he also stated, “North America is also, simultaneously, moving into one of the most dynamic phases of fresh church planting in our history.”  I think both statements are true.  Congregations which served Christ’s cause well in the past will either transform or discontinue.  At the same time, the Church must vigorously plant new congregations which are able to fulfill its mission today.  While all of this is very painful for many of us, we need to be aware that God is re-arranging the Christian map, and that the call to mission must be the defining feature of the Church and every congregation at this moment in history.

This is a change in approach that would have huge impact across the denomination.

A New Jersey United Methodist Church will close. The story says church splits left it without a future.

My summer reading goals this year are modest. I want to trace a bit the outlines of United Methodist thinking about evangelism. To do that, I’m going to start by reading these three books:

Albert Outler, Evangelism and Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit

William J. Abraham, The Logic of Evangelism

Scott Jones, The Evangelistic Love of God and Neighbor

I’m reading them in this order because I gather Abraham is critical of Outler and Jones is critical of Abraham. (For a take on Abraham’s criticism of Outler, check this page at Joseph Slife’s site.)

If this does not exhaust my ability to learn from divinity professors, I might take a stab at this as well.

But if any summer is left, my hope is to turn to some books written by pastors. I’d love to know your favorite books on evangelism by pastors.

Peter Enns has a nice discussion about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral and what it brings to theological reflection, particularly in comparison with Calvinist approaches. (ht: Allan Bevere)

NOTE: The original version of this post asked a question that several commentors found unfair or inflammatory. Since the word choice in the question was not my intended subject, I’ve deleted it. 

I just read a blog post by a pastor who announced in the middle of the sermon a dark secret about his past. He confessed to being a recovering sex addict. He meant it to be a “you are not alone” kind of moment. The congregation, however, reacted poorly to the announcement, and he found himself in short order being hauled before a committee for some close questioning. The pastor deemed the church to have failed him in this instance. He was removed from his pulpit about a month later over other issues. (Edited to correct a mistake on my part.)

The people commenting on his blog praised his courage and condemned the congregation for their reaction to his revelation about his sex addiction.

But I can’t help but wonder if the pastor bears some responsibility for the bad reaction.

As a preacher I am probably too careful and cautious with my sermons, but it strikes me that part of — to use Fred Craddock’s term — exegeting the congregation is finding the line between challenging them and shocking them. If I think I’m getting close to going somewhere they are not ready to go, I’d want to engage the church leadership on the topic first. If I had a story like this pastor, I’d want to share it with people in the congregation before I announced it from the pulpit.

I share the pastor’s feeling that the church is too silent on the topic of sex addiction and pornography. I absolutely agree the culture swims in sex and the church’s silence is harmful to those who needs its help.

But as a pastoral issue, it is precisely the explosive issues that need the most thoughtful and prayerful and respectful handling.

Isn’t it?

God does not need us. Indeed, if He were not God, He would be ashamed of us.

— Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans

Ever since I read that line the other day, I have not been able to silence it. It is such a terribly non-United Methodist thing to say. I can’t imagine the folks at ReThink Church sticking that on a billboard, but wouldn’t that be great if someone did?

Maybe you don’t think it would be a great idea. Here’s why I do. I think we too often act as if we are afraid of our own convictions. The implications of what we claim to believe lead us places we fear to go, so we back away from the claims. We fear looking like fools, so we cultivate earnestness. We become bland and inoffensive to the point that TV comics make jokes about us being bland and inoffensive. 

We could use a little subversive humor in our communication with the world.

Here’s an interesting story about the demise of First United Methodist Church of Tampa.

There is some interesting stuff and some good “reading between the lines” statements. The story also contradicts something I thought was true. I had always thought that a conference could not force a local charge to disband.