John Meunier

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:9,10, NIV)

Jesus came to seek and save the lost.

The church exists to continue the work of Jesus. How are we doing?

The big advantage business has over non-profit organizations such as churches is that it is impossible to deny failure in a business. You lose money. You go out of business. You lose money. You know something is wrong. You lose money. You change or die.

A church, on the contrary, can limp on for a very long time without any bottom-line success.

Is there any local congregation in the United States that does not have people around it who we could call “lost”? Even in the smallest town or most thinly populated rural county, isn’t it true that there are people Jesus came to save?

The answer has to be “yes,” doesn’t it?

Why don’t we reach them?

At the small church I serve, the answers are not all clear to me, but I know as the appointed pastor the question is one I must answer. Answering it calls for creativity, risk-taking, and overcoming fear of failure. But how can we do less? How can I?

It all starts with a clear-eyed question that is answered honestly: How are we doing?

Here’s an event that those within easy travel distance to central Indiana might want to consider.

The Third Annual Wesleyan Theological Forum will be offered Tuesday, November 15^th, at 9:00 a.m. at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana.  Professor Mike Pasquarello of Asbury Seminary and Dr. Derek Weber of Aldersgate UMC will lead the Forum focusing on the theme “Preaching Christ in the Wesleyan Tradition.”  This continuing education event is open to clergy and laity in and beyond the Indiana Conference.  Cost is $40.00, which includes lunch. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I posted about the preaching triangle. Today, my thoughts are pulled back to it as I think about the focus of our preaching.

Every sermon is concerned in some way with the preacher, the hearer, and the Bible (or topic). But we can think of sermons as falling into different types based on the center of focus or primary emphasis of the sermon.

For instance, the sermon that takes as its center point the preacher and his or her own feelings, thoughts, and testimonies could be called an expressive sermon. What are often called “testimonies” might fall into this category. Getting something on the heart or mind of the preacher out into the open is the goal of this sermon.

The sermon that keeps very close to the text of the Bible, that takes as it primary goal fidelity to what the Bible says, we might call a referential sermon. It’s primary movement is to explain. The expository verse-by-verse sermon may end up in this category at times. On the other hand, the topical sermon that barely touches the Bible may also be referential as it attempts to fully explain the nuances of its topic or insights.

The sermon that narrows in on the hearer with the explicit goal of changing his or her ideas, attitudes, and actions we can call a persuasive sermon. All preachers probably hope their preaching will change people, but there is a difference between hoping and organizing with great intent to achieve that end. Andy Stanley’s aptly named Communicating for a Change embraces the persuasive sermon.

A fourth type of sermon not plotted on my triangle would be the literary or artistic sermon. Such sermons find their center of gravity in the use of language and images themselves. They aspire to be poetry and dip low into the common arts of entertainment and humor. In either case, it is the use of the medium of communication itself that forms the heart of this sermon.

There are no pure types, of course. The most persuasive sermon ever spoken has its referential, expressive, and literary elements and aspirations. But just as some football teams run to set up the pass and others pass to set up the run, preachers tend to bend the other elements toward their primary goal.

In my own preaching, I tend to lean toward referential sermons with some nods toward persuasion. The center of my sermons tends to be around some statement about God that the text illuminates. I do not always stay close to the text, but I would say my sermons lean more toward explanation and reference than anything else.

What a treat I got in my e-mail today.

Katie Yosua read my post about Charles Wesley’s hymn “Let Us Plead for Faith Alone” and got inspired to write a new tune for it.

I have the musical ability and knowledge of a sand flea, so can say nothing about her work other than how honored I am that something I wrote led someone to put their creativity and talent into motion.

Here’s a link to her composition for any who are interested in trying out her version of the hymn.

If anyone would like to get in touch with her directly, e-mail me and I’ll forward your message to her.

Let us plead for faith alone,
faith which by our works is shown;
God it is who justifies,
only faith the grace applies.

Active faith that lives within,
conquers hell and death and sin,
hallows whom it first made whole,
forms the Savior in the soul.

Let us for this faith contend,
sure salvation is the end;
heaven already is begun,
everlasting life is won.

Only let us persevere
till we see our Lord appear,
never from the Rock remove,
saved by faith which works by love.

I’m at a loss to think of a hymn or sermon of either Wesley that more compactly gets at the essentials of Wesleyan theology. What we need is a contemporary musician to come up with a catchy new tune so we can get a new generation of people singing their theology.

Dan Dick has two posts this week about the ways that we revel in our indignation and anger. For some of us, anger is a right. It is something we claim is always justified and we defend as if it were a part of our body.

Have you noticed the mammoth chip some United Methodists have on their shoulder?  Just mentioning it makes some people mad.  I’ve received eight nasty emails since yesterday, when I posted the not-too-profound concept that anger is a choice and that no one else can offend us; we can merely choose to be offended (Loser’s Choice).  Obviously, indignation is viewed as a right or a spiritual gift and not something we control.  I can’t even reprint some of what has been written because it uses language not appropriate and it is in the form of personal attack.  It actually gives me a chance to practice what I preach.

I am reminded of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings who fell in love with the very thing that poisoned his soul. He would die rather than part with it. And yet it was destroying him from the inside out.

The great challenge of this is that any attempt to lead people away from their precious anger is understood as an attack. It is experienced as an attempt to destroy the thing that gives meaning to their lives. I have no idea how to deal with such things.

Instead, I find myself thrown back on Scripture.

Finally saw Robert Duvall’s excellent movie The Apostle last night.

Here he the Apostle EF preaching right before getting hauled off by the police.

And here’s a good “interview” with Duvall about the movie.

What does Duvall think of southern Christianity and revivalist preachers in general? He has a fascination for them which began more than thirty years ago when he visited a Holiness church in the small town of Hughes, Arkansas. He says that he was intrigued by the cadence, rhythms and honest faith he witnessed in the songs and tent-meetings there. For Duvall, these revivalist tent-meetings are “an important part of American culture.” The preaching is “a distinct American art-form.”

“The best preacher I ever met,” says Duvall, “was a 96 year-old black man from a little church in Hamilton, Virginia. He seemed to me more spiritual than the Dalai Lama or Mahatma Gandhi. This guy was great. He had a great cadence of preaching, a great honesty.” Duvall invited a Jewish film-director friend and his Catholic wife to hear him preach. “It was terrific,” Duvall recounts. “The director told me a year and a half later that he could never get the preacher entirely out of his mind. He was that impressive.”

By grace [John Wesley] meant what the New Testament plainly teaches: grace is neither God’s general favor, nor God’s mercy on our failure, nor God’s pity on our pain. Grace is God’s pardon and redemption in the face of our sin. Grace has its objective, and the objective is to restore a broken, sin-sick humanity to God and to one another. Grace, then, is not God’s act to improve humankind, but specifically grace is God’s act to make new, to redeem.

— James Logan, How Great a Flame!

A friend asked me this question: Do United Methodists publish lists of pastors who have been accused of sexual abuse, or do they sweep it under the rug?

The question came to mind today when I read about the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston’s release of some names of priests accused of sexual abuse.

I know the issue is not simple, but I do wonder why we don’t do the same thing. Surely we could and should release the names of pastors who have been disciplined, moved, or otherwise required official sanction as a result of sexual sins.

The UM Portal has an interview with Mark Gough, director of church development in the Indiana Conference, about the reported uptick in membership in Indiana, the first in 30 years.

Here is Gough’s short explanation of what happened here:

As we developed the structure of the new conference (the North Indiana and South Indiana Conferences became the Indiana Conference in 2009), we purposely developed a structure that supported the mission: “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” The bishop, directors, superintendents and all conference leaders began to talk about, “How is what we are doing supporting the mission?” This raised the issues of membership, professions of faith and worship attendance as key indicators of how we are doing.

And here is where we grew:

The growth was across the state and in every area. It is very interesting that when we first saw the final numbers, we assumed that the large churches grew and that was the key. What we discovered when we dug into the information is that some of our largest churches declined, but the (growth) trend was across the board. Large, small, rural, suburban and urban, we had churches in each category that grew. My learning from this is: When you focus on the mission and make some changes to implement the mission, every church can grow.

As a Hoosier United Methodist, I take such news as a hopeful sign. Perhaps change is not beyond us.