Wisconsin talks about covenant

Here is the account of the handling of the clergy covenant proposed by a group within the Wisconsin annual conference.

“Rev. Steve Scott presented the Clergy Covenant report at Sunday morning’s Plenary session. The team was formed at the 2012 Annnual Conference session to address procedures for clergy in order to help resolve issues that harm the clergy covenant within the Wisconsin United Methodist Church. “This is all very personal,” Scott said. “We are the church together. What we have discovered is that we can either continue to debate over differences in theology or we can focus, as this team is charged to do, on living together in better ways.” Bishop Jung affirmed the document as “a tool to be used for future conversation, not as a document up for debate or approval.”

The report was presented to the clergy session according to this report. The presentation to the clergy session dropped a controversial recommendation regarding sexuality. The Q&A on the clergy covenant web site gives some indication of the discussion around that provision. Before the conference, the web site had said the covenant would be voted on by the clergy session. I cannot find sign of that now.

The Wisconsin conference website has a link to a video of the plenary session at which the covenant was discussed. The covenant discussion begins at about 1 hour and 8 minutes into the session. Here is a report of the clergy session presentation. Here is a report of the plenary session presentation. These appear to be advanced texts and not transcripts of the actual presentations.

In my brief watching of the video from the plenary session, I believe I heard the presenter says that the recommendation about sexuality (recommendation 6 in the report linked in the first paragraph of this post) was not presented to the conference because doing so was the only way to ensure that everyone in the clergy covenant group returned to the group again when they started to meet again. I may be misinterpreting it, but it sounds like some conversation went on between the time the group published its report and the time the presentations were made at annual conference session.

Wesley’s favorite fruitful practice

In 1787, John Wesley recorded in his journals the outcome of a worship schedule change.

The Methodists changed the time of their prayer and preaching service to be the same time as regular church. This was undoubtedly not something that Wesley was enthusiastic about, but I suspect was urged strongly by Methodists who were not as attached to the Church of England as he was.

In his estimation, according to a note on Nov. 5, 1787, that experiment failed.

The congregation was, as usual, large and serious. But there is no increase in the society. So that we have profited nothing by having our service in the church-hours, which some imagined would have done wonders.

We can see here Wesley’s practical side, but it is more striking to me how he measures the success or failure of the move: Did it enhance the size and work of the Methodist society?

In other words, if I interpret him properly, what mattered was not bodies in pews on Sunday but disciples in formation as part of the society. In our language, what he really wanted was not more worship attendance, but larger numbers of people engaging in “intentional faith development.”

Covenant cheese-head style?

Wisconsin’s clergy covenant team — a group that was commissioned by the annual conference after the Amy DeLong trial — released its recommendations for consideration at the upcoming Wisconsin Annual Conference. The group’s web site says the recommendations will go to the clergy session.

Jeremy Smith has written favorably about it here.

The purpose of the group was to make proposals to help repair the covenant among clergy in Wisconsin. One section that seems to capture the heart of the document’s goals is quoted here:

The Wisconsin Annual Conference will no longer participate in the Book of Discipline’s categorical discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people. Sexual orientation and partnered status create no barrier to effective and faithful leadership.

The Wisconsin Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church professes that any person whose gifts and call are otherwise affirmed will be welcomed into candidacy, ordination and appointment.

GLBT persons already ordained will now be free to live un-closeted and truthful lives, without threats of retributive action.

Additionally, United Methodist clergy in the Wisconsin Annual Conference will be free from complaint, punishment, prosecution or trial if he/she conducts same-gender Holy Union ceremonies.

Is Jorge Acevedo Richard Gere?

Jeremy Smith is starting a series of blog posts about what he sees as a dystopian future of the United Methodist Church if the practices of the biggest and most influential congregations take hold.

Never one to shy away from an in-your-face headline, Smith calls his first category vulture churches.

Read the first post here.

To get the Richard Gere reference in the headline, you need to read the post.

I’ll be interested to see how Smith engages with the pros and cons of the church growth models he describes.

Church leaves UMC over pastor move

This story reports on a United Methodist Church in Alabama that ceased to be United Methodist when its pastor was told he would be moved.

We have a lot of churches where the bishop would not dare try to move the senior pastor. I wonder if we are beginning to see a new trend of churches — especially newer ones — withdrawing from United Methodism rather than allow a pastor to leave.

Here is a follow up story that confirms the actions planned in the first story.

The goals of a top pastor

Mark Beeson is senior pastor of one of the most vital congregations of United Methodists in Indiana. His church — by all outward appearances — does incredible ministry and is busy spawning offspring congregations.

A recent post on his blog gave me a little insight into the mindset of a senior pastor who overseas the growth of such a church. Beeson wrote about his personal goals:

1. I want to do something with my life that actually makes a difference. I long for the assurance that I’ve had a noticeable impact and made a contribution.
2. I intend to serve God’s purposes until I can do no more and when my time on earth is done, I want God to find me in the middle of some worthwhile task – continuing the work of Christ’s followers before me.
3. I’m determined to look for the next right thing to do, each-and-every-day of my life. When Jesus brings me home I’ll be glad to know I served God’s purposes to the end. Even if I don’t finish every little project I’m working on, I want to be like Paul, “the doulos (slave) of Christ,” doing what God wants me to do and finishing well.

Beeson’s first point reminds me of Steve Jobs’ statement that his goal was to leave a ding in the universe.

Nazarenes on discipleship

In 2006, the Church of the Nazarene adopted a mission statement to make Christlike disciples in the nations, which bears some similarity to the United Methodist mission statement of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Here is a link to a report in a Nazarene magazine about the meaning of that mission statement and how it is lived out. I must confess there is a level of engagement with these issues and Wesleyan theology that I seldom see in official UMC media.

You can watch the same presentations in video format here.

Book Review: A Thorn in the Flesh

Episcopal priest the Rev. Caroline J. Addington Hall has written a book that should be of interest to United Methodists embroiled in debates over human sexuality and the church. In her book, A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality Is Changing the Episcopal Church, she tells the recent history of the Episcopal Church from the birth of the sexual liberation movement in the 1960s to the current situation of schism and division.

The story is told in detail and with a sensitivity to the nuance and complexity of the debates and politics that play out on a national and global scale. A married lesbian, Hall is an advocate in the battles and her framing of the debate, tone, and language do not hide this. What she describes in the book is a splintering of two churches that started coming apart at the beginning of the 19th century. In her words:

In this period of reformation, the interpretation/authority of scripture has been challenged many times: the abolition of slavery as an acceptable way of life, the acceptance of divorce, the ordination of women, and now full inclusion of gay and lesbian people. This latter is perhaps the bitterest fight because it incorporates the question of gender as well as the question of marriage, and it is also the most difficult to argue because the Bible says nothing positive about homosexuality. The battle for gay inclusion of exclusion seems to mark the development of two different religions, both called Christianity, but it may have served as the final point of bifurcation for two strands that began to unravel as early as the late nineteenth century.

The book is fascinating because of its depth as it traces the story of the Episcopal Church in recent decades. It is fascinating for this United Methodist as we appear to be walking over much of the same ground.

This brief review cannot do justice to the book, but reading it did raise two other thoughts that may or may not be worthy of further discussion.

First, Hall connects the ongoing battles over sexuality in the church to the Baby Boomer (my word, not hers) generation’s coming of age in the 1960s. The left-right divide of that decade set the terms for the debate and the issues going forward. I wonder, in part, if this is why the rising Millennial generation is so weary of this conversation. It is their parents’ fight, not their own. This is my question, not Hall’s, but her book stirred the thought.

Second, Hall connects the debate over sexuality to broader questions in the church. For instance, she offers this observation about the various responses within the Anglican Communion to Islam.

In the Anglican debate, the second question about coexisting religions becomes: Is Jesus Christ the only way to God, or is it limiting God to think that he cannot also work in other ways? Archbishop Akinola, who sees Jesus as the only way, aimed to grow the Church of Nigeria as big as possible in order to vanquish Islam nonviolently — though he has never ruled out the possibility of violent response. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori, on the other hand, sees the valuable contribution of Islam and has joined in faith conversations with Muslim leaders.

I find Hall’s engagement with the broader set of issues and the broader context of Anglican Christianity most helpful. It sees issues as inter-related rather than isolated, which strikes me as more reflective of real life.

Hall does not hide her bias in the book. Conservative motives are often cast in a negative light and liberals are the heroes. She ends the book with an appendix that argues that the Bible does not really teach what traditional Christians have said it does. But the book is fascinating reading and an in-depth look at the melange of issues that the United Methodist Church has been wrestling with for 45 years. As our church becomes more “global,” the fault lines Hall describes will only deepen.

Christ & Paddles sex club

What is the proper response of the United Methodist Church to the general situation described in this story from the New York Times?

At around 4 on a Saturday morning, a time when most of the gay bars in New York have closed and locked their doors, a steady stream of young and middle-aged men, almost all shirtless and some stripped down to their boxer briefs, have found their way down a dark stairwell and into a maze of basement rooms, where the décor can best be described as fallout-shelter chic.

They have come to Paddles, an after-hours sex club in Chelsea, not yet ready to end their evening. They prowl the long cinder-block hallway, exchanging knowing glances. A husky, bearded man in his 40s lounges on a corrugated black rubber bench, admiring a chorus line of smooth-chested 20-somethings, their flesh glowing under a pink neon sign and black lights. A man in a metal-studded black leather chest harness strides toward a back room, the hookup room, where a circle of men, skin glistening with sweat, hover around a swing, watching.

Before you jump on me, I am not saying this is 100% of the behavior for those with same-sex attraction. And I’d be happy to ask the same questions about heterosexual hook-up culture or the normalization of extreme pornography. Indeed, if you’d rather read those stories and post about them, please do. (I will warn you that the pornography story is graphic.)

What I’m trying to get my head around is how the church responds to what is considered normal sexual behavior in our culture. I’m trying to establish whether we have any common ground in our understanding of Christian sexual ethics by pointing to what looks like a clear-cut case and seeing if I am correct that it is clear-cut to United Methodists.

Do we agree that this kind of culture is not in keeping with God’s will for humanity? Do we want to encourage the men in the story I quoted above to change their hearts and lives?

The obvious answer is “yes,” right?

Our Social Principles would say that obvious answer is “yes.” Wouldn’t they?

Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience would, too, yes?

We all agree, don’t we?

If your congregation had its church building just up the block from Paddles sex club, what would you do?

NY Methodist distressed by UMC

A Methodist from New York has written a lament over what he sees as the rightward shift in the United Methodist Church.

“Theological pluralism”, or the “inclusive church”, or the denomination that practiced Mr. Wesley’s “If your heart is as my heart, then give me your hand”, are vanishing. They are being replaced by an exclusivity – and by a surprising and unfortunate overlooking of reason and of experience from the Quadrilateral – and by a narrow theological literalism that is contrary to the basic Protestant Christian teaching of the individual’s relationship directly to/with God.

The author makes use of a popular quote from John Wesley’s sermon “Catholic Spirit.” That sermon certainly rewards reading. I’m not sure Wesley would use it to advance the argument this author makes, but that would be an interesting conversation.