Our Theological Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

As I sat on the floor of the convention center in Jackson, Mississippi during Annual Conference 2011 for the Mississippi Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, I was thunderstruck and dismayed by what I was listening to. A petition to General Conference 2012 had come forward asking for the following change in the Mission Statement of the UM Church.  “The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls and for the transformation of the world. Local churches provide the most significant arena through which disciple-making occurs.” The part in bold and underlined was the wording that was being debated.  And as I sat there on the floor of the Mississippi Annual Conference I actually heard two fellow clergy rise and argue in opposition to the addition of the words "for the salvation of souls" to our Mission Statement found in Paragraph 120 of the UM Discipline.  John Wesley said, “You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work” (Jackson, VIII, p. 310).  Seems like a pretty basic concept for UM clergy.  Yet there I sat as a fellow UM clergy (who is a friend of mine) argued that to insert this language in the mission statement would make salvation too individualistic, that indeed Christ had come to redeem all of us and all of creation, and I wondered out loud, "How did we get here?"

And I think I know.  But the answer is not one any of us may like because of the implications for our connection.  We are here because we have changed our minds; about who God is, what He has or had to say to us, how we can know His will, about the authority of and how to read and interpret, scripture and the goal or purpose or mission of the church.  In the late 19th and early 20th century we saw the emergence of modern liberal theology that Wikipedia defines as; "Liberal Christianity, broadly speaking, is a method of biblical hermeneutics, an undogmatic method of understanding God through the use of scripture by applying the same modern hermeneutics used to understand any ancient writings. Liberal Christianity does not claim to be a belief structure, and as such is not dependent upon any Church dogma or creedal statements. Unlike conservative varieties of Christianity, it has no unified set of propositional beliefs. The word liberal in liberal Christianity denotes a characteristic willingness to interpret scripture without any preconceived notion of inerrancy of scripture or the correctness of Church dogma."

This liberal theology now labeling itself as progressive came to dominate most main line seminaries in the middle to late 20^th century, relying on the writing of scholars such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Henry Ward Beecher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Leslie Weatherhead, and John Shelby Spong.  It was in response to this rise of modern liberal or progressive theologies that led a group of visionaries to start Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, my Alma Mater.  Dismayed at what was being taught in seminaries and to our young pastors the mission statement of Asbury in 1923 read, “Asbury Theological Seminary is a community called to prepare theologically educated, sanctified, Spirit-filled men and women to evangelize and to spread scriptural holiness throughout the world through the love of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit and to the glory of God the Father.”  The same cannot be said of all or even most of our official United Methodist Seminaries. 

If we are upset by where our church is, we can lay it squarely at the feet of our seminaries, teachers, theologians, and denominational leaders.  We can also lay it at our own feet for allowing it to happen. As I write this today, after listening to the arguments on the floor of the conference this year, I wonder.  Do our churches share the same theology as their pastors?  Do they even know what THEY believe?  Do they even know what their pastors really believe?    Are we open about our theology?  Do we lie, obfuscate, or otherwise dodge the question?  Do we say nothing so as to not be pinned down?  What does your pastor believe?  What does she or he think, who do they read, who taught them?  And don’t you have not only right but a duty to ask those questions?  If not you, who?  If not now, when?  Hopefully before it is too late.

General Conference Delegation

In 1968, the UMC reported 11,000,000 members. In 2012, we will report 7,000,000 members/3,000,000 average worship attendance. We lose approximately 1500 members/week. In the 500 fastest‐growing counties in America, total UMC membership decreased 2265 persons. We do much we believe is good, but sometimes the enemy of the great we could do is the good things we settle for. While I was at Asbury, Maxie Dunnam spoke to us often about tipping points. The UMC has reached a tipping point: General Conference 2012. We must ask hard questions, make difficult decisions. We must, I think,

1) face the state of our church with brutal honesty and clear headedness, 2) be brave and bold, 3) align our resources around the local church to accomplish our top priority:

“Go, and make disciples,” our great commission, 4) streamline our bureaucracy, 5) shrink our infrastructure, 6) get monies that are misaligned or that are sitting on the sidelines into the

game, and 7) make wholesale and structural changes.

However, we MUST NOT abandon the beliefs that make us United Methodists, but MUST maintain a deep commitment to

1) Wesleyan/Armenian theology, 2) the EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT, 3) first, personal holiness and second, social holiness, and 4) our discipline’s current orthodox interpretation of scripture.

I am seeking to become a delegate to General Conference 2012 because I believe I am willing to ask questions others won’t, say things others won’t. I want to leave my children a UMC that is stronger and healthier than I found it.

NUDGE! - What if?

Leonard Sweet recently pointed out to me that John Wesley was on the cutting edge of technology during his day.  Wesley, according to Sweet, was an early adopter of a new means of mass communication that would bring learning and education to the people, burgeoning a growing middle class born out of the industrial revolution, and paving the way for our modern information society where information and education was no longer the purview of a lofty few.  Wesley was one of the first to embrace this cutting edge technology over the objections of more than a few of his pastors.  The technology?  The Book.  Wesley was committed to his pastors READING and creating an educated informed laity.  And so began the people called Methodists’ early commitment to reading and in so doing to the Methodist Publishing house and educational institutions throughout the new world.  Methodists blazed the trail in the wilderness of America and wherever they went, they left behind schools, hospitals and educated masses.  And they thus changed America’s destiny.  


There is great angst about the future of the United Methodist Church in America as we look to this annual conference and to the General Conference of 2012 and perhaps rightly so.  But in looking for solutions we need only look back to the principles that drove our early movement.  We were a people that thought outside of the box and outside of the four walls of the church.  We were a clergy that were sent and a people that went.  We started schools and colleges, hospitals and seminaries.  We planted them in far off outpost of the new nation in places others were not yet willing to go.  We were the trail blazers, the early adopters and adapters, the innovators and the daring.  The first to go, the last to leave and the radical revolutionaries of the day.  The early circuit riders planted hundreds of new churches in new communities.  We did church in new ways. Totally new forms were birthed, including the camp meeting movement that led to the Second Great Awakening.  We were a movement!  A movement that at once called for BOTH a fierce commitment to personal holiness AND to social holiness.  We believed that it mattered BOTH how we lived our personal lives AND how we lived in community.  And we used the new technology of the book and the industrial printing press to spread the good news to all the world.  


What if?….What if we as Methodist became as committed to early adoption and innovation in new technologies and forms as we once were?  What if we created new ways of doing church or even doing the business of church and the connection that increased our economies of scale, leveraged technology, brought learning and training by the best thinkers and theologians of our day directly to the local laity, decreased cost and made us more effective, more flexible, more responsive, more organic, and hopefully more connected?  What if we recaptured the passion of a God called, annointed, Holy Spirit driven, movement that was committed to inviting and convincing ALL people to form a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord AND Savior, in the hopes that they would be “saved to the uttermost” and that they would be convinced to “go on to perfection”?  What if WE became more about those outside of the church than those of us in the church?  What if we could do this without abandoning any of our Doctrinal Heritage? What if we could see lives being changed and hearts being strangely warmed?  What if we could all sing, “My chains fell off; my heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed Thee?  What if…..?"

Stephen Spark, Lead Pastor, Indianola FUMC

Holiness of Heart and Mind

A few years ago I preached a sermon called, Lives in Covenant - Holiness of Heart and Mind. It kicked off a four week series centered around what it means to be a covenant people. It lead towards a Wesley covenant renewal service. One of the emphases from that week was that we live lives striving for Holiness and that Holiness is only achieved, not through artificial surface showey piety, or right knowledge (orthodoxy), or even right practice or right living (orthopraxis), but is rather achieved through an overflowing and outflowing of love, for God, for oneself (properly understood) and for those around us, both those we are in covenant with and more importantly those that we are not. It is that love for one another that marks us as Christian and it is this passionately intense love that drives us on to perfection. How are you in your walk toward holiness? Are you going on towards perfection? Do you fully expect to be perfected in this life? Is the perfect love of God driving out all fear in your life? Are you seeing Christ more and more converting every part of your life and even the desires and instincts of your heart? This is what we Methodists believe is part of the Christian covenant. 

As we approach annual conference 2011, I am ever more convinced that we must live into the truth that we are a people that live in covenant.  We are people of THE Covenant.  We are to be a people of Holiness of Heart and Mind.  As we gather this year may our hearts overflow and outflow with love for God, ourselves (healthily), the people called Methodists and for, particularly, those that are outside a covenant relationship with Christ.  May God perfect us all in his great and rich love.

What are YOU willing to do?

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