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
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