United Methodeviations (Dan Dick)

We’re not getting older; we’re getting better.  Well, actually we are getting older, but this doesn’t mean we can’t get better as well.  The graying of our church — a subject of great concern and incredible misplaced anxiety — is worth looking into, but as an opportunity, not a problem to solve.  Youth culture is troughing again for the next generation or so, and in many parts of our country the age trend will be at the upper end of the spectrum — more old people, with more resources (translated “disposable income”), more time, more energy, and more productive years.  In demographers eyes, a golden opportunity to exploit a market.  But will the church pay attention?

See, the problem is that most in the church refuse to use common sense when it comes to planning.  Research shows that over 8-out-of-10 United Methodist churches are pinning their hopes for the future on “young families with children.”  Congregation after congregation nostalgically pines for the glory days when their Sunday schools were packed to bursting, and when twenty- and thirty-somethings sat shoulder to shoulder with mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and Aunt Flo.  The vision for the future looks like a rerun from 1959.  In a day when the average length of membership for young adults is less than two years, die-hards in the church look to rebuild their congregations on the shoulders of today’s young.  Good luck with that.  Hey, if you have a lot of young people to draw from, go for it; but this is not the reality for a significant number of UMCs.  Younger families are heading to newer evangelical congregations with plenty of comfort resources and technology, where demands and expectations are VERY modest.  And these growing independent churches have no delusions that the young will pay their own way.  The trend in drawing young is in providing ministry “to” and “for” them, not “with” them (or expecting them to pony up to cash to pay for it).  A tiny number of United Methodist congregations have the resources or leadership to go toe-to-toe with the “big guns.”  And when I visit a small congregation with one 9-year-old and one 14-year-old (generally brother and sister) and they are envisioning revitalization through an active Sunday school and youth program, I have to scratch my head and wonder what they’re thinking.  Most assuredly we need to do everything in our power to provide spiritual support, education and guidance to people of all ages — but real people, not mythical wish-people who don’t exist, and even if they did they probably wouldn’t come to our church.

But who would come to our church?  Well, there is ample evidence that people who connect with a congregation connect through building relationships, and as important as multi-generational relationships are, these tend to succeed best in families.  The relationships that bond people to churches are relationships between peers — social, educational, cultural equals who reach out and invite each other into relationships.  We tend to cross bridges into familiar territory — so if our landscape is middle-age on up, then that’s who we are most likely to attract.  And how nice for us that 55-and-older will be the largest growing demographic over the next 25 years… and that over 40% of this Boomer demographic has no church affiliation.  The harvest has never been so ripe in the last sixty years!  Boomers (born between 1946-1964 — our current 46-64 year olds ) LOVE relationships.  This generation wants to be active, engaged in things that help others and that make themselves more comfortable.  This age group spends more money on themselves than any other, and they are the easiest touch for charity.  According to some, there have never been more people entering retirement who are looking for something worthwhile to do.  Churches that are paying attention are going to start growing — not with young adults, but with middle adults, retirees, and older adults.  And the wonderful thing about older adults is that we’re constantly making more!  Culturally, interest in church and religion is hitting later in life — just like about everything else.  When I did the spiritual seeker study for the denomination in 2003-2006, “spirituality” became a high priority for the majority of 41-60 year olds as they approached 50.  Also, the largest segment of “lapsed” church members — inactives, those who have drifted away, those who relocated and never reconnected — is in the 50+ category as well.

It is time for churches to figure out the difference between dreaming and planning, wishing and strategizing.  We can say we want a return to the 1950s with full Sunday schools and happy young families, but let’s be honest.  For the vast majority of UMCs, this just isn’t going to happen.  So, if we can’t have that, what can we have?  A much larger number of UMCs can have vibrant, vital, highly interactive ministries with middle adults, retirees, older adults, that attract and serve the audience they actually have instead of only wish they had.

Now let me be clear: if you have a viable children’s, youth, young adult, young families ministry, then by all means do it and do it well.  I am not saying we abandon one group for another.  What I am saying is simply this: the fastest growing non-ethnic demographic segment in most of the country for the next 25 years will be in the 55-and-older category.  Almost half of this group has little or no church affiliation.  Opportunity?  I think it is worth exploring.

Why are we here?  I don’t have one answer that applies equally to all congregations, but I believe this question is THE question every congregation should discuss and wrestle with.  Why do we exist?  What difference are we making — in the lives of our members and friends, in our community, in our denomination, in our country and in our world?  How do others benefit from our existence?  What is our witness?  What are we known for?  What do we WANT to be known for?  What are we doing about it?  This string of questions is all about identity and purpose.  They remind us that we are here for a variety of reasons — but if we are not consciously aware of the reasons, it is extremely difficult to tell whether we are doing a good job or not.

It can be quite disconcerting to ask church leaders what difference they are making?  Where they are clearly aware of the differences they make in individual, communal, and social settings, the question generates great energy and excitement.  Leaders fill newsprint with ways both big and small that lives are touched, people grow, hope is given, healing happens, transformation occurs, relationships are formed, bridges built, new possibilities emerge, and the gospel is shared.  It can be amazing.  But often the response is guilty silence.  People clear their throats and refuse to make eye contact in the wake of the question, “What difference do we make?”  Perhaps one person might offer, “well, we’re a friendly church — we all love it here,” but that’s about the extent of the feedback.  Sometimes, people turn hostile, firing back, “why should we have to make any difference?  This is our church and it takes care of us.  That’s good enough for us.”  And while an isolated individual might say and believe this, it is quickly evident that the majority of people present don’t agree.  We all know, deep down inside, that the church exists to make an impact — to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” or some similar significant purpose.  We know it, and we feel embarrassed when we have to admit that our own congregation is not living up to its full potential.

But part of the problem is that we don’t even take the time to ask key questions about our purpose, our witness, and our impact.  Many churches are going through the motions — continuing to do what they’ve always done because they’ve always done it that way.  Why do we offer worship on Sunday morning?  Because we’re a church and that’s what churches do.  But what do we want to happen to all the participants when we worship?  What expectations do we have?  We don’t have any expectations — worship isn’t a means to an end (relationship to God? oneness in Christ? empowerment by the Holy Spirit? strengthening Christian community? equipping us to live our faith in the world?), but an end in itself (an hour each week with three hymns, two scriptures, an anthem, and offering, a 20-minute sermon — shorter if possible — world without end, amen).  What is Christian education all about?  Give our kids something to do — learn Bible stories.  But what are we teaching them to do?  Sit quietly and listen to teacher so they know how to live a good Christian life.  What about adults?  Oh, our adult classes are as much about fellowship as learning.  A decade ago I spent a month in the East and West Ohio Conferences doing some survey work.  One of the questions I asked hundreds of regular church attenders was, “how have you grown in your faith in the past five years?”  Unbelievably (at least to me) almost three-out-of-four people (73%) responded that “I haven’t really thought about it before.  I can’t say I have grown in my faith.  I am pretty much the same today as I was five years ago.”  Of the one-in-five that reported growth (19% — 8% “weren’t sure”) it was almost universally person and individual (I know the Bible better, I pray every day, I come to church just about every week, I think I am nicer now, I wear a cross, I carry my Bible with me everywhere I go, I give more money to the church/to missions).  Only 29 out of 889 (3%) people reported that they actually served more people or actively engaged in ministry to others.  This research revealed a very simple, basic fact: we don’t talk about the reason the church exists in most of our congregations — we just assume everyone knows.

It is almost impossible to measure success without clear goals and objectives.  What difference do we WANT to make?  What impact are we trying to have in people’s lives, in our community, in our world?  What are the tangible fruits we are trying to grow and bear and share?  There is a huge difference between churches that say (real example) “we want to have a food pantry” and “we want to provide meals to 250 people each week.”  In the first church, members make occasional donations and food is always on hand to give to people who come to the church seeking assistance.  Their ministry doesn’t require much organization or support, and they are proud that they are doing something good.  They have responded to requests 39 times over the past twelve months.  In the second church, they had to figure out what it would require to provide food and supplies to so many people.  They needed space for storage and distribution, a work force of volunteers and a coordinator, a strategy for soliciting and receiving donations, and good estimates of what all would be needed.  They made the food pantry a central focus of their ministry and realized that the only way they could be successful was with help, so they reached out ecumenically and partnered with other Christian churches.  In the same twelve months as the first church, they responded to 4,316 requests, providing food for over 10,000 people.  The second church is the smaller of the two congregations.  Which is making the bigger difference?  The one with the clearest vision for what it is trying to do.  The success has nothing to do with available resources, people, time, faith, pastoral leadership, etc.  It has to do with vision, determination, intentionality and a clear sense of purpose.

Once we decide what it is we want to do, then (and only then) can we figure out the best way to do it.  This is known as “form follows function.”  Too many of our existing churches are enslaved by their form — the preexisting systems and structures that limit what we can accomplish.  How we are organized determines what we can do.  New ideas must conform to the existing structure.  New ministries must not disrupt the status quo.  The very things we did a generation ago that made a difference dwindle and die (“if only we could have a Sunday school like we used to have,” “I remember when we had to set up folding chairs in the sanctuary on Sunday morning,” “we used to draw people from 25 miles away to our church suppers,”), but the structures we used then are the structures we are stuck with today.  Inasmuch as humankind was not created for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was created for humankind, we were not created to serve our church structures, but our church structures were intended to serve us to make our ministry, witness and impact effective.  We don’t serve the church, the church serves to transform us into Christ for the world.  We are supposed to be making a difference.  We should be making an impact.  If we are not making the difference we believe God wants us to make, then we need to step back away from “the way we’ve always done it before,” and ask the key questions about identity, purpose, witness, and impact.  Then, as we discern who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do (function), then we can ask “and what is the best way for us to be effective (form).  When what we do reflects why we’re really here, we can’t help but make a greater impact.

Moxie — 1. vigor; verve; pep, 2. courage and aggressiveness, 3. skill; know-how.  Moxie is an American slang word, coined from a depression-era soda pop (that tastes a little like carbonated shoe-polish…).  It came to be a term of admiration — someone with Moxie was brash, bold, eccentric, impressive and generally got things done.  I use the term to describe what I believe are the qualities and characteristics needed to launch high-growth potential congregations.  I have a reputation for not liking large and mega-churches, which is not true.  My position, consistently, is that our largest churches are not our healthiest churches, they are incredibly difficult to create and sustain in a healthy manner, they require a very rare skill set (moxie), they are not a good model to lift up for others to follow, and they have generated a mythology based in wishful thinking rather than reality.  And yet, we have some, and they do a lot of good work.  Yet, a truly healthy congregation never depends upon the lead/senior pastor for their long-term effectiveness.  Take the pastor out of the equation and the whole formula comes apart.  So, I don’t equate size with health, numeric growth with systemic growth, or popularity with effectiveness (and this often gets me in trouble).

But I cannot (and do not) deny the success and prowess of a handful of United Methodist pastors.  I have nothing but admiration for the results Adam Hamilton has produced — I simply don’t think you can remove Adam from his results.  Doing what Hamilton does won’t produce the same results.  The same is true for a Slaughter, Rasmus, Caldwell, Gordon, etc.  These pastors all possess moxie — innate qualities and drives that are foreign to many of us.  I personally am not an ambitious person, nor am I an entrepreneur.  I’m visionary, but not patient.  I am a good critical thinker, but I am not overly self-confident.  I would be a poor church-growth pastor for a variety of reasons.  So what are the rare variables that make for a great founder/savior/turn-around large church pastor?  I offer five — in Scrabble order — that add up to “moxie.”

E is for entrepreneur — to build something, to grow something, to create something — this is a key drive for new launch pastors who can generate large/mega-churches.  There is a strong streak of the salesman/saleswoman in effective entrepreneurs — as well as marketing pitch and spin.  Not everyone can do this, and not everyone can learn this, but for those who are born with it the question is never “can we?” but merely “HOW can we?”  Where there is a will, there is a way, and may entrepreneurial pastors pursue both their will as well as the will of God.  For the most deeply committed, this makes them a veritable unstoppable force.  This, of course can be both a great strength and a glaring weakness.  Talking to pastors about the church they lead produces a very different story than that of many who are led.  During my Vital Signs research an interesting correlation emerged: the larger the church, the larger the disparity between the story that the pastor and key leaders tell and that of the people in the pew.  It often sounds like two completely different churches.  But I believe entrepreneurs do not live in the realm of the “what is,” but in the realm of the “what I am trying to create.”

I is for innovation — effective launch/turn-around pastors are leaders, not followers.  They don’t buy books by other pastors to see what they are doing.  They don’t attend leadership academies hosted by other successful pastors.  They are innovators, not imitators.  They are constantly looking at their setting and asking what’s missing?  Where is the next new thing we can do or offer that adds value to the people we serve (or those we want to serve).  There is very little copy-catting in the most enduring large churches.  You may get away with following the herd for a short time, but in the end church growth is just like any other growth industry — if you don’t establish a competitive advantage, then reinvent it constantly, you won’t lead for long.  Doing a new thing, even a risky thing — and doing it well — is a hallmark of moxie.

M is for mission — I have yet to meet a successful pastor of a large, growing congregation who was not trying to create a large, growing congregation.  Big church pastors are pursuing a big church mission.  They see mega-church as their raison d’etre.  They have a missional objective to lead a large church.  The gospel compels them to reach as many people as they can with the good news.  However, like the apostle Paul, often they pursue their own mission to the detriment of the empowerment of the whole body of Christ.  Bottom line focus and results driven program often lead to representational ministry — where a handful of leaders (many paid) do the ministry for the whole church.  It creates a passive complacency among most of the members (however, this phenomenon is not limited to large churches.  We have found creative ways to allow passive pew-sitting to define us as a church in congregations of all sizes…) where attenders are “proud” of the ministries of their church, though they never do more than give a buck or two for others to do the ministry for them.  It is stunning to interview members of some of our largest churches and realize how very little they know about or are connected to in their own church.  Many of our pastors are mission driven, but this drive does not trickle down throughout the whole congregation.  Yet, it contributes to the” irresistible force” nature of many successful pastors.

O is for obsession — single-mindedness and clarity of focus characterizes our large church pastors.  Regardless of what they write in their biographies, it is a little overwhelming to see how tightly aligned everything is to their ministry and work in real life.  Even when not “on-the-job,” they are on the job, their minds moving a million miles an hour with details big and small on where they want to go next.  I find it amusing trying to have a conversation with some of our lead pastors about anything but ministry.  Every conversation comes back to the church.  It’s inescapable.  This total immersion in all things church-success related may take a toll in family and other relationships, but pays big dividends on the church development end of things.  For large church pastors, church growth is the Promised Land and they are willing to do whatever they must to get there.  Here is another place where pastors tell a different story than others — this time their own families.  During my research for Vital Signs, I found that most successful large/mega-church pastors feel they do an excellent job juggling work and while family members report that they understand the sacrifices that must be made, but they only rate the juggling act as “fair” at best.  For this reason, successful church growth pastors require the loving support of a family willing to make necessary sacrifices so that the whole family fulfills the call to ministry of the pastoral head.

X is for x-factor — here is where I often get my head handed to me — over the intangibles.  There is an x-factor in successful large and mega-church pastors.  Rarely are they the most handsome, charismatic, charming, eloquent or smooth.  Most have rough edges and noticeable flaws.  They are far from perfect… and it doesn’t matter one bit.  The books they write are not the best books published on their respective subjects.  Their seminars are rarely deeply profound or unique.  Almost everything they do, someone else is doing better somewhere else… and it doesn’t matter.  There is just something about them that works.  They are greater than the sum of their gifts, knowledge, experience, skills, and competencies.  This is not to say that aren’t gifted and exceptionally skilled.  It is to say that there are many people out there with every bit as much to offer, but who function in relative obscurity in comparison.  It isn’t an issue of “fair,” it just is.  Some people are able to take what they have and maximize it beyond its apparent potential, and the danger then becomes setting such exceptional performance as a standard or norm for others to emulate.

Take the E, I, M, O, X — shake ‘em up, toss ‘em out, rearrange ‘em, and you got MOXIE — the building blocks for successful church growth pastors.  At least, these are the qualities and characteristics I have found to be at the heart of our brightest and biggest.  Add a lead pastor with these characteristics to a good location and some adequate resources and you have the foundation in place to grow a big church.  This is the good news.  The bad news?  There simply aren’t that many people with this unique blend working for them.  Even if we could clone them (and our Social Principles aren’t likely to approve cloning any time soon…) it probably wouldn’t make any difference.  History shows us that large/mega-church success is a one-time occurrence for 4-out-of-5 lead pastors.  It’s those pesky intangibles again.

I close sharing two things I have said many times in the past.  I have nothing against large churches, though I am a bit more leery and cautious about mega-churches.  It is simply that with quantity, quality trade-offs are made.  There is ample evidence that ten healthy 300 members churches are more effective than one 3,000 member church.  The only measurable advantage the big church has over the smaller churches is less overhead (one 3,000 member church costs much less to run than ten 300 member churches).  Usually, large and mega-church proponents compare a healthy 3,000 member (or 10,000) to a handful of small, struggling churches… where there is really no comparison at all.  The second thing I offer is that Christian seekers who are currently unaffiliated with an organized church overwhelmingly state that they would prefer intimacy and engagement with a community of faith, and wouldn’t be interested in a church with more than 100-200 members.  And our successful large churches actually figured this out, which is why so many are designed around “cells” or small groups — trying to be a large church of small churches.

Last word?  One size does not fit all.  No church, based on size, is going to be the standard (or the salvation) for the future.  Quality — health, vitality, engagement and impact on community and world — are much more important indicators of “success” and “effectiveness” than size, prominence, or popularity.  There is a place for everyone, and opportunity enough to go around.  It might take moxie to make a church huge, but it only takes God’s Holy Spirit to make it bear fruit — fruit that will last.

Forgive this personal digression, but I just noticed that United Methodeviations passed the 500,000 page views milestone recently.  On the one hand, this boggles my mind.  I realize that many hits come from “regulars” who check in frequently, so I have no delusions of reaching half a million people.  I also know that many people “accidently” visit looking for graphics or hitting the wrong button.  Still and all, a bunch of people have visited the site and engaged the materials I post here.  That’s so cool.  I mean, I write the blog as a way of thinking out loud and journalling.  Much of what is here is nothing more than me processing what I think and why.  I do not kid myself that this is cutting edge thinking, nor do I really think other people “need” to know my thoughts.  But I do love engaging in dialog and exploring ideas.  I don’t always like people’s responses; they don’t always like or agree with what I post.  Yet, we have a forum that enables us to have a conversation, to agree and disagree, and for the most part it is civil.  The church (and the world) need safe places to negotiate our differences and to seek ways to build bridges and celebrate our commonalities.

I often receive criticism for “being negative,” and there are times when this is well-deserved.  However, I also get criticized for unrealistically asking people to stay focused on the positive and not always obsess about what we lack, what we aren’t, what we don’t do, and what we can’t do.  I have developed a reputation as a cynically optimistic negatively positive critical thinker.  I can live with this.

In the past year and a half, the question I have been asked at least once a week is “Why aren’t you still working for the General Board of Discipleship (or another national Board or Agency)?”  I have no idea — you have to ask them that — but it hasn’t really made any difference.  I am still connected to Methodists/United Methodists around the planet, and instead of writing books and leading workshops I am writing this blog and preaching and teaching in a smaller market.  I could not be happier than to lend my gifts and talents to the Wisconsin Annual Conference.  While not a proponent of determinism, I do believe that wherever I am is where I am supposed to be (and whoever is in the conversation is exactly the right person to be there) so I grow where I am planted… and currently I am planted in very fertile soil.

And so I keep thinking out loud, and I am stunned and deeply grateful to all who read, find value, are challenged and provoked, respond (in friendly, civil ways), and forge a digital relationship with me.  The health and well-being of our church depends on open, honest, sometimes painful conversation.  Thank you for having one with me.  Please keep it up.

My thesis: the greatest danger to today’s Christian church in the United States doesn’t come from outside.  It isn’t atheists.  It isn’t gays or lesbians.  It isn’t the liberal media.  It isn’t terrorists of other faiths.  No, the greatest threat to our church today is us — the silly little disagreements even more than the major theological rifts.  All week I’ve been receiving emails and even a phone call (!) from people who disagree with me.  They disagree so vehemently that disagreements between Christians are the greatest threat that they promise no longer to read my blog or communicate with me.  That’s how deeply they believe that our disagreements can’t divide us…

One fair question that more than one person has asked is what I am basing this opinion on.  From 2002-2006, I worked on a research project for the General Board of Discipleship (that never got published) to look at attitudes toward mainline churches, particularly the UMC.  One part of that research project was to conduct “exit” interviews with hundreds of individuals who left a United Methodist congregation (to find out their reasons why).  The top 10 reasons given are as follows:

1. disagreement with another/other member(s) (16%)
2. disagreement with the pastor(s) (15%)
3. disagreement with changes made in the church (14%)
4. “outgrew” the church — no longer fed (12%)
5. disagreement with teachings of the church (local or denomination) (10%)
6. relocation — moved away (10%)
7. lost interest (9%)
8. found another church (7%)
9. changes in family/work situation (5%)
10. friends left the church – had no other connections/relationships (2%)

Note that four of the top five reasons given are conflict within the church.  Switching faiths didn’t make the top ten.  Leaving because gays and lesbians came in, ditto.  Being influenced and converted by atheists?  Nope. Inability to deal with brothers and sisters in the faith?  Bingo.  Church splits?  100% internal.  Church implosions?  100% internal.  Pastors requesting a new appointment?  83% grounded in conflict or disagreements in the congregation.

To those who have written to me telling me that I have absolutely nothing to base my opinion on, I simply say that this is where my opinion comes from.  The evidence might not be compelling to some, but it is to me.

However, beyond the mere reality of disagreement is how we deal with disagreement. The majority of United Methodists who leave over conflict do so because they feel there is no room to agree to disagree.  Too many conflicts in the church are defined in “win-lose” terms.  And once the “losers” lose, ties are cut, bridges burned, and bonds are severed.  88% of respondents reported that no one contacted them after they left, and no one invited them to come back.  Not only are we not concerned about the divisions that threaten to destroy us, we are equally unconcerned with the people who leave.  This, in my opinion, is a threat to the long-term survival of healthy Christian community.

And as I have said elsewhere, this divisive, destructive, and self-defeating behavior is witnessed by the world we hope to serve and save.   Each time we engage in petty, puerile, and poisonous infighting, this becomes our public witness to what it means to be the church.  Of course, when we are able to navigate conflict and disagreement in mature, healthy ways, this is our witness as well.  Unfortunately, we don’t seem to do the latter nearly as often as the former.

I know there are many who disagree that there is any kind of behavior problem in our congregations.  Nothing I say is going to make much difference.  Ultimately, no matter how well or how poorly we are treating each other in the church, there are still significant ways we can do better.  To commit to live the fruit of the Spirit is a good place to start (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control).  We could follow with some Micah 6:8 (justice, mercy, humility).  We could crown it with Wesley’s General Rules (do no harm, do good, attend to the ordinances of God).  Really, anything will do, so long as we strive to honor the Christ, “who has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (Ephesians 2:14b)

I witnessed one of the best missions presentations today at the Wisconsin School of Christian Mission.  Anita Ayers Henderlight, Executive Director of the Africa Education & Leadership Initiative presented an uplifting, positive, informative, hopeful and highly motivational program on the Sudan.  Uplifting?  Positive?  Hopeful?  SUDAN?  What gives?  The United Methodist Church produces an unending stream of media decrying how awful and terrible things are in the Sudan, especially Darfur.  And yes, there are many challenges in the region, but that’s only half the story.  The real difference isn’t about who is telling the truth — the real difference is who is using motivation and who is resorting to manipulation.

One of the most immediate differences in Anita’s presentation is that it is about real people in real settings living their real lives.  There are very few posed pictures; no sincere-looking Pastor Happy showing how concerned he is in every third shot.  No images designed to tug at the heartstrings in a calculated way.  No crying babies covered in flies with open wounds, no distended bellies, not hopeless empty gazes.  What is striking about Anita’s images are the number of smiling, happy people.  Are they struggling in difficult settings?  You bet.  Are they in danger from disease and violence?  No question.  Are they living lives of quiet desperation?  No way!  The images in this morning’s presentation were of possibilities, not problems; hope, not despair; people pulling together, not people coming apart.  Anita is committed to creating something beautiful, not merely eliminating something bad.  It is such a hopeful, powerful message — one which I wish our whole denomination would pay attention to.

Doing good is its own reward.  Seeing our efforts make a difference is meaningful.  Being beaten over the head by the immensity of the problems is not.  Sure, we might guilt someone into giving a dollar or two, and we may manipulate people’s emotions enough to make them part with their hard-earned cash, but research shows that in such cases, once people give a few bucks they move on, figuring that they did their part and nothing more is expected.  However, when people contribute to building something positive, they tend to invest for a longer period of time.  Modern marketing techniques are all about behavior modification and short-term results.  Too bad we have adopted so much from modern marketing…

Years ago (1985), I returned from a mission trip to Haiti.  I put together a slide show and presented it all over the Northern (now Greater) New Jersey Annual Conference.  The pictures showed our projects, the people we worked with, the people we worked for, and the children of the villages/towns.  Scene after scene showed laughing, playing, singing people.  Some of the poorest people I ever met laughed almost constantly.  They were gentle and kind, and their spirit shown through the pictures.  Even in an orphanage where the majority of the children were sick — some terminally so — most of the pictures showed smiling or laughing people.  When I showed the slide show around the conference, many people commented, “This isn’t what I expected.  On TV all you see are crying babies and sad mothers and fly encrusted sores.  Where are all those people?”  Well, they were there.  They were just hard to find.  Most people that I have met in Haiti, Africa, Central and South America are not living under a cloud of despair.  They cope.  They persevere.  They prevail.  Sadly, there are many leaders in our church who are afraid happy, contented people aren’t compelling enough to use to raise money.  So, they look for the heart-tuggers and the tragedies.

I know well over a hundred people who serve (or have served) as missionaries.  Almost universally they speak of the courage, strength, nobility and spirit of the people they serve.  They are motivated to make things better, and while they honestly and realistically understand the life-and-death challenges people face, rarely do they use such information to manipulate.

Don’t get me wrong.  There is great suffering and great human need.  Most Haitians were not laughing, singing and dancing in the streets following the recent earthquake.  It was appropriate to share images of that suffering and tragedy to raise both awareness and funds for the situation.  Yet, people cannot long exist in that hyped-up condition of concern and compassion.  The sad fact is that the needs in Haiti are as great today as they were a few months ago, but the support is no longer there.  Many Americans believe that we “took care” of that problem; unaware of the needs and demands that continue.  However, a news report the other day talked to some relief workers in Haiti who were commenting on how bad things still are.  And in the background?  A small group of children laughing and playing in the rubble.

United Methodists do not need to be manipulated.  We don’t need another slick video highlighting how compassionate and caring the pastor is as he holds a fragile child on his lap.  We don’t need cunningly spun stories and images telling half-truths and untruths aimed at raising money.  What we need is to know what is really going on.  We need to connect with people around the world to make this world a better place.  We don’t need marketed campaigns.  We need to build relationships with real people doing real work to make a real difference.  I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to see an authentic and balanced presentation on a significant mission opportunity in the Sudan.  It made me proud to be United Methodist… something I don’t feel nearly as often as I would like.

George Steinbrenner died at 80.  This news brought to mind a flurry of memories and images.  When I was younger, I absolutely LOVED baseball.  I followed the Big Red Machine in the 1970s and memorized volumes of stats and stories.  There was something pure and fun and inspiring and simply American (in the best sense of the word) about baseball.  I grew up in the mystique of the American pastime.  It was great.  Then Steinbrenner changed everything.  Baseball stopped being a sport and became a business as Steinbrenner changed all the rules and paid exorbitant and obscene amounts of money to buy championships.  Rarely did I ever hear a good story about George Steinbrenner.  He obtained the status of baseball antiChrist — representing everything wrong with the “game.”  He opened to door to free-agency, the baseball strikes, and ended the possibility of multiple players spending an entire career with one team.

Power corrupts.  Absolute power etcetera, etcetera.  This week I have been reflecting on divisions within the church, and the fact that our greatest threats do not come from the outside, but from within.  This was certainly true of baseball.  Football and basketball were not the greatest threat to baseball.  Baseball did it to itself as greed, money, media, politics, and power plays became more important than competition, loyalty, and athletic performance.  Think of the influence that money, greed, politics and power plays have on our church today.  The parallels are a little scary, but they simply reflect the larger shifts in cultural values.

But when did church become about power, size, material possessions, popularity, and media savvy?  It kind of makes sense with baseball — an entertainment industry.  It is a for-profit pursuit.  But the church?  Why are we following this same set of values?  Yes, we have some “box store” style churches that crank out a pile of programs and products, and they do some good.  But is this what we’re really all about?  Sure, we have a few “franchise” pastors who call all the shots, but is this a good thing?  We certainly love to keep score and track stats — even though most of them reflect losing seasons.

I am currently attending and teaching at a School of Christian Mission in Wisconsin, and it is so wonderful to be with a large group of Christians whose focus is on doing good for others.  We’re not talking about growing the church, but living the gospel.  We’re not talking about the needs of the institution to receive financial support, but how we can give to the poor.  We’re not talking about how to get more people to come to us, but how to equip people to go and serve others.  We’re not talking about how to get bigger, but how to be better.  It is a refreshing meeting, and a reminder of what we’re really all about.

Steinbrenner represents for me the “win at any cost” mentality that is so destructive in our culture.  This may be very unfair — I never met the man and I base most of my impressions on what I have heard and read.  What really upsets me is when I see such values of materialism, manipulation, competition, conquest and condescension leech from the dominant culture into the church.  Instead of the church influencing culture for the better, the culture corrupts the church.  What’s up with that?

Neither baseball nor the church are likely to return to kinder, simpler states.  We’ve “grown up” for better or for worse into what we are today, but hopefully we can “mature” beyond our current limitations.  Perhaps we can emerge from our current infatuation with big churches and fancy technology and pop pastors and MORE, MORE, MORE and seek a sane alternative that aligns our greatest efforts with our deepest values.  It’s never too late, except for Steinbrenner.  I wonder if he ever questioned his materialist and imperialistic drive to win, or if he was happy and content all along the way.  Thankfully in the church there are those who question, and those who desire something better.

Generally, a vision is a positive thing — something worth pursuing, something people want.  Promised Land.  Land flowing with milk and honey.  City on a hill.  Shining light.  Good thing.  At its best, the church is all about vision.  Or, it should be.  Too often we are about division instead of vision.  I wrote yesterday about our greatest threat being US — that it isn’t the non-Christians and atheists that pose the greatest danger to Christianity, but sanctimonious, angry, judgmental Christians.  I received nine emails today all arguing against my point, but I share three quotes that I kind of think prove my point, but that definitely present an alternative view.

When great men of faith like Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye tell the truth and teach the gospel, who are you to make it sound like they are doing wrong?  Loving everyone is not the same as tolerating sin.  We do not have to love Muslims, gays, and terrorists because they not only sin, but they have no repentance.  If they repent and become good Christians, of course we will love them.  But the real problem here is not that faithful Christians aren’t loving, but that false Christians attack faithful Christians with false witness such as yours.

Is there such a thing as right and wrong?  You act like there’s no such thing as sin.  You act like people who hate sin are sinners and sinners are really the good people.  I do not understand what you are saying.

If you don’t believe the Bible, why are you a Christian?  You can’t just make the Bible mean what you want it to.  That is the way of false prophets and the anti-Christ.  It is not those who believe the Bible means what it says that will destroy the church, but men like you who twist the truth and lead people astray.

I’m not going to try to unravel what I said from what people think I said.  I believe I am pretty clear that it isn’t what people believe that is as great a problem as how they treat each other when they disagree.  And it is easy to get sidetracked on the “big” issues and miss the main point that I was trying to make: church-going Christians don’t treat one another very well.  The negative energy that threatens our church isn’t even over such things as human sexuality, abortion and immigration — it’s about the color of the carpet, removing inactive members from the roles, changing the time of worship, and whether the pastor spends too much time in the office and not enough time out visiting.  The major problems continue to plague us, but the day-to-day irritations and unkindnesses are eroding our very foundation.  How can we hope to navigate a landmine like homosexuality when we can’t discuss worship styles without someone leaving the church?  I’ve been involved in conflict mediation in the church for over twenty years.  In that time I have encountered emotional and physical violence, gun play, vandalism, late-night drive-by terrorism, anonymous threats, and harassment by phone, mail, and email.  All perpetuated by “loving Christians.”  Isolated incidents?  Hardly.  Every time I share these stories, dozens of laity and clergy launch into stories of their own.  Speaking with people who have left the church, at least half left because of how they were treated (and about half left because they didn’t get their own way).  THIS is the kind of behavior that I find so toxic and destructive.  This is what is tearing us apart.  And often, this is the very type of bad behavior that we tolerate and ignore.  Sin?  This is sin, and it is every bit as bad as all the other stuff we judge others for.  Why aren’t we as concerned about this kind of sin?

And even if it is “sin,” it doesn’t mean we ostracize and reject those who behave this way, but we speak the truth in love and hold each other accountable to better behavior.  We remind one another that the evidence of our relationship with God ISN’T condemnation, judgmentalism, vile attack, violence, and self-righteousness, but love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  I realize that many who “love the Bible” could care less about this list, but it’s still there nonetheless, and we’re going to have to find some way to apply good scholarship, reason, critical thinking and common sense to the whole, and not just the parts that make us feel good.

It fascinates me when I try to share a vision of unity, harmony, peace, love, acceptance and grace and people argue that I am not a Christian.  I feel like I am on safe and solid ground when I say that God is love and that Christ has broken down the dividing walls of hostility and that we should evidence the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and then I find that such beliefs make me evil and unfit to be a pastor.  I feel like we need to build bridges and seek common ground, and am accused of being naive.  I call for prayer and discernment in Christian community, with a belief that God’s Spirit might still actually be present in the body of Christ, and I am told that I have a bad theology.  Well, I’m willing to talk about it and to try to reconcile — because I think that is the key to the future.  I wonder what those who disagree with me would suggest?

On a not-too-infrequent basis, Christian commentators will rant and rail against secular and non-Christian forces conspiring to destroy our faith.  Any given day, the Muslims or the scientists or the atheists or the Jews or the secular humanists or the liberals or the homosexuals or Planned Parenthood or the… you get the point.  Google the subject and you will find articles citing each and every one of those I listed as a threat to the Christian faith.  Yet, as I listen to the hate and bile being spewed by those governed by fear and violence rather than by faith, it occurs to me that the greatest threat to the Christian faith are Christians.

If the Christian church in the United States is destroyed any time soon, it won’t be because an outside force conquered it.  It will be destroyed from within.  Science can’t disprove faith.  Atheists aren’t that impressive.  There are as many liberal Christians as conservative Christians, so you can’t call them an “outside” threat.  And Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and dozens of other world religions have no power over Christians.  No, there is only one group on earth powerful and influential enough to destroy our church — and that is Christians.  Christians who would rather battle and argue with each other than find ways to get along.  Christians who would rather debate “truth” in order to ignore things like “justice.”  Christians who attack and condemn each other while spouting that “God is love.”  Christians who are more concerned with how we differ than what we could become if we were united by our faith.

What’s so important about being right?  Why are our conflicting beliefs worth hating each other over?  How can our differences completely undermine our responsibility to act with love, peace, kindness, gentleness, and self-control?  Do we really believe that God approves of our judgmentalism and derision? Is there any more necessary demand on our current situation than the need for reconciliation, unity and healing?  Why is it that a faith defined by mercy, grace, love and justice leads to such hurtful, hateful, unkind and unjust behavior?

I know that some will see me as the problem — wanting to love the unlovable and accept the unacceptable.  I confess that this IS my reading of the gospel.  I am as bothered by sin as the next person, but I simply don’t see sin as a reason to argue.  We’re all sinners, we all need God’s grace, and we’re better off together than we are split apart.  I would much rather exert my energy to love someone I disagree with than to waste my energy trying to hurt or alienate them.  It bothers me that so much of our faith language is about behaviors in which we refuse to engage.  Righteous indignation seems more appealing than unconditional love.  Hating gays gets more play than amazing grace.  Misunderstanding other people’s beliefs is more important than making sure we understand our own.  But to what end?

Where will this all end up?  We’re not attracting many more people than we are alienating and repulsing.  We are losing credibility with younger, more educated people.  We are often viewed by Christian believers outside of our organized churches as contentious, divided, and hypocritical.  These views aren’t merely about theological differences, but our inability to navigate theological differences.  Holding different beliefs isn’t the problem.  How we behave about our differences is the bigger issue.  Certainly patience, peace-making, grace, mercy, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, inclusiveness and forbearance are challenging, but come on… are we even trying?  Many don’t see it.

We need to be better.  We need to stop listening to those who want to divide us, to segregate us, to put up walls, to ostracize and alienate, and we need to seek a better way.  We need to allow the fruit of the Spirit to define us — as the way we live in the world, and not just nice ideas to which we pay lip service.  I am tired of hearing one batch of Christians bad mouth other Christians as if it is their God-demanded duty.  Humility.  Self-control.  Civility.  Respect.  Servanthood.  These things are all more acceptable than judgmentalism, condemnation, self-righteousness, and contempt.  Yet, many preference the latter list to the former.  Things need to change, and they won’t change for the better if we tolerate the dividing walls of hostility and continue looking for the specks in the eyes of others while ignoring the logs in our own.  We need to learn to get along.

I received three different requests for this article in the past two weeks, so I am reprinting it here (from February 2009)

No Christian leader that I know ever sets out to do an “average” job for God. Oh, sure there are a few jaded pastors who are just counting the days to retirement, or an occasional lay leader who is feeling “burned-out,” but those are very few and far between. Pastors and laity leaders in our congregations deeply desire to do a good job in whatever capacity they serve.

Why is it, then, that 33% of congregational leaders say they are “struggling,” and that only 4% of our congregational leaders rate the ministries of their churches as “excellent?”  (11% rate the ministries “very good,” 29% rate the ministries “good,” 36% rate their ministries as “fair,” 16% rate their ministries as “poor,” and 3% confess their ministries are “terrible” — based on a 2002 survey of 1,500 United Methodist pastors and 2,700 lay people.)  Less than half of our leaders feel their ministries are “good-to-excellent.”  55% feel their ministries are mediocre at best.  Why is mediocre “normal,” and “good” beyond the reach of so many?

Here are seven reasons why mediocrity is the best so many congregations can manage:

1. Mediocrity is the default setting.  Mediocrity might not be our intended goal, but if we don’t have anything else to shoot for, mediocrity is the best we can do.  Not every church that sets goals excels, but those that do not have clear, specific, concrete, measurable goals rarely make it farther than “fair.”
2. Mediocrity is the result of too many demands, and not enough resources.  The vast majority of our churches can be great at one or two (maybe three) things.  Yet, mediocre churches attempt to do a little of everything — spreading both human and material resources too thin.  Doing a few things extremely well is much better than doing many things poorly.
3. Mediocrity is a reflection of an unclear (or contested) sense of purpose.  It is difficult to excel when you don’t know exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing.  If some people think the church is about making disciples, while others think it is about attending worship, or taking care of the members, or attracting visitors, or <insert focus here>, it is going to be extremely difficult to be first rate.  Priorities are vertical, not horizontal — a “top priority” must come first.  Healthy churches can tell you what is most important, what is second, and what is third, and on down the line.  Mediocre and struggling churches say things like, “well, we have seven top priorities…”  When you have multiple “priorities” of equal importance, you have NO priorities.
4. Mediocre churches focus on programs, not people.  This is another way of saying form follows function — programs should support the central work of helping to build relationship with God, relationship within the community of faith, and a servant relationship with the world.  Congregations that do the difficult work of building healthy relationships, good communication, and affirming/respectful environments can excel at just about anything they put their mind to.
5. Mediocre congregations are limited by low or unclear expectations.  If coming to church on Sunday, or attending a Bible study, or participating in a small group is good enough, then all the church will ever be is “good enough.”  Problem is, “good enough” is an unacceptable standard for the incarnate body of Christ in the world.  Healthy, thriving churches know that it is a good thing to set clear standards for participation, help people grow in their commitment to the community of faith, and hold them accountable as a way to help them excel.
6. Mediocre churches look for someone else to solve their problems.  Every community of faith contains the gifts, passions, knowledge, experience, faith, and vision to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil. 2:12b)  Healthy churches realize they have everything they need to develop a world class ministry of some kind.  Mediocre churches churn through an almost endless series of books, videos, training seminars, and consultants looking for the 7 habits, 12 keys, 40 days, or 101 answers that will magically transform their ministries.  There is no packaged membership, stewardship, evangelism, Christian education, or leadership campaign/resource that will turn a “mediocre” church into an “excellent” one.  Being like some other church doesn’t make you excellent — it makes you redundant.
7. Mediocre churches are more concerned with numbers than nurturing discipleship.  Getting people to “come to church” is, at best, a mediocre goal.  Helping people to deepen their relationship with God and live their growing faith in the world moves us toward “excellence.”  This is true at all levels, and it is a challenge to The United Methodist Church.  Most of our measures of success in our denomination have nothing to do with quality, just quantity.

There is no simple formula for “excellence,” but important factors for improvement are clarity of purpose, focused priorities, healthy relationships, commitment to spiritual formation and development, good communication, prayerful discernment, and an unwavering dedication to quality and excellence.  Excellence doesn’t happen by accident.  True excellence is the result of careful, conscientious, and committed design.

One last observation about “mediocre” churches — most of them are to busy to be distracted by “spiritual stuff.”  Leaders of churches in the “terrible-to-fair” on average, pray, read the Bible, meditate, attend worship, fast, and engage in devotional reading less than the leaders in the “good-to-excellent” range.  It appears that an important key to bringing positive change to the church is to invest positive time in ones own spiritual growth, balance, and integrity.  We cannot lead others to a place we don’t go.

No one ever sets out to be mediocre.  Church leaders want to do well — in fact, most desire to honor and glorify God in everything the church does and is.  Mediocrity isn’t a goal.  Mediocre is what happens when we don’t have anything better in mind.

Want to know a secret?  The key to congregational vitality isn’t growth, it’s balance.  This shouldn’t be a secret — and it isn’t for about 10% of our United Methodist congregations — but sadly it is for the vast majority.  Ever since the late 20th century when we lost our mind to the church growth movement, we have been enamored with size, leading us to waste an incredible number of resources trying to get bigger instead of better.  The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but they are not synonymous, either.  Bigger is bigger, not necessarily better.  Interestingly, better is better, and more often than not leads to bigger — eventually.  Anyway, balance is the key, and we’re talking balance in three fundamental areas: inward and outward focus, works of piety and works of mercy, and personal formation and connection with a larger community of faith.

Inward/Outward Focus — In many of our congregations, it’s all about US.  We build ourselves big buildings, hire ourselves big staffs, pay lots of money on program and landscaping and parking lots and digital technology, and make our churches as comfortable as can be (of we’re lucky).  More regularly we scrape together whatever we can to keep going — spending our money on upkeep and overhead, salaries and insurance, heat and lights.  We do what we can to get by — but it’s still focused on our own needs and wants.  No matter how big a church gets or how many resources it has from which to draw, when the focus is primarily on ourselves, we are far from healthy.  Any congregation that forgets that it exists as a manifestation of the body of Christ to serve God in the world is on a slippery slope to begin with.  Selfishness simply doesn’t gibe with the Christian gospel, and all our rationalizations otherwise (we need to take care of ourselves first, then we can take care of others…) can’t change this simple fact.  Our healthiest congregations live in a dynamic tension between strengthening the congregation and serving the world — and in the very best situations, one always feeds and promotes the other.  We grow, enabling us to do more and serve more, which leads to further growth.  This is very different from the mentality that says if we grow more we will have more — a closed loop.  It is a subtle, but significant difference to hear the conversations in healthy and unhealthy congregations.  Case in point: two small congregations that were in decline in the late 1990s, each within seven miles of the other and a host of other Christian fellowships.  The leadership of “Wesley UMC” fretted and fussed over “how to get new members, young families, and more leaders.”  They tried program after program, and slid further in decline.  They cursed the times and the culture — there was no way they could grow in their community.  They gave up.  They are gone now.  The leadership of “Christ UMC” asked a different question: “how can we serve more people?”  They realized that doing Christian service for others needn’t cost more money.  They began doing programs designed to equip people to be in ministry to others.  They left the building.  They discovered community needs (primarily among the elderly) and they worked to meet them.  Today, they flourish and thrive and have tripled in size — in the same community where “Wesley” claimed there was no opportunity.  The only significant difference was the way they framed their question; not how can we get more, but how can we do more?

Works of Piety/Works of Mercy — the “all about us mentality” led many congregations to focus more on spiritual development and less on Christian service.  What is clearly an integrated whole in our New Testament and United Methodist theological heritage (discipleship and stewardship — learning and teaching, following and leading, receiving and giving, preparing and providing) has become fractured and fragmented in many churches.  Somehow worship trumps mission, Bible study trumps evangelism, fellowship trumps Christian service.  Bringing people in our doors has a higher priority than sending people out.  Having a small core group of people feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned on behalf of the larger congregation is the rule, not the exception.  ”Active church member” is determined by attendance and monetary giving, not by hours of service to those outside the fellowship or ministry in daily life.  In our healthiest United Methodist congregations three facts are evident: 1) as much ministry happens away from the church building as in it; 2) as many people are engaged in acts of Christian service in the community as attend a worship service; and, 3) almost everyone is engaged in hands-on service to others.  One small southwestern church of about 150 active members celebrated when the 150th member participated in a mission project.  How many of our churches can boast that 100% of the membership has been on a mission trip?  One Midwestern congregation averages about 75 people in worship each week, but over 100 people volunteering in their community.  A small congregation of 50 feeds over 500 people each week and tutors 125 children and youth each week.  These are strong churches — lacking no resources of people, money, time or energy.  When everyone is both a student and a teacher, a follower and a leader, a hearer and a doer, it radically alters our definition of “church.”

Personal Formation/Connection to Community — perhaps the greatest challenge we face in our modern individualistic society is putting the good of the whole community of faith ahead of any single agenda or personal need.  A significant number of people in the United States come to church for one reason — what’s in it for them.  Church is one more edutainment option among many — a way to kill an hour doing something perceived as an avenue for self-improvement.  For this segment, there is little or no desire to do anything with the larger community of faith other than share in a once-a-week (or once-in-awhile) worship experience.  The idea of participating in spiritual community has virtually no meaning.  Many subscribe to the attitude that “my faith is between me and God and is nobody else’s business.”   Our healthiest congregations do not pander to the consumer mentality of modern spirituality but create communal spiritual environments where the “we” is always put before the “me” of any individual.  There is a widespread, shared vision of “body of Christ” as the guiding metaphor, meaning that no individual can do it alone.  Church is fundamentally about relationships — to God and others.  Where individuals are formed in the faith for the common good, to build up the body, to equip the saints for ministry, etc., there is health.

It is easy to see how closely these three things are related and they all share a common thread — the Christian faith isn’t just about “us.”  We are formed for a greater purpose than our own satisfaction and fulfillment.  We are God’s church — existing to seek and serve God’s will.  Certainly we are beneficiaries, but we are not the reason the church exists.  The church doesn’t exist to serve us; we are the church, equipped to serve those who are not yet (nor will some ever be) part of the universal fellowship.  We have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to get people in our church buildings, and now we struggle motivating people to go out and serve others in the world.  Some of our churches are so saddled with property and facilities that they have little time or energy for ministry, just maintenance.  A number of our churches are so busy doing things to keep the members happy  that the mission is all but lost.  Transformative ministry bows before passive chaplaincy and the church declines and the world remains unchanged.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  With balance not only do we change the church, but we change individual’s lives, as well as the world.  It’s nice to know it can still happen.

We’ll take anybody.  We don’t even require membership classes anymore.  Nobody has the time, and most of the people who join our church are coming from other churches, anyway.  We ask at the end of every service if there is anyone who wishes to join, they come forward, and we ask if they believe in God and as Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  If they say “yes,” they’re in.  Our numbers are way up because of it.

The above paraphrase, comes from a recent conversation I had with one pastor, but it is representative of a large (and possibly growing?) segment of our church.  It reflects the “low-cost/high-benefit” mentality of most of American consumer culture, but is it appropriate in the church.  I say “no,” but there are an awful lot who say “yes.”

It isn’t about rules and regulations and keeping people out.  It is about making it as simple as possible for people to enter the family of God.

This pastor speaks for those who believe no one should be denied, and that church membership is of secondary importance to Christian community.  Her comment points out the gatekeeper role of the local congregation and reflects a broad sentiment that any person who wants to say “yes” to Jesus Christ should not only be allowed to do so, but should be helped along in whatever way possible.

I don’t disagree that we should be an open gate — but a gate still implies a boundary; something that distinguishes those who say “yes,” from those who have no interest.  For me, there is a huge difference between making something simple and making it meaningless.  I believe that many of our attempts to make Christianity simple have done little more than devalue the Christian life, resulting in an insipid, passive, and unproductive faith.

The Christian life has substance.  It makes demands.  It requires action and practice.  It must be learned and honed and perfected.  It is a partnership agreement with God, the Holy Spirit, and faith community.  It isn’t a hobby.  There are very clear requirements and expectations.  A person seeking to embark on the lifelong journey of Christian formation needs to know what this means, and then the choice is whether or not the person really, truly wants to pay the costs to reap the benefits.  It costs very little to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God — you don’t even need a church for that.  But to grow in the faith, to perhaps embark on the process of becoming a Christian disciple, to pursue a transformation in the Spirit to lead and teach and serve (whether as laity or clergy) — these require true church.  The person seeking doesn’t get to make the “rules.”  This would be like hiring someone and telling them their job is to do whatever the heck they want to.

We make a passive, muddled attempt at offering some expectations in The United Methodist Church, but we have little or no accountability, so it all falls flat.  We ask newbies if they will “uphold the church by their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness,” but offer virtually no guidance as to what we are really asking.  We make assumptions that new “members” pray, that they know how to pray, that they have a disciplined prayer life, and that they will now include the “church” in said prayer life.  Nine-out-of-ten United Methodists respond to the question, “What does it mean to ‘uphold the church by your presence?’” by answering, “Attend worship services.”  Most UMs limit gifts to a financial contribution, service to “helping out at the church,” and witness as “going to church.”  The problem here isn’t with people giving poor, low expectation answers.  The problem is that leaders in the church offer no challenge to such answers.

Another problem is that the percentage of “new members” who become “inactive members” within the first six months of joining a United Methodist Church crept above the fifty percent line in 2006 and kept going up.  New members aren’t even being held to the minimum standards.  Zero accountability.  A person can “join” a United Methodist Church, never pray, never attend, never give, never serve, never share their faith and remain a member in good standing.  What message does this send to the world about the value of membership vows in The United Methodist Church?

We don’t even take members in anymore.  People don’t want to join.  Anyone is welcome to participate as they feel comfortable.  Membership isn’t as important as engagement.

I am in full agreement that membership isn’t the point.  Membership has always been a means to an end rather than an end in itself.  A membership process at its very best is an integration of a newcomer into the very DNA of the local congregation and the church universal.  It is a process of inclusion into the identity and purpose of each congregational entity.  It widens the circle we label “us.”  It is an organic process of unification and growth.  All this changed when the driving value of Methodism shifted from service to size.  Once numbers ascended the throne, all bets were off.  Getting bodies in the pews trumped getting new members into the body of Christ.

The influx of other faith communions is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but it does have an impact.  The Evangelical Association, The Methodist Church, and the United Brethren (to a lesser extent) were primarily mission societies that prized personal holiness and evangelism above all else.  It was clear that “we” existed for one purpose — to be a witness to Christ IN THE WORLD.  As we have welcomed Baptists (of all flavors), Presbyterians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, and a whole host of other denominations, we have become more stew than salad — a blending of flavors and textures that, over time, lose their distinctiveness and become something “other” (and in our case, I would say, less than the sum of our parts).  In a salad, each new veggie or accoutrement adds a flavor or texture, but the whole retains its integrity (kind of like the body of Christ imagery from Paul).  We never lose our original intent (becoming greater than the sum of our parts).  A significant number of people enter The United Methodist Church dragging their plunder from Egypt — carrying all their history and knowledge of the way their old church worked into their new church.  A lay leader in a United Methodist Church said to me recently, “In my last church the priests did everything.  I get so angry at our pastor every time he talks about “the ministry of the laity.”  If he would spend less time trying to get us to do his work for him, he would get a lot more done!”

When I worked on the Seeker Study for the General Board of Discipleship I talked to literally thousands of 18-31 year old Christians who have no ongoing church affiliation.  In conversation after conversation, young people told me that they were frustrated by churches that “couldn’t tell their story.”  Many different people said that the reason they didn’t join a church is because they weren’t clear what they would be saying “yes” to.  A sampling of their comments indicate that the beliefs, values, practices, expectations and theologies of most local congregations were fuzzy at best.  One young woman who claimed to have tried close to 100 different churches put it this way:

If I were looking for a job, I would look for one that matched my skill and knowledge, could help me grow and develop and gain experience, that aligned with my core values and my vision for the work, and I would expect to give my best and in return I would want to be treated fairly.  I would need to know what would be expected of me and how I would be evaluated.  If I came away from an interview feeling uneasy about my prospective employer, I wouldn’t take the job.  When I come away from a church not knowing what it believes, what it has to offer me and what it wants from me, and it doesn’t seem to know what it is there for, I don’t go back.

Accountability to vows before God and a Christian community are not intended to “weed out” anyone, but to facilitate the emergence of those who desire a life in Christ.  Accountability is not, by definition, punitive.  Actions must have consequences.  When people perform well and follow-through on their word, this should be recognized and celebrated.  When people perform poorly and fail to keep their vows, there should be consequences.  And when people hear what is required and say “no thank you,” then we should honor that, but in no way should we keep lowering our expectations until they are willing to say “yes.”  Being a Christian — and more pertinently, being a Christian disciple — comes with some demands.  It is up to each and every individual to decide whether or not they want to meet those demands, but this is their choice.  The body of Christ needs to be clear that membership in the body means something, and that all are welcome — as long as they are willing to take seriously the promises they make to God and the community of faith.

I used a hymn at this year’s annual conference that I wrote the words to about 20 years ago when I was charged with merging two congregations that didn’t really want to merge.  There was loads of competition and strife, so I wrote this song as a call for unity.  When our annual conference decided to hold conversations around our church and homosexuality, I pulled it out, dusted it off, and gave it its second public airing.  I don’t know what impact it had on unity, but I have received a number of requests asking where people can obtain a copy of the words, so I thought I would post it here.  This posting comes with permission to use it and reprint it, but with proper credit. (It is copyrighted.)  Even if you don’t care to use it, I offer it as a poetic devotion, calling us as Christian brothers and sisters to a deeper commitment to respect, civility, harmony, compassion and common courtesy in all of our dealings — with each other, and with all God sends our way.  Peace.

Make Us One, Lord

(to the tune of Holy Spirit, Truth Divine)

Make us one, Lord, make us one

Guide us by your love and grace

As we seek to do your will

Let your Spirit fill this space

Make us one, Lord, make us one

Let your peace and patience reign

Help us speak our thoughts in love

Without causing others pain

Make us one, Lord, make us one

Gentle, faithful, truthful, kind

By your presence help us guard

Every precious heart and mind

Make us one, Lord, make us one

Shift our focus to your will

Shape our future by your hand

Our true potential to fulfill.

Music: Adapt. from Orlando Gibbons, 1623

Words: Dan R. Dick, 1989

I have been working on a sermon for this coming weekend and I have been doing a lot of thinking about the fruit of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5:22-23.  Spiritual gifts, graces and fruit have been an interest of mine for some time (check out Equipped for Every Good Work and Beyond Money… if you can still find copies, since they are both now out of print) but each time I come back to lists of gifts or fruit, I start thinking about them in new (or at least different) ways.  Paul lists nine signs (evidence) of true spirituality in Galatians.  Christians will  be known by their love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Love is agape – that wondrous, unselfish, all-encompassing, non-judgmental, unconditional love that most of us cannot possibly understand (because we want to withhold it from so many…).  Joy is chara – unbounded exuberance and sense of well-being.  Peace is eirene – either absolute balance and calm or the total absence of discord.  Patience is makrothumia – which means “far-feeling” or tolerance, perseverance, long-suffering, or putting up with discomfort.  Kindness is chrestotes – servant-like compassion and care extended to others, especially the stranger (what we often mean by “hospitality” today).  Agathosune means doing for others, a form of charity — goodness in outward and tangible gifts and service — true generosity of heart and action.  Faithfulness is pistis – hardcore belief and unwavering adherence to the highest values of holy living, those who are completely devoted to God.  Gentleness is praotes – the humble acknowledgement that others are as good as, if not better than, we are — and that all those created in the image of God deserve respect and care.  Self-control is egkrateia – literally “in-holding,” it means keeping it together and not allowing one’s emotions to run wild.  Each of these Greek terms can be translated a number of ways, which makes their study rich and rewarding.

What comes clear quickly is that these fruit are not passive and pleasant, but are active and demanding.  We must LIVE the fruit of the Spirit, not merely possess them.  We need to “feed” others these fruit.  But where my thinking has gone this time is in a slightly weird direction.  Watching my wife dump oranges, pineapple, blueberries, bananas and cranberry juice in a blender the other day, I started thinking, “What would the result be if we dumped the fruit of the Spirit in a big blender and hit ‘puree’?”

I have three answers that have popped into my head, that I will share here, but I would love to hear what kind of “fruit smoothie” you come up with.

1.  Love + joy + peace + patience + kindness + generosity + faithfulness + gentleness + self-control = justice.  Compassion, mercy, caring for the weak and powerless, serving those outside the faith — these things are all implicit in the Greek words we translate as the fruit of the Spirit.  We are the “fertile soil” in which God nurtures, cultivates, and grows the fruit, but it is grown to serve the entire world — not just the community of faith, but especially those beyond and outside.  When I think of the fruit in combination, justice is the smoothie it creates.  Justice will never happen by accident.  It will only occur because people commit to ensure it happens.  It will not happen without love.  It will not happen without radical kindness and generosity.  Without gentleness and self-control, we will not be motivated to do for others.  Anyone possessing even one iota of faithfulness knows that justice isn’t an option, but an imperative.  And a commitment to joy must be a commitment to joy for all or it is incomplete.

2. Family — not dysfunctional human family, but truly spiritual family grounded in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Who hasn’t wished to be part of a family like that?  Wouldn’t it to be fantastic to find yourself gathered at a table where everyone truly loved and accepted everyone else?  Wouldn’t it be great to be with people who you didn’t fear were judging or condemning you?  Can you imagine being together without having to walk on egg shells and avoid delicate conversations?  Wouldn’t it be simply amazing to be with others you know love and care about you without reserve — and you feel the same about them?  That would be…

3.  Heaven — do we want to experience the realm and kindom of God here on earth?  What are we waiting for?  A significant part of Jesus’ message, especially in Luke’s gospel, is that the kingdom has come, that God’s realm is not waiting in some far off day and time, but that it is possible now, well within our grasp if we will merely accept it.  Living the fruit of the Spirit is experiencing the kingdom/kindom of God RIGHT NOW!  There is absolutely no reason not to experience true Christian community today, apart from egotistical self-centeredness.  The reason we do not experience it is because we do not want to.  We think we know better than God.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We need to become fruit-farmers and fresh produce sellers.  We have been given everything by God that we need to experience a taste of heaven on earth.  We need to enjoy the goodness of God’s fruit and blend it in tasty ways and share it with the world.  Why make it harder than it needs to be?  If the world got the best of what we have to offer instead of the worst (bickering, judgment, divisiveness, arrogance, condemnation, etc.), perhaps our witness would make a bigger impact.  To me, at least, it seems worth a try.

Well, Wisconsin Annual Conference, Session the 41st, ended yesterday.  Tracking all my rookie mistakes — this being my first year organizing the agenda for conference in my role as DCM (Director of Connectional Ministries) — I can proudly say I only made a few, and a couple of them were of ignorance rather than poor performance.  Now, others might have a very different opinion.  What I feel good about, others may be disappointed by.  That’s the nature of things.  But having a day of “detox” from the madness of the past four days, I am mulling over three things.

First observation, conference breeds bizarre ambivalence.  There is an atonal rhythm of moving from unifying spiritual focus to divisive topical debate.  So many people gathered together is the ideal environment for discord, but so much of the time is (should be) celebration of the faith we share.  Jeremy Deaner, a bright, young shining light in our conference preached one of the finest sermons I have heard in years reminding us that we are one.  No amount of human pettiness can change that fact.  Just because one Christian decides he is better than another Christian, or that a Christian is somehow superior to a non-Christian, or that one Christian’s theology and reading of the Bible is better than her peers, or that clergy are somehow more spiritual than their laity counterparts, doesn’t change the fact that God makes us one.  We have no choice in the matter.  God has already done it.  Deal with it.  And yet we don’t deal with it.  We spend half our time celebrating our unity out of our diversity and then we spend the other half trying to divide the body into the worthy and the unworthy.  How very sad.

Second observation, it only takes a few people to sour a conference experience.  Overall, we had a truly remarkable conference.  We had a civil and respectful conversation about homosexuality and the church — raising important considerations about talking with people instead of about people, needing to shift focus to a positive celebration of human sexuality as a gift from God, and to keep perspective about the larger issues of justice, grace, and community.  Yet, just one or two personal agendas can derail the whole train, shifting the spirit and energy from the positive to the negative in the blink of an eye. 

Third observation, we need revival — not just good, old spiritual revival, but revival of our positive regard for one another.  So many people initiated contact to accuse, to blame, to confront, and to voice displeasure — and rarely was it done kindly or courteously.  Interestingly, those operating with the least grace were clergy.  Instead of saying, “I have a problem, could we work together to find a solution,” in any kind of conciliatory way, people tended to address problems by shouting angrily about how they were injured.  From registration to room arrangements to displays to plenary to agenda, a handful of people flew into fits, pouting and blaming, accusing and making all kinds of assumptions about malicious intent.  Where has this aggressive victim mentality come from?  Why is selfishness becoming the default?  Are we really so ego-driven that we think everything is about us?  I wanted to hug conference staff people who were unfairly treated and downright abused.  Sure mistakes were made and things fell through the cracks.  In situations like this where there are so many details to cover, things are bound to go wrong.  But why does that seem to give some people the right to be small-minded, rude and petty?

And I say again, it was only a few.  As I look at the past four days, my best memories are of the positives — a lovely ordination, a fine celebration of our retirees, an excellent commissioning service, an even-handed and grace-filled conversation about a “hot” subject, fine preaching by our Bishop Linda Lee and Jeremy Deaner, some great witnesses to the wonderful ministries and missional projects throughout our conference, and great people.  At the heart of the annual conference, it is the people — connecting, conferring, and celebrating.  I would love to see the day where we gather and hammer through the tough stuff first, so that we could simply have a couple of days together to celebrate the fellowship and worship and glorify God.  There is a wisdom to saving the best for last.

Where is the power and energy at Annual Conference this year?  I am not talking about any one Annual Conference — I’m talking about all of them.  Is our energy toward building, creating, forming, bridging, healing, mending, bonding, uniting, and becoming?  Or is it about conflict, controversy, contention, competition, factions, divisions, agendas, and egos?  Oh, I know, it’s both — but I’m talking about our intentions.  I am talking about the decisions we make going in.  Are we going in as positive forces for transformation or negative forces for getting our own way?  Are we going in open to possibilities or are we going in loaded for bear to champion a personal cause?  Are we seeking to solve problems or create new ones?  Each person has to make up her or his own mind about what kind of attitude and approach she or he will take.  Where is our energy?

This is a different question than “where is our power?” — and that may be part of our problem.  Annual Conference — and church in general — has come to be so much more about our power to control our own destinies than about God’s power to transform the world.  This is a personal observation, gained by attending no less than 31 different annual conferences over the past 15 years (this is the first year that I have only attended my own annual conference since 1995…).  What I have seen over the past decade-and-a-half are lots of hurt feelings and endless controversies grounded in a lack of trust and respect, an insistence on narrowly defined theologies from one end of the spectrum to the other, and an unwillingness to concede even one opinion or belief.  It is not a pretty sight.  And, sadly, it only takes a handful of people to define the energy of the whole Annual Conference.  The vast majority of people hold a positive attitude and energy.  They love the church and the love the annual meeting.  They bask in worship and learning, take very seriously the policy-making, and enjoy the fellowship with other United Methodists.  Most have no desire to spend lots of time arguing, debating, fighting, or posturing.  They are there to celebrate the work and witness of The United Methodist Church.  But that is rarely what gets reported or remembered.  Conference after conference, I hear people lament about something that happened at the 2004 or 2006 session.  A big bru-ha-ha, a blow-up, a fight.  Conference leadership tend to talk about what went well; conference members talk about “the good stuff.”

Is it all bleak?  By no means.  That’s the point.  It doesn’t have to be negative.  It doesn’t have to erupt in endless controversy.  We don’t have to be The Divided Methodist Church.  With very little effort and a small commitment to stay positive, many of our conference encounters could take a 180 degree turn.  The key is that WE WANT TO be better.  If people make a commitment to make something work, then they find a way to succeed.  They don’t give up on each other.  They don’t attack each other.  They may not like each other, but they care enough to find a way to work things out.  This shouldn’t be so hard for Christians to grasp.  The reconciling love of God that gave us redemption through Jesus Christ is alive and well and present in the Holy Spirit.  (Yes, this is a statement of personal belief.  It is a theological, rather than a factual, statement…)  The same power that destroys the dividing walls of hostility is available to us today.  How we are different and what we disagree over does not have to define us.  How we are the same and what we can accomplish together could define us.  But we have to want that to happen.

Where is the energy coming from this year at our Annual Conferences?  And will we draw from God’s power, or will we fight over our own power, in such short supply?

I am fast coming to despise email.  Not just the quantity, nor the spam — but the high level of miscommunication it engenders.  Three examples:

• you’re not the kind of example I would expect from The United Methodist Church.
• I have never heard such nonsense about the church before.
• The kind of change you’re talking about would make us a completely different church.

Are these three sentences (each lifted from an email I just received this morning) positive or negative; praising or condemning?  The first two are (apparently) praise, the third angry — though without tone, inflection, facial expression, cadence and other cues, it took me awhile to catch on.  The first woman commends me later in her email as being “a breath of fresh air in a stale, musty church,” though she also earlier said, “I’m not sure where you get some of your ideas from,” and “what do you think would happen if we threw away all our time-tested beliefs?”, so I wasn’t really sure whether she was happy with me or not…

The second woman led her email with “I have never heard such nonsense about the church before,” and went on to cite four or five things I have written in my blog, so I thought I was being torched until the second paragraph where it became apparent that she was merely incredulous about some of the things I have written — until she checked into them for herself and confirmed they are indeed true.  From there on, the email was filled with praise and questions.

The third, from a pastor, ripped me up one side and down the other for trying to change the church.  Apparently my conviction that God is love and that we should treat others with respect, dignity, compassion, kindness, and acceptance makes me “the lowest kind of liberal democrat dog that is trying to destroy this fine country and God’s holy church.”  I have yet to figure out how kindness makes me a liberal, but I am okay with it.  It will come as a blow to my conservative and republican friends that they are “acting liberal” when they are being kind, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Our emailing/blogging culture is taking us some pretty fragile places.  I marvel at people who seem to gleefully jump on any ambiguous phrase to misread, misinterpret, and misrepresent something someone else has written — taking innocent statements and making them something completely different.  Clear, effective communication is difficult enough without going out of our ways to make it harder.  It seems we will not allow the same grace to the written word that we might to the spoken word.  We are much quicker to “climb the ladder of inference” and ascribe negative intentions and meaning to words in print.  Many read to argue and debate, not communicate.

Because communication is hard, and good communication is often painful.  Being clear takes work.  One mentor of mine said of preaching, “you think purple, say blue, people hear green and see red!”  What we mean, once it leaves mouth, pen or keyboard is no longer ours alone, but is at the mercy of the hearer, the receiver, or the reader.  What we say and mean may be perceived very differently.

One of the best courses I had in college was a communication class where the professor talked of the five parts of communication: the creation of the message, the transmission of the message, the reception of the message, the interpretation of the message, and the application of/response to the message.  Elegant and sublime, simple and problematic.  Problematic because we only “control” two of the five essential elements of communication.  A common failing of modern communication is it is ALL about creation and transmission — we don’t take the time to find out what people receive, how they interpret it, and what they do with it.  We ASSUME our wonderful ideas and communiques are being received and read unfiltered — that people are hearing us and knowing exactly what we mean.  This is why dialogue is so often superior to monologue — it gives us immediate feedback about the last three essential elements of good communication.

We so often end up talking “at” each other rather than “with” each other.  My understanding you is sadly not as important as your understanding me (at least in my mind…).  I have a right to my opinion, you have a right to my opinion, but I have no real interest in your opinion. (A common blind spot of blogging.)  I don’t want you to get upset with what I say — I simply want you to know what I mean and agree with me completely.  This, alas, is not communication, but narcissism.

It is even worse when we are sure we are right.  Then, what I say is “truth” while what you say is “opinion.”  What I say is “right” and what anyone else says differently is “wrong.”  This is where communication ends and debate begins.  I have yet to meet anyone who has “won” a communication, though I know many who pride themselves on “winning” a debate.  Healthy relationships — the best reason I know for communication — are not about winning and losing, and our life in Christ is about relationships.  If the body is to remain strong, then our communication matters.  We need to get good at it.  We need to care as much about what people hear as what we say.  We need to seek to understand as much as we seek to be understood.  And we need to make certain that our communication reflects our most deeply held values, so that the grace of God, the love of Christ, and the renewing power of the Holy Spirit might be felt by all.

Okay.  Blog vacation over.  I’m back.  I have been unbelievably busy for the past two weeks, but am now going to get back to my two-to-three blog a week schedule.  I’m sure you are all relieved…

I have tried in the past couple weeks to keep my thoughts to myself and to simply observe.  And here is what I have observed.  Of all the Christian disciplines and instructions of Jesus and Paul, one seems to be lost — hopefully not irrevocably.  That discipline is: humility.

Could Christians — or more specifically any one Christian — be wrong?  Has our “faith” become entrenched, incontestable, unapproachable dogma?  I have been privy to various “conversations” between Christians, and the one characteristic painfully absent has been any measure of humility.  What happened to not being haughty?  What happened to considering others better than ourselves?  What happened to the faintest trace of civility and kindness?  Oh, many couch their comments in acidic forms of tolerance, but real humility?  Not so much.

What’s up with Christians attacking other Christians for interpreting the Bible differently than they do?  What’s to be gained by insulting other Christians for their unique and individual Christologies?  What gives some Christians a level of assurance that gives them the right to attempt to humiliate other Christians who believe different things than they do?  Sorry, this isn’t a liberal/conservative thing, no matter how much you want to make it so.  This is how one flawed, imperfect human being treats other flawed, imperfect human beings kind of thing.  This is about core beliefs and practices.  This is about how Christians justify pettiness, judgmentalism, violence, narrow-mindedness, hate, hostility, prejudice, ugliness and ignorance as God-fearing virtues.  It makes me sick.

Ooooh, too harsh?  Sorry.  We are the body of Christ.  The evidence of our life in Christ is love.  Joy.  Peace.  Patience. Kindness.  Generosity. Faithfulness.  Generosity.  Self-control.  You know — fruit of the Spirit.  This is what one loving soul told me this week about my penchant for focusing on the fruit of the Spirit.

What about righteousness?  What about holiness?  What about purity?  If the love of God extends to all then our faith is a mockery.  Sin is sin, and your stupid unconditional love theology just shows you don’t understand the mind of God at all. 

Okay.  I’m good with that.  My God is a God of love, not hate.  I can accept that others want to punish and torture those they disagree with.  I don’t have any sympathy for them, but I acknowledge they exist, and if they can sleep at night, I can accept them.  I simply will never accept any theology that strives to hate, exclude, condemn, and judge others simply because they think differently than I do.

The Christian call to humility may be our most extreme challenge.  To not force one’s own opinions on others — wow, how can we live with that?  To allow that others have the right to think differently — how could Christians possibly cope?  To not think more highly of our own thoughts and opinions than those of others?  How un American!  To not judge?  To not hate?  To not condemn?  What fun is that?

Humility.  What does it mean?  What does it look like?  What would our faith look like if more of us took it seriously?  I wonder…

I’ve gotten in trouble lately for an idea that I thought was fairly safe, but turns out (as many ideas do) is theologically open to debate.   I suggested that human beings, created in the image of God, might be children of God.  I do have to acknowledge that this is a theological perspective that does not align well with the “truth” of other perspectives.  I have been “taught” that no one can be a child of God until they agree to be a child of God — that parentage is dependent on the child deciding to be a child.  I have been “instructed” that until we accept a narrowly defined set of acceptable Christian standards, we cannot “qualify” as children of God.  I have been chastised by “theological experts” that children of God has nothing to do with God’s intention, but only the human response.  I have been corrected by those who know the truth that we have to completely ignore the whole of Christian and theological thinking in order to pick and choose a few isolated passages of scripture and a limited theological perspective that limit our acceptance of “children of God” to include only those we like and with whom we agree.

And the Bible is no help here, because it can be used to defend and define all the various theological perspectives.  This is a classic “decide what you want, then find the evidence to support it” argument.  For me, the logic is simple.  From this perspective:

• if all things have their origin in God, and
• if human beings are created in the image of God, and
• if our humanity separates us from other orders of primate, fish, and fowl,
• then human beings are legitimately “children” of God (metaphorically speaking)

Through this logic, we don’t pick our parent, we simply are “children of God” by being part of the human race.  Ah, but there are other arguments.

Indeed we are “created” by God, but we are born into a broken state, and our restoration into the family depends on two things: we must be worthy and we must be adopted.  Now, worthiness is a slippery slope — defined differently by different perspectives to require very different things.  At one end of the spectrum, all one has to do is say “yes” (much like joining most churches — nothing more is required than nodding one’s head at the appropriate moments) and they are in.  All along the spectrum to the other end, the “yes” has strings attached — “yes, and…,” and “yes, but…”  ”Yes, and,” requires that we say “yes” and that we be good children, minding our manners and behaving like civilized little men and women.  The rules of the house dictate who are the “good” children and who are the “bad” children; who gets cake and who doesn’t, if you will.  It is all about who is deserving.  Further on is the “yes, but,” where we move from deserving to eligible.  This is the limit on adoption, stating that there are some who are disqualified from ever being children of God because some aspect of their nature makes them “sub-human.”  Since a dog or a cat cannot be a child of God, then neither can anyone we deem ineligible.  Throughout history we have played this game with money-lenders, tax collectors, racial and ethnic minorities, women, the mentally and physically challenged, the mentally ill, slavery, domestic abuse, and our current flavor-of-the-month, homosexuality.  An embarrassing survey of our Christian history reveals the repetitive cycle of a majority abusing power to dehumanize a minority (or occasionally a power-trust minority oppressing a powerless majority).  The initial thesis put forth is simple: sub-humans cannot be children of God, thus to label a group subhuman ends discussion and debate.  To formalize our modern decisions, we turn to a pre-modern, non-Western, pre-enlightenment text to select archaic thinking that will “prove” our actions to be biblically and theologically sound.  Occasionally, we transcend such irrational thinking, setting aside the Bible to realize that perhaps God will not punish “innocents” such as children and the mentally challenged and mentally ill, who have done nothing wrong and don’t deserve such harsh injustice, but these occasions are rare.  We also have generally had the guts to say that the Bible is actually WRONG in its endorsement of child abuse, slavery, slaughter of innocents, oppression of women, and genocide.  We still waffle on things like capital punishment, divorce, power issues around race and gender, but we are at least questioning their validity.  Today, virtually no one I know even pauses before wearing mixed-fiber fabrics or eating a cheeseburger or slice of pepperoni pizza (neither of which existed in the time of the Patriarchs, but both of which are forbidden by scripture.  Hmmm….)

There is also a case to be made for “Children of God,” being simply a club name — something along the lines of “the Screaming Eagles,” “the Fighting Tigers,” or the Rotary or the Masons, but I’d rather not go there.  The hard lines of who belongs and who doesn’t in such clubs/teams make it an ultimate “lose/lose” path.

I am not saying that any one perspective is right or wrong — that’s not my place.  I know what I believe about God’s love and our place as “Children of God.”  I base my belief in large part on Paul’s explanation that Christ has broken down the dividing walls of hostility and that those once alienated and ostracized have been reclaimed — that there is now no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, but through Christ there is unity, and that while many in creation may not realize they are children of God, that in no way mitigates God’s love for and acceptance of them, and places the burden to extend God’s grace and love on those who do acknowledge that they are children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus.  This “I Believe,” yet I try to honor and respect those who believe differently.  I do wish those who disagree with me could refrain from framing our disagreements in terms of them being right, and me being wrong — them being enlightened, and me walking in darkness.

I close with a question I received in an email last Friday, that I have a very clear and simple answer to.  In Wisconsin, we will be having a conversation about homosexuality at our Annual Conference session in a couple of weeks.  I have been saying to people this is a time for listening and understanding and engaging in civil discourse — that in a couple of hours, we will not be able to arrive at consensus on such an emotionally charged issue that runs the gamut on the theological spectrum.  I believe this “issue” isn’t an issue at all, but is a classic example of our inability as Christian community to navigate the subtle and not-so-subtle difference between truth and opinion.  I believe this is an abdication of doing deep theology, where we prayerfully discern what is right in our day instead of defaulting to a totally different culture, time, place, worldview, level of rational understanding, and apprehension of reality.  I believe it is not as important to win an argument as it is to learn to disagree well; that civil discourse is bedrock foundation for any future decisions we might be challenged to make.  Many have told me this is a cop-out, that civil discourse is a waste of time.  One person frames it this way:

Talking about sin without naming it sin and requiring people to cease in their sin is wrong.  We know what the Bible says.  We know what’s right.  There is no opinion here.  Only truth.  And those who reject the truth must not be allowed to dictate to those who accept the truth.  Do you honestly believe that God wants everyone in heaven?  Do you believe for one moment that He would allow sinners to enter in and poison the true children of God?”

My answer?  Yes, I do believe that God wants all of us (children) to be reconciled into one holy realm.  But I believe that the failings, inadequacies, brokenness and misunderstandings that define our humanity are insignificant in the presence of God.  God (in my belief) is greater than any sin, any weakness, any disease, any mistake, or any wrong I possess, and in the presence of divine love, all will be purified.

I truly don’t have time to police the wrongdoing of others; I need to stay busy becoming the person I need to be.  Worrying what someone else might be doing wrong is simply an abdication of my responsibility to make sure I am doing no harm, doing all the good I can to all the people I can, and that I am continuously striving to strengthen my relationship with God and the body of Christ through my own spiritual formation and development (thank you, John Wesley).  For me, the only way I can give time to judging and condemning others is time I take away from making sure my own house is in order.  That’s the choice I make for myself — and part of that choice is to see every other person I meet as a child of God, a brother or sister (whether in the faith or out), and a person God charges me to love.

Here’s something I don’t understand.  Why do so many people in the church who teach evangelism despise non-Christians?  No, really.  It would seem to me that as Christians we would absolutely LOVE everyone who isn’t a Christian, but this isn’t the case.  Over and over I meet United Methodist evangelists who are harsh and divisive when it comes to engaging with non-Christians.  I tell a story about a mission project that my UM church did with a group of Hindus and a Harley-Davidson biker club.  I use the story as an illustration of true unity and harmony, interfaith collaboration, and building bridges with those outside the faith.  A few years ago, a prominent pastor in our denomination stormed up to me after I told the story shaking with rage.  ”What kind of Christian are you?” he began.  ”Telling people they should reach out to heretics and thugs.  Your job is to convert such people, not buy into their lies  You should have nothing to do with such people, and you shouldn’t encourage others to work with them either!”  I was so taken aback at the time, I didn’t know how to reply.  But whenever I think about this experience I confront a fundamental illogic.  If we want to “convert” others, how is avoiding them a good strategy?  If evangelism is not only our words, but our actions as well, how do we witness to our faith in the vacuum of staying only with our own kind?  How does someone else’s lack of faith or belief in another faith mitigate my responsibility to witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ?  How with others know my faith if I refuse to engage with them in a meaningful way?

I used to run into this in prison ministry.  I spoke at a Congress on Evangelism about the importance of prison ministry and shared numerous stories of men who had come to faith after committing some horrible crimes.  A well-known, widely published evangelist interrupted me and drawled, “You do know, don’t you, that those people will say anything to get released?”  I replied, “None of these people are getting out of jail because they converted to Christianity.  Their faith isn’t excusing them from their crimes, but their lives are being changed.  This man-made a dismissive sound, shook his head, and said, “You’re naive if you think they’re really becoming Christians.  There are millions of good people out in the world who need to hear the good news.  Why waste time on those who have already made their choice?”  I was incredulous.  This same man makes similar statements about the homeless, believers of other faiths, and homosexuals.

I encountered the same attitude a few years ago when I worked with a group to host a conference on The Great Commission.  As we discussed “making disciples of Jesus Christ,” we talked about the challenges of a multi-cultural, multi-faith, pluralistic and diverse culture.  I remarked that the growing awareness of world religions often meant that Christian leaders were ill-equipped to have intelligent conversation with spiritual seekers well-versed in the teachings of other religions.  I have friends in Denver who report that most visitors to their church know as much about Buddhism as they do Christianity, and they want to know what the differences are and how the teachings are similar.  I observed that Christian leaders need to be in dialogue  with Buddhists (and teachers of other religions) so that we are better able to navigate the questions people have.  ”There is a lot we can learn from leaders of other faiths,” I said.  I was immediately jumped on by various people around the table.  ”Those people have nothing to teach us!”  ”We shouldn’t listen to them, they should listen to us!”  ”Christians in no way should validate the lies of other religions.”  ”We have the truth.  There is nothing to gain by pretending we don’t, or that what other people believe is as good as what we believe.”  ”We shouldn’t even have contact with those people.”

Those people.  Them.  Heretics.  Or, as the Bible calls them, children of God.  If we truly believe what our scriptures say, who currently walking this earth is not created in the image of God?  Who do we not have an obligation to be in relationship with?  Who is our witness for?  Certainly not everyone will listen to us and accept our faith as their own.  Does this mean we shouldn’t continue to live as Christ among them?  Are there people who are beyond God’s grace?  Is Christian witness only for those who will accept it?  Who deserve it?  Who we like?  Who we approve of?  What a slippery slope.

I can never understand when The United Methodist Church gets into discussions of who should be allowed in and who should be kept out.  Any process of building dividing walls and creating uncrossable boundaries leaves me cold.  Even if I disagree with someone completely, I will have absolutely no influence on that person if I refuse to interact with them.  If there is something I deem a “sin,” ostracizing the sinner is the very last thing I should desire to do.  My ability to offer a positive Christian witness requires proximity.

Evangelism can be either aggressive or apologetic.  We can batter people with our beliefs, or we can share them.  We can tell others what we think they ought to believe and do, or we can describe how our beliefs and behaviors have been transformed by our relationship with God.  We can harp on the costs of not believing or we can celebrate the benefits of belief.  We can threaten or we can invite.  We can offer people an ultimatum or we can offer people a gift.  But I believe we need to be willing to offer our witness to ALL.