jvoorhees's blog

I received an e-mail earlier today informing me of a series of videos that the Good News organization has produced for YouTube featuring Maxie Dunnam and Eddie Fox urging United Methodist annual conferences to reject the proposed constitutional amendments on inclusion. You can see the first of these videos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MBON4eq7Eo.

Certainly Maxie has the right to try and inform folks about these amendments as they prepare to vote on them during the upcoming Annual Conference season. However, these amendments had the approval of some three quarters of the delegates present and I am wondering if our new age of communication tools has outstripped our rules of organization in lessening the impact of our elected delegates. Yes, this “educating” our folks about what they are voting on is important, but given the approval of the General Conference, should those who actually “won” the debate and vote have the possibility for an equal response.

The larger concern for me is does this direct appeal to members of annual conferences change the nature of our system in negative ways?

What’s your opinion on this? Is this appropriate or should there be an “official” forum for these conversations.

When I first was appointed as the pastor of the Antioch United Methodist Church, one of the first persons that I called for help in thinking about leading the congregation was Dan Dick, a consultant on church leadership at the General Board of Discipleship. We were in the process of reworking our leadership structure and all sorts of folks suggested that Dan was the guy to talk to. In the years since, I have called on Dan several times for his thoughts on leadership in our church and I have to say that his suggestions have always been effective.

Dan has left GBOD but has started writing regularly at United Methodeviations. After reading some of his recent posts, I asked Dan if he would be willing to be highlighted as a featured blogger here at the MethoBlog, for I believe that he is saying things that will provoke conversation and will help all of us to be challenged in our ministries. His posts are included in the feed of recently updated blogs (http://methoblog.com/?q=aggregator/rss/1) and we will be listing his articles at the top of the front page for your edification.

Welcome Dan to the MethoBlogging community. We look forward to what you have to say.

Will Deuel has written an interesting post on his experience of the candidacy process. He writes:

And therein lies the problem.  As I see it, the United Methodist Church is so wrapped up in maintaining the system and its procedures that we have forgotten about the people whom the system is supposed to serve.  The Board of Ordained Ministry has not created a pathway to ordination, it has created an obstacle course. A skandalon.

And when we serve systems and processes rather than people, we have a problem.

How have you experienced the obstacle course that is our current candidacy process, and do you feel that the focus of your BOM is to keep the riff-raff out rather than welcoming folks into the covenant community of ministry? Are we, for a variety of reasons, paying too much attention to systems and processes rather than people.

Yes I know...

--the blogroll is messed up,

--I haven't been adding new blogs,

--the site needs to be reworked.

It's on my list and I hope to start on version 3 of the Methoblog soon. What features would you be interested in seeing here?

Joseph Lowery's benediction -- yay or nay?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

…Rick Warren’s prayer -- yay or nay?

Leave your comments with your thoughts on the Invocation earlier today.

Well God may NOT want you to, but it IS a cool video and the book looks good.

It’s been pretty quiet around here on the MethoBlog. Not many folks have been posting stuff to the front page, and we generally just mosey along gathering your posts and compiling them for your use. Behind the scenes however I have started working today on some changes that I hope will improve the experience here. It involves moving from the “built-in” aggregator in our content management software to a more developed system. While I was able to import the basic information about your feeds, I still have to tweak and test each one individually, and since there are over 200 feeds gathered here, this is going to take a little time.

There will be some times during the next few weeks when our testing may cause the RSS feed to disappear. We will try to minimize this as much as possible, so don’t freak out if things seem strange for a while.

¶ 5. Article V. Racial Justice

The United Methodist Church proclaims the value of each person as a unique child of God and commits itself to the healing and wholeness of all persons. The United Methodist Church recognizes that the sin of racism has been destructive to its unity throughout its history. Racism continues to cause painful division and marginalization. The United Methodist Church shall confront and seek to eliminate racism, whether in organizations or in individuals, in every facet of its life and in society at large. The United Methodist Church shall work collaboratively with others to address concerns that threaten the cause of racial justice at all times and in all places.7

--2004 United Methodist Book of Discipline, The Constitution of the United Methodist Church

 

For the past 48 years, I have lived with the reality of racism in our country.

• I saw it when the KKK staged a rally down the street in front of our home in suburban Maryland.
• I saw it when Walter Cronkite interrupted the television one night to tell us that a visionary pastor had been killed.
• I saw it when my mom and I moved to Nashville and I experienced the protests and bomb threats that followed the implementation of court mandated desegregation. 
• I saw it when all of my friends parents began to pull them out of the public schools, deciding suddenly that private education “made more sense.”
• I saw it when my relatives would talk about “good niggers and bad niggers.”
• I saw it in their faces when a multiracial couple would enter the room.
• I saw it in the churches I attended and served, experiencing the reality that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the day.
• I saw it in the poverty that continued in poor black communities and the decisions by white lawmakers that served to divide those communities.
• I see it again and again in the fear – fear of change, fear of “those people,” fear that “our way of life” is threatened.

Like many, I hoped and prayed that this past November 4 was a sign that racism was no longer the force it once had been. Of course, I knew that an election wouldn’t end the deep seated divisions and the social structures that continue to make race a dividing factor in our land. However, as I watched my children, kids who had never experienced racism in the ways that I had; kids for whom Obama was simply an exciting figure, not necessarily a black one (in their eyes), I found the possibility for hope.

In the days since, as words have been spoken by an elected leader suggesting the Obama (with no justification) is the modern personification of Hitler, I find myself more concerned than ever that we have got to quit playing around with the issue of race in our country and deal with the divisions in a clear and decisive way. That became more clear to me when I read the following story in the AP this afternoon:

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

 

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

 

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

--Election spurs 'hundreds' of race threats, crimes

What concerns me the most about this trend is that many of the folks promoting this emotional and even physical violence are people who claim faith in Jesus Christ, including those who we United Methodists claim as brothers and sisters.

For many years now, we United Methodists have been in a uproar about the issue of sexual identity and faith, a topic that has similarities to concerns about race (although several in the movement for civil rights also claim some significant differences). Throughout that argument, we have focused our language on whether homosexual practice is compatible or incompatible with Christian teaching, and our official stance has been that sexual practices between persons of the same sex fall outside the realm of compatibility. While that conversation will continue to be debated for many years, the language of compatibility with Christian teaching raises some questions for me, for if homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, then isn’t racism also similarly tainted and should be fought against with the same energy and passion that we have directed toward the sexuality issue? For that matter, don’t all the “ism’s” fall in this class, and shouldn’t the church take a prophetic witness against these sins of exclusion?

What we can say as United Methodists is that we believe that opposing racial division is important enough in defining who we are that we made this opposition part of our constitution as a denomination. This isn’t some wimpy proclamation in the Social Principles (which have been sliced and diced enough to be considered by most more suggestions and rules of life). Putting something in the constitution means that we have said “This is who we are…” and “This is so important to us that we want it to be part of our identity.” The articles of our Constitution aren’t simply laws that ebb and flow according to the will of the General Conference in a given year. No, to change these rules means that it goes to the broader body, and these articles are not easily changed.

What does this mean for us, United Methodists? Look at what the book said:

The United Methodist Church shall confront and seek to eliminate racism, whether in organizations or in individuals, in every facet of its life and in society at large.

There’s not a lot of equivocation in this statement. Either we are serious about doing all we can to eliminate racism, or (according to our organizing documents) we aren’t United Methodist.

For the past several months now, I have chosen to sit by quietly as racist propaganda was shared. While I did all I could to help set the record straight, pointing folks to places where they could obtain factual data on the background and history of the candidates, and while I called my congregation to the message of love and grace offered by Jesus Christ, I was not especially prophetic in confronting the racism around me, racism that seem especially prevalent in my homeland of the South.

God forgive me. Have mercy on my soul.

It stops right now, in the places where I do have the ability to make a difference.

I have generally kept a hands off approach to the content aggregated and the comments left on the MethoBlog,, in the desire to be seen as a censor. However, my calling to the gospel and my ordination as an elder in the United Methodist Church will no longer allow me to do so. Yes, I believe in the freedom of expression, with folks being able to express their opinions. However, those “opinions” don’t extend to speech which promotes hate and violence, for that form of speech is in my honest opinion outside the realm of Christian teaching. As such, I will be deleting and removing any content on this site that promotes hate, violence, and promotes racism in any way. A failure to do so would mean that I was failing in my vows to uphold the order and discipline of our communion together, a communion that has said clearly that part of who we are is a group opposed to racism in any form.

The lines between opinion and hate are often blurry, and I recognize that sometimes judgment calls are in order. I am willing to establish a process of review by trusted members of this community regarding the decisions I may make about content, however as the creator, editor, and owner of this site it is ultimately my responsibility to determine what I feel is responsible content, and what is not.

This is a very simple step that I am taking as a means of opposing racism in the world. I am also praying about some steps and standards congregationally, and would be interested in hearing how you work to oppose racism in the places that you serve.

The fact is, whether you agree with the political philosophy of Barack Obama or not, there is no room for racism in the body of Christ. And it shall be the standard of this site to oppose it however we may.

Sincerely,

Jay Voorhees

Editor and Publisher of The MethoBlog