Category Archives: Ministry

Thought Re: Infrequent Communion

10 Wednesday Mar 2010

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I am reading John T. McNeill’s A History of the Cure of Souls as part of my preparation for my upcoming field exam in the History of Christian Formation. I just read the following passage:

“The parishes were divided into elders’ districts, in which each elder was to examine communicants privately before each communion service, and to bring about reconciliations between neighbors found to be at variance. Metal tokens were distributed to those qualified to take communion, and were presented for admission to the communion table.” (252)

The passage is broadly referring to sixteenth century Presbyterianism. As I read this passage a question popped into my head: Is this the reason that Presbyterians typically celebrate Communion quarterly and not more frequently?

In other words, I wonder if the history of the reason for infrequent celebration of the Eucharist in Presbyterianism may have been lost. I am ignorant of the reason that academic Presbyterians would give for quarterly celebration of the Eucharist. However, the main reason I have heard lay Presbyterians give is that receiving Communion too often makes it less special. My purpose here is not to get into why I think that is an inadequate understanding of Communion. Rather, it is to ask if anyone has any further insights into the reasons that Presbyterians give for quarterly Communion.

I am intrigued by the possibility that it was originally because there was a very complicated system for interviewing every member who wanted to take Communion beforehand, which would have made it impractical to do this every month. My guess would be that very few Presbyterian churches continue to do this today. If that is true, it seems possible that the original reason for only communing four times a year has disappeared, but the practice has remained in place.

And yet, I suspect that there is much more to it than what I have just laid out. Does anyone have any thoughts or expertise to share?

Too Close to Home

09 Tuesday Mar 2010

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I am reading Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One and I just came across this:

Recently an executive of a denomination was pulling his hair out over the decisions being made in the national office. They had received an estate worth over 20 million dollars. Of that amount, the national office had spent 10 million dollars hiring an agency that researched people’s attitudes toward the denomination and then developed a massive marketing campaign that included chat rooms and a bobblehead dog mascot. The executive was frustrated because of what this program suggested – namely, there was nothing wrong with the church’s perspectives, and all it needed was a marketing challenge on how to attract more people into what was already there. Nobody and nothing on the inside needed to change; it was about how to present and market who they were. This is the attractional mind-set that has to die before a missional imagination can be born. (83-84)

The authors are challenging the attractional approach to ministry, where the goal is to get people to come to our programs or our events as a church (foremost of which is typically the Sunday worship service). Yet, as I was typing the quotation above, another reason occurred to me why marketing campaigns are not the answer. To put it very crudely: If all that mainline churches in the United States needed to attract people to become involved in a church was something that compelled them to enter the doors of a church again, September 11, 2001 would have been the advertisement the church was waiting for.

I have often heard people talk about how full their churches were in the week or two after 9/11. However, I have not yet heard anyone say that the people who visited after the devastating events of September 11th actually became involved in the life of the Church. (I am sure there are some people who joined churches after 9/11, but what I am pointing to is that I have not heard of a church where the majority of people who visited stayed connected to the church they visited over the long term.) This could be interpreted in a number of ways. But one way of looking at it is that they were “attracted” to church and did not find anything there that they needed or wanted. Spending money on Coke ads would be a waste of time and money if nobody thought Coke tasted good.

I am sharing these thoughts as a sort of stream of consciousness, so I may ultimately decide that there is nothing here worth exploring. I guess my main question at this stage is this: Does the ReThink Church campaign fit into the quotation from Introducing the Missional Church? Thanks be to God, as far as I know there is not a bobblehead dog mascot in the campaign… so it seems like we are already ahead of the game there.

The very name of the campaign at first glance would seem to suggest that there is an openness to doing things differently, to changing. But I suspect that is either not ultimately the case, or the creators of the campaign have dramatically overestimated the UMC’s ability to change over a short period of time. We are, after all, a denomination which has been lamenting the decline of younger clergy and the implications of such a decline for the future of the church, while continuing to put the real power of framing and shaping the future of the church into the hands of people who will decidedly not be the future of the church. Or to put it differently, there seems to be a broad consensus that the denomination is not healthy. However, there seems to actually be very little that is proactively being changed. And the ultimate motivation for change seems to be fear. One does not have to read too many books to read one that predicts when the UMC will cease to exist if we continue declining at our current rate.

My prayer for the United Methodist Church is that the Holy Spirit will release us from our fear of death. I pray that by the grace of God we will be motivated by love – love for God and love for our neighbor. I pray that we will want to reach out because we have something worth sharing, something that people need, and that we will actually care about people outside of the church enough that we will want them to experience God’s love, to taste and see that the Lord is good! I yearn for revival to come upon us, to come to us – not as something that we have earned or forced into being, but as an utter gift of grace. Unmerited. Undeserved. But freely given so that we might have life, and have it abundantly.

Craig Groeschel on the UMC

26 Friday Feb 2010

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I have always been interested in the whispers I have heard within the Oklahoma Annual Conference about Craig Groeschel’s past connections to the United Methodist Church. I was so interested at one point that I attempted to contact him for an interview. For those of you who may not have heard of Craig Groeschel, he is the founding pastor of LifeChurch.tv, which is a church that began in Oklahoma and now has campuses throughout the United States.

One of the reasons I am interested in LifeChurch is because they seem to more effectively practice Wesleyan mutual support and accountability than the United Methodist Church does. I have a friend who was on staff at LifeChurch for awhile and I was fascinated to hear about how important of a role small groups (they call them Life Groups, I think) play for people involved in LifeChurch. My impression is that these groups are about more than going through a study, but they are about encouraging one another to move forward in their discipleship. At times I have wondered if the best example of a modern day equivalent of the early Methodist class meeting would be found not in a UM congregation, but at LifeChurch. (I want to admit this is simply speculation on my part, as I have never been to either a worship service – which they call an experience – or a Life Group.)

In any event, through conversations with my friend I have been very intrigued by the potential connection between LifeChurch’s effectiveness at sharing the gospel with unchurched people and their emphasis on Life Groups. This is one of the main things I wanted to ask Groeschel about. I was particularly curious if he had thoughts about whether something like Life Groups would work in the UMC today, or if – in his experience – he has seen institutional barriers to such a small group ministry.

This is a long winded way of saying that Craig Groeschel has written a series of blog posts this week about the UMC. In the first post he gives a glimpse of his own experience as a pastor in the UMC. While I am sure there is more to the story (I am sure Groeschel would freely admit this, as he does not at all suggest he is giving an exhausitve account of his experience in the UMC) Groeschel seems to me to try to talk about his experience with restraint and humility. I suspect United Methodists can learn much from Groeschel’s story… and I confess I still want to know more.

You can read Groeschel six part series on the UMC by following the links below:

Groeschel on the UMC #1

Groeschel on the UMC #2

Groeschel on the UMC #3

Groeschel on the UMC #4

Groeschel on the UMC #5

Groeschel on the UMC #6

Successful Small Groups? Location, Location, Location

19 Friday Feb 2010

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In a previous post, I shared a few thoughts on Eddie Gibbs’ Churchmorph: How Megatrends Are Reshaping Christian Communities. Since finishing the book, I have continued to chew on two things, a profound insight and (at least to me) a glaring oversight. These two things are unrelated enough that I think they merit their own posts. So, in this post I will lift up the insight, and in the next I will mention what I think was overlooked.

The profound insight relates to small group dynamics and is found in the following passage:

Why does the typical suburban small group not establish a spiritual relational closeness to Christ when the home-atmosphere setting is conducive to fostering a corresponding social relational closeness? Those small groups that best facilitate both kinds of relational closeness to Christ are most likely to consist of individuals whose lives intersect during the week outside of church-related activities, and in which a high level of trust has developed, allowing members to let down their guards and remove their masks. Unfortunately, with many suburban small groups the same degree of disconnect from their wider social context is evident in their group as it is in the worship service and centralized program gatherings, and they do little to foster relational closeness. Although the group members are meeting in decentralized locations, they continue to perpetuate an inwardly focused mentality. (93-94)

The insight that I find profound is the focus on interaction outside of church-related activities as important to the success of small groups in enabling people to become more like Christ. To put this in United Methodist language, Gibbs seems to be arguing that small groups will be most effective in “making disciples of Jesus Christ” when they are intentionally structured so that members lives will intersect as frequently as possible.

This has some support in early Methodism. The first class meetings were divided up based on location. So, if you were in a class meeting in London in the early 1740s, the other people in the class would have been those Methodists who lived the closest to you. In other words, early Methodists were in classes with their neighbors.

I am not certain that Gibbs’ argument is correct. However, I think it is a very interesting hypothesis, and it seems that trying to bring people together who will be most likely to interact outside of the hour that they are together worshipping and the hour they are meeting in their small group would seem to have enormous potential for making it as likely as possible that the group would become a place where people “watch over one another in love” (to use Methodist language again).

What do you think? Does this seem like a helpful insight? What are the qualities that you have found to make a small group most likely to succeed in helping people to become more like Christ?

(In the next post I will talk about my biggest disappointment with Churchmorph and why it is a cause for concern for those in the Wesleyan tradition.)

Preach It, Eddie!

30 Saturday Jan 2010

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In today’s mail my copy of Eddie Gibbs’ Churchmorph: How Megatrends Are Reshaping Christian Communities finally arrived. I ordered it for a directed study I am enrolled in this semester with Dr. Elaine Heath called “Spiritual Formation through Community.” I am really looking forward to working with Dr. Heath this semester, as I have already benefited from several previous conversations with her.

I want to share the following quote I just read from Gibbs’ book:

“Evangelization is not an end in itself, but rather an invitation to a life of discipleship. Unfortunately, discipleship has become an elitist concept, referring to those who are ‘really serious’ about their faith commitment. Much evangelization has focused on the decision itself to the neglect of the change of allegiance that such a decision entails. Addressing this disconnect entails first the need to address, as a matter of urgency, the challenge of undisciplined church members” (48).

Amen!

I particularly resonate with the unfortunate reality that discipleship has come to be seen as something for an elite few, rather than as the norm for every person who has received the gift of forgiveness and new birth through faith in Jesus Christ. I hope he says more!

(By the way: If you are not familiar with Elaine Heath’s work, you should check it out. Her books have been rolling off the presses over the last year! I am particularly excited about Longing for Spring: A New Vision for Wesleyan Community, which she co-authored with Scott Kisker. She has also recently published The Mystical Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach. I am also looking forward to reading her work on Phoebe Palmer titled, Naked Faith: The Mystical Theology of Phoebe Palmer. Professor William J. Abraham writes in the Foreword to the book, “Elaine Heath’s work breaks extraordinary new ground in the interpretation of the theology of Phoebe Palmer… This is wonderfully accessible, ground-breaking scholarship on the great mystic of Methodism.“)

The Crisis of Cynical Younger Clergy?

28 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by in Christian Living, Life, Ministry

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A recent conversation has continued resurfacing in my mind. The short version is that someone’s reaction to meeting a younger clergy person was that they seemed kind of cynical. The person who made this comment is someone who I find to be charitable and not quick to find fault with others. So, the comment stuck with me.

Since this very brief conversation, I have found myself wondering if that is a criticism that is too often true of younger clergy. As a younger clergy person, I know it has been true of myself at times. I am not sure why this is the case, but for many of us who are in our twenties and early thirties who are seminary students and pastors, we tend to be quicker to find problems than to look for solutions. And we tend to be contemptuous or scornful of those we disagree with.

Sometimes the conversations that leave me feeling the most drained and hopeless for the future of the church are with groups of younger clergy. And this is something that too often I have found to be true of younger clergy across the theological spectrum (I am referring here primarily to the younger United Methodist clergy I have interacted with). Sometimes it seems that what we primarily have in common is our age and our ability to see the negative in nearly any situation.

In some ways, this should not be all that surprising. We are the generation that has made the Daily Show and Steven Colbert our preferred news source. Both of these shows are satires that are dripping with sarcasm, and often seem to appeal to their audience based on a kind of “inside joke” mindset. In other words, you get these jokes and understand the hypocrisy, because you are smarter than the people Stewart and Colbert are talking about. (See, there I go being cynical and quick to find fault…)

However, my experience with younger clergy is not that we are all cynical all the time. (Of course I am painting with very broad brush strokes here. There are many clergy who are younger and do not fit the stereotype I am developing here.) Cynicism, it seems to me, comes out most clearly when groups of younger clergy come together. Though we can be very cynical in groups, every younger clergy person I have talked to is passionate about the church and has ideas for how to strengthen and improve it.

Ultimately, I don’t know why cynicism tends to be particularly pronounced when younger clergy come together in groups (and I may simply be wrong about this generalization). I wonder if part of it is that it is a collective expression of frustration that the church seems to be so desperate to have younger clergy, but then does not always seem to be very good stewards of the younger clergy that they do have. In other words, there may be some reason for cynicism. It can be difficult to hear people talk about the crisis of younger clergy and at the same time feel like nobody is noticing or listening to the younger clergy who are in the church.

However, the point of this post is not to justify cynicism among younger clergy. I am writing to challenge myself and any younger clergy who might read this to consider whether cynicism is a virtue, or whether we might want to consider trying to look at things in more positive and productive ways.

Going back to the beginning of this post, I think one of the reasons my friend’s comment has stayed with me is because I suspect that cynicism amongst younger clergy is more of a hindrance than an asset. I believe the church absolutely needs us to provide leadership. However, I also believe the church needs us to have hope in what God wants to do in the places that we are called to serve. There are certainly reasons to be dissatisfied, and I am not arguing that we should ignore or overlook problems. Instead, I am arguing that noticing problems should prompt us above all else to look for solutions.

In other words, I don’t believe that the gift that God has given this generation of younger clergy for the church is the gift of being able to point out problems with the church. Rather, I believe that our gift is to boldly look for solutions, with faith that God will provide. I have seen signs of younger clergy making positive contributions to the life of the church, and I know that we are just getting started. I hope and pray we will not be distracted by the reality that the church we are serving is not perfect. Instead of diagnosing what is wrong with the last step that the church took, or is taking, perhaps we can begin to seek to discern what the next step is.

What do you think?

Organizing from the Bottom Up

05 Monday Oct 2009

Posted by in Accountability, Book Review, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

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In a book I am reading for one of my classes this semester, Inventing the “Great Awakening” by Frank Lambert I came across the following quotation:

“Beginning with a few Oxford students, Wesley embarked on a lifetime task of organizing Christians from the bottom up, banding small groups of Christians together in religious societies for the purpose of deepening their faith and then putting it into action through charities and evangelism” (85)

This sentence has stuck with me. I have not often thought about the pastor’s task being one of bottom up organization. But it seems to make quite a bit of sense. This also seems to be a way of agreeing with people who argue that it is too late for the UMC as an institution to return to Wesleyan practices, such as an equivalent of the class meeting. Lambert has given me an image that helps me to think about restoring an authentically Wesleyan approach to discipleship in the local church, and it is beautifully straightforward! If Lambert is right, one of the key roles of Wesleyan preachers and lay leaders was organizing Christians in small groups “for the purpose of deepening their faith and then putting it into action.”

In a sense, the beauty of early Methodism was that the weight of the institution was behind this. In other words, paradoxically, the idea to organize for the purpose of deepening faith that would lead to action came from the top down. The powers that be commanded a bottom down approach to discipleship!

Today the situation has changed. We live in a time of increasing bureaucratization of the UMC, and the institution does not demand this bottom up approach to discipleship. Yet, while the full weight of the institution may not be behind the necessity of small group formation, it is also not actively forbidding or hindering it. This means that every pastor or active lay person who wants to return to the riches of our Wesleyan heritage does not have to wait on the powers that be to give the green light. It also means that we should not use the behemoth that is the institutional UMC as an excuse for failing to organize Christians wherever we find ourselves in order to better position them to be transformed by the grace of God and practice their faith.

In other words, Lambert’s image of bottom up discipleship is a hopeful one for me, because it suggests that the only thing keeping people at the local church level from experiencing the blessing of “watching over one another in love” is a failure of people at the level of the local church to do it. And while that is not an insignificant obstacle, it certainly seems to be a far smaller one than trying to change everything that is wrong with the UMC – broadly speaking – before actually turning our attention to the people that are coming to our churches, seeking to live faithfully and experience the fullness of life in Christ.

What do you think? Is the idea of a bottom up approach to discipleship promising for the contemporary UMC?

One Thing Is Needful

18 Friday Sep 2009

Posted by in Christian Living, Life, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

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Try this mental exercise:

Imagine that an intelligent being, who had no previous experience with human beings or our world, were to observe human interactions and the way that we spend our time. What conclusions would that intelligent being come to about what is most important for human life, survival, and happiness?

Now imagine that the same intelligent being, instead of observing humanity in general, were to observe your life. What conclusions would this intelligent being come to about what is most important for your life, your survival, and your happiness?

One of my favorite sermons by John Wesley, “The One Thing Needful,” begins with this very mental exercise:

Could we suppose an intelligent being, entirely a stranger to the state of this world and its inhabitants, to take a view of their various enterprises and employments, and thence conjecture the end of their existence, he would surely conclude that these creatures were designed to be busied about many things. While he observed not only the infinite difference of the ends which different men were pursuing, but how vast a multitude of objects were successively pursued by almost every different person, he might fairly infer that for all these things were the sons of men placed upon the earth, even to gratify their several desires with sensual pleasure, or riches, or honour, or power. (I.1, p.34)

Wesley then notes “how surprised” this being would be “to hear their Creator declare to all, without distinction, ‘One thing is needful!’ But how much more when he knew that this one thing needful for me, their one business, the one end of their existence, was none of all those things which men were troubled about… Nay, that it was an end not only distinct from but contrary to them all – as contrary as light and darkness, heaven and hell, the kingdom of God and that of Satan!” (I.2, p.34)

The intelligent being, then, would assume that these people must have an infinite amount of time. In other words, they are not doing the “one thing needful” because they are guaranteed to have enough time to get to it. But Wesley wonders when this being realized that “all men were placed on a narrow, weak, tottering bridge, whereof either end was swallowed up in eternity…” how would it respond? He asks, “How would he express, how would he conceive the senselessness, the madness, of those creatures who, being in such a situation, could think of anything else, could talk of anything else, could do anything besides, could find time for any other design, or care, but that of ensuring the one thing needful!” (I.3, p.35)

So what is the one thing needful from Wesley’s perspective? He vividly describes it:

To recover our first estate, from which we are thus fallen, is the one thing now needful – to re-exchange the image of Satan for the image of God, bondage for freedom, sickness for health. Our one great business is to rase out of our souls the likeness of our destroyer, and to be born again, to be formed anew after the likeness of our Creator. It is our one concern to shake off this servile yoke and to regain our native freedom; to throw off every chain, every passion and desire that does not suit an angelical nature. The one work we have to do is to return from the gates of death to perfect soundness; to have our diseases cure, our wounds healed, and our uncleanness done away. (I.5, p. 36)

I find that this sermon is worth reading on a regular basis, because it so powerfully asks us if we have our priorities in check. Another way of getting at the same basic point that Wesley is making is that you can tell someone’s priorities by the way that they spend their time and their money.

Wesley believed that it was absolutely essential that God’s priorities were our priorities. And this was not just a platitude that he often repeated. As a result of his conviction that one thing is needful – being renewed and remade in the image of God – he used anything that he could find to help people constantly be reminded of what was most important. And so Wesley urged his followers to use the means of grace – to pray, read Scripture, receive Communion, and fast – and to watch over one another in love through various forms of communal practice. As many others have pointed out, the goal was not to create the ultimate bureaucracy, or to create anything for its own sake. Rather, the goal was to fan the flames that God had lit in people’s hearts and lives. The goal was to help every Methodist keep their eyes on God and to keep them attentive to nurturing and growing their relationship with God.

So, what conclusions would that “intelligent being” come to about what is most important in your life? Or for that matter, what do other people in your life think are most important in your life, based on the way that you are actually living?

It seems like we often think it is acceptable and normal to believe that our true priorities can’t be that easily seen. The idea is that if you want to know what my deepest priorities are, you would have to be able to talk to me and ask me, so I could explain them to you.

There may be some truth to this way of thinking. Convictions, ideas, and beliefs certainly do matter. But so does the way that we spend our lives. What are you spending your life on? What are you investing your life in? As we consider these questions, Wesley reminds us that there is only one thing that is needful.

How Can This Blog Help You Use Blueprint for Discipleship?

31 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in Christian Living, Ministry, Technology

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I have been considering different ways that this blog can be used as a further resource for those who are using A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide to Christian Living in a small group setting this fall. I have considered a series that works through the book chapter by chapter. I have also wondered if it might be fruitful to accept questions from readers or group leaders and each week I could post a video response to the question. I am open to other possibilities as well.

If you will be using the book this fall, or if you have experience leading small group studies, how do you think this blog could best be used to make the experience that people who use the book have even better? I am very interested in your thoughts.

Campus Ministry

18 Tuesday Aug 2009

Posted by in Christian Living, links, Ministry

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For those who are not either college students, or campus ministers, campus ministry can sometimes be easier to take for granted than to actively support. Yet, it seems to me that it would be very difficult for a committed Christian to make an argument that campus ministry is irrelevant or unimportant.

Ashlee Alley and Creighton Alexander have given us the opportunity to actively support United Methodist campus ministries through prayer. Yesterday began forty days of prayer for United Methodist campus ministries as they begin a new year of ministry with college students across the country.

You can read Ashlee’s post about it here.

You can find the prayers each day here, or follow them on twitter here.

Will you join me in praying for United Methodist campus ministries?