Tony Steward has a great post that is prompted by the realization that guys often miss opportunities to hold one another accountable for growing in their faith. In hopes of rectifying this, or at least providing a way forward, he offers a list of questions that guys should ask each other. I commend this post to you, but more importantly, I commend the practice of having real conversations with others about your relationship with God and your relationships with others.

I have recently attempted to get in touch with three different pastors who I consider to be both incredibly successful and very well known. Two of them started United Methodist Churches that have grown like crazy and have become, for many, models of how to do ministry in the United Methodist Church in the twenty-first century. (I contacted them seeking endorsements of my book which is coming out next spring.) The other is not United Methodist but also started a church that has seen amazing growth, I attempted to get in touch with him to talk about his experience with United Methodism in order to try to learn from him how to avoid some of the mistakes and barriers that Methodism has recently put up to doing a new thing in the name of the Lord.

Literally when I began writing this post I had heard from two of them and had not heard back from the third. As I was typing I got a response from the third (actually the only one who responded himself, the other two were mediated through executive assistants). I have chosen not to mention their names because I am really not trying to make anyone look bad, and this post isn’t intended to be about any particular person, but about a more general thought process I have been on as a result of trying to learn from and interact with people who have done some pretty amazing things.

This experience has made me think a lot about being nationally recognized, at least within your field of expertize. Here is a summary of my thoughts:

• I heard back from all three of them within a week. I am impressed by this because I am guessing that they each receive a pretty high amount of correspondence. Although, I was most impressed by the quick response of the person who responded personally.
• I immediately received a polite but firm “no” from the one I hoped to interview. I initially received a hopeful response from the first endorsement request, but a few months later received a “no.” The third, the one who directly emailed me back, wrote to say that he is traveling this week and will try to respond next week.
• At first I was pretty cynical about the two pastors who I couldn’t even directly talk to. One of them, in particular, I really felt like if I could have a five minute conversation with would be interested in my book and would be willing to make the time to talk about it – in part because several people had said I should contact him about it because they felt that he would be interested in supporting it. But as I have continued to reflect, I have begun to realize that I have no idea what their lives and schedules are really like. I am struggling to balance starting a PhD with being a dad and a husband. I know that two of the people I contacted are husbands and parents and also happen to be the primary leader of a church that has thousands of people in worship each week. So what right do I have to expect anything from them? The next stage was sort of sadness, because I know that I really do have a lot to learn from people like them and for the most part because of their success I will not be able to have any in depth correspondence with any of them. But here is where I am today: I am wondering why I want to “rub elbows” with the big fish… or something like that. I think there are some good reasons, but I also think some are not so good… like ambition, pride, things of the like.
• Finally, I have been struggling with the sense that networking and trying to get to know people and be known by them is a sort of necessary evil, but then that also seems too strong. I think this is as honest as I can be about where I ultimately come down on this: I feel like the book I have written is worth reading and it represents, as best as I can articulate it right now, the passion that I believe God has given me for what I have to say to the Church. However, not many people know who I am and name recognition seems to be a big factor in whether someone buys a book. So, if I can get someone else, say someone whose name you recognize, to say “Hey, this is a great book! You should read it…” then maybe more people read what I believe God has given me to say.

So the moral of the story is this: I am thinking about asking John Wesley himself to endorse my book, but I can’t think of a way to do it without using a ouija board… Just in case you are wondering, in my mind if he did endorse my book it would be something like this: “This is the best articulation of how to put Wesleyan theology into practice since… well, me! If I were re-writing the General Rules today I would add a fourth rule, buy Kevin Watson’s book A Blueprint for Discipleship.” – John Wesley, Founder of Methodism

That might help sell a few books…

Yesterday I was doing some research at Bridwell Library. During a restroom break I noticed some interesting graffiti on the walls of the library bathroom.

“Lord, Save me from your followers.”

And

“United Methodist Church = Choose Your Own Religion.”

These are very interesting things to take the time to carve into the metal sides of a bathroom stall… One can only imagine the conversations (read: arguments) that prompted these theological works of vandalism.

Last night my brother was giving me a hard time because I have not been updating my blog very often. He said that he was losing interest. I told him that he should just use a reader and then he wouldn’t have to come to the site everyday to see if there was anything new (this is not intended to excuse my failure to post more frequently…).

I know that most, if not all, of you who read this could easily figure out how to set up a reader account on your own. But, I thought that if I gave an abridged version, it might encourage some of you who have always thought about using a reader, but never have, to give it a shot.

In this post, I will give you an idea of what a reader is, and then tomorrow I will walk you through creating a google reader account.

But first, what is a reader? A reader is like an email account, except that it collects articles from blogs that you subscribe to. Your reader will automatically put in your “inbox” any new content from any of the blogs that you subscribe to. You can save posts that you particularly enjoy (this has the added benefit, if you are a blogger, of serving as a way to flag things you want to link to later) and sort through your “messages” by blog, by whether they have been read, or however you want to go through it. One of the most important things about this is that it is all free! The reader itself is free to use (at the one I will recommend is) and all of the blogs that you subscribe to are free to subscribe to.

Second, if you have not used a reader, a word of caution – don’t get too excited right away and subscribe to everything. I subscribed to some of the bundles that google offered and quickly got overwhelmed when I first set up my account, because if I didn’t check it everyday, I knew there would be hundreds of things to sort through. Start small, and you can always add subscriptions as you get the feel for it. (Most importantly, subscribe to deeply committed!)

Interested? If so, check back tomorrow morning for an easy tutorial on how to set up a reader account.

Yesterday Melissa, Bethany, and I went out to lunch for a very nice Father’s Day meal. As I noticed people coming and going it hit me that it was generally pretty easy to tell who the people were who came from church and who had not gone to church. Obviously, you could be very wrong about who had gone to church and who hadn’t – and I know that at many worship services people may dress more casually than they do almost any other time during the week… but just go with me for a moment.

I remember cringing when I read in a book the story of a waiter saying how they hated working lunch on Sunday because that was when all the Christians ate out and they were notoriously bad tippers. I am guessing that many folks who work in restaurants on Sunday are noting who the Christians are and what difference being a Christian in making in their lives, or isn’t making.

I know this isn’t all that profound, but it just hit me yesterday as I was eating my orange chicken that Sunday at lunch is probably the time in the week when it is most obvious to the rest of the world who the Christians are. If you go out for lunch on Monday and you are dressed up, people will probably just assume you are a white collar worker on your lunch break… but when you show up for lunch looking like you didn’t just roll out of bed on Sunday, many people will assume you came from church.

If I am right, Christians have a wonderful opportunity… but I wonder how many of us are taking advantage of it? If nothing else, I know that next time I eat out after church on Sunday, I will be more aware of what my actions say about the impact that worshipping God is having on my life.

I was shocked to read that noted journalist Tim Russert died today. Russert was the commencement speaker at my graduation from the University of Oklahoma in 2002. My thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and family members.

As Melissa and I continue to work to get settled into our apartment I have been amazed out how fast things can change. Three weeks ago I was getting ready for a wedding rehearsal, two weeks ago was the last day of Annual Conference, and one week ago we were still up to our eyes in boxes. Now we are starting to get our bearings on the area that we live in. I am starting to figure out which roads to avoid during rush hour(s) and the fast way to get to Barnes and Noble.

In some of the reading I have been doing, I have also noticed how fast things can change within an institution. This has been particularly stark in Nathan Hatch’s Democratization of American Christianity. Hatch details how quickly British Methodism embarked on a “quest for respectability” and an “exaggerated concern for institutional discipline” after  1789 (91). By 1815 “rural itinerancy and the circuit horse were almost extinct” (91).

I found this passage particularly thought-provoking:

The system [of circuit riders in early American Methodism] kept the church dominated by young men who, according to a critic in the 1820s, were inexperienced, rustic, wanting in “social intercourse,” and contemptuous of their elder colleagues who had been forced to locate. If Americans first became susceptible to a cult of youth in this period, as David Hackett Fischer has argued, then it may be very significant that the Methodists advanced by means of a youth cadre and that power within the church constitutionally remained in the hands of the young rather than with those who could claim age and experience (87).

I really don’t have any in-depth comments to make about this, except that it is just very interesting that during Asbury’s tenure and during a time when Methodism in America saw dramatic growth it was dominated by inexperienced, passionate, youth (and one authoritarian leader, Asbury himself). There seems to be a lot of discussion about the need for young(er) clergy in the UMC. Yet, I have not noticed nearly as much action where young clergy are being given the opportunity to exercise meaningful leadership in their Annual Conferences than I have heard people lamenting the lack of young clergy leadership. For better or worse, the current approach to cultivating leadership seems to be very different than Asbury’s.