• About Me

Kevin M. Watson

Kevin M. Watson

Tag Archives: Munger Place

Munger Place – Membership

13 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Kevin M. Watson in Christian Living, Life, Ministry, Wesley

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Andrew Forrest, Church Membership, Munger Place


I think Munger Place Church, a congregation of Highland Park UMC, is doing some great things. I want to share a few things I have experienced at Munger that I think could be instructive for the broader United Methodist Church.

A few weeks ago I attended the membership class for Munger with my wife. The class was two hours on a Wednesday night, and there were more than fifty people there – and this was the third membership class! Part of Andrew’s vision for Munger is that he wants it to be a place where everyone is welcomed with open arms on the one hand, but where there are meaningful standards for membership on the other hand.

Incidentally, I am in complete agreement with Andrew here. I think the best way to measure whether a church has meaningful membership standards is whether the average attendance is higher than the membership of the church. My guess is that most United Methodist congregations have a membership that is two times larger than the average weekly worship attendance of the church. When this is the case it reveals that the members of the church do not think something as basic as showing up at church is essential to being a member of the church. As Andrew said in the membership class, this is a model that a health club would love. You could buy one treadmill and have 10 million members!

Currently, Munger Place has four expectations of each person who takes the extra step of becoming a member of the church. 1) Attendance at weekly worship service; 2) Support the church financially with consistent giving; 3) Participate in a weekly small group, which Munger calls Kitchen Groups; 4) Serve others, particularly the last, the least, and the lost.

I appreciated the way Andrew communicated these four expectations in a way that showed that they really were expected of members, but avoided coming across as legalistic of Pharisaic. Andrew also stated explicitly that if people were unsure of whether they were ready to make these commitments, they were welcomed – and encouraged! – to continue to be active in the church without taking the step of becoming a member.

Just exactly how members will be held accountable for keeping these expectations remains to be seen. But Andrew has already raised the standards for the typical United Methodist Church by having a mandatory membership class. And if this Sunday is an indication, I am told that there were about one hundred people who joined the church the first time they were given the opportunity. (I was disappointed to miss worship, as I was in Atlanta for an academic conference.)

I have spoken with a few people who joined the church and have been thrilled to hear how meaningful it was to them. One person talked about how big of a step this was in their life. Another person said that it was so meaningful they had tears of joy as they made their commitment to ministry through and with the church. One person emailed me to celebrate becoming a part of Munger and joining the UMC for the first time. The email concluded, “Go Wesley!”

One of the things that excites me the most about Munger is that I have met several people who are captivated by the Wesleyan vision for the Christian life. These women and men do not have the anxiety about the future of our denomination that many lifelong Methodists have. In fact, they hardly seem to notice the decline, because they are too captivated by the God who is changing their lives.

And if this weren’t enough… this is all happening in a church that was closed because it was no longer financially viable. New life. Resurrection. Thanks be to God!

Munger Place in the News

05 Wednesday Jan 2011

Posted by Kevin M. Watson in Article Review, Christian Living, Ministry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Andrew Forrest, Mary Jacobs, Munger Place

Mary Jacobs of the United Methodist Reporter has recently written a feature piece on Munger Place Church. Munger is the church that my family has been involved with since it began the process of relaunching about a year ago. Public worship services began in October and have been ongoing since. I have been working on a longer post on Munger in my head for weeks now, but until I get it down here I will say that there are two things that I think Munger Place is doing that offer a model for The United Methodist Church.

First, campus pastor Andrew Forrest is serious about working to reclaim a contemporary equivalent of the early Methodist class meeting. Andrew calls these groups Kitchen Groups, and they are primarily focused on creating a space where people come together to talk about how their journey as followers of Jesus Christ is going – that is the primary purpose and activity of Kitchen Groups.

The second thing about Munger that really excites me is that it is providing an opportunity for a young person with obvious gifts to gain real ministry experience in a growing church. Andrew will graduate from Perkins School of Theology this spring, and as a result is in the process of applying for commissioning as an elder. It excites me that he is not just observing, but leading and even preaching at a church that had 700 people in attendance on its first week in worship and has consistently had 400 people a week in worship since. For all the talk about the need for younger clergy in the denomination, I don’t often see younger clergy given this kind of opportunity to thrive in ministry. If the UMC is serious about attracting the best and brightest of the up and coming generations, it will need to be willing to take risks on gifted people like Andrew.

You can visit Munger’s website here.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Kevin M. Watson
    • Join 356 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Kevin M. Watson
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...