UMC 2013: There will be Schism and Rumors of Schism

            I love people. It is one of my primary flaws and my primary strengths, people are messy and gross and hateful and bitter and wonderful and selfless and kind and gracious and beautiful. Do you see my dilemma? I love the United Methodist Church, even though I have only been a part of this family for a short while, this is still my family – and it is made up of humans, beautiful, messy humans. Humans that are currently in a state of sheer panic and disarray; what is a newly reborn UMC baby to do in this midst of this talk of a schism besides pray and duck their head?

            The UMC is not a stranger to schism and rumors of schism. In 1844 the Methodist Episcopal Church split over the issue of slavery when one of the five bishops inherited slaves. The Church’s silence on the issue of slavery was brought to the forefront and we know how it ended. The Church reunited after slavery was ended and we all lived happily ever after. UNTIL women wanted to be ordained (although John Wesley ordained a woman in 1761 – it took until 1956 for women to fully gain ordination in the UMC), talk of schism rose again – female Elders were attacked and harassed but the storm passed and the UMC endured. The primary problem is not that we spend too much time focusing on issues of controversy, but that we avoid conflict with the world and with each other. Actually, that’s not entirely true – our real primary issue is that we as a denomination lost sight of Wesleyan values. John Wesley opposed slavery, he ordained women – he championed the rights of minority groups. So how then did the Methodist Episcopal Church split over slavery? We know exactly what Wesley thought on slavery, his followers in England fought hard to end slavery while Methodists here in the United States stayed silent on the issue. We lost sight of where we came from and what held us together and we left.

            Everyone can talk about how expensive a split will be. And then there are issues of the property: obviously Asbury Seminary will go to the conservatives, Iliff and Claremont will go to the progressives – but what about Perkins and Duke? I’m not just speaking about the seminaries but the people they represent. Perkins has moderates and liberals and conservatives and every color of the rainbow, as does Duke, as does the UMC. How will this split really work? The answer is it won’t.

            Splitting isn't about our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, it is about us and what we want. We want instant change and gratification for our wants/desires. Our brothers and sisters won’t fall in line with our wishes so we feel it best to disown them rather than work to reach an amicable solution. We are spoiled children fighting over toys instead of fighting for justice. If a schism is really necessary let it be done with kindness and love, not hatred and disrespect. Let us be filled with grace and the Holy Spirit, not animosity, hostility, and a spirit of self-centeredness.

            When we take communion the presiding Elder says “This is not my table or the United Methodist Church’s table, it’s God’s table and it is for everyone”, we need to remember that all of the property of the UMC, all of her seminaries, every building, pew,  hymnal, Book of Worship, Book of Discipline, everything it owns is borrowed, even its members. The UMC belongs to God, so before we split up that which is God’s let us remember that God will hold us accountable for what was placed into our hands. And when God judges our actions we need to have a really good excuse to tell our Heavenly parent why we couldn't play nicely with our siblings. 

Thoughts?

Men & Children Ministry

“Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” - Psalms 127:3-5 (NRSV)

This Sunday one of the greeters and Stephen Ministers came up to me, she wanted to know the attendance of the nursery, just like every Sunday. Usually it’s this sweet middle aged couple, but today it was Jeanette Scruggs, and she stopped me and starting telling how impressed she was to see a young man working in children’s ministry. Yes, I am one of the unsung heroes, me and the 30 other men in the US that are so bold to burst through the gendered world of children’s ministry. There are many reasons why men don’t serve in children’s ministry, too many to list but I will list three reasons why men don’t do children’s ministry, and three harmful things that result as a result of their absence.

1. Taking care of children is for women, therefore children’s ministry is only for women.

We all know that men can take care of children just as well as women can, and if you don’t believe that - stop watching Leave it Beaver and hop on the Modern family bandwagon. Men have made massive leaps and bounds in the area of homemaking in the same manner women have proven they can do more than cook and clean and “submit” to men’s authority. Unfortunately for children in the church it takes the Church longer to adapt to society. It will be a few years before more men start serving.

Another element in this formula, men have historically only allowed women to serve in two ministry functions: women’s ministry and children’s ministry. Because of that women tend to be better at doing ministry in said arenas, I’m sure a man could be a great women’s minister (I know of a woman that ran the United Methodist Men ministry in her church, and got re-elected). But women have a stronghold in children’s ministry because it was the “leftovers” that men allotted them.

2. Children are difficult to deal with, give me something to build instead.

If we are being entirely honest, children are hard work, and  a Sunday morning sermon means free Daycare and a reprieve from the onslaught of “why” questions and “Johnny hit me”, “I want dessert now”, “Let’s buy that toy”, etc. Why should men give up their break from their own children to watch other people’s?

3. Men are rarely asked to help.

Let’s get real, the children’s volunteer table is made to trap women into service, it’s riddled with pink, purple, red, flowers, rainbows, and a host of other stereotypical gendered images used to tug at the hearts of women and trick them into mothering more kids. Men are trapped into gardening, building, moving people, visiting prisons, all worthy services, but things the average male church members are more comfortable.

Some people argue that men can’t be trusted around kids because of sexual abuse cases - which I am going to say is just ridiculous, both genders are just as susceptible to pedophilia, but I’ll the psychologists deal with that.

Side Effects

1. Men are missing out on being blessed by serving kids

I LOVE working with children, not just because I get paid to do it, but because I am so blessed by them. Every time I get to be harassed by my 5th & 6th graders I continually come away extremely tired and worn out swearing that I will never have children, until the next day when I am talking my friends’ ears off about how wonderful all of my kids are. I call them all my children, even though when they were born I was in elementary school, they are my babies, I teach them about faith and life and love, and occasionally about gender inequality. I love their laughter and their ability to find joy in every situation. The children I teach at Sunday school are so loud, crazy, and disobedient; but they want to learn and to help others every chance they get. They are a prime example of what it is to wander, and a prime example of what Christ meant by “childlike faith”.

2. It promotes a gender hierarchy.

I know I have beaten this to the ground, but children’s ministry is typically placed at the bottom of the totem pole, and then given primarily women, basically scraps from the table. Personally, to me children’s ministry is the most important, but I’m a minority in that aspect...but I digress. Placing children’s ministry at the bottom of the totem pole does two things. 1. It shows young boys that women are not to be trusted with important tasks and authority. 2. It makes working with children less of a priority. Which leads to my last point.

3. Men missing can make children feel unimportant and unwanted

Nothing in this world will make a child feel less loved and less valuable than an adult not spending time with them. I can remember as a kid forcing myself to pretend to like sports in a desperate attempt to get the attention of my father. I really don’t want the children I work for to have to go through the same awful experience I did. Men being involved in children’s ministry, stops them from hiding from their children in the main service and gets them involved in their children’s lives and in the lives of other children. The coolest time for me as a kid in Sunday School was when the music man came and sang for us. He not only made the songs so much fun he spent time getting to know us. In 2nd grade we got the man that used to be a clown who gave out candy for accurate answers to Bible trivia. These men shaped my views on God and my life, they lifted me up and encouraged me. They made me feel loved and cared for.

The lack of men in children’s ministry saddens me, but I definitely see a bright future where churches no longer use gender hierarchy to determine where women are placed. A future where men participate in the spiritual formation of their children; where children are loved and cared for by adults, not just the women, but the whole Christian community.

Two Deaths & A Book About Teens With Cancer

He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” - Job 1:21(NRSV)

It’s very strange reading a book about teenagers that are dying, while going through the death of two people in your life. I just finished reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, a book about teenagers with cancer, some with cancer that is easily treated, others with terminal cancer and little hope for survival. Reading about teens contemplating their own deaths at the fault of their own mutated cells, made going through two recent deaths a learning experience.

The first death I was prepared for, my friend Michael’s mother had a heart attack on Christmas and fell into a coma, I was hopeful for her recovery, yet prepared for her death. The second completely caught me off guard, my friend Jennifer Stanford, died in a car accident. It is a very different thing to bury a parent, and to watch a parent bury a child. Something about children burying their parents feels more natural. In the book, the main character who has terminal cancer constantly wonders about life and death and the meaning of it all. As I sat in a room for the visitation of Trisha Heath, I wondered alongside Hazel, “Why do the good die young and the corrupt live on?” I wondered why God allows Bernie Madoff to live comfortably, while good people struggle to get by. I wondered why this mother of three was dead at 59 and Scott Peterson, a man that killed his wife and unborn child is still alive and comfortable in California, fighting for his right to live. I wondered why Jennifer Stanford was killed in a car accident, while so many drunk drivers recklessly endanger others’ lives and survive their crashes.

And I wondered about Hazel, and Augustus Waters, and Isaac, and the other fictional teens in this book whose stories reflect the realities of living cancer patients. I wondered why God made our bodies prone to improper mutation that could end up killing us. I wondered how families I know like the Moores, the Onstotts, and many others who have fought cancer together and have come out on top. Why do they survive while others who fight just as hard die?

“Funerals are for the living.” said Hazel, and she is so right. As a kid I went to the funerals of my grandfather, two aunts and one uncle. I am well acquainted with how funerals go, and I must confess this: I hate funerals. I hate how they make people more sad, instead of hopeful, I hate how pastors turn eulogies into sermons about being a good Christian - instead of celebrating the deceased. And as a person prone to empathy I hate how much I cry at them. But I go to them, not because I loved the deceased, but because I love the living people they have left behind, because the funeral is for the survivors, not those that have died. I go to them to cry with other people that are crying, to hug the man that never hugs, but needs one because his mom is dead, to comfort that woman that I have never met before who is weeping uncontrollably. I go to meet family members I probably won’t see again until someone else dies or gets married.

The funeral for Mrs. Heath was an interesting one, I had never gone to the funeral of a Caucasian person before, all of my family, like me, is Black. So this funeral was new, yet at the same time very familiar. There were still the people that were horribly under-dressed, the people on their phones the whole time, and the people, like my brother, who cracked jokes to lighten the mood. One thing I found the most interesting is how much sadder this funeral was than the ones for my family. The pastor was so somber you thought he was shipping her to Hell, the room was lit dimly so it looked depressing. This is not how Christians are supposed to be buried. We have hope for resurrection, something I feel needs to be taught in churches far more often.

One thing I will take away from this experience, besides the acknowledgement of how short life is and many other cliches, is gratitude. Life and death are not fair, but I am thankful for both of them. Some people live long a fruitful lives and get to have three children and a loving husband; some people only live long enough to graduate college; some people die within hours of birth; some do good; some have nothing but wicked deeds attributed to them. Life is unfair, but death is the great equalizer, no matter how much money one does or doesn't have, no matter gay, straight, or bi, White, Black, or Beige, we will all return to dust. We have all been blessed with the gift of life, and the bittersweet gift of death, what we do with this gift is important. The Lord will keep giving, and the Lord will keep taking away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Advent & Adoption

Today was the fourth Sunday of Advent. As a person who did not grow up in churches that practice Advent, it is still a new tradition to me. I love watching the candles being lit as we all pray and anxiously await the arrival of Christ. This day Advent was made more real to me as I looked over and saw the Burdett family. The Burdetts first starting going to my home church (Servant Church - Austin) the same time I did, at the time they were childless, today they have two beautiful children and during the service one of them was snuggling with Grandma Burdett as she comforted him because his finger was hurting. She held him like she had known him his whole life, but she only met this child a few months ago. The Burdett’s beautiful children were adopted from Uganda, and what’s interesting to me is how much adoption is like Advent.

During Advent we await the arrival of Jesus Christ, we wait like Mary did for 9 months, although Advent only lasts a month. During adoption the future parents wait to be matched with children like the Burdetts did, they waited for months until one day they got the call, they would become parents to these precious gifts from God. They flew to a foreign land to gather their children and then they waited for weeks in a hotel until the country of Uganda legally turned the children over to them, then they returned to the United States and waited until the US government allowed their children to become US citizens. Adoption, like Advent, involves a lot of waiting and a lot of trusting in God. And as we wait and trust in God, God assures us that our waiting will not be in vain, God has not left us, God is here. The Burdetts will not be left without children, their children will rise up and call them blessed. Christ is coming, all we have to do is trust and wait.

You can read more about the Burdett's adoption story on their blog about it: http://burdettadoption.blogspot.com/.

My attempt at a book review of Torn by Justin Lee

I have never written a review for a book before, which is strange because I read books all the time. This book, Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs,-Christians Debate is different. Justin Lee tells his life story in these pages, and yet he also tells the story of the Church, and the stories hundreds of thousands of Christians that have struggled in this “culture war”. He doesn't just tell his story he tells my story, and the story of my friends who left the Church because it refused to show them grace. He tells the story of parents who had to leave their churches because their children were not safe there, he speaks of families that separate because of the dogma the Church promotes, and he does it all so brilliantly from the perspective of an Evangelical Southern Baptist gay man that wants to serve the Lord.
As Lee continues to immerse the reader in his own personal story he uses others’ stories to continue not only moving his story forward but working in theological information and well as the history of the Church’s opinions and reactions to gay people. His in depth analysis of “Ex-gay ministries” as well as on “Queer Theology” is done from the position of a layman making it more understandable and relatable. He ends the book by giving practical ways the Church and individual Christians can work to bring unity instead of division on the issues that homosexuality may bring up, and he does it in an unbiased fashion.
I found myself drawn to Lee’s story and even more so to the passion he has for serving Christ and the Church. In this book I saw the future of the Church and its role in hosting healthy conversation about sexuality, and more importantly about the people these conversations effect. I strongly recommend every Christian read this book, because in it there is so much information that we as Christians need to learn in order to be faithful and gracious disciples of Christ.  

Unity is What Matters

As a part of the United Methodist Church, I know what division looks like. I have seen arguments over everything from pension plans, to whether or not church structure should be changed. One major argument has been going on for about 4 decades about whether or not LGBT persons should be allowed to fully participate within the UMC. This debate has strong theological arguments on both sides, as well as real people on both sides, so I feel no need to argue it here. What I do want to argue in favor of is unity.
The main problem with the word unity is that people assume that unity means that everyone thinks the same, but that is not the case. My mother and father disagree, a lot, but they are still unified in their decisions, sometimes my mom has to give up what she wants so my dad can make decisions he feels are best for our family, like when we moved to Texas; other times my dad has to give up he wants, like a new car, so that we as a family can get what my mom wants, like new furniture. Being unified means being willing to be flexible when difficult situations arise. I think the UMC needs to be a little more flexible.
At the last General Conference when presented with the Hamilton/Slaughter Amendment, the legislative body of my church decided not to “agree to disagree” on Homosexuality, when quite frankly it should have and here is why:

1. We do disagree, a lot of us disagree on how LGBT people are to be treated
2. Honesty is the best policy and to say we don’t disagree is a lie and breeds resentment on both sides of the argument and makes it difficult for those caught in between
3. It’s okay to not have all the answers

I know that this debate will continue on in the future for years to come, possibly for decades more. I am alright with that, but what I am not okay with is our lack of honesty in admitting that this disagreement is occurring. Some in our church would rather split, or stay in community and just suppress the non-majority group’s opinions. But I believe that leaving a way open for individual annual conferences, or central conferences, dare I say individuals to come to their own conclusions about what God is saying through Scripture, tradition, reason, and personal experience. I believe that repentance from saying we have all the answers is good for the Church universal and that humbly welcoming people of all opinions will lead to a better understanding of God and neighbor overall. Whether we agree or not is not important, remembering we are still one in the Spirit and one in the Lord. We may not all agree but that just proves that we are family even more.

A Storm Brewing in the West

Recently the Western Jurisdiction voted to make the slogan of the UMC “Open Doors, Open Hearts, and Open Minds” a reality by adopting this statement:

A call to biblical obedience: Understanding that God’s grace and love are available to all persons, the WJ is on record as believing that the UMC is in error in its position that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. As a result, the WJ calls on bishops, clergy, local churches and ministry settings the challenge to operate as if the statement in Paragraph 161F does not exist, creating a church where all people are truly welcome.(http://www.rmnblog.org/)

More conservative Methodists have cried foul-ball, and rightfully so, the Book of Discipline clearly states that General Conference speaks for the entire global connection, and though it is extremely difficult to get any legislation passed due to the way our current system is set up - what the Western Jurisdiction has done is essentially told the General Conference that it is wrong and that they won’t listen to it when it come to LGBTIQ issues. Actions like these are not uncommon in Christianity, Protestants have done the same thing with the Roman Catholic church as have the Eastern Orthodox church. Baptists and Methodists split over the issues of race and slavery as evidenced by the Southern Baptist Convention (1845), and the Methodist Episcopal South (1844). The past ideological disagreements in these denominations have lead to “us vs. them” mentality that caused these churches and the respective denominations to split. Some like the Baptists never reconciled after their disagreement on slavery, and have continued to drift further apart as the decades became over a century; the Methodist Episcopal, and the Methodist Episcopal South on the other hand came back together and became the United Methodist Church (after merging with the Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1968).
The very name United Methodist is in-and-of itself misleading, because the church is not united when it comes to the issue of how to treat the LGBTIQ community. Some factions of the church want full-inclusion on every level of church; some wish only for the church to allow full-participation in local congregations; and there are those that wish to exclude said community from ordination, but not from other forms of participation; some factions like that of some of the delegations of the Central Conferences truly believe that LGBTIQ persons are evil and need to be stopped. How can this church resolve these very different approaches in a way that keeps our church united?
I say “our church” because it is all of ours. This issue is not unique to the UMC, the Roman Catholic church has views as contrasting evidenced by the fact that both Lady Gaga and Rick Santorum are both Roman Catholics but their views on the LGBTIQ community are as different as they are. Our denomination had a white flag raised at General Conference, the Hamilton-Slaughter petition, which would have allowed our church’s members to agree to disagree; but the voice of our denomination could not even agree to disagree. On the one hand it is laughable that General Conference couldn’t agree to disagree because it is obvious that they do not all agree. It is also sad that GC2012 failed to agree to disagree because that means that each side feels that it is so right it must run the other side over and force it to “do the right thing”. It creates an environment that leads to hurt and to defiance, the perfect storm for another Methodist schism.
The Western Jurisdiction was not alone in its contempt of the current wording of the Book of Discipline when it comes to homosexuality. The Northeastern Jurisdiction also pushed through legislation that showed the region’s disdain for the harsh language which has aptly been described as the “incompatibly clause”, but it went nowhere near the extreme move the Western Jurisdiction’s move. Alongside these jurisdictions are countless United Methodists in other jurisdictions and Central Conferences, yet despite the unrest and aggravation on both sides of this argument no one is willing to compromise. The actions of the Western Jurisdiction prove this point, and the jurisdiction’s actions can have multiple outcomes especailly since the Western Jurisdiction is also hosting the next General Conference, here are my predictions for what will happen in the next four years:

1. These actions will force General Conference to spend more time on “holy conferencing” on LGBTIQ issues.

2.. They will cause the US Methodists to consider making the US a Central Conference, or at least making the Western Jurisdiction one.

3. They will cause the entire church to rethink and focus on what our covenant is with one another, and re-examine the authority of the Book of Discipline.

At worst this could lead to another Methodist schism, at best it could strengthen the church if we the church approach this with the humility and grace becoming of those who dare to call themselves Christians. What I want to happen is that different from what I envision happening: I want the US to be a Central Conference and end its colonial approach to church governance; I want General Conference to spend more time talking about homosexuality; I want the church to really think about what it means to be in covenant with one another. Most importantly I want this church to follow Christ.
I asked earlier: How can this church resolve these very different approaches in a way that keeps our church united? The answer is so simple: Fix our eyes on Jesus. We spend so much time looking at what makes us different and not focusing enough on why we were united in the first place, we were united by the power of the Holy Spirit in Christ. We have open doors so that others can come in and be lead to Christ as well, we have open hearts so that Christ’s love might pour out and touch others, and we have open minds so that whether we are right or wrong we are still faithfully loving all, and treating everyone with the same grace that the Creator showed through Christ.