40 Days of Prayer for the UMC

Dear friends,

I invite you to join with me and others around the country (and world) to be in prayer for the United Methodist Church. On May 18th a grass-roots movement to pray for the church will begin. Young adults (clergy and lay-persons) from across the denomination have written prayers as a part of this movement. Each day the UM Young Clergy website will post a new prayer.

I invite you to join us in this prayer movement by subscribing to the prayer feed, or going here to pray the prayer for the day.

Thank you in advance for praying, may you experience the life-giving movement of God in your life, and together may we be open to God's life-giving movement for all of Creation, and how we are called to be a faithful part of that movement and witness in the world.

Would you close down churches?

Adam Hamilton from Church of the Resurrection shares an interesting observation of questions the UMC could ask from observing what's going on at GM. (Read the full post here.)

He suggests that if the UMC were to close "dead" or "dying" churches two things may occur:

1) The UMC could use the pastors and resources from those churches create new congregations

My two cents is that, although this would be heart-wrenching and difficult, done with grace, its the right thing to do.

2) Seminaries would be forced to shift the focus of their training

Currently, in my opinion, seminaries train students for models of ministry that are at least one generation behind the current generation - no wonder 18-35 year olds are the largest missing segment of the church.) This issue with the curriculum isn't necessarily theological. Rather as Hamilton points out, practical. Seminaries need to give students tools for leadership, dealing with conflict, managing budgets, running a meeting, in addition to worship and pastoral care skills.

Lastly, a commenter on the Hamilton's post raises another good point about the difference between shifting structure and shifting culture. So often we do the former without considering the latter. My hope is that we could do both in order to make the emphasis of the church to make disciples of Jesus for the transformation of the world, not church members for the sustainability of the denomination who are really well organized.

So, what do you think? How does our structure need to shift? How does our culture need to shift? How do we make this happen - so that our denomination is about something bigger than itself - the mission of God in the world.

North Alabama's New Process for Pastoral Appointments

If you are UM (laity or clergy) you may find this of interest. Bishop Will Willimon shares the process the North Alabama conference will use to make appointments this year. This is the process straight from Willimon's blog (I added links to some of the things he references):

• We shall look at the church statistics on the Conference website to get a longitudinal picture of the pastor’s leadership at the present appointment.
• We will examine the statistics on the Conference Dashboard to get an up-to-date report on the results of the pastor’s leadership.
• Every pastor to be moved will complete a Strengths Assessment Inventory (available through the book by Buckingham, Now Discover Your Strengths). The Cabinet has used this Inventory on ourselves and found it marvelously revealing. This enables us to get an accurate assessment of each pastor’s individual strengths, focusing on the specific gifts and talents of the pastor, rather than focusing upon any alleged weaknesses. This gives us the ability to match a pastor and his or her strengths with the needs of a congregation.
• Every fulltime pastor who may be moved will be interviewed by a team of three District Superintendents who will guide the pastor through a conversation that will uncover a pastor’s own dreams, abilities, and strengths. Those conversations will then inform the discussion in the Cabinet.
• The Bishop and District Superintendent will listen to and respond to a sample sermon from each full time pastor who is moving.
• Every church will be asked for a statement of mission and goals for the future so that we can match a pastor’s gifts with a congregation’s needs.
• Each District Superintendent will present the proposed new pastor to the congregation’s lay leadership and explain why the Cabinet believes this pastor is the leadership suited for this congregation’s mission.
• Every newly appointed pastor will be asked to design and present to the DS and to congregational leadership a “First Ninety Days” plan for ministry in the first three months of the pastorate. This is after participating in a workshop that trains pastors how to devise these plans. The execution of this plan will be observed and shared with the DS who will work with the pastor on any needed modifications in the plan.

What do you think of the above process? Pros? Cons?

I'm still not sure what I think about it, it seems like quite a few layers. However, I like the way the cabinet will get a good feel for each person moving. I'll be curious to see how this works.

(HT: Shayne Raynor)

Annual Conference Blogging...

Today is the first day of the Annual Conference of the VA Conference. (Essentially the annual business meeting of the United Methodist Church in Virginia.) I am trying to keep an open mind about the work to be done and the impact it might have for the kingdom of God. I must confess, I am skeptical about the impact of these few days here but I as I said I am trying to keep my cynicism and skepticism at bay.

I will post updates as the week goes along. This is the most prepared I have been for an annual conference in that I read a lot of the reports ahead of time. This morning should be pretty boring...but they have WiFi (free) here in the Roanoke Civic center, so I will find productive ways to occupy my time...

Random thoughts from others...

Scot McKnight has an interesting post about Pietism and emerging church here.

Jay Voorhees shares some questions (positively) about itinerancy and denominations that resonate with some of what I have been thinking.

I think John Wesley would fit very well with the emerging church/culture conversation and movement. He brought revitalization into the Church of England (and ultimately a new denomination) with his emphasis on acts of piety (worship, personal holiness) and acts of mercy (serving and loving others, social holiness). These marriage of these two acts of mercy and piety seems to be making a comeback in the emerging church conversation.

And maybe this new conversation/movement - whatever you want to call it - will renew the UM denomination. However, at times "it's easier to give birth than it is to raise the dead" and maybe God is birthing a new movement. However, "in order for there to be resurrection, there must be death" so maybe the UM church (and mainline denominationalism) has do "die" in order to be resurrected. Or maybe I have had too much coffee this morning a need to get back Bible study preparation.