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The first story is one I observed first hand a few months back. Campus ministry is changing. It is just not the same Wesley Foundation it used to be. Over at TCU, one of our congregations, White’s Chapel UMC, launched a new campus ministry called The Lab. I went on a weekday night with pastors John McKellar and Todd Renner. The worship and gathering was held in the upstairs of a yet to be opened coffee house. The setting was a long way from stained glass and elegant comfort. It was vibrant and alive! We were packed in with people standing. I quit counting at 60. Two young people gave the sermon. It was engaging, thoughtful, challenging and theologically sound. With grace and unmistakable clarity, they offered Christ.

The second story is one I have shared in a recent Wilderness Way. Jolynn and I visited two congregations in the Central Texas Conference within a month of each other.   The first church was Sardis United Methodist Church in the Waxahachie District. Under Pastor Dale Wilbanks this small church has gone through remarkable growth in professions of faith (conversions), growing involvement in young families, mission outreach and the spiritual development.

For many, especially a younger generation, a general sense of spirituality superficially suffices. Organized religion is shunned as being a lukewarm religious version of the coffee house or local civic club. It is perceived as nice but not needed. Jesus is a pleasant optional extra. Recently a young gen-X-er visited with me about going to church on Sunday morning. She commented “If you don't believe the whole Jesus part, why get up early on Sunday?  It makes no sense to go to all the trouble of going to church if you don't believe the second half of the story.”[1]

Variations of the “why” question abound. Why bother with organized religion, after all everyone is going to heaven. Why bother, truth is merely a matter of personal opinion. Why bother, it doesn’t really matter what you believe; all that matters is how you act. Why bother, you Christians don’t act any different from the rest of us.

This year, on October 23^rd to be exact, we will celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church. In the beginning we spread west through sacrifice, privation and martyrdom because we knew why it mattered. We lived with a burning conviction that Christ wasn’t an optional extra, that the church wasn’t just a nice social convenience; and that a life of Christ-like devotion engaged us in the great causes of both spiritual and social reformation, with concomitant commitments to social justice and mercy for all.   Sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ (evangelism) wasn’t a marginal side show. It was why we existed! Witnessing to Christ as Lord and Savior was at the heartbeat of who we are.

At our inception we held to a core conviction that life lived apart from Christ was devoid of true salvation, transcendent meaning, and death defying purpose. As Charles Ferguson entitled it in his marvelous historical work on “Methodists and the Making of America”, we were “organizing to beat the devil.”[2] That is still our challenge! 

Later you will hear an invitation to contribute $1 per year that you have been in the conference to enable a great day of Centennial Celebration on October 23^rd. As a part of the Centennial Celebration we are going to inaugurate a Centennial church challenge to lift up and recommit to the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Our celebration is designed to call us into the future for Christ and His kingdom in a true Wesleyean fashion. Unfortunately the fire of such passion and purpose has been banked in too many churches. 

This drift from purpose and passion is at its heart a theological crisis represented by the “why” question. I spoke last year about the need to rethink and reclaim core theological convictions. Our gradual drift from salvation to niceness, from reforming culture to reflecting culture, from taking care of others to taking care of ourselves, from being Christ-centered to self centered, reflects a spiritual and theological disease that is slowly killing us. Hear me with care, this isn’t liberal verses conservative. Nor is it the possession of the left wing of the Democratic Party, the right wing of the Republican Party or the no wing of the Libertarian Party. If any of those dominate our lives, if those passions drive us to hate or fear those who disagree with us, we face a first commandment problem. The theological disease we battle is far deeper and far more destructive.

The “thinning” of Christianity (as scholar Phillip Jenkins calls it) stems from a distant and unengaged deity. A vague notion of spirituality or God will never suffice. Bishop Will Willimon notes: “The most important decision in Christian theology is to decide whether you will speak of God as a person or as a concept, as a name or as an idea. Talk about God as, to use Paul Tillich’s term, “ultimate reality,” and you will get a safe, dead abstraction that you can utilize in whatever salvation project you happen now to be working. Name God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and God will enlist you in God’s move upon the world. That’s one of the things we mean when we say that “Jesus is Savior.” …

Christians are witnesses to a great cosmic incursion, an invasion in which God, rather than being distant from the world, has daringly entered the world (Gal. 4:4A). The world is God’s contested territory in a vast program of reclamation.”[3] As that dramatic closing statement in the whole the Bible, Revelation 21 puts it: “‘See, the home of God is among mortals.”[4] 

To the “why bother with the Christian faith” question, the answer comes in the blinding clarity of Holy Scripture. Hebrews 1:1-3a, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,^{He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”}[10]  Both theologically and in practice we have to do the hard work of re-examination and re-appropriation. I am convinced this answer comes in the form of really being Wesleyan Christians. The true genius of Methodism lies in our recovery of the apostolic impulses found in the Book of Acts. I think the great faithfulness and fruitfulness of the three examples I lifted up at the start are great precisely because they have engaged in that work. Lives are being transformed and disciples made.

The second or corollary why question is: Why do we need the church? Adam Hamilton recalls starting Church of the Resurrection. “In 1990 I was sent as a mission pastor to start a new congregation in the south part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. I remember spending the summer before we launched Church of the Resurrection wrestling with three questions:

            1. Why do people need Christ?

            2. Why do people need the church?

            3. Why do they need this particular church?

            Without an answer a church will flounder. Without deep conviction about the responses to these questions, a pastor will never lead a congregation to change the world. But when a pastor, a church leader, or a congregation is clear about the answers, and able to inspire others about the answers to these questions, the power of the church begins to be unleashed.”[11]

Allow me to delineate some elements of the deep change we are facing.

We have to live the 5 practices both corporately as a church and individually as Christ followers. Radical hospitality. Passionate worship. Intentional Faith Development. Risk-taking mission and service. Extravagant generosity.

We absolutely must engage in personal hands-on evangelism (sharing the good news of Jesus Christ as both Lord and Savior) and witnessing to our faith. Clergy, who are you talking to about Jesus? Lay leaders where is your explicit, both verbally and in action, witness to Christ as Lord and Savior being offered in your community and among those you come in contact with.

The mission of the church – to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world – has to claim priority over how we do church. This will mean that mission needs to trump relationship. This is a radically deep change that some in our midst will not be able to make. In the interest of harmony we cannot allow a small minority to block ministry. Nor, however, should this be used as an excuse for poor pastoral care.

Every single local church needs to be clear on what its specific path to discipleship looks like. Allow me a brief digression. I recall a member of one of my churches who was a long time Christian. She was also, the nicest word I can think of is, a curmudgeon. Perennially pushy and demanding, she insisted on her own way. Great energy was spent just keeping her happy or avoiding her wrath. She was befriended by wonderful lay leaders (one couple got the Bishop’s Exemplar Award, another was Conference Lay Leader) but nothing seemed to rub off. Through all the years of prayer, bible study, music, preaching, etc., she never actually became any more Christ like. Nor did we expect her to! We all said “oh, that just Mary (name changed to protect the guilty).” There is something wrong with that. For starters we can be “Marys” ourselves. Secondly, if we really love each other, we will engage in small group accountability to help each other grow in grace and Christ-likeness. This is precisely what the early Methodists used the class meeting for! We are in the life transformation business. (Young people will join churches where they see life transformation taking place!) 

A major part of our alignment proposal is to designed to concretely assist local churches develop their path to discipleship. We are in the life transformation business. The outrageous intention of the Christian faith is that you and I and those who do not even know Him, as well as society as a whole, actually become more Christ-like. 

We must gain specific clarity on the outcomes, if you will the fruitfulness, we expect from local churches. To that end we will be developing a fivefold measuring gage for fruitful Christ honoring, Kingdom advancing outcomes. Last year I met with each District in a clergy meeting and asked what outcomes or measurements of faithfulness and fruitfulness we should measure. A remarkable consensus quickly emerged. Additionally, the Council of Bishops has been wrestling with the same issue and came up with a similar listing. We will seek to measure the following aspects of faithful and fruitful ministry:

I realize that there is a great list of additional candidates, but I’ve also learned that if doesn’t fit on a postcard, you won’t fill it out. We will start here and as we learn more we’ll amend it or correct it as needed. Specific definitions on how to measure these various elements will be developed. Carefully, critically, let me add that metrics are one part of living out our faithfulness and fruitfulness. They aren’t the whole story. Rather they are a crucial element of a deeper conversation which engages us in concretely answering the “why” question. This conversation calls for accountability to God and to each other from both pastors and congregations. We really are partners in ministry. The great Reformation recovery of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers really does apply to us and our time.

An additional element comes in understanding the paradigm shift we are living through on this wilderness way. Such understanding is at the core of how we live out the why. Gil Rendle, senior consultant for the Texas Methodist Foundation and the consultant we have hired to work with our alignment process, has developed the following diagram to help us live into the future. I share it with his permission.

Nouns             Verbs                                       The difference to be measured

Resources        Activities

Problems:

·         Non-profits routinely do not know what they produce.

·         Systems that can’t measure their outcomes commonly measure their input

·         In non-profit systems inputs are commonly mistaken for outcomes

·         Systems need to be built backwards

The Old United Methodist Paradigm

Outcome: more members; satisfied clergy; satisfied congregations

The New United Methodist Paradigm

            Input:                                                 Outcome: disciples (changed people)

Clergy                                                 who will change the world

Congregations

Members

1)       Our current system of funding Pension and Health Insurance is unsustainable!  It is a train wreck hurtling down the track. If we don’t like the currently proposed solution (to be presented by the Board of Pensions), we still need to come up with some solution. 

2)       Alignment around mission and focusing on faithfulness and fruitfulness is core to who we are and are to be. At a Conference level we simply have to become more nimble and fruitful. The Conference exists for the mission and not the mission for the conference. The same is true for the local church. The church exists for the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world (Matthew 28!) and not the mission for the church. 

3)       At a Conference level we are in the business of energizing and equipping local churches. Specifically, we need to push the things down to the local church and let folks on the ground engage in the God honoring mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. On the local church level, the resources needed from the Conference are rarely money. God has already given most churches and Christians all the money they need. It’s in your pockets and checkbooks. What we need to supply and assist in are new ways of engagement with our culture and our greater world. This leads to the fourth concrete example.

4)       Leadership development for a new day in the life of the church is absolutely a priority. This includes both lay and clergy leadership development. I’ve already mentioned the importance of Partners in Ministry. I shared with the Executive Session of the Conference that in the next 10 years 59% of our Elders will be eligible for retirement, 40% in the next 5 years! There are all kinds of dimensions to this issue. We have to actively encourage and call a younger generation into ordained ministry. Given the cost of a seminary education, we need to endow scholarships to aid young families going into the ordained ministry. The list could go on, but leadership development is not optional.

5)       New church development and transformation of existing congregations are central activities we must be about. Currently we are drastically underfunded in this area. Rev. Gary Lindley, Executive Director for Church Development, and his wonderful assistant, Vicki Eldredge, are working tirelessly to increase the number of shares for new church development. Important as that is, it is barely the beginning.

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer once observed, ‘The rusty swords of the old world are powerless to combat the evils of today and tomorrow.’ Likewise [writes George Hunter in his book Radical Outreach] the traditional model of doing church is increasingly powerless to produce the kind of Christians who will reach the people in the community and who want what Christianity has to offer (but isn’t offering).”[13]

            There is more to mention, much more. For now let me say again how honored I am to share with you in ministry. You are my inspiration in Christ. Both Jolynn and I know ourselves to be incredibly blessed to be a part of the Central Texas Conference and more particularly the churches and members, lay and clergy. From the depths of our hearts we thank you.

Let us pause together in divine reflection. Like the disciples at Sardis, we have God sightings we need to share. Like the saints at Mt. Zion, we have miracles to report. Like the experimenters at The Lab, God is moving in our midst. We can take hope, take courage, take joy, in the truth of the gospel. We know the why. And God, God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is moving in our midst. “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”[14]

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By: Bishop Mike Lowry On 6/7/2010