Last week, I posted about some of the visions that are being shared by some of the leaders of the United Methodist Church. If you haven’t read that post, it would be helpful to do so before you continue.
- The United Methodist General Board of Discipleship
That post featured a video produced by the General Board of Discipleship. The conversation that is portrayed is one of the first readily accessible conversations from folks at that level for the broader church. It is also one of the first major approaches to the concept of a United Methodist praxis, or ‘way of being in the world,’ that has been offered from the General Conference level of our denomination. The visions are still somewhat nebulous, but offer the sense that these people have done some homework. Most of all, there is a direction suggested.
As I mentioned last week, N.T. Wright includes the examination of praxis in his overall examination of Christianity. He has applied his methods to the person and ministry of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul, and concepts as profound as resurrection, salvation, and what it means to be the Church in the world.
- The Right Reverend N.T. Wright
N.T. Wright’s understanding of the figures of Christianity is a result of approaching each one from the standpoint of its story, its symbols, its praxis and four questions applied broadly to the culture in which the figure may be found:
- Who are we?
- Where are we?
- What is the problem? and
- What is the solution?
Any examination of the future of Methodism in western civilization would benefit from this same approach. I promised you that I would apply those same methods to the current conversation about where our denomination is heading. This is the second of five posts on this topic. In this post, I will discuss story and symbol as a way to offer reminders to some and thumbnail sketches to others. Again, this is for the overall goal of understanding United Methodism as a movement through history, primarily to gain wisdom regarding its trajectory and thus its future.
Story
Our collective United Methodist story is a complicated one. Like all Christian stories, it begins with Scripture. Through the pages of Scripture, we follow the tale of God’s creation of all-there-is, the establishment of a Holy People, and God’s interactions with those people, including the chapter of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ and the new way to worship and serve God that this brought about. This is a decidedly Judeo-Christian history, and serves as grounding for our identity more than it serves as a day by day record of events. Remember, this is our story.
After the stories of Scripture end, we have a two-thousand-year history (since the last recorded Acts in the Bible) that is maintained as our Tradition. That history is filled with many expressions of Christianity, some of which are deplorable. Knowing which are worthy and which are to be condemned is a function of understanding the core of our history, that is, the teachings and ministry of Jesus Christ. Both are necessary for determining our future.
More to the point, we bear up under the last 200 years of Methodist history since John Wesley. Our story is that of the pioneer clergymen who rode the circuit to attend to the ritual and theological needs of otherwise independent and self-sustaining communities.
Our story in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is primarily that of social holiness movement. Our story is that of Methodist men and women who would not tolerate injustice and stood against the tenets of evil. Our story is one of historical tolerance of the beliefs of others while maintaining a respectful, but distinctly pronounced disagreement with those same beliefs.
Though we have our own embarrassing moments as a denomination, we should keep in mind that we must examine our successes and our failures in order to be faithful to the lessons our story has to give us.
We also have more recent stories that are much more institutional. The rapid growth of United Methodist General Board Agencies in both size and power makes for a story in and of itself. The story of the United Methodism since merging the Methodist Church with the Evangelical United Brethren is a larger tale of doing more with fewer people and more dollars. Lovett Weems description of present and future realities is helpful here. See the video here.
Obviously, there are thousands of chapters to our story, but these serve as the major sections of this Methodist narrative.
Symbol
Apart from the primary symbols of our faith (the Cross, the Resurrection, Table, Cloth/Stole, Bread, etc.), our chief cultural symbols come directly from our United Methodist heritage. The small group experience of accountable Christian discipleship is a largely neglected but often mentioned component of our Wesleyan heritage. We can lift high the empowered role of the laity is a symbol that is unrivaled in Christian history. We celebrate the deployed nature of the churches while maintaining the cooperative nature of our central structures to accomplish tasks that no one church or even regional grouping of churches could accomplish. A shorter name for this is “Christian Conferencing.” These are potent symbols for who we are.
Some of our more recent symbols could include the museum-mindset of many churches. Locked into a curating mode, many of our congregations offer a historic glimpse of what the church building looked like. Some include histories of the church which resemble genealogy more than theology. These symbols are as potent as they are deadly. We could also include other more contemporary symbols of “perfect attendence” and “confirmation certificates.” But I’d rather not. I’d much rather deal with gears that turn than rubber stamps and honors.
What Our Story and Symbols Suggest
These stories and symbols come from time of unparalleled success and historic decline. The suggestions appear obvious in so many ways. But I am very aware of the fact that I’ve been living with these stories and symbols much longer than many.
First, we would be out of place in our own story if it were told of us in the contemporary setting. United Methodist Churches that operate as empowered laity organized into small groups (the historic class meetings) are the exception and no longer the rule. In many rural United Methodist Churches, the clergy is the employee of the laity rather than the deployer of an empowered laity. This story is as foreign to many United Methodist Churches as the circuit rider mounted upon his horse, a historic tale with very little modern relevance.
Our symbols today are more in line with the institutions from which Methodism pushed away in years past. The institutional church of John and Charles Wesley was incredibly rigid, an authoritarian body chiefly concerned with maintaining orthodoxy and control. Methodism was distinct from this institutional structure because of it’s organic growth, and it’s empowerment of lay persons. The control was built in to the emphasis on discipleship, and the exercise of faith which resulted in powerful leaders filled with the Spirit. Oddly, the more the institution holds on to power and control, the less power there is to go around, and the quicker it dies.
I should pause here to differentiate between authorizing and empowering. This must be made clear. Empowerment, in this case, is the development of skills, knowledge, and ability. Authorization is then more akin to handing over a badge and a certificate regardless of capability.
The answer, then, is not to release power into the hands of the undisciplined. Empowerment must take the form of disciple-making. A spirit-filled leader takes on an empowerment that goes beyond a certificate and exceeds any badge of office we might offer.
In recent times, we’ve seen uninformed and un-discipled persons, both laity and clergy, take matters of belief into their own hands. Without much more than a glance at Scripture, authorized but unempowered leaders have spoken ideas without merit or credibility into cameras and microphones. This has resulted in a divided denomination, filled with opposing and contrary beliefs. When we authorize persons without truly empowering them, then we release a twisted sort of power without experience or wisdom, which is far from a well-developed vehicle for the deployment of Christ’s power through the Church.
Future-Story and the Symbols of the Not-Yet
Though we cannot clearly see what is yet to come, we can see from our history that there are two major divisions in our stories. One is highly successful. The other is greatly diminished and most clearly defined by its almost constant search for the antidote to its ills. There are two major categories to our symbols. One set contains the symbols of power and passion. The other category points to a shadow of the past and a dead sect of which Wesley himself warned.
The more robust of the two must be re-engaged in some fashion if we are to return to effectiveness as a denomination. Though the days of the pastor on horseback riding his circuit are behind us, there must be some recapture of the methods of making disciples. We would do well to note that Wesley himself was renewing an idea that went back to Jesus, and to the Jewish concept known as the minyan. Whatever the form, the concept is clearly revealed in the better pages of our story and symbols: Christianity is a community of faith that operates as the body of Christ in the world. I believe that community requires us to go deeper in our relationships than we currently go. As we approach next week’s topic, that practice of community will be the focus.
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