SCD Ideas

by Mary Beth Coudal*

Grand Rapids, MI, August 4, 2008–The Rev. Jim Walker is on a journey to shake the “churchy-ness” out of church and make it about fellowship and the kingdom of God– based on the example of Jesus Christ.

He details his journey in a new book, Dirty Word: The Vulgar, Offensive Language of the Kingdom of God (Discipleship Resources), and he shared it in a ministry track at the Grand Rapids site of the 2008 United Methodist School of Congregational Development. He dramatized it during a service of Holy Communion shared via satellite with another section of the school in Orlando, Florida.

“Do we really need church?” asked the co-pastor of the Pittsburgh faith community Hot Metal Bridge, which has United Methodist and Presbyterian sponsorship. “Need” is the wrong verb for Walker. His advice: “Be the church! Instead of go to church!”

Walker, who is the United Methodist co-pastor, derived his community of faith concept from the Greek word “koinonia,” which means to share in fellowship. His ministry track was entitled “Headwounds: Koinonia in a Fractured World.”

“We need to practice koinonia everywhere but the church building,” Walker says in his book. “We need to flee, run screaming out of our safe and comfortable churchy surroundings, and slam as hard as we can into the mosh pits of this dark and lonely world.”

“The Kingdom of God is about the dirty, the losers, the misfits of our culture,” according to Walker, but they are “rarely welcome through the doors of our churches–because we like things sterile, to cover over our dirt. We like to reject people… But Jesus went to the smelly places.”

Jesus associated with unsavory people, and Walker had an opportunity to demonstrate that component of the New Testament Gospels in a communion service on the night of August 4. The service originated in Grand Rapids, but parts of it were shared via satellite with the congregational development group in Orlando. The school met from July 31 to August 5.

He did a one-person dramatization of the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, the tax collector, from Luke 19:1-13. He likened Zacchaeus to a man with only one chair, although he was rich. He had no friends as a result of his shameful profession–collecting taxes from his own people, the Jews, for the Roman overlords.

In the Lukan story and Walker’s interpretation, the townspeople of Jericho are horrified that Jesus would invite himself to the home of a sinner such as Zacchaeus. “Ahaaaaa, we want Jesus, but not this Jesus,” the storyteller imagines the people saying as they wandered off. He wondered if we could hear echoes of contemporary church members in the reactions of the people of Jericho.

Walker introduced both the passion of Jesus and the origins of Holy Communion as the Zacchaeus narrative moved toward the transformation of Zacchaeus, the big-time sinner. The tax man with only one chair promised to give away half his belongings and restore four-fold what he had stolen after his encounter with Jesus. The monologue ended with the empty-chair man invited to a place at the table.

Walker officiated at the service of Holy Communion in Grand Rapids; in Orlando, Bishop Hee Soo Jung of Chicago and Bishop Mary Virginia Taylor of South Carolina presided at the Lord’s Table.

Jim Walker is totally serious about the church turning its attention, as did Jesus, to people on the margins of respectable society. The cover of his book features a photo of a skinny, tattooed, chain-wearing, and pierced man, Doug, who is part of Hot Metal Bridge in Pittsburgh. (The fellowship is named for a real bridge, or maybe a restaurant near the bridge.).

Hot Metal Bridge fellowship is identified as an “emerging church,” Walker notes. “We’re just trying to reach the last, the least, and the lost,” he said, “And I guess when you do that, you’re labeled emerging,” Walker said.

Walker hopes that The United Methodist Church will stop “planting churches” and spend more time and effort building “faith communities.”

“We create these churches and expect people to come to us,” he says. “It’s really a people movement.” His fellowship meets in a bar, a tattoo parlor, and around a table.

For more on Jim Walker’s ministry, visit the website of Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community at www.hotmetalbridge.com.

The School of Congregational Development is an annual event co-sponsored by the General Board of Discipleship and Global Ministries. For more info go to www.scdumc.org.

*Mary Beth Coudal is a staff writer for the General Board of Global Ministries. (Elliott Wright contributed to this article from Orlando.)

http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/pr.cfm?articleid=5093
 

Grand Rapids, MI, July 31, 2008–Worship attendance at the Living Water United Methodist Church, a new congregation in Pearland, Texas, peaked at 225 in the fall of 2006.

Then it dropped the next week to under 200, and kept dropping week by week until it reached 70.

That was not the way it was suppose to happen! The new church start on the south side of Houston had been widely publicized and praised in the Texas Annual (regional) Conference of the denomination.

“I felt like a failure,” the pastor, the Rev. Ed Jones, told the 2008 United Methodist School of Congregational Development, meeting at two sites, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Orlando, Florida, with satellite links for some plenary addresses and worship.

Mr. Jones, speaking from Grand Rapids, said: “We took six months to sort things out and now we are in a new day. I realized I was listening to words on church-growth charts but not listening daily to the word of God. We were too caught up in building the church and not enough in connecting the disconnected.”

“We were taking our values from charts when we needed to place our values in human hearts,” said Jones, an African American clergyman.

The United Methodist Church as a denomination in the United States is not unlike Living Water congregation in the fall of 2006: it is losing participants, and has been since its membership peaked in the 1960s at around 11 million.

Starting new congregations in the US is a current United Methodist priority. As a global denomination, however, its membership is growing in Africa and Asia.

The annual School of Congregational Development, focused on the US, is jointly sponsored by the General Boards of Discipleship and Global Ministries. Five of the ministry study tracks this year deal with starting new congregations.

Living Water Church developed what it calls GAUGE, which lists five values:

Grow spiritually.
Authentic relationships must be developed.
Use gifts for ministry.
Give cheerfully.
Extend a hand.

It also has a strategy taken from chapter 5 of the Gospel of Luke. The passage tells the story of how Jesus noticed two empty boats and fishermen washing their nets on the lakeshore of Gennesaret. Jesus boarded Simon’s boat and eventually asked him to put out into deeper water for a large catch of fish.

The Living Water strategy understands that we begin at the shoreline in our faith venture and gradually move out, until we are “living deep” in the Spirit, empowered “to serve living water to a thirsty world as we grow toward our full potential to share the love of Christ with others.”

Jones advised persons who want to start new churches to engage the disconnected, especially disconnected families, and to “preach Jesus.”

He said that Living Water Church uses cultural resources, including popular movies, to engage people, to get their attention, and move them out from the shoreline to deeper waters.

“If you trust God, God can trust you,” said the pastor, and that relationship with God makes it possible to share the love of God with the broken, wounded people of the world.
Jones, a former firefighter, did his theological studies at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, and Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He credits his wife, Sylvia, a dentist, and his three children, with providing a domestic connectedness that permits the stability needed for ministry.

http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/pr.cfm?articleid=5085

by Elliott Wright
Orlando, FL, July 31, 2008–The 2008 United Methodist School of Congregational Development opened with a challenge to Christian leaders to live and act like Jesus.

Bishop Minerva Carcaño of Phoenix gave the keynote address at the event this year held in two locations, Orlando, Florida, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Speaking from Florida, she was linked by satellite to the Michigan site. Her topic was “The Spiritual Life of the Christian Leader.”

“The spiritual life of a Christian leader is a life that thinks and acts like Jesus,” Bishop Carcaño said, bolstering her assertion with biblical citations, hymnody, and personal experience.

The six-day school is attended on a volunteer basis by United Methodist pastors, district superintendents, bishops, and other leaders, some of them lay persons. It is sponsored jointly by the General Boards of Discipleship and Global Ministries. Strong emphasis is put on developing new congregations, revitalizing existing ones, and strengthening church leadership.

Early in her presentation the bishop asked the 300 people in Orlando and the 150 in Grand Rapids to stand and sing the hymn that includes the phrase, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! There’s just something about that name.”

Bishop Carcaño, who leads the Desert Southwest Annual (regional) Conference, also explored the passage in the Letter to the Philippians in which the Apostle Paul challenges Christians to have “the mind of Christ,” who, while he was God, became a human being who suffered and was nailed to a cross.

“‘Go for it,’ says Paul. Aspire to think and act like Jesus.”

The joy that comes from making Jesus the model of leadership, the bishop warned, may put Christian leaders in conflict with the world.

She also stressed that Christian leaders, those who think and act like Jesus, are not always in prominent positions in the church. Among those she cited as models of Jesus Christ were her grandmother Sophie; a young pastor she met in the mountains of the Philippines three years ago; and a woman ministering at the Mexican border to persons deported from the US–notably by washing the feet of weary travelers.

Bishop Carcaño stressed the important symbolism and reality of Christians washing the feet of those in need and one another’s feet. She said:

Jesus himself showed us his mind and heart when on the eve of his crucifixion he took a basin and towel and proceeded to wash the feet of the disciples. Jesus’ own action on that night became the lens through which we can see the mind of Christ and thus the spiritual life to which we are called. Because he loved his disciples from beginning to end, Jesus washed their feet.

Jesus’ love for his disciples is expressed all through his ministry, but particularly and most importantly, in his death. It is only from the standpoint of Jesus’ death that …

It is all about relationships; relationships with God, with Jesus, and with each other. How different the world could be if we consistently served out of spiritual lives grounded in God’s own love; a love that we know through Christ Jesus and that we best understand through the very mind of Christ, Christ who invited us into relationship with him and with each other, to serve each other in Christ’s own love.

 Bishop Carcaño expressed the hope that Christian leaders would not get too caught up in what she described as the current “self-care” movement that reflects the priorities of a narcissistic society. “Self-care,” she said, “is pretty common sense … take care of your life for it is a gift from God … sleep, exercise, eat right, and spend time with your loved ones.” She said:

The importance of our lives is found in our relationship with God who created us for holy purposes. We find the significance of our lives … through relationships of love with others. In knowing that we belong to Christ Jesus who has redeemed and reconciled us with God and with each other, we are enabled to respond to both the joy and the demands of love.

Participants in the School of Congregational Development engage in ministry tracks, seminars, worship, and visits to area “teaching churches.”

The school sites in Orlando and Grand Rapids were linked for several plenary addresses and services of worship, some originating in Florida and some in Michigan.

*Elliott Wright is the information officer of the General Board of Global Ministries.

http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/pr.cfm?articleid=5084
 

The newest results of the Pew’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey show an American populace that professes belief in God without having to pay the price of discipleship.  While 92% of people say they believe in God and 58% pray once a day, when it comes to living it out with others the numbers drop dramatically.  

While worship attendance tells one part of the story (see links to survey results below), the amount of influence religious belief has on daily living seems to be in decline.  For example, while 78% of Americans say there are “absolute standards of right and wrong” only 29% rely on their religion to determine these standards.  Only 14% say religion is the “main influence on political thinking.” Other questions in the survey talk about heaven and hell, preserving religious tradition, and salvation.

When seen as a whole, the answers point to a population who embraces the concept of spirituality without absolutes.  Belief is a good thing, but what you believe is up to the individual.  The final arbiter of what is right is not the church or the religious institution, but what seems to work in the moment. 

While this may appear to be a minefield for the leaders of Churches, this also gives the leader of a local church a unique opportunity to shape the spiritual life of people who participate in the life of his or her congregation.  Rather than coming with preconceived notions of what it means to be a Christian, people who participate in the life of the local faith community are open to learn what you have to offer.   The church finds itself in the teaching mode rather than the caretaking mode. 

Fifty years ago the assumption was that everyone was a Christian and all you had to do was to remind people to do the right things and to remember the creeds and prayers of the historic church.  Today it is normative for people in church to be surprised to learn about different kinds of prayer, or about the Trinity, or how a daily devotion can shape the spiritual life of their family.  The life of John Wesley and his brother Charles becomes a witness to those who have never heard the story.  The Book of Acts is a eye-opening account of the power of the Holy Spirit as the church was born.

What becomes attractive is a congregation who strangely enough is living what they are teaching.  It’s no mistake that many of our largest congregations have a well thought out strategy for teaching the basics of the Christian faith, for helping people experience many different types of worship, small groups, and prayer, and offer multiple opportunities to be in service to their communities and in mission to the world. While the results of the survey may appear to be discouraging it challenges the local church to step up its efforts to communicate the gospel message in a way that connects with people so that they may know the joy of Christian fellowship and following Jesus as part of a community of faith.

Go to these links to find some great interactive tools relating to the survey: 

http://usatoday.com/news/graphics/2008_pew_religion/flash.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-06-23-pew-religions_N.htm

As we head into Holy Week I am reminded of an article in the Harvard Business Review about the importance of Storytelling.  Here is a portion of the article:
“A big part of a CEO’s job is to motivate people to reach certain goals. To do that, he or she must engage their emotions, and the key to their hearts is story. There are two ways to persuade people. The first is by using conventional rhetoric…It’s an intellectual process…you build your case by giving statistics and facts and quotes from authorities. But there are two problems with rhetoric. First, the people you’re talking to have their own set of authorities, statistics, and experiences. While you’re trying to persuade them, they are arguing with you in their heads. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.
The other way to persuade people…is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story. In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener’s emotions and energy…If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.”

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0306B&ml_page=1&ml_subscriber=true

If you read carefully you will see a couple of things that stand out from the article.  First, trying to persuade by giving facts, statistics, and quotes works only if your info-commercial is better organized and told then the information the congregation already has in their heads.  I must admit this has been my basic style — I have a laptop filled with PowerPoint Presentations and I can persuade with the best of them, or at least I try.  The key phrase here is at the end:  people are not inspired to act by reason alone.
Let that sink in for a moment.  When you preach the story of the passion this week are you aiming for the head or the heart?  Are you seeking to persuade by quoting The Case for the Resurrection or some similar book?  Are you hoping the historical facts will support your argument or are you using the approach of the Jesus Seminar where you will vote for the passages you think only Jesus could have said?  I fear that too much of our preaching is focused on analytical arguments rather than touching the heart with (gasp) emotion.

Second, the article makes the case that the way to persuade people is by uniting an idea with an emotion.  This comes with telling a riveting and powerful story.  During Holy Week you have such a story to tell.  If you read the events of the Holy Week with an eye to the story that is being told the characters will leap off the page into the very depths of your soul.  The story of Jesus’ last days, his death, and resurrection has fueled the Christian Way since its inception.  My hope and prayer for you is that you will be able to tell The Story as if you are hearing it for the first time.  The wonder.  The tears. The shame.  The grief.  The hope.  The love that prevails to this day.

My father said something to me about Easter Sermons,  “Craig, don’t forget to smile on Easter. Point to the flowers and to the cross.  Remember that Easter is a celebration.”   In his own way he was saying he had heard too many sermons that aimed at the head rather than the heart.  Another things crosses my mind, “Do you believe?”   “Do I really believe?”   I pray that in the midst of all the activities that surround this week, Palm Sunday (whose getting the branches?) the Easter Egg Hunt (do we have enough eggs?), The Maundy Thursday Service (what kind of bread shall we use?), Good Friday (will anyone show up?), and Easter (one more service to go!)  that you will have a revelation — this Jesus that you will be talking about came for you.  He died for you.  He lives for you.  He wants to live through you.  Let it be so.