Happy New Appointment Year!

 Today is the first Sunday of the new appointment year. For those who are receiving new appointments, it is a day of anxiety: will this new relationship between pastor and parishioners be fruitful? Will it help us all grow in our discipleship? Will it foster ministries that extend beyond the walls of the church to those in the community who are most in need? Will it hone our prophetic voices and witness, as we seek a more just world for us all, in particular for the most vulnerable in our midst?

I am praying for you!

The appointment year is so uniquely United Methodist. While we plan for the long haul, we also know that at the end of June, we who are pastors may be passing the baton to someone who will be following us. For parishioners, it can be a time of grief as a beloved pastor moves on to another church in need of their gifts. If you are continuing with the same pastor/appointment, I pray that you will do some introspection: where have we been most faithful together? Where do we need to forgive each other? What do we need from each other to grow in faithfulness? Are we helping one another engage in ministries in the community that are life-giving and life-transforming? If not, why not?

I am praying for you as well!

When I came to the Mountain Sky Conference eight years ago, I was so struck by how missional our churches were: nearly every church had an outreach ministry that made an impact on the lives of others—whether in the community in which the church was, or even in other continents through mission trips and missional giving. I was and continue to be moved by this sign of vitality in our churches.

Your church is needed to be a beacon of hope as you share the love God has for all people. In these
highly divisive days, how you live together, honoring the differences that exist between your neighbors in the pews, can be a witness that diversity is a sign of a wildly creative God and adds contour to community.

I am praying for us all through these days of transition. May the Holy Spirit continue to draw us more deeply into God’s grace, and lead us all into Beloved Community.

What Are We Teaching the Children?

 What are we teaching the children?

Children have been on my mind a lot these past few days. How do we adults explain to our children the political climate in our country? How do we discuss the recent conviction of former President Donald Trump? What do we want them to know about integrity, honesty, and leadership?

The children are watching us. They are seeing how we engage in difficult conversations with each other. They are noting the language we use when talking about people we disagree with. They are studying how we treat others.

What are they learning from you?

This weekend, I am praying each sentence of the Epistle lesson for Sunday. I am letting each word reverberate in my soul:

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;” (Romans 12:9-16b)

I invite you to sit with these words in prayer. Let God come to you as you pray. What does God want to teach you through this text? How will that inform how you live?

What will the children watching learn from you?

Yes, Jesus Loves Me

 “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…”

This is the very first song nearly every child learns in a Christian Sunday School. Sunday School teachers and members of the church are vessels of this love through their care and instruction. In this supportive environment, children grow in faith as they grow into their God-created selves.

But in too many churches, once young people begin to question their sexual orientation or gender identity, the message they receive is that God’s love is now conditional. This causes deep spiritual harm. Someone who doesn’t have a nurturing environment to grow into the person God created them to be lives a stunted life, never living into their full potential.

Church ought to be the place where every child of God will find a loving and accepting home to be who they are.

The United Methodist Church made huge changes to be that loving place through General Conference actions.

There are some United Methodists who are going to think we went too far by removing the language that declared homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching”, allowing clergy to preside over same-gender weddings (if they choose to do so) and allowing LGBTQ clergy. I hope you will enter into a time of wondering: why would these pass overwhelmingly by delegates from around the world (the ban against LGBTQ clergy only had 51 no votes out the entire body)? What scriptures would prompt people to adopt these positions? How do these statements help us “do no harm; do good; and stay in love with God?”

We humans see the image of God as through a mirror dimly (I Corinthians 13: 12). God is so much bigger than our limited comprehension. The God who created the world in all its diverse flourishings has imprinted on each human God’s own image. The more we encounter and enter into relationship with each other, the deeper we look into each other’s eyes, the clearer God’s image emerges. We gain a bigger picture of who God is, particularly when we include those who don’t look like us, think like us, or love like us.

There are people of all ages in your community who are looking for a grace-filled community that allows them to ask questions, to be able to take tentative and shaky steps to explore who God made them to be, to find themselves in a community who will cheer them on when they do so.

Will you and your church be that community?

Let me tell you: there is amazing joy waiting for you if you are willing to do so. For wherever there is new life, whenever someone says yes to being their full God-created self, when someone is finally able to proclaim out loud to God “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” the angels sing and the saints dance.

I pray that our United Methodist Churches will be such loving places. May no child of God ever think they are beyond God’s love. May they be able to sing throughout their life:

“Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so”

 

Where Love and Joy Dance

 How apt that this past week’s lectionary was from I John 4, a beautiful passage on love—the love God has for us and the love we ought to have for one another.

Love is the bedrock of the Christian life.

And love is what I am experiencing in Charlotte at General Conference.

For years, General Conference has felt more like a battleground than an experience of Christian conferencing. Voices were silenced. Lives were demeaned. Hope was dashed, over and over again.  

But something is happening in Charlotte. At first there was a timidity of spirit, but then an open-heartedness to one another grew and even in the midst of differences, joy has bubbled up in contagious ways. Truly, the Holy Spirit is in this place.

What’s changed?

One of the best lines I ever heard in a church meeting was when a group was moving through a difficult topic but slowly aligning in consensus. Someone disagreed with the direction and said, “I just need to be a devil’s advocate and say…” Someone else said, “The church is the last place that needs an advocate of the devil.”

Differences of opinion and diverse voices are so vital for healthy conferencing. But those who just seek to disrupt, divide, and disorder do little to build up the Body of Christ.

Continue to pray for the delegates, who are working hard to respond to the Spirit’s leading, who are listening intently to one another,  and who are helping us realize the future of our beloved denomination.

And may this gracious spirit pervade our local churches, so that all who walk through our doors will find a place of welcome, where love and joy dance together down the aisles.

Prior to the Start of General Conference

I write from Charlotte, North Carolina, where the Council of Bishops has been meeting prior to the start of General Conference. Over the next few days, delegates, volunteers, and observers from around the world will arrive as the long-awaited General Conference begins. 

There is a pensive hope that pervades our meeting, hope that we are nearing the other side of the chaos and contention we all experienced during a difficult season of disaffiliation. 

How many of us have brought tender hope to the start of each General Conference, only to have that hope crushed in painful ways as the delegates reaffirmed or tightened restrictions about the role of LGBTQ+ people in the life and ministry of the church? 

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” 

Today, on the eve of the start of General Conference, I am drinking from the well of infinite hope. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will be an experience of God’s grace beyond what we have ever experienced. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will provide a witness to the world that there can be unity in the midst of diversity. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will be spiritually enriching for the delegates and all who are assisting and watching. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will remove the harmful language about LGBTQ+ people, so no one will question whether they are welcomed in the household of faith. 

I am hopeful that at the conclusion of this General Conference, we will be a new church, with a renewed sense of identity and purpose. It has been a long pregnancy. The labor has been particularly painful. But there is a birthing in our midst and we are the midwives. May we be attentive as we listen for sighs too deep for words, for the stirrings of the Spirit, for the movements of new life seeking to see the light of day. 

And then, when the last person leaves the convention center and returns home, may we all participate in raising this new church to be a strong presence in every community around the globe. The world is in need of the generous grace and deep love found in Jesus Christ that is the
bedrock of United Methodism. 

Please cover the delegates in prayer as they begin their work. May the Holy Spirit sustain and guide them in the days to come.

The Ones Who Aren't Here

 I and so many others are frantically preparing for General Conference, that once-every-four-years United Methodist meeting that we had to postpone due to COVID. At this meeting, delegates determine church policy for the next four years which will order our shared life and ministry.

I love my friendships across The United Methodist Church. There is an orientation to life and faith that we share as United Methodists that has fostered deep and lasting friendships for me. But oddly, as I sit in prayer for the upcoming meetings, it is not the faces of my friends that rise up within me nor the issues the delegates will tackle. Instead, the names and faces of those who have left the denomination are the ones that swirl with the Spirit in the space of my prayers.

Even though we held deep differences—in particular about the role of lgbtq+ people in the life and ministry of the church (and even though their beliefs have been soul wounding to so many of us) I can’t help feeling the void their departure has left.

This is in part because I do believe in the power of our sacraments. It is through baptism and communion that we come to experience God’s generous grace. The bread is broken, but we are together made whole. The water we place on our forehead to remember our baptism reminds us that God loves us and claims us, but not we alone! Through these experiences, we are united with others, whether we like it or not. They are our kin in Christ and we are theirs.

Because of this experience, I can’t “other” another. I can’t dismiss them. I can’t pretend they don’t exist. I can’t wish for a church without them in it.

The Church’s witness is lessened when we are unable to live gracefully among ourselves. Our diversity ought to be revered as a blessing that opens us more fully to the image of God that is imprinted on humanity. It isn’t easy work. It is hard. Really hard. We have to be willing to be changed by our encounter with another. But this is what leads us all to a holier and more whole place.

I look forward to the ways the Holy Spirit will show up at General Conference, and the people we will be at the end of our time together. But today, I am sitting and reflecting on the ones who won’t be there.

What Are We Teaching the Children?

 I grew up on a dead end street on the South Shore of Long Island, perfect for playing ball in the summer and sledding in the winter. It seemed to be an inevitable badge of childhood that all of us would eventually sport a scar on one or both knees from tripping on the curbs that were marked as 1^st and 3^rd bases. The block had many young families, so I grew up with enough friends to make two teams of whatever we chose to play. We were fiercely competitive, but the make-up of the teams were never the same, as players were interchangeable, one team to the other.

We certainly had our fights, but they never lasted long if we wanted to continue to play our games. We needed one another, so whatever grievances we held against each other were quickly forgotten so we could resume our play.

Why, as we grow older, do we lose this capacity to forgive and forget? Why do we harbor resentments for so long? When did we stop seeing that we are all, ultimately, on the same team?

This hit home for me as I watched the State of the Union address. When did we devolve from having civility in the chambers to cat-calls and taunting? When did Thanksgiving dinners begin to need referees or rules about what we can and can’t talk about? When did we grow so polarized that we have forgotten we are on the same team?

I can’t help but wonder about what we are modeling to our children. Do our actions model respect when we interrupt a speaker? Are we teaching tolerance of difference when we dismiss and dehumanize those we disagree with? Are we helping our children grow into adults that will lean into hard conversations with humility and curiosity?

Jesus reserved some of his harshest words to for those who mistreat children:

 “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.

“But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck. Doom to the world for giving these God-believing children a hard time! Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it worse—and it’s doomsday to you if you do.” (Matthew 18: 3-7, The Message)

This week, consider what your words and actions are teaching the children around you. And then, take time to consider what the children in your life might be trying to teach you about God and a life of faith.