Ring Out!

 This weekend I am in Orlando at Exploration 2024, a gathering for young adults to explore how God may be calling them into a vocation in the church. I love helping people explore their call—I believe each one of us was created to contribute something unique to the whole of our life together. Our task (and it can take our entire lives) is to figure out what it is and live it.

It’s kind of like playing in a bell choir.

Unlike a vocal choir, where often all the vocal sections (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) sing the same phrase with counterpoint notes, a bell choir member has but 2-4 notes (well, we altos also often have only 2-4 notes, but at least we sing them throughout the song!). Which means that as the song with bells is performed, a bell ringer must be prepared to come in at the right time with the right bell. I have seen some bell ringers ring just one bell through an entire piece, but the song would not be complete if they did not play their part at the right time. If they played the wrong bell, or came in early or late, or even refrained from playing, the musical piece would be changed.

While in other musical groups, people play individual instruments, all the bells together make the musical instrument. We all are the instrument together.  If someone misses their cue, or misses a performance, the instrument will not be able to perform due to missing notes.

Each of us carries a note we must play if the Song of Life is to be complete. To not be aware we are carrying the note, to not play the note at all, or to play it wrong results in the Song of Life devolving from being a Divine Love Song to a cacophony of dissonant and disconnected notes.

Scripture put it this way:

“Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” (I Corinthians 12: 4-7)

You are needed in this world. If you don’t bring your whole self, with your unique gift, to our life together, the vibrations that reverberate in our souls is diminished. The beauty of life fades. The sweet goodness of life is lessened.

Live so aware of yourself and others that you will know the right cue—of when and how to let your life ring out in joy and delight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHgpuWPg1OE

On Eagle's Wings

This summer has been spent in deep prayer and discernment. It has been forty years since I began serving as a clergywoman in The United Methodist Church. This coming year will be my last before retirement.

 

I have listened for God’s voice as I have asked, “How can I serve well in this last year? What should I focus on? How can I bring my best self to all matters and relationships?” I opened myself up to the pain I carry, having broken a stained-glass ceiling. I have felt anger rise up in me about the lies that have been said about me that encouraged people to seek disaffiliation. And my heart was filled with so much joy as I thought of all the people I have been blessed to serve and be in ministry with.

 

In the sacred silence, as I listened for God’s still, small voice, I was aware I was not alone. Every morning, as I prayed on the deck, eagles would keep me company. Not one, not two, but a whole nest! I felt comforted knowing I was not alone in the space, as I sought discernment about the future.

 

Seven years ago, when I was overwhelmed by the threats, hatred and condemnation that I received after my election as bishop, Robin and I came to Nova Scotia to visit my uncle. We went for a drive and as I was driving, I began to cry silent tears. I just didn’t think I had the strength to go on as bishop. I love this ministry, I love the people of the Mountain Sky, and I love The United Methodist Church, but I just didn’t think I could take one more step. I felt empty and scared.

 

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something coming towards us. It was an eagle! It flew right past my window and then flew ahead of me, directly at eye level, and led me as I drove for a couple of miles! And then, without me touching my phone, this song from my playlist began to play:

 

Hold me close

Let Your love surround me

Bring me near

Draw me to Your side.

And as I wait

I'll rise up like the eagle

And I will soar with You

Your Spirit leads me on

In the power of Your love.

 

(from The Power of Your Love by Geoff Bullock. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jZ_ZkMYUsc)

 

It was in that moment that I knew God was with me, and with power and grace would give me what I needed to serve faithfully. When I returned home after that visit, I felt God’s strength empowering me and guiding me.

 

How right, in this last summer of active ministry, God provides me with companions to remind me of God’s presence and power. Mick Jagger sang it best: “We don’t always get what we want, but we get what we need.”

 

This summer, I received a blessing I didn’t even know I needed. I am returning to the Mountain Sky with joy and anticipation of all that is before us, knowing that in all things, we will be lifted up on the wings of the Holy Spirit.

 

Let’s do this!

The Deadly Silence of Muzak Churches

 I love traveling across our area and seeing the towns and villages where our United Methodist Churches are located. As I stop to pray for the church, its laity, clergy, and ministries, I wonder what that church means to the community it sits in the middle of. Is it seen as a beacon of hope? A refuge from the storm? A place of welcome? A source where basic needs (like water and food) can be met? Does it offer a spiritual path that enriches the lives of those it touches? Does it matter at all to those around it? If it closed its doors the day after tomorrow, what would be different in the town? Would anyone even notice?

When I was growing up, we derided “Elevator Music” which was found in department stores, doctors’ offices, and, well, in elevators. Muzak was invented in 1934 by Major General George O. Squier as a way to send recorded music to businesses without the use of a radio signal. Science entered in when it was found that music could be used to bolster productivity in workers and calm people down. One of the company’s slogans was, “Muzak fills the deadly silences”. At the height of its popularity, Muzak reached tens of millions of people a day, from presidents and astronauts to someone in the produce section of a grocery store.

A professor at Queens College said of Muzak: “[it’s] a kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us; and it never startles us, it is never too loud, it is never too silent; it’s always there.”

Sometimes, I wonder sadly if the same can be said of our churches.

Have our churches blended into the landscape so completely that people don’t even know we are here anymore? Are we “there” but not “out there” in a world that has so much brokenness and so many needs? Have we watered down Jesus’ message so much that it no longer startles us?

There are “deadly silences” in our churches and communities that the Church must speak into, bringing the light of God’s Love and the healing balm of the Holy Spirit as we minister as disciples of Jesus Christ. This is not the time for us in the church to fade into a comfortable background. Drugs and division, violence and viciousness are causing our communities to crumble.

How can you and your church move out of the background shadows and sing loudly and boldly a new song of hope, healing, and liberation, so that the entire community can dance to Love’s song?

Doors May Be Closed, But the Church is Open

Each Saturday I pray for the clergy and laity of the Mountain Sky Conference, as we get ready for worship. I pray that you will greet one another and newcomers with a generous and warm hospitality; that the burdens and joys you bring will be lifted together in prayer to God, that the Word spoken will both challenge and comfort you in your faithful living, and that the music will shake something lose in you so that its message will bring you healing and hope, and that when you rise from your pew, you will have found yourself changed by the whole worship experience: you will live your Monday more deeply as a disciple than ever before.

But tomorrow, most of our churches will not be holding worship in an attempt to slow the rate of transmission so our local health care systems will not be overwhelmed by a spike in infections. By closing our doors, we are living into the first General Rule of our church: do no harm. We are also following Christ’s command to love our neighbor by protecting the most vulnerable in our midst: the elderly as well as those with underlying health conditions, because the mortality rates in these populations are so high.

But just because the doors of the church will be closed doesn’t mean the church is closed. This is a moment for us to step forward in our communities as the hands of Christ and offer love in bold tangible ways. In order to do that, may we in these days of pandemic response sink more fully into our individual and communal growth through the spiritual discipline found in the means of grace.

For we United Methodists, the means of grace are inward and outward focused to help us be open to God’s work in us to strengthen our faith.

In the days to come, may you order your life together in reading and studying scripture, in prayer and fasting, in caring for our bodies as well as engaging in Christian conferencing.

But the means of grace don’t stop with us, the means of grace also includes doing good works, visiting the sick, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry, and giving generously to the needs of others as well as seeking justice, ending oppression and discrimination and addressing the needs of the poor

We are in uncharted waters. Your ministry is needed in vital, life-saving ways. May the work of your church be undergirded by the ways you will engage in the means of grace so that together, you and your church will grow more spiritual and share the love of God in ways that will help us emerge from this pandemic a more faithful church and a healthier and stronger community.

May God bless you all.

Mountain Movers

Tomorrow is the story of the transfiguration (Matthew 17), when Peter, James and John went to the mountain top with Jesus and he was so completely filled with God’s light and love that he literally shone. And God’s voice was heard, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

I find what follows in the scripture to be fascinating. A man begs Jesus to heal his son. He had brought him first to the disciples, but they weren’t able to provide a healing. When we think of Jesus getting angry, we usually think of the time in the temple, when he overturned the money changers. But Jesus is pretty livid here, and this time the focus of his anger isn’t those outside his social circle. This time, his anger is directed at his own disciples. In the Message version, Jesus responds saying, “What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this?”

It is only after Jesus heals the boy and he and the disciples move on to be by themselves that the disciples finally get up the nerve to ask, “Why couldn’t we heal the boy?”

Imagine yourself a disciple. Imagine having walked all through the Judean hills and valleys learning from Jesus, wanting to know still more because clearly you’ve missed something. How would you feel if Jesus answered your question by saying, “Because you’re not yet taking God seriously. The simple truth is that if you had a mere kernel of faith, a mustard seed, you would tell this mountain, “MOVE!” and it would move. There is nothing you wouldn’t be able to tackle.”

We are the disciples of Jesus. We are the ones Jesus is speaking to. We are the ones God is wanting to move mountains.

Are you ready to move mountains?

This is the question that is held before you and me as followers of Jesus every single day. When we rise in the morning, God has an expectation of us. There are needs within our churches and communities that only you can respond to. Do you have the right stuff? It doesn’t take much, only the faith the size of a mustard seed.

I have been a church goer and a pastor long enough to know that oftentimes we don’t focus on what’s really important to God. We care more about the number of people in the pews than the state of their souls. We treat our churches like museums rather than triage centers, where wounded people can come for healing and not worry that they are messing up the feng shui of the place. We worry more about filling in all the bodies needed for the nominations report than what the people who inhabit those bodies are called to do in the world and whether or not we are equipping them to go do it.

We don’t make the main thing the main thing. We allow ourselves to get distracted by the small stuff. But God doesn’t call us to the small stuff. God calls us to the things that are crushing, bruising, damaging God’s beloved children. God is calling us to make a difference in the world. To move mountains, not molehills.

You and I know what is going on in our world. We see the needs around us. We know that there are people in our pews whose homes resemble battle fields. We know there are people in our churches and communities that struggle with demon addictions. We know that poverty is taking a terrible toll on those around us. We know that schools don’t need armed teachers, they need teachers that are armed with enough money so that they don’t have to buy the basic supplies for their classroom instruction.

But do we possess faith, yes, even the smallest amount of faith, to respond to the needs, hurts and hungers of our world. Do we believe we can move mountains?

St. Teresa of Avila reminds us:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people.

We are called to move mountains. God expects nothing less of us. May our faith strengthen us, inspire us, and move us, so that we can usher in the Beloved Community God desires of us.

Jeremiah’s Calling...And Yours

I was in conversation with someone earlier this week who was telling me about their new pastor. “We got another older pastor. We’ve been saying for years we want someone younger but we are never given one.”

It’s something I hear often as a bishop. I asked my friend, “When was the last time your church sent someone into ordained ministry?”

There was a long pause. 

“Um...I really don’t know.”

There’s a crisis of call in many of our churches. Not only are we not helping people hear their call into ordained ministry, we aren’t helping everyone hear their unique calling, given by God, to be lived out each and every day. 

Have you claimed your call? 

Jeremiah heard God’s call to be a prophet and balked: “I’m just a boy—I wouldn’t know what to do or say.”

God doesn’t take “no” for an answer, and equipped Jeremiah for his vocation: Go where I send you. Speak what I need you to say. And don’t be afraid. 

Are you living out your call? Or have you, like Jeremiah, made excuses? Don’t you know God created you for a unique purpose and if you reject that purpose, if you fail to claim your call, the world is left hungry for the love of God you could have made visible. 

It’s time to stop making excuses and claim your calling. And it’s time for all our churches to help everyone listen for and respond to their call. 

Don’t be afraid! God will give you what you need!

Here Am I, Send Me!

I love Isaiah 6: 1-8. It is the call of the prophet of Isaiah, “Whom shall we send and who will go for us?” Isaiah doubts his worthiness, even though he has seen the Lord, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Yet, he experiences a cleansing of the guilt of sin he has been carrying, and is able to respond, “Here am I, send me.”

God calls the most unlikely people to carry God’s message of saving love into the world. Isaiah felt unworthy, Moses was a murderer, Sarah laughed at what God had promised. Jesus picks unlikely ones as well: fishermen, tax collectors, a woman at the well…not the people you would automatically assume would be chosen for such sacred tasks.

God continues to ask, “Whom shall we send, and who will go for us?” Our task is to help one another hear and respond to God’s call. God has a particular task for each one of us: some are called to teach Sunday School and train up a new generation in the ways of Jesus. Others are called to create mission pathways so people can bring Good News in tangible ways to communities in crisis. Some are called to administrative work, to help the church use its resources to further its ministry. What has God called you to do? How have you responded, “Here am I, send me!”

I was blessed as a child to have someone recognize something in me that I wasn’t able to see in myself. One day when I was 11 years old, Ken White asked me if I ever thought about becoming a minister. His question rocked my world and forever changed my walk with Jesus. Through that simple question, God’s call for my life was given the space to grow.

Each church should be nurturing future leaders. How is yours doing it? Do you see the fruits of the Spirit in a young person’s life, just waiting to be encouraged to develop? Have you offered a spiritual nudge and asked, “Is God calling you to ordained ministry?” Are you staying alert and looking at those who might seem like unlikely candidates for such work? The teen who is always hanging out in the background of church activities, who seems to have no where else to go? The addict who has found sobriety whose joy at a new lease on life is contagious? The single mom with several children of her own yet still has the emotional bandwidth to be a mom to all the kids in the neighborhood?

When was the last time your church sent someone into ministry? If you are not nurturing the next generation of ministers, how will your church have the spiritual leadership to continue to be a living witness of God’s generous grace in the future?

May you and your congregation allow God to speak through you, “Whom shall we send, and who will go for us?” as you encourage deeper discipleship in one another, and may someone—may many people--respond, “Here I am, send me.”

To Be a Peculiar People

Two years ago today, I started my ministry here in the Mountain Sky Conference of The United Methodist Church as your bishop. Looking over the past two years, my heart is filled with thanksgiving to God for the life we have shared together. I have been deeply moved as I have traveled throughout our conference, listening to so many of you tell me about what excites you about the ministries of your local church, the concerns you have for your community, the hopes you have for those who will come after you. I have delighted in the ways the Spirit has moved in our midst, bringing new fruit from the labors of so many, as we created a new annual conference together. I have been humbled by the secrets you have whispered to me, seeking relief and healing from the wounds you have carried. I have been energized by the bold faith of our young people and encouraged by the wisdom of our elders. I have been grateful for the ways we have been willing to engage in hard conversations together, allowing grace and love to guide us even in the midst of deep disagreements.

Reflecting on all of this, I can only utter the prayer of Dag Hammarskjöld: “For all that has been, thanks. For all that shall be, yes!”

As we enter this new year together, may we continue to find ways to deepen our love of God and neighbor. We are living in an era where love is in exceedingly short supply. More and more, differences are seen as threatening rather than something to delight in as a gift from God. Bullying and belittling have threatened civil discourse. Violence is seen as preferable to compromise. As followers of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, what are we called to do? Who are we called to be?

This will not be an easy year for United Methodists, as General Conference delegates determine who we will be for coming generations. Can we be united in mission, to extend the love of God to all in such generous ways that others are inspired to follow Christ? Or will we allow our differences to divide?

May we in the Mountain Sky Conference sink deeply into the ways of Jesus to offer the world an alternative vision of community. I Peter 2 calls Christians a “peculiar people” because the teachings of Jesus are in stark contrast to the world.

“Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. You’ve had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God.” (I Peter 2: 1-3)

May we lean into love, through which we come to know God more completely. Love never rejects but always seeks to connect. It doesn’t divide but always draws the circle wider. Love never belittles but honors others as made in the image of God.

In this way, may we allow the Spirit to lead us in ways we can’t even imagine, as we love God, each other, and those we haven’t met yet, more deeply and completely.

For Everything There Is A Season

The last Sunday in June is a bittersweet one in United Methodism. It is the last Sunday of the appointment year. For some churches and clergy, there is a sigh of relief that pastor and parishioners were reunited for another year. For others, there is consternation that there is no change. For still others, it is a time to say goodbye and put closure on the life and ministry that was shared.

This reflects the cycle of life. Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Take time to reflect on the ministry you shared together in the past year. Remember when your breath was taken away by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Tell of how you were surprised by the power of God to transform your life, the life of other, and even entire communities. Celebrate the new life that has emerged from your shared ministries.

Don’t be afraid to admit the mistakes and missteps that were made. Confession really is good for the soul. Let go of the disappointments and unmet expectations and offer one another the fullness of grace that is extended through forgiveness.

In the tenderness of the day, remind one another of how each one is made in the image of God, beloved and equipped by God for the task of ministry in the world. Ministry will go on as you all claim this power. Perhaps you can’t even get a hint of it yet, in all the emotions of this time. But trust in the knowledge that God is not done with us yet!