Even Amid the Devestation; Christ is Risen!

The Second Week of Eastertide will long be remembered by us as the time of terribly deadly storms that ravaged Alabama. We have lost over a dozen of our churches, a number of parsonages, the homes of many of our people, and worst of all, the lives of many sisters and brothers. We are heartbroken.

In times like these God gives us the opportunity to rediscover the redemptive work of God in Jesus Christ. By God's grace, we believe we shall look back on the next few weeks as a time when -- even admid our tragedy -- we experienced the presence and power of the Risen Christ. Our loss is huge, but we may find that the gifts of God are greater even than our loss. Still, Light shines.

Over the past harrowing forty-eight hours, I've been proud of our churches and our pastors as they move into prayer and into action -- Matt Lacey's teams have shown the wisdom of hours of training and preparation for such a time as this. The North Alabama Conference has had all too much exposure to natural disaster. We have developed one of the most extensive and well prepared network of staging areas, disaster response teams, equipment facilities and trained people who are able to respond in force. Through UMCOR and our connectional giving, we have not waited until disaster struck. We are connected, organized, and in action in Christ's name. Over the last forty-eight hours, the Cabinet and I have been engaged with our churches and pastors who were hit. Methodists from all over the country have been sending messages of concern and will receive funds to help us. I've heard from pastors in North Carolina, Maryland., Indiana, and Washington who will be receiving offerings for us on Sunday. Even in the storm, our connection is testifying to our faith in God's ability to redeem even this. We are not alone!

We shall build back our devestated churches. We shall stick with our ravaged communities. We shall offer funds and hands-on-work for those in need. We gave over half a milliion dollars to help with Katrina relief and days and days of work. We shall do even more now that disaster has come our way.

And we shall claim all Wesleyan good work as visible proof.that, even in the storm, even amid the loss, "Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!"

I'll be in our hard hit Southwest District this weekend, and will preach at our Forrest Lake Church (even without electricity and badly damaged, Forrest Lake has taken in those who need shelter). We shall pray, shall receive a special offering for the victims, and we shall testify to our faith in a God who keeps coming back to bless us, to raise us up, and to be with us.

Will Willimon

Easter: God Comes To Us

The Resurrection is not only an event in the past; it has present implications. Easter is a sign of what God is up to in the world. The same resurrected Jesus who came back to his defeated disciples continues to come to us. This meditation is selected from my book, “Why Jesus?”(Abingdon, 2010). Happy Easter.

On Easter evening, when the disciples gathered behind the locked doors and the risen Christ came and stood among them, two of the twelve were absent. Thomas was somewhere else. Judas wasn’t there either and we know why: he was mourning his own betrayal of Jesus into the hands of the authorities. Judas believed in the power of the authorities, or the power of money, or the power of revolution or something else he deemed more loveable than Jesus. (In my experience, this is the way it is with some disbelief. It’s not so much that we don’t believe; it’s that we deeply believe that something or someone else is much more of a “god” than Jesus.)

Thomas also disbelieved. But his disbelief had a more willful tint than Judas’ disbelief. Thomas told the other disciples, when he heard that Christ had appeared to them, “If I can’t touch the holes in his hands and jab my fist through the wound in his side, I will not believe that the apparition that you saw was really Jesus.”

The next thing you know the risen Christ reappears, telling Thomas, “Go ahead. Jab your hand in my side. Stop your unbelief and believe.”

How do we know that the one who is raised from the dead is Jesus? Jesus, God crucified, has nail prints in his hands, a gaping wound in his side.

John doesn’t say that Thomas took Jesus up on his offer. I like to think that he didn’t. Just having Jesus compassionately reach out to his disbelief, just hearing Jesus say, “You need proof? I’ll give you proof,” was all Thomas needed to exclaim, “My Lord! My God!”

The Resurrection is a sign that Jesus is determined to give back the whole world to God, including you. He will stoop at nothing, even a cross, even allowing you to make a crude poke in his side, to get to you. So, if you’re having trouble believing in Jesus as the Son of God, don’t worry. It will come. He isn’t done with you or with the world yet. The King is determined to have sway over your life. The divine Lover will stoop to anything to get what he wants. Keep looking over your shoulder. He wants you.

William H. Willimon

P.S. Our Conference Lay Ministry Team has coordinated daily devotionals written by lay people from across the Conference to help us prepare for Annual Conference 2011. The devotions are on our Conference website as part of the Lay Ministry Blog. They will run from today, April 25, thru June 8. Go to www.northalabamaumc.org/ac11devo to see the devotionals each day.

God's Peculiar Love

Over the next few weeks, I’m reflecting upon Jesus as God’s salvation. These meditations are selected from my book, “Why Jesus?” (Abingdon, 2010). Lent is the season of the cross. The cross rearranges our definitions of God – God defined not as almighty power but rather as suffering love.

The night before his death on a cross, Jesus cries out in Gethsemane, in prayer, “I don’t want to die,” he, who was one with the Father, shows the peculiar nature of God’s love: God’s love is not sentimental or sweet; it is costly love that is free to love completely, even unto death. Jesus in Gethsemane also embodies God’s freedom: God is free to walk away from the horrors of humanity or to love even down to the dregs of suffering and death. In love, God chooses to love all the way to the end.

Still, from what we know of Jesus, it’s hard to imagine him doing anything less than drinking the cup of suffering down to the bottom and being obedient to the Father for, in so doing Jesus is being true to his deepest self. The God whom Jesus reveals in Gethsemane is not being less-than-godly in this anguish in the Garden but is rather disclosing true divinity – suffering, sacrificial love, all the way to the end. And the God who loves humanity enough to die with and for humanity reveals what true humanity really is – obedient, trusting love. Here is a God who is truly known only in Gethsemane as the cross looms before him. So when, after the Garden, the next day as Jesus breathes his last and the soldier says, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!”[i] we hear a statement that can only be made at the foot of the cross after a night like that – Jesus is fully human and fully God, God truly human, humanity truly caught up into the divine heart, Mount Calvary become Mount Zion, the veil in the temple ripped in two.

A wonder as great as his resurrection was his death on the cross. The miracles he performed were wonderful but they were temporary fixes, holding death at bay for just awhile. Jesus did more than love the world through an occasional good deed here and there – a random act of kindness to somebody’s mother-in-law, the restoration of sight to one blind man. On the cross he accomplished something cosmic, decisive, something that went right to the heart of the matter.

By the way. Where were Jesus’ disciples during all this sweat, tears, and anguish in the garden? Once again, true to form, they are sleeping like babes, thereby aggravating Jesus to no end. It isn’t like he asked them to die for him; all he asked was that they watch and stay half awake one hour for him while he prayed.[ii]

Repeatedly Jesus predicted his death but his disciples found it impossible to believe.[iii] Perhaps having seen so much good and so much God in Jesus, it was inconceivable to them that the world would eventually turn on the God who had so graciously, in Jesus, turned to us. Perhaps it was that they just couldn’t conceive of anyone named “God” acting in such a way as to get crucified.

So when soldiers come to arrest Jesus, his lead disciple, Peter, swings into action, takes matters in hand, draws a sword (Jesus had earlier expressly commanded his people not to take extra baggage while walking with him[iv]) and nicks a piece of an ear of the High Priest’s servants. Jesus rebukes Peter telling him to put away the sword, not because Peter is such a lousy swordsman but because this isn’t at all the way God’s reign comes.

“Do you think,” Jesus asks, “that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me twelve legions of angels?”[v]

But that would be the way of Caesar, not Jesus. Rome promised their allies and subject peoples peace, security, good highways and the best legal system in the world. But at a price: high taxes, an oppressive bureaucracy, a far flung military, a few worship services to honor the Emperor, and much crucifixion of Jews.

Jesus went to the cross between vacillating but dangerous Pilate and the colluding religious authorities. Rome had an economic and military stranglehold upon the whole known world; Jesus commanded his followers never to take up the sword. Jesus’ sovereignty was different from Rome,[vi] as is dramatized by the Romans mockery of Jesus just before crucifying him, putting a royal robe upon him and shouting, “Hail king!”[vii] Rome solidified power with the whip, nails, and a cross; Jesus accomplished what he wanted to do through nonviolent, suffering love.

To the mob crying, “Crucify him!” Pilate said, “Behold the man,” not knowing his double entendre. Pilate is no real man in his dithering appeasement of the crowd. This bedraggled, whipped rabbi before whom Pilate smirks is the real man, the model for true humanity. Yet Pilate is not alone in infamy. Pilate tells the chief priests that he is inclined to release Jesus, for this little rabbi is no real threat to the Empire.

And the reply of the religious authorities? “If you let Jesus go, you are not really a true friend of Caesar,”[viii] they say, implying that they are Caesar’s friends. They seal their apostasy with the astounding claim, “We have no king but Caesar.” They thus forsake the teaching of the whole Old Testament. How many times did the God of Israel need to say, “I am the one, the only Lord. All the world is mine. I am King”? The cross is a sad reminder to religious leaders of any age about the cost of subservience to the government and the predominate order, the substitution of Jesus’ way for Caesar’s.

In Gethsemane and on Calvary’s hill, Jesus redefined the sovereignty of God. The one we expected to be the royal Victor became the tortured Victim. The one who looked like the failed Victim became the divine victory. As Paul said, Christ “humbled himself…. Therefore God has highly exalted him….that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”[ix] The King who reigns from a cross redefines power for the Caesars of all time, be they democratically elected or not. Early Christian preachers, like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John told the story of Jesus in such a way that subverts the stories of Augustus, Louis XIV, Queen Victoria, and all the imitators of Caesar closer to home. Divine sovereignty redefined on a cross.

William H. Willimon

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[i] Son of God! Mark 15:39.
[ii] while he prayed. Mark 14:32 ff.
[iii] impossible to believe. Matthew 20:18.
[iv] walking with him Luke 10:1 ff.
[v] legions of angels?” Matthew 26:53-54.
[vi] different from Rome. John 18:13-40.
[vii] “Hail king!” John 19.
[viii] friend of Caesar,” John 19:12.
[ix] Christ is Lord.” Philippians 2.

P.S. Our North Alabama Annual Conference will meet June 2-4, 2011, at Asbury UMC in Madison. We are asking all our churches and individuals to be in prayer for this time of Christian Conferencing. We have a prayer sign up on our Conference website – www.northalabamaumc.org/ac11prayer.

Also, beginning the last week of this month, our Lay Ministry Team will provide daily devotionals leading up to Annual Conference. These will be posted on our Conference website beginning April 25.

God On A Cross

Over the next few weeks, I’m reflecting upon Jesus as God’s salvation. These meditations are selected from my book, “Why Jesus?” (Abingdon, 2010). Lent is the season of the cross. The cross rearranges our definitions of God – God defined not as almighty power but rather as suffering love.

On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus gathered with his disciples in the Upper Room, sharing a meal with them. Jesus called the Passover bread his “body,” and urged his disciples to feed on him for the remission of their sins. He passed around the cup of wine, telling them that the wine was now the sacrificial blood poured out like the blood was dashed upon the altar in the temple.[i] Whereas the temple was where Israel celebrated the Old Covenant, the “Old Testament” between God and Israel;

• now this cup, this bread was sign of the New Covenant, the “New Testament” God was ratifying with the whole world.
• now, in Jesus, people didn’t need to perform an ancient ritual act, blood sacrifice or engagement in some certified spiritual practice as doled out by the priestly experts at the temple.
• now the necessary ladder from heaven to earth and back again, the movable Tent of Meeting, the great high altar on Mount Zion was among us as Jesus.
• now the world need not come to the temple. God’s “temple” had, in vagabond lover Jesus Christ, come out to the whole world.
• now the appointed means to enable humanity to get to God and God to get to humanity was provided by God – God’s own Son, Jesus. The work that Jesus did on the cross was redemptive, bringing-us-close-to-God work, which he did for all time, for all people.

All that being said, it’s still a shock to see God on a cross. It’s not at all what we expected. Can the problems between us and God be so deep that they can only be set right by God submitting to such human violence? Once again we see that we cannot affirm “God is love” without risk of grave misunderstanding, anymore than we can say, “Jesus is both God and Human” without nuance of what we mean by human and divine. The cross signifies that deep paradox is built into any accurate picture of Jesus because we don’t expect God to go to such lengths to get to us.

The gospels preach this. For instance, the first thirteen chapters of Mark’s gospel show Jesus the powerful Magician, the all-knowing seer, the divine one who casts out demons and commands the wind and wave, “Be still!” Jesus comes across as a human being but with remarkable divine powers. When Jesus heals a paralytic, the religious leaders ask, “Who is this speaking blasphemy? Who is powerful enough to forgive sin except God alone?”[ii]

In chapter 13 the mood shifts and Jesus becomes the human, anguished one who is tormented by thoughts of his imminent arrest. In Mark 14, dining in darkness at the home of Simon the leper (apparently no healthy person would receive Jesus at this late hour), when an unnamed woman shows up and adoringly pours expensive sweet smelling oil on Jesus, his disciples (feigning concern for the less fortunate) protest, “she should have sold this oil and given the money to the poor.” Jesus tells them to show compassion for the poor anytime they want but tonight, “she has anointed my body for burial.”[iii]

The next night Jesus shares a last meal with his disciples.[iv] During the meal, Jesus tells them that when the going gets rough all of them will scatter. Peter self-righteously protests, “Though these eleven cowards desert you, you can count on me.”[v] Before dawn, when challenged by a little serving girl, Peter curses and three times denies even knowing Jesus.[vi] The night ends with Peter (nicknamed “The Rock,” by Jesus) weeping in the darkness like a baby – the first in a long line of Jesus’ best friends who were grave disappointments to their Master.

Jesus then enters the Garden of Gethsemane, sees the prospect of his looming execution, sweats like great drops of blood, and prays to be delivered.[vii] “Oh God, I don’t want to die!” Is this any way for a God to act? It’s as if, in these later chapters of Mark, Jesus the God-Human One is Jesus the All-too Human One wrestling with God. Remember that our story began in a garden, the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were tested and flunked the exam, disobeying and rebelling against who God created us to be.[viii] Now, in another garden, Jesus is confronted with a fork in the road. Jesus can be obedient to God’s way, at grave risk deliver God’s love letter to humanity or he can act like our primal progenitors and safely go his own way. He can stand up to his adversaries and suffer what they have in store for him, or he can cut and run.

Jesus’ anguish in the garden is a great mystery in which the gospels enable us to peer into the depths of divine love. Of Jesus it can be said, “Truly he is the Son of God,” and yet he is no robot unflinchingly plodding toward his death on a cross. He is truly flesh and blood. He does not play-act in Gethsemane; he wrestles with his destiny, crying in anguished dereliction. He is ready to play his part in the divine drama of redemption and he asks to be delivered from it. He is obedient to his Father’s loving but risky rescue operation for the world and anguished that such painful lengths must be traveled in order to reach the human race. Nobody takes Jesus’ life – in free obedience he gives it. In short, he is in his anguish, as the church believed him to be, truly God and truly human. And in his obedience, in his complete unity with the Father’s loving determination to get back the fallen, murderous human race, he is truly God.

William H. Willimon

[i] altar in the temple. Leviticus 17:11.
[ii] God alone.” Mark 5:21.
[iii] for burial. Mark 14:3-9.
[iv] with his disciples. Mark 14:17-31.
[v] you can count on me. Mark 14:26-31.
[vi] even knowing Jesus. Mark 14:66-72.
[vii] to be delivered from it. Mark 14:32-42.
[viii] us to be. Genesis 1:26-2:25.

P.S. Our North Alabama Annual Conference will meet June 2-4, 2011, at Asbury UMC in Madison. We are asking all our churches and individuals to be in prayer for this time of Christian Conferencing. We have a prayer sign up on our Conference website – www.northalabamaumc.org/ac11prayer.

God Healing the Division Between Us and God

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reflecting upon Jesus as the means of our atonement with God. These meditations are selections from my book, “Why Jesus?” (Abingdon, 2010).

When Jesus finally led his disciples into Jerusalem (on the day the church now calls “Palm Sunday”), many of his followers expected him at last to stand up and act like a Messiah, become King, storm the Roman garrison and set up a grand new “House of David” government. To their surprise, he bypassed City Hall and attacked the temple. Why did Jesus not head for the palace, confront Pilate and do something really useful rather than make such a fuss over a place of worship?

Jesus grabbed a whip and kicking over their tables, spilling their precious coins across the floor, drove the money changers from the temple. When Jesus cleaned out the temple,[i] charging the money changers there with turning the Lord’s house into “a den of thieves,” this seems a severe, unwarranted reaction by Jesus. After all, the money changers were there as a public service, following scripture, helping people to buy the requisite animals for the temple’s sacrificial rituals. How did Jesus expect people to worship at the temple? It’s like expecting a modern preacher to give a sermon without a Powerpoint projector. How are we to be with God without an appropriate ritual vehicle to get to God? Why Jesus?

The story of Israel could be read as a record of our repeated attempts to get to God. The story begins in darkness as progenitor Jacob dreams of a ladder let down from heaven to earth with heavenly messengers taking God’s mail back and forth.[ii] In the Exodus much of the biblical account of the escape from Egyptian slavery is consumed with minute details about a portable tent (“the Tent of Meeting”) that Israel utilized in the desert in order to meet and to be met by God.[iii] Those stories find their culmination in the grand temple in Jerusalem, the center of the world, Mount Zion where God condescends to God’s people and heaven and earth traffic with one another. The temple took almost fifty years to build. Its complex of buildings occupied over thirty acres and was a wonder of the ancient world. Jews everywhere, when they prayed, turned toward the temple, place of divine-human meeting. When pilgrims trudged up toward Jerusalem for festivals, they weren’t just going up to the capital city; they were going to heaven.

Isaiah foretold a day when, not just Jews, but all the nations would stream into the temple singing, “Let’s go up to Jerusalem, to the temple where we can learn the ways of God and walk with God.”[iv] Everybody would gather to worship the true God at the temple, a “house of prayer for all people.” [v]

Jesus seems strangely, severely critical of the temple. When his disciples expressed awe at the temple’s grandeur, Jesus quipped that he could tear the whole thing down and rebuild it in three days (exactly the number of days Jesus’ body was in the tomb.)[vi] In driving the money changers from the temple, in disrupting the temple system, in healing people outside of the temple’s rituals was Jesus thumbing his nose at the temple hierarchy (notorious collaborators with the Romans)?

John’s gospel says that Jesus was setting himself up as the new “temple,” the new means of mediation between God and humanity. Jesus argued with a Samaritan woman at the well.[vii] When she said, “You Jews say we’ve got to go to Jerusalem to worship rightly and we Samaritans say it’s at Mount Gerizim,” Jesus responded that one day soon, “true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” The woman confessed confusion about what all that “spirit and truth” meant and the right location for worship, saying, “Oh well, when Messiah gets here, he’ll explain it all to us.”

Jesus said, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Somehow discussions of where best to worship are being shifted from Mount Zion to Jesus. About three decades after this exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman the majestic temple lay in ruins. The patience of Emperor Titus ran out with these troublesome Jews. Rome had attempted to pacify the Jews by allowing them to have their temple; now the Romans decided that there was no way to keep Jews quiet without reducing their temple to ashes. Christians came to believe that the temple, the meeting place between God and humanity, was now a man from Nazareth.

Some people think of the cross of Christ as our way to get to be with God in heaven when we die. Surprisingly, the gospels portray the cross first as God’s way to get heaven to earth now. When Jesus breathed his last and died on the cross, Matthew says that the curtain in the temple – the veil that separated heaven from earth at the high altar, sinful people from righteous God -- was mysteriously ripped in two.[viii] Who slashed the curtain? It was as if in one last, dramatic, wrenching act of self-sacrifice, God ripped the veil of separation between earth and heaven. Now Israel need not gather on the Day of Atonement (the day of “at-one-ment” with God), stand before the temple, give over their sins to the priest who pulled back the curtain, entered the temple’s holiest place, and offered their sins to God. The curtain was ripped asunder. Now we could get to God because God had gotten to us. On the cross, Jesus had somehow done something decisive about the distance between us and God.

Will Willimon

[i] out the temple. Mark 11.
[ii] back and forth. Genesis 28:12.
[iii] met by God. Exodus 27:21; 33:7.
[iv] walk with God.” Isaiah 2:2-4.
[v] all people.” Matthew 21:13.
[vi] in the tomb.) Luke 18:33.
[vii] at the well. John 4.
[viii] ripped in two. Luke 23:35.

People of the Cross

During these weeks of Lent, I’m reflecting upon Jesus as God’s salvation. These meditations are selected from my book, “Why Jesus?” (Abingdon, 2010). Lent is the Christian season of the cross in which we discover a very different definition of God than the one we expected, a God who reaches out to us in suffering, self-sacrificial love.

On the way to Jerusalem (and in a sense, Jesus was always on his way there, i.e. on the way to his death) James and John ask, “Rabbi, do for us whatever we ask.”[i]

“Ask,” said Jesus.

“Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left when you come into your glory.” When you are crowned King, made Messiah, as we know you will surely be, let us sit on your Cabinet, sharing in your glory.

Their request must have discouraged Jesus. Here were those who had witnessed his servant leadership, who had shared in his trials, still thinking about power and glory.

“You don’t know what you are asking,” replied Jesus, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” He was of course talking about his imminent death.

“We can!” they answered. The folly of Jesus’ dearest friends is almost boundless.

Then Jesus responds, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant.”
Surely he spoke with irony. In the end, when he was lifted up high on a cross his disciples were nowhere in sight. On his right and his left were two common criminals.

Hearing about the attempt at one-ups-manship by James and John, the other disciples are indignant. Jesus gives them a lesson in leadership, Jesus style, telling them that they were behaving no better than a bunch of pagans, which must have deeply stung these Jews.

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant; whoever wants to be first must be slave of all,” he told them. “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus died on a cross, not to appease the anger and blood lust of God the Father (as the church has sometimes implied) but rather because of the anger and blood lust that the Father’s love received from a humanity who wanted nothing so much as to be gods unto ourselves. The cross which the world erected to silence another uppity Jew became, in the hands of God, the means whereby God got to us.

Everything about Jesus is cruciform. The cross is not just an unfortunate event on a Friday afternoon at the garbage dump outside Jerusalem; it’s the way the world welcomed lover Jesus from day one. Herod tried to kill him when he was yet a wee one in swaddling.[ii] From his very first sermon at Nazareth the world was attempting to summon up the courage to render its final verdict upon Jesus’ loving reach, “Crucify him!”

Gethsemane and Calvary bring to a head just about anything I’ve told you thus far about Jesus. It was not just that Jesus was born in a stable, had compassion on many hurting people, told some unforgettable stories, and taught noble ideals. Rather the significant thing is that Jesus willingly accepted the destiny toward which his actions drove him, willingly enduring the world’s response to its salvation. Arrested as enemy of Caesar, tortured to death as a criminal, Jesus was more than just one more victim of government injustice. He is not just an example that sometimes good can come from bad. Rather, as Paul puts it, on the cross Jesus was Victor: Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them on the cross.”[iii] And he did it for Love: the cross is not what God demands of Jesus for our sin but rather what Jesus got for bringing the love of God so close to sinners like us. This is all validated by God’s raising this crucified victim from the dead, not dramatically rescuing Jesus’ failed messianic project, nor certifying that Jesus had at last paid the divine price for our sin, but rather showing forth to the world who God really is and how God gets what God wants.

What’s amazing is that the providence of God took this cross, this horrible sign of Roman cruelty and the world’s rejection and wove even that into God’s good purposes for humanity. Very early on, the church preached, “Jesus died for our sins.”[iv] That which the world saw as sign of Jesus’ miserable failure, of the government’s need to kick butt in order to keep law and order, of the fickleness of the crowd, or the sinister betrayal of his followers, Jesus’ people came to see as a sign of God finally doing something about the problem of us. “At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly,” said Paul.[v] “Jesus Christ, you crucified, but God raised from the dead,” preached Peter.[vi] Paul says that when he preached among the Corinthians, “I preached nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”[vii] God’s love is infinitely persuasive, patient, and willing to suffer in order to love us. God acts just like Jesus.

And so must we. Jesus promised rewards, but not always the rewards we wanted. When, after the rich man turned away from discipleship and Peter exclaimed, “We’ve left everything and followed you!” Jesus replied that he would receive everything back ten times more – houses, family, friends -- and suffering too. Suffering too? That’s a “reward”?[viii]

As Jesus trudged up Calvary, exhausted from his brutal torture, a man in the crowd of onlookers, Simon of Cyrene, was enlisted to carry Jesus’ cross.[ix] Simon is beloved by many of us; in a sense many of us have been picked out of the crowd of curious onlookers and made cross bearers. Every Christian helps Jesus carry the cross for Jesus chooses not to carry the cross by himself. Jesus never promised his people perpetual good health, freedom from all aches and pains, or bypassing of death. Jesus got little of the “good life,” nor did he promise us that we, by following him, would do so. Rather, he assured us that he would never allow anything worse to happen to us than happened to him. He promised that the world would also nail us to some “cross,” if we followed him. As Martin Luther King said it, paraphrasing Jesus, “the cross we bear always precedes the crown we wear.” In our Jesus-induced times of pain, he gives even us innate cowards the courage to take up our cross and follow.

The writings of Paul show that from a very early date (probably as early as the first blow that was struck against the head of Jesus by the soldiers) the followers of Jesus began to make sense out of the senseless death of Jesus. There was complete agreement that, on the cross, God was taking the horrible act that we perpetrated and utilizing that to do something about the problems between us and God. Paul -- who put some strange limits on women speaking in church, or same-sex relations, or marriage -- had an unlimited, extravagant, sweeping view of Christ’s cruciform rescue operation for weak, ungodly, sinners:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us…we have been justified by his blood,…saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.[x]

Weak, sinful, ungodly people are the recipients of the determined love of God that is made manifest on the cross, work that we could not do for ourselves.

Will Willimon

[i] we ask. Mark 10:35-45.
[ii] in swaddling. Matthew 2.
[iii] on the cross.” Colossians 2:15.
[iv] our sins. 1 Corinthians 15:3.
[v] the ungodly. Romans 5:6.
[vi] preached Peter. Acts 2:36 ff.
[vii] him crucified. 1 Corinthians 1:23.
[viii] insert
[ix] cross of Jesus. Luke 23:26-32.
[x] saved by his life. Romans 5:6-10.

There Once Was a World by Peter L. Steinke

Some years ago I co-authored a book, Resident Aliens, which announced the demise of the Christendom era. Since then, many have noted that the church today finds itself in a radically different situation than the past decades in America. What are the implications of this? My friend Peter Steinke wrote a meditation on our life today as journey and exile. As we enter the season of Lent, I thought you might find Peter’s thoughts helpful: -Will Willimon

There once was a world where the church functioned according to what some have called the "attractional" model…. People come to a place, consume the spiritual goods, and serve as patrons to "meet the budget." But a shift has happened. North American culture has taken new turns.

Christendom refers to a period of time when the Christian faith profoundly informed the culture. And, in turn, the culture carried the traditions, symbols, and rituals of the Christian faith. Another often-used term—post-Christian era—… In a "post-Christian" world, the church cannot expect favorable treatment or higher visibility.

One could say that a gathering storm—a confluence of factors—has assailed the church and its dominant perch on the societal ladder. None of this has to do with the church's internal functioning. The sea change is external or contextual. There once was a world that was eager to be hospitable to Christian churches and supported "blue laws," soccerless Sundays, eating fish rather than meat on Friday, public prayer in schools and at nodal events, deferring to clergy by way of discounts, weekly religion sections in urban newspapers, and greeting others with "Merry Christmas." Now, suddenly, with steep changes happening in our society, congregations have to ask themselves whether they are responding to a world that no longer exists.

The loss of members, influence, and a sense of mission—the church's misfortune of the moment—resembles the experience of Israel's exile. The lesson of the present dislocation is clear, if still not learned. The era of Christendom is gone. No longer is culture subsidizing and supporting churches.

Today's rapidly changing world is pressing the church to respond to a shift of paradigms—but not for the first time. In previous shifts, the church has both responded slowly and responded imaginatively. …Faced with a strange new world, the church is challenged to be true to its purpose and attuned to its context. I believe the paradigm shift of rapid change constitutes a rich opportunity for the church. God has set the door open to the future. But the new day is as perplexing as it is promising. …these dislocations could be part of God's new creation. It may be God working through the unknown that contributes to the destabilization of the world. God is no stranger to Eden's deportation, Babel's scattering, the exodus, the exile, and crucifixion. God can be surprising, mysterious, taking history into unexpected turns.

The challenge of change for a congregation on a steady downward slope is precisely to redefine and redirect its mission. …Congregations may hanker for a technique that will bring about results they want to achieve; they want to replicate what has been discovered by someone else: "Give me a copy of the wonderful plans." Seeing what those plans have done for others, they want the same result—but without going through the process that got the others to that point. The shortcut of imitation certainly bypasses a lot of pain. How churches hunger for precisely this situation.

Meaningful, lasting outcomes are the result of the journey …Transition time is life's curriculum. Being on the path opens new insight; being on the path, not the steps one takes, is the very condition necessary for learning.

The Bible is replete with stories of transition and exile. …Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness—alone, hungry numb—and the devil tempts him three times. The process of thinking, testing, and exploring contains the lessons… Only by going out, being there, and seeing from a fresh angle will the process lead to learning. Discovering how to respond to shifts and changes is the learning. Self-confidence is a byproduct. But growth is in the struggle, the push, and the journey.

The Wesley Study Bible as a Ministry Resource

Bill Thrasher, our pastor at Sand Springs UMC, is a strong leader in Christian education of his flock. He noted how the Wesley Study Bible, which I had the honor of editing with Joel Green, had become a help to him in his work in Christian formation of the young. He wrote to me recently urging all our churches to use the Wesley Study Bible in their Confirmation Classes and work with their students.

I’ve also done a book that is keyed to the WSB, This We Believe (Abingdon) that is keyed to the WSB. - Will Willimon

Sometimes I wonder, who appreciates Wesleyan theology and doctrine more, those who grew up in the church or those of us who became part of the UMC much later in life? Of course, since I chose to become a United Methodist because of the doctrine, I think those like me are more appreciative. This anecdotal observation comes from watching, listening, conversations, and attending school with other local pastors and elders as well. Wesleyan theology is a great gift.

My journey began when I was twelve years old and my father, an evangelical bi-vocational preacher of another denomination, noticed that I lay upon my bed reading my Bible hours upon hours at a time. He bought me my first Thompson Chain-Reference Bible. In a way, since Thompson was an ordained Methodist elder and pastor, his Bible was the forerunner to the Wesleyan Study Bible. Then my father told me something very out of character for him. He said, “Son, don’t listen to what man says. Don’t even listen to what I say. Pray and study this Bible the way I showed you and the Holy Spirit will teach you the truth”. I applied this to my life. As a result, I preached and taught Wesleyan theology without even knowing it. The truth of the Scripture led me to Wesleyan beliefs and practice of theology.

With this in mind, recently in a quiet time with the Lord, I wondered how we could build stronger Wesleyans. Recalling how the Thompson Bible and God’s Holy Spirit led me into the United Methodist Church, I realized that if we could get our young people to use the Wesley Study Bible beginning at an early age, we would produce generations of stronger Wesleyan adults. The Wesley Study Bible ought to be the Bible of choice to give to all of the young people in our congregations.

It is our custom in our congregation to give a young person a Bible as part of their confirmation training. Why don’t we use the WSB during the confirmation classes and then give the student a WSB upon completing confirmation? How about presenting it to seniors when they graduate from High School? It is very Wesleyan to do, don’t you think?

Blessings to you and yours, and to our church,

William H. Thrasher, Ph.D.
Sand Springs UMC
Gordo, AL 35466

Making Clergy

This month our Board of Ordained Ministry (Rick Owen, chair) moves into high gear in evaluating persons for ministry in our church. I am thrilled with the various improvements that our BOOM has made in the process of prayerfully evaluating, selecting, and authorizing new clergy. Our whole process of calling people to the ordained ministry has been overhauled with careful attention to the task of producing the leaders that our church needs to grow and to give United Methodism a bright future.

She walked off a good job that she dearly loved and, in her early forties, went back to school in an academic field in which she had no previous experience. When she told her husband that she was heading to seminary, he called her crazy and threatened, “This wasn’t part of my contract.” Her teenagers said they would never forgive her for announcing, “I think God wants me to be a United Methodist minister.”

She borrowed fifty thousand dollars to help pay for the education that the church requires, leapt a dozen hurdles including psychological testing and a financial investigation, and endured grueling interviews and papers on United Methodist doctrine, history, and polity for the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry. Not content with her M.Div. degree and her past preparation, the Discipline requires two more years of probation while the Board evaluated her fitness for ministry.

And all of that has brought her tonight, to where she kneels before me in the Service of Ordination. I hold my crosier in one hand and give her a Bible with the other, ominously telling her, “take authority to preach the word.” I ask her to promise loyalty to the United Methodist Church, to defend our doctrine and, more specifically, submissively to go wherever a bishop like me sends a pastor like her. And then I lay hands on her head praying for the gift of the Holy Spirit to enable her to do what she has so brashly promised.

Of all Episcopal duties, the making of new clergy is the most sacred -- and the most daunting. Ordination is counter to just about everything that Americans believe. A vow to subordinate personal ambition, marriage, family, a comfortable income, and even the choice of where to sleep at night to the mission of the Bride of Christ is mind boggling recklessness. The odds are something like one in four that she will make it no more than ten years as a pastor before she burns out, blacks out, or backs out.

And I stand before her, lay hands upon her head, order her to tell people the truth that most of them are assiduously avoiding, pray for the Holy Spirit to zap her, and proclaim that her ministry is God’s idea before it was hers. I am unworthy to be here, as I have been unworthy to nearly everywhere Jesus has put me.

Pray, church, that the Lord will continue to send us laborers for a bountiful harvest!

Will Willimon

Ashes to Action: Give, Pray, Do

R.G. Lyons is leading some amazing work at our “Church Without Walls.” R.G. is one of the bright new leaders in our mission. In this message R.G. describes an initiative for Lent. - Will Willimon

In a few weeks, many churches across our conference will be observing Ash Wednesday as we come together in sorrow for our sins, our need to repent, and our complete dependence on God’s grace. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that our acts of repentance, sacrifice, and fasting are most authentic when we make common cause with the poor and outcast, when we use our acts of sacrifice to uplift those most in need.

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?” – Isaiah 58: 6-7

This year, Mission 2 Gather is offering churches the opportunity to live out Isaiah’s admonition with our Ashes to Action campaign. For two weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, we share the stories of people whose lives have been changed through our mission congregations and advanced specials: Kids who have been neglected and abused but have found a place of safety and support, stories of lonely shut-ins who now have a community, and family members of prisoners who have a caring and loving support group. We are inviting our churches to become a part of their lives (and the lives of people like them) by giving, praying, and doing. Every day leading up to Ash Wednesday, participants in Ashes to Action will have opportunities to give to organizations in their own communities and throughout the conference that are ministering to the most needy of our society, to pray for a specific ministry, and to volunteer with our mission agencies to enter into relationship with people who are hurting. Then on Ash Wednesday, we are asking all churches to take up an offering to support the work of the eight Mission 2 Gather organizations.

This offering is very important because giving to Mission 2 Gather organization is essential to serving the people we see on a daily basis. But Ashes to Action is about more. It is about inviting the people in our churches to remember that repentance is not just between them and God; repentance is about entering into the lives of those who have been most sinned against – the poor, the outcast, the unclean.

R.G. Lyons

To join the Ashes to Action campaign, sign up at www.mission2gather.com. The calendar and devotional booklet can be downloaded from this website. Also, an informational video that can be used during announcements is available on the website and all churches are invited to use it in any way they think appropriate. For more information or questions, contact Deb Welsh at welshdebl@aol.com or R.G. Lyons at rglyons@gmail.com.

Transitioning New Pastors

United Methodism practices as “sent ministry.” Our pastors are sent (rather than called) to where they are most needed. We now ask every pastor and receiving congregation to submit a “First Ninety Days” plan. This year each full-time pastor who moved received a letter from me and the DS that stated specific goals and expectations in the first year. District Superintendent, Mike Stonbraker has taken the process another step further. I asked him to describe his creation of the Transitional Team.

The Cabinet and I are attempting to change from just “making appointments” to “making appointments work.” - Will Willimon

Transitioning New Pastors

Transitioning in to a new church appointment can be one of the most stressful events in the life of a pastor, his/her family, as well as the churches. Saying farewell to one family and entering a new church ministry packs a great deal of emotion and anticipation.

From the time appointments are announced until Moving Day, we must live through Annual Conference, sweltering heat, (not to mention one of those pop-up showers on moving day), trying to live out of boxes for the first few days, and our “first Sunday.” Pastors work to unpack their office, begin meeting the new folks, and help the spouse as much as possible. Staff and team meetings are planned, and we begin living out our First 90 Days plan. The new school term begins, football season kicks off, and districts schedule pastor consultations. Before you know it it’s time to start planning the Advent Season.

I have been working on a system with a fresh approach that would begin the transition process much earlier for the incoming pastor and church family. This past year I requested that four churches work with me by creating a Transitional Team to be in place by late March early April. This team would be hand selected by the outgoing pastor and the Chairperson’s of the Pastor Parish Relations and Administrative Board/Council. The team would be composed of a cross-sectional group from the church, to be composed of no more than twelve and no less than six people including the outgoing pastor, the incoming pastor and the two chairpersons.

First the team was asked to schedule a two hour meeting with me. Together we talked about the most pressing issues facing the church’s ministry. Worship, small groups, evangelism, and staff positions seemed to always be placed on the table. We focused on ways to improve these areas while keeping the church moving in a positive, healthy direction. No concern or issue was off limits. Second, we focused on making the transition out and the transition in, smooth and fluid. The team was asked to work closely with the Worship Team on the final Sunday for the outgoing pastor and the first Sunday for the incoming pastor. I asked that both events be prayerful and uplifting through celebration and hope for everyone concerned. I also asked that Moving Day preparations and assistance be made available for both pastors. Finally, scheduled meeting dates were made with the incoming pastor for April and May to assure he/she understood the pressing issues and expectations coming with this transition. But above all I asked that this Transition Team be “cheerleaders” for this time of change and challenge. Learn about the incoming pastor and their family. Spread hope and excitement for the years ahead while praising God for the ministry past. Bring unity and joy for everyone involved. Claim this appointment for what it really is, change and renewal.

I have requested that the Transition Team stay together for one year. They are to meet with me again in August to share updates on how well the team has worked through this transition and how the future year is beginning to unfold. So far the feedback has been very positive. Combining the First 90 Days and the Transitional Team ideas and plans have helped the early days of a new move to be a bit easier and smoother. Pastors are getting their “feet on the ground” much sooner and in the scheme of things understanding their new role and priorities.

This has really helped me as well. I’m learning much more about the individual churches and their desire to grow and make a difference within the community. Will this work? Is there going to be some tweaking? Only time will tell. However, I truly believe that getting more of the church family involved in the positive transition in and transition out is crucial for every church setting.

Mike Stonbraker
Northwest District Superintendent

P.S. I recently noticed that two of our congregations, who have had a recent history of struggling financially and finding it difficult to shoulder their fair share of our connectoinal ministries budget, are now participating at 100%! Both of these congregations, Liberty Crossing and Highlands (Birmingham) received new, young pastors last June (Wade Griffith and Mikah Hudson, respectively) which makes this progress all the more remarkable. If you want to know how we've had the best year in four years in regard to connectional giving, this is the primary reason: committed, dedicated pastors who know that the purpose of the church and its ministry is focused outside of the congregation, partaking of Christ's ministry in the world. Congratulations to all those congregations (more than half of all our churches) who participated at 100% or better! - WW

Monitoring Key Indicators of Congregational Health

Our Conference has pioneered the use of metrics in ministry in our Dashboard. Part of the impetus for this effort has been my observation that in every one of our thriving congregations, there was a noted attentiveness to fruitfulness and accountability based upon measurement of ministry. The converse is true in declining congregations. One of our slogans is “you only count what is important and whatever you count becomes important.” This article, which appeared in Wesley Seminary’s “Leading Ideas,” (Jan. 5, 2011) takes measurement of ministry to the congregation. I thought you would find it both interesting and confirming of our work.

Will Willimon

Too many church leaders are "leading in the dark." Congregational leaders need to develop a "dashboard" to monitor the basic metrics of their church. And monitoring must be done "along the way," not just at the end of the year. If you only looked at your car dashboard at the end of each trip, you would miss the most important signals the indicators are sending.

There are several guidelines when developing a congregational dashboard:

• Keep it simple, up-to-date, and understandable…. it needs to be something that people can keep up with and understand.
• Share the dashboard…. Even if some of the trends are negative, the sooner church leaders know the problems, the better chance they have of reversing them.
• Compare trends over time…. Take the time to look at the larger, multi-year trends.

Monitoring People and Their Engagement

Worship attendance should be prominent on any church's dashboard. Congregations with more than one service should record the attendance for each service separately, as well as the overall total, so that changes in each service can be noted. A key metric of worship attendance is maintaining a 52-week running average of attendance that can be compared to the same average a year ago.

Tracking visitors is another important task related to worship attendance. Be sure you are greeting, engaging, and monitoring new and returning visitors. If there is more than one service, be sure to record visitors for each service. A key metric for gauging the success of your visitor follow up is tracking the percent of first-time guests who return for a second time and how that percentage compares to last year.

Membership is another important element of your dashboard — not just whether the church is growing, declining, or staying the same, but how it is gaining and losing members. Are membership gains coming from professions of faith, transfers from your denomination, or transfers from other denominations? If there are multiple services, how do they compare in terms of generating membership gains? Are membership losses coming from people moving out of the area, changing churches, dying, or drifting away? Once your congregation knows these trends, you can develop appropriate strategies to deal with them. A key metric is how many new members have been received so far this year compared to the same time last year.

Professions of faith and deaths. Comparing the number of professions of faith to deaths is a way of monitoring those entering the faith and those leaving the church through death. A key metric is the ratio of professions of faith to deaths.

Monitoring Giving

Keeping abreast of the key indicators of financial health is vital to sustaining ministry. Avoid the common practice of dividing the budget by 52 weeks as the standard to know whether the church is "ahead" or "behind" on the budget. Rather than coming in 52 equal units, each congregation's giving will follow its own pattern. Therefore, the most effective way to monitor offerings is to calculate the three-year running average of money received through each Sunday of the year and then use those figures to determine how much you "need so far" to be up to date on the budget. A key metric is where your year-to-date income stands in comparison to the portion of income that normally comes in by that same time of year.

Joseph E. Arnold is Research Manager for the Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

What We Have Learned About Planting Churches in North Alabama and Beyond…

Alan Beasley reports that Russellville First paid their entire Fund 524, Birmingham-Southern College, times two! I hope all of our churches follow Russellville’s lead and I hope all will receive an offering for our scholarships at BSC in Lent.
Will Willimon

Do you prefer the good news or bad news first? Most people prefer the bad first so here it is. Nationwide eighty percent of new churches fail. The only worse odds are among new restaurants. It is tough to start anything.

Why should we start new churches when many fail? Glad you asked.

• Because there is no more effective method on the planet to reach new people for Christ.
• Because the only denominations that are growing are those that are planting churches at a rate approaching two percent. (In case you are doing the math that would be sixteen new communities of faith per year for us. We start about a fourth of that number.)
• Because everywhere in the world where the church is expanding (ie. China, India, Africa etc.) it is happening on the foundation of rapidly multiplying communities of faith.
• Because Jesus commands us to go and do the new thing making disciples.
• Because…selfishly we need more vibrant churches to share the load of paying for our mission (OK…I admit that is not the best motivation…but it is motivation.)

Can the failure rate be reversed? Again, glad you asked. Now for the good news…YES! We can reverse the numbers to an eighty percent success rates by focusing on four areas. That is where we have been pouring our energy into over the past eighteen months. In Jim Collins Good to Great lingo, “The flywheel is slowly beginning to turn.”

Effective Assessment of the Plant Pastor

Dr. Charles Ridley identified thirteen characteristics of effective church planters. Potential church plant pastors must be assessed for their effectiveness potential based on these characteristics. Jim Griffith has trained a team of pastors from our conference to do this kind of assessment. We have also developed a partnership with Growing Healthy Churches to do detailed assessment for our potential church planters. We are committed to having no one plant a church in North Alabama without the pastor and church having the highest potential for success.

Proper Training

We have sought outside help, partnering with Griffith Coaching to provide training through his “boot camp.” This boot camp trains in habits and skills that lead to the highest likelihood of ongoing effectiveness. All new church pastors in North Alabama have now had that training as will all future new church pastors.

Ongoing Coaching

Jim Griffith has provided coaching for us for the last two years. In turn he has produced a group of pastors from our conference to begin providing ongoing coaching for our plant pastors. We have adopted the Growing Healthy Churches model of cluster coaching. An effective new church pastor from our conference will lead each of these coaching clusters. Here is the message; you are not alone when you go out to plant in North Alabama. There is a team and ultimately a person who will be a friend, mentor and coach. Church planning in North Alabama is now a team sport!

Parent Churches

Partnership with a strong, vibrant parent church is paramount for effective plants. We are evaluating the possibility of treating any money given from a parent church in a similar fashion as capital money. This gives the parent church a financial incentive and benefit for doing this important kingdom work. We have found that any parenting church gets a big spiritual boost from becoming a church planting church.

Our Greatest Needs

Our greatest needs: Gifted plant pastors. Only a few have the gift mix to do this difficult work. If your fell called to this, I need to hear from you. We promise to give you what you need to succeed. Committed partner churches. Church planting cannot remain the domain of the conference. In fact…I work for the day when it is no longer the work of the conference. Because ultimately; churches plant churches!

Tommy Gray

Director of Congregational Development

North Alabama Conference of the UMC

Our College on the Hilltop

For well over a century, Methodists in Alabama have delighted in our partnership with Birmingham-Southern College. This nationally prominent, academically excellent liberal arts college has been at the forefront of the mission of our church. Generations of North Alabama Methodists have grown in their faith, experienced their first hands on mission work, and deepened their commitment to Christ at our little college on the hill. The college has given millions in scholarship aid to UMC students, giving BSC the highest percentage of UMC students of any of our colleges in the country. Currently, over a hundred of our most effective pastors are alumni of BSC.

In the current financial crisis at BSC our church is once again having the opportunity to demonstrate our faith in and love for the college.

Here’s some of the ways we are helping BSC:

• Scott Selman has delivered a check for $250,000 to BSC, advance payment on our yearly apportionment for scholarship for UMC students.
• All of our churches are asked to receive a special offering for BSC on a Sunday before Easter
• All our churches that give to our special asking for BSC are being asked to advance pay that amount immediately, doubling their gift. This could produce as much as $300,000 for the college.
• All of us clergy trustees are making personal solicitations to all of our clergy alumni of BSC, asking them for special gifts and for contacts with potential donors.
• I have offered to appoint a Chaplain to Birmingham-Southern from our Conference, with the cost being borne by our Conference for one year.

As you can see, our conference is in high gear to help BSC. We’ve stepped up and saved the college before and we can do it again. Andy Wolfe and I have made a short video which will be appearing on our website in the next few days. I am currently serving on the Presidential Search Committee; we have some wonderful prospective candidates. The Faith and Ethics Lectureship that Patsy and I sponsor will take place this spring. A visitation team from our UMC University Senate will be visiting the college this spring. I urge all of our people to give generously to BSC and to send us your best students during this crucial time in the life of our beloved college in the hill.

Will Willimon