Christians as Consumers or Disciples?

Tony Robinson’s book, What’s Theology Got to Do with It? has some good insights on the theological basis of the church, insights that can help our efforts at congregational renewal in the Wesleyan spirit. This week I continue with some of Tony’s insights that I have found helpful.

Lutheran pastor Michael Foss argues that the central challenge facing many congregations today is to shift their dominant paradigm from being cultures of membership to cultures of discipleship. When Foss describes what he means by a culture of membership, he turns to the model of the now-ubiquitous health club. Writes Foss:

I don’t want to push the analogy too far, but for the sake of illustration, let’s think of the membership model of church as similar to the membership model of the modern health club. One becomes a member of a health club by paying dues (in a church, the monthly or weekly offering). Having paid their dues, the members expect the services of the club to be at their disposal. Exercise equipment, weight room, aerobics classes, an indoor track, swimming pool—all there for them, with a trained staff to see that they benefit by them. Members may bring a guest on occasion, but only those who pay their dues have a right to the use of the facilities and the attention of the staff. There is no need to belabor the point. Many who sit in the pews on Sundays have come to think of church membership in ways analogous to how the fitness crowd views membership in a health club.3

Foss argues that this understanding has misplaced the true purpose of the church and distorted its nature. The point is not membership. The church does not have clients, members, or consumers of goods and services. The point is discipleship. The church exists to form and sustain individuals and a people who are followers of Jesus Christ, who are his disciples. Rather than buying into a consumer model of the church, where the customer is king and the church simply meets customers’ needs, the church does more; the church redefines our true needs. The church transforms people according to the life and pattern revealed by God in Jesus Christ. It unites them with others who are committed to this way of life.

Nevertheless, perhaps because we have grown so accustomed to thinking of ourselves as consumers of various goods and services, the membership ethos is hard to break. I have noticed, for example, that in many congregations, when a new group gathers for the first time, the default option for introductions tends to take the form of name and number of years of membership. Length of tenure provides some useful information, and there is much to be said for loyalty and commitment, but something else often seems to be going on during such a ritual. A pecking order is established based on length of membership and an insider-outsider dynamic is suggested.
Indeed, as Foss notes, “The membership model identifies who is in and who is out. No wonder those outside the church consistently say that church people are more judgmental than others.”4

One Sunday when I was free from my pastoral responsibilities, I went to visit this small church. I parked on a nearby side street and walked to the front door, which was closed. I pulled on the door and found it would not open. It was locked. The Sunday service was to begin. I knocked on the door. After a while, an older member of the congregation pushed the door open and invited me in, saying, “We usually don’t open this door; everyone knows to come in through the back door.” Well, this arrangement was very cozy and friendly if you were part of the “everyone” who made up the aging and shrinking cohort of the congregation. If not, you hardly felt welcomed. The message was clear: members only. However, and here’s the crucial point, the congregation’s members were oblivious to the message of the locked front door as well as to the implications of their confidence that “everyone knows to come in through the back door.”

Congregations and clergy seemingly have often misconstrued or misunderstood the closing scene in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus meets the disciples on a mountain and charges them with the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). Somehow it seems we have heard Jesus say, “Go therefore, and make members . . .”

While at times in the past, clergy or other church leaders may have had so much power and authority that they have been indifferent to the needs, desires, and opinions of church members, I am not advocating this stance as the antidote to religious consumerism. Yet perhaps we have swung in the other direction. Yes, congregational leaders must take seriously the experience of congregational members, but the church is not driven simply by people’s needs and wants. It is driven by God’s dream and purposes for creation.

Will Willimon

Church Renewal as Theological Recovery

Tony Robinson has long been a good friend of mine. He published a book awhile back that gives a wonderfully theological take on church renewal. (What’s Theology Got to Do with It? Convictions, Vitality, and the Church, Anthony B. Robinson, Alban Institute, 2006).

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to share some of Tony’s insights on the theological purposes of the church.

It concerns me that the literature on what it takes to create healthy congregations includes a great deal on systems theory, leadership studies, conflict management… but little that is explicitly theological or biblical in nature. By and large, it seems that congregational health is not considered to have much to do with either the core convictions of the Christian faith, theology, or the Bible. In particular, little attention is paid to ecclesiology—the theology of church. In fact, Christian conviction about the church often seems to be missing entirely. This lack, I believe, should be central to our efforts as we work to build healthy congregations for the future.

Theologian Ellen Charry, who teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary, puts the matter directly: “I am increasingly realizing that a number of our ministerial students have no ecclesiology to speak of. For them the church is a voluntary not-for-profit organization run like a local franchise.”1 This is perhaps understandable given the pervasiveness of the consumer economy, including churches that compete in the free-market of spirituality in North America. … If our efforts to be and build congregations do not rest on a core of Christian conviction about what the church is, we tend to go to default options from the culture. The church becomes an entertainment experience with audience ratings, a purveyor of spiritual goods and services, a religious club for people who share the same worldview and experiences, a coalition united around a set of causes or sociopolitical agendas, or simply a gathering place where people ha ve their individual spiritual experiences. The biblical sense of the church as a people or body is lost.

Consider, for example, the “congregation” (in this case, I use the word advisedly) that gathers around the compelling personal presence of one preacher and leader. A number of such charismatic leaders operate in North America. Some are televised. Many are not. Some do wonderful things. Some use and abuse their members or participants. In all cases, though, the attention of the faithful is centered on the dynamic leader. When something happens to that person—a mental breakdown or accusations of sexual harassment or financial malfeasance, for instance—the church usually goes from boom to bust in short order. When the charismatic founder dies, “the ministry,” as it is often referred to, simply dies also. The church is the ministry of that one person. Usually, in such instances, there has been no real church. There has been a charismatic leader and his or her followers. This is but one of the common disto rtions of church today. Lacking core Christian conviction about this thing called church, distortions and pseudo churches flourish, although only for a time. Established and more traditional congregations that lack a sufficient ecclesiology often lose their sense of identity and purpose.

The very word ecclesiology provides clues to its importance in understanding what it truly means to be a church or congregation. It comes from the Greek word ekklesia, which means “a people called” and “the visible assembly.” Church is not the building in which people meet, nor is it the leader. It is people gathered into community in response to God’s call in Jesus Christ. Church happens, as Jesus said, where “two or three are gathered in my name” (Matt. 18:20).

Churches, like other organizations, develop their structures, systems, and rituals for governance and continuity. These can be quite important, for they sustain common life and work, but such structures are in the end provisional. In Paul’s words, they are “clay jars,” not to be confused with the “extraordinary power [that] belongs to God” (2 Cor. 4:7). The church belongs to and owes its existence to God and not to us. God has created and claimed the church for God’s purposes.

The owner is God. Thus, the church is not simply a consumer-driven entity that exists to meet the religious needs of those who come to it. Churches may meet people’s needs, but they must do more than that. At least potentially, they transform people by drawing them into a larger purpose and identity. “Once you were not a people,” writes Peter, “but now you are God’s people” (1 Pet. 2:10).

As the exodus event transformed the Hebrew people into a people called and set apart by God, so the new exodus, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, calls and sets apart a people of God, the church. This people owe its being to God. The people of God are called to be faithful to this creating, redeeming, and sustaining God. And, as Israel itself was blessed to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth, so the people of God—the church—also are called by God to be a blessing to others. God calls the church not to receive special favors or protection but to carry out a unique vocation: service to God and to the world God loves.

Will Willimon

Lessons Learned in Saving Sumatanga

The past three months have been remarkable. Beginning with Director Bob Murray’s emotional appeal, we have saved a beloved ministry that showed every sign of dying. Our churches have raised an unprecedented half a million dollars in gifts in three months. Sumatanga is being reorganized. This beloved camp now has a future. This is a very different result for us. Here’s what I have learned:

• People respond to the truth. A frequent response to Bob’s speech at Conference was, “I had no idea Sumatanga was in so much trouble.” For too long the Trustees tried to struggle alone with Sumatanga’s problems. Transparency and facing hard realities are essential, especially in the church. Our people show that they are eager to respond when they know the truth.

• Preserving the past is no substitute for adaptation to the future. We cannot save the old Sumatanga. Change or die. We can only see the present crisis as an invitation from a living God to serve the present age, to pray for creativity and fresh courage. Rather than be bound by the many management mistakes and poor decisions of the past, Bob Murray spoke to us all in ordering us (in his speech to Annual Conference), “Get over it!”

• People are the key. The arrival of Bob Murray, the innovations produced by Bart Styes, the new team they have assembled, the day that Mike Byrne became chair of the Board made everything possible. The best way to change an organization is to change the leadership. Furthermore, Sumatanga knows that their future is not in getting more money from the churches but in getting more Christians at the camp. As Bob says, Sumatanga is in the hospitality ministry. If Sumatanga keeps focused on servant ministry to people, its future is assured. It’s such a temptation for the church to forget that we serve God and our neighbor; we don’t preserve buildings and institutions.

Thank you for giving Sumatanga a future. Over the years, God has used Sumatanga for some extraordinary acts of vocation, revelation, and renewal. By God’s grace, and your generosity, Sumatanga’s ministry continues.

William H. Willimon

Later this month some of us will gather at Sumatanga to celebrate a wonderful grant that we have obtained this summer from an anonymous Foundation. The good news continues!

Traditional or Contemporary?

It’s always nice to hear that something you said was helpful to another Christian. When that Christian is an Episcopalian, it’s wonderful. While the Rev. Bennett doesn’t say all that could be said on the debate of “contemporary vs. traditional” in Christian worship, it was interesting to see her Anglican perspective on the worship of the church.

G. K. Chesterton once said that being a "traditionalist" means a determination not to automatically dismiss any man's opinion outright just because he happens to be your father.

The buzz these days in the church is whether you attend a church that has "traditional" or "contemporary" worship.

William Willimon, former chaplain at Duke University and newly elected Methodist Bishop of Alabama, (not known to be a curmudgeon) writes this: "I was recently at a church of my own denomination, and I came away frightened, thinking, have I seen the future of the church? The hymns (songs really), anthems, everything had jettisoned the tradition, our language, our metaphors, and our stuff in favor of something called contemporary Christian music. And in my humble opinion, what I heard that day, I just don't think will lift the luggage in the future. As people were singing, praising some vague thing called 'God' who, as far as I could tell, had never done anything in particular, as we were bouncing along praising, I wanted to say, 'you know there are people out there today who just found out that their cancer is not responding to treatment, or who found out their kids won't do right, that their marriage won't survive, or that they ca n’t keep their jobs, and here we are just bouncing along, grinning, praising God. We've got some good stuff for that kind of thing -- where is it?'"

Willimon speaks of running into a preacher who said his church had had contemporary worship for 12 years. "When does the contemporary stop being contemporary? When we go into our second decade of this stuff." The preacher said, "You mark my word, you've heard it here first; you're going to drive by some Baptist church in Atlanta, and they're going to have, out there on the lawn, an amplifier, a set of drums, and a guitar for sale. We will have moved on to some other infatuation."

Willimon reports that he heard an (ELCA) Lutheran pastor say recently, "We are starting to form new churches that have, as part of their mission, the aggressive, loving nurturance of traditional Christian worship."

The fact is, there is something to be said for using words that have been used in Christian worship for 2000 years, something to be said for using prayers that St. Augustine and St. Basil and countless others handed on to us like the precious gems they are. There are 2000 years of Christians who have pressed them to their hearts, stained them with their tears, and carried them to their deaths. The core of our Christian worship is filled with the life blood of Israel as well. The truth is, not many people realize how ancient are the prayers that we pray and the substance that fills them or how ancient is much of our music. This is not to negate that there is some bad theology in traditional hymns nor the need to bring a freshness to worship or a spontaneous voice to prayer.

It IS to say that what traditional worship gives us is something that is not only unique, but something holy, something that has bubbled up from thousands of years of Hebrew-Christian experience.

There are contemporary hymns I love, that bring me fresh insight into God and my relationship with God. But I will never stop breaking out in goose bumps when the choir sings an "Aye Verum Corpus" or a Gregorian chant that suddenly brings the world of my Christian ancestors so close I can almost reach out and touch them; those who felt that God was worthy of the deepest reverence they could offer.

A student asked Willimon, "How come we always sing these old hymns in Duke Chapel? I don't know any of these hymns." Willimon replied, in love, "Well you'll notice that you won't hear any of this kind of music on MTV. This is different kind of music. You had to get up, get dressed, and come down here at an inconvenient hour of the day to hear music like this. Check out the Ten Commandments. It says that thing about 'honor your father and your mother.' This is our attempt to do that in a small way. To be a Christian is to find yourself moving to a different rhythm, a different beat."

So yes, this year in our church you will hear the ancient words again and you will hear the ancient music again and the reason it will touch you is because it has woven its way into your soul as it did those before us. No doubt, there are things that are new, both tunes and words that will ultimately weave their way into our hearts and souls as well. In the meantime, perhaps the test of whether they stay or leave should be do they give you goose bumps! If not that, then at least it should be something that doesn't just make you feel good, but something that pulls back the veil between God, you, and the rest of the community, so that we are able to perceive just Who it is we come before and worship.

-- The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett, St. Andrew's, Episcopal Church, Edwardsville, Illinois

(From The Anglican Digest, Easter A.D. 2005.)

Will Willimon

We Are Fine

A few of you may have recently gotten a "very urgent" and distressful email from my wife Patsy's personal yahoo email account. It appears that Patsy's yahoo email account has been compromised and a "spam" email was sent. Please know that the email is false. Both Patsy and I are fine. We appreciate then many calls of concerns we have received. If others inquire, please help spread the word that the Willimons are well and that the email is false.

Will

Thinking Like Christians about Health Care

Brother Rowe Wren recently wrote to say, “I would like your thoughts on…the present Health Care Bill.” In my travels around the Conference, I have heard much discussion on this pressing issue before our nation.

I personally find the bill being debated and proposed to be fearfully complicated but it is an attempt to solve a complicated and expensive problem. Yet we must not be deterred by the complexity. Above all, we are enjoined to think about this issue, and any others, like Christians. (If you are interested in a thoughtful response to health care by some of the leaders of our church, then log into http://www.umc-gbcs.org/site)

I’m not sure that I have special light to spread on this subject other than my own attempts to think about this issue in a Christian way. Here, for what they are worth, are some of my responses:

1. I hear that most Americans are “happy with their health insurance.” I sure am. Our church provides our elders with the most generous of health care programs. Our Conference heavily subsidizes the health insurance of our retired elders. I am deeply grateful for such support. However, we can’t leave it at that. The most underserved group in our society, when it comes to health care, are poor children. Alabama leads the nation in the number of children who are untouched by medical care, making us also a leader in childhood malnutrition and illness. As the church, Jesus has given us responsibility for the “least of these.” Saying that “I am happy with my health care” is not saying enough. Our concern should not be to protect our entitlements but rather our Jesus-assigned concern is, “Am I happy with my neighbor’s health care?”
   
2. Scripture tells us that we are “not to bear false witness.” It is tough enough to have a national debate over an issue of this complexity without deliberate misinformation being put out on the airways to muddy the conversation and spread unwarranted fear.
   
3. I am so disappointed by our state’s Senators and Representatives, most of whom have contributed nothing to this debate and show a callous disregard for the welfare of their poorest constituents. Let’s urge our elected officials to get in the debate and craft good legislation. We have the most expensive health care system in the world that leaves out millions because, while it is not government run, it is dominated by the insurance companies. I’m glad that our elected representatives have health care; thousands of their constituents don’t.
   
   
   
4. I fully trust the American Medical Association and our doctors to worry about health care and they say we need dramatic reform. Methodists should care about those who can’t get health care as the much as the AMA is concerned. I visit church after church were the congregation is having to pull together and provide funds (thank goodness!) for people in their congregation or community who have suffered catastrophic financial loss due to huge medical bills. Some of our health care professionals volunteer every year to go work in medical missions where Christians are trying to help those who are left out of our health care system. Why? We think about these issues with scripture, with Luke 10 where, in one of Jesus’ favorite stories, the Samaritan says, “take care of the wounded man and when I return I will repay you whatever it costs.”

It would be great for every pastor and church to explore how your congregation can prayerfully, thoughtfully respond to this issue. Surely we can do better than the likes of TV’s Glen Beck and Joe Scarborough. Of course, they have no desire to think about this issue with Jesus, and it shows. But we do! Read Luke 10:25-35! Then, “go and do likewise.”

Rowe, I hope this is helpful.

Will Willimon

Claiborne’s Call to Young Christians

This year’s Annual Conference focused on reaching and empowering a new generation of Christians. At Conference our churches received some great ideas about how to reach out to the "Under Forty" generations; generations that we appear to have (unintentionally) excluded from too many of our congregations.

Some of our younger clergy like Carrie Kramer Vasa, following up on the energy ignited at Conference, have invited one of the most exciting spokespersons for a new generation of Christians – Shane Claiborne. Shane will be with us on August 29. I’ve worked with Shane and have found him a fascinating new mix of evangelical passion and good old Wesleyan concern for “practical Christianity.” Shane keeps focusing on Jesus and the radical, life-changing, world-changing power that flows from ordinary people (like us!) taking Jesus seriously. His books Jesus for President and The Irresistible Revolution are just great.

I could say more about Shane but I will let him speak for himself. Here are some Claiborne quotes that I’ve collected:

"Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived."
(Ouch! As somebody who does lots of talking, it’s good to get this Wesleyan reminder that the truth about Jesus is meant to be lived!)

"I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about."
(Everything we know about attracting young adults to the church says that they must be engaged in face-to-face, hands on mission.)

“I need to be born again,…. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy, too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest."
(Isn’t it curious which scripture we ignore and which we notice?)

""How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says 'Jesus is the answer' next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to says 'Jesus is the answer - but not in the real world.'"
(Shane really stresses taking Jesus seriously.)

"It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays."
(We’ve got to make sure that when we attract people to the church we, in Wesley’s words, “offer them Christ,” not some gospel substitute.)

(Shane says of his own young adult years….)
"But as I pursued that dream of upward mobility preparing for college, things just didn't fit together. As I read Scriptures about how the last will be first, I started wondering why I was working so hard to be first."

"I asked participants who claimed to be 'strong followers of Jesus' whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor."
(I see John Wesley smiling.)

And this…
"Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful."

Get the young adults in your church together and join Shane on Saturday, August 29, 9-4, at Trinity UMC in Huntsville for the Live It! event.

Will Willimon

It’s All About Numbers

Although I’ve never heard this comment from a bishop, a pastor, or a church that was growing, a frequently heard comment in response to our Conference Priorities, from those who have limited their ministry to decline is, “So? It’s all about the numbers.”

Though I don’t see much indication that we have become infatuated with numbers (I was miserable at math in school) in our evaluation and deployment of our pastors, in our evaluation and leadership of our churches (most of our churches are still declining rather than growing) some question our historic Wesleyan focus on numbers of baptisms, attendance, membership, giving, and mission. The church is all about Jesus Christ and his mission. Are we now guilty of moving toward an “It’s all about numbers” posture?

We loaded up our car for our annual family vacation. I had been clear with the family about our time of departure for the beach. Patsy had dutifully loaded the car. I had dutifully been clear about the time of departure. Harriet was there. Where was William?

“That does it. We’re leaving. He knew the time and yet he’s not here,” I said, in love.

“We can’t leave without him,” Patsy asserted. “How can you go on a family vacation without the whole family?”

I responded, “Look, we have one child who obeyed the rules, did as she was told, is punctual and obedient. Isn’t that good enough? Let’s go. Don’t worry about the other fifty-percent of our children.”

“We have two children. We are not going anywhere without everybody,” Patsy commanded, in love.

“One, two, whatever,” I responded. “So? It’s all about numbers! What difference does it really make whether we have all of our children or half of our children? The important thing is the quality of our family interaction on the vacation. This is about love, not numbers!” (adapted from the Annual Conference learning session with Mark DeVries)

You have a problem with our caring about the actual fruit of ministry, the results of our work? Take it up with Jesus (or John Wesley) who commanded us to go into all the world (100%) and make (more) disciples.

There is nothing wrong with most of our churches, nothing that they need to do, other than reach more people. There is no more honest, potentially life-giving measure of ministry than the numbers that are found on our Conference Dashboard.

The Sunday after this year’s Annual Conference Patsy and I had the privilege of worshipping at Northwood UMC in Florence. There, Rev. Peter Hawker is leading this church into the first growth they have had in many years. In just three years Peter has transformed Northwood through an emphasis on passionate worship, mission to the community, and risk with the Holy Spirit.

Upon entering the Northwood sanctuary, the first thing that one notices is that the first two rows of pews are filled with children and youth. Peter commented that only a handful of those children “are ours.” Most of the children (a number of whom the church recruited from “meth families”) are children that Northwood recruited for the church. I thought of all the dying congregations who say “we have no children or youth anymore.” Those children are leading Northwood (100 years old this year) into a vibrant future, all because a church decided to find a way to be obedient to Christ’s mission.

“We weren’t willing to enter the Kingdom of God without all of our children, all of them with us,” said Peter.

And I responded, in love, “So? It’s all about the numbers.”

William H. Willimon

Which North Alabama congregations grew last Sunday? You can find out by visiting our Conference website www.northalabamaumc.org and clicking Church Stats at the top of the page. Then look through our Conference Dashboard.

Good News by the Numbers

After my first Annual Conference as Bishop in North Alabama, I read the story of that gathering in The Birmingham News. The story was a glowing report of all that we were doing as a church. Impressive. But the story ended with, “this year, as with all previous years, the North Alabama Conference lost four thousand members.” Our bubble was burst. Why is it that good news, no matter how good, always seems to be defeated by bad news?

This year Lori Carden, our Conference Statistician, gave one of the most encouraging reports we heard at the 2009 Annual Conference: Growth! Documented, unavoidable, growth. Lori noted once again that we are an aging church: the death rate for North Alabama United Methodists in 2008 was 8 times higher than the death rate for the state of Alabama. This is what happens when our congregations limit their ministries mostly to people my age. More than 2000 people were removed from church rolls, not by disaffection with our church, but rather by death. Our total membership for the Conference decreased by 852 people. At the end of 2008 total membership was 149,473. Not much good news there.

But then Lori gave us an expanded look at our numbers. The loss of 852 members is THE SMALLEST DECLINE WE HAVE HAD IN TWO DECADES! This past year we cut our rate of loss by two thirds! Lori also noted in 2008 professions of faith increased by 401 people; ethnic membership was up by 689 people and the number of people who were baptized in North Alabama United Methodist Churches was up by 115. She also noted a huge increase in the number of people participating in small groups – 8425 people!

How did we do it? I’m sure that most of this growth was due to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. But we also let the Holy Spirit guide us: we defined an “effective pastor” as someone who knows how to lead a church to grow, we began to notice our numbers with the initiation of the Conference Weekly Dashboard, we gave pastors and churches skills (NCD, Healthy Congregations Program, Ethnic Church Development, and New Church Development) in how to produce growth, we started more new congregations, and the Cabinet vowed to do a better job of keeping pastors in place or moving pastors on the basis of a pastor’s ability to grow a church.

These are wonderful numbers that are evidence that we are moving in the right direction. They are also validation that if your church is not growing it is probably because your church has decided (even if unintentionally) that it can’t grow, has not availed itself of the great resources for growth that we now offer, and has therefore decided to decline and die. The good news is that God is graciously granting those pastors and congregations fruit who desire and work for fruit. Thanks be to God!

Will Willimon

Is YOUR church growing? Find out by logging into the Church Stats section of our Conference Website: there you will find a picture – by the numbers – of the spiritual health of your church.

God Send Us Preachers

This week the theme of our Annual Conference is empowering a new generation. A highlight of Annual Conference is Ordination when we will ordain a new group of United Methodist pastors. I’ve written this hymn for the Commissioning Service this year. Please pray this as a prayer that God will continue to send us a new generation of pastoral leaders to lead our church into the future.

God send us preachers brash and true;
Make them to serve your holy word.
Your summons shall by them be heard.
In sermons bold, we have heard you.

You said the Word and there was light,
Made new creation by your voice.
When in your presence we rejoice,
You’ve come to cheer our darkest night.

Your living word made prophets bold,
The Spirit-giv’n Good News to preach.
None could out run your Spirit’s reach;
Brave preachers spoke as they were told.

God speaks to us by God’s own Son.
Salvation preached for all to see.
When truth is told, God’s victory,
God’s Word made flesh, God’s will is done.

Each time a preacher stands to speak,
Whenever hungry hearts are fed,
Your church discovers one more time
That Christians live not just by bread.

Give preachers courage to obey,
In some dead place or silent hell,
The angels’ Easter charge, “Go! Tell!”
To call more foll’wers to the Way.

These preachers shield from love of praise;
Ignite their sermons with your fire.
May they not fear their people’s ire,
But serve your Word, throughout their days.

When hands upon their heads are laid
On this, their commissioning day
May they know now your pow’r to say
That same strong Word your Saints obeyed.

Lord speak to us, our fears relieve;
Just say the word and we are healed.
Hearing your word is faith revealed,
Though we’ve not seen, yet we believe!

Will Willimon

Note: Can be sung to tune of #157 “Jesus Shall Reign,”

Advice for New Pastors 4

This past year Allan Hugh Cole, professor at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, has edited a book for new pastors, From Midterms to Ministry (Eerdmans). I was asked to write a chapter in the volume, recounting my own journey from seminary to the parish, drawing out any implications that my experience had for new pastors.

This month, thousands of new pastors will emerge from seminary, a few of them coming to join the ranks of the North Alabama Conference. I therefore offer these thoughts in the next few weeks, hoping that they will be helpful to those of us who are new in the pastoral ministry and those who are not.

The Necessity of Mentors

One of the most important decisions that a new pastor can make is to obtain a good pastoral mentor. Ministry is a craft. I am unperturbed when new pastors sometimes say, “Seminary never really taught me actually how to do ministry.” I think seminary is best when it instills the classical theological disciplines and exposes to the classical theological resources of the church, not so good at teaching the everyday, practical, administrative and mundane tasks of the parish ministry. One learns a craft, not by reading books, but by looking over the shoulder of a master, watching the moves, learning by example, developing a critical approach that constantly evaluates and gains new skills.

Selecting a mentor can be your greatest challenge as a new pastor. Few experienced pastors have the training or the gifts for mentoring a new colleague. The “Lone Ranger” mentality afflicts many lonely pastors and their work shows the results of their failure to obey Jesus’ sending of the Seventy “two by two” (Luke 10:1). Some senior colleagues are often threatened by your youth, or your idealism, or your talent, seeing their own failures and disappointments in the light of your future promise. You will encounter those experienced pastors whose main experience has been that of accommodation, appeasement, and disillusionment with the meager impact of their ministry. They have a personal stake in robbing you of your youthful energy and expectation for ministry. Their goal is to get you to say, “Well, I thought that ministry in the name of Jesus would be a great advent ure but now I’ve settled in and turned it into a modestly well paying job.”

Yet in asking someone to be your mentor, to look into your life, to show you how to do ministry as they have done it, is one of the most flattering and affirming things you can do for a senior colleague. The Christian ministry is too tough to be done alone. There is something built into the practice of Christian ministry that requires apprenticeship from Paul mentoring young Timothy to Ambrose guiding the willful Augustine, to Carlyle Marney putting his arm around me and saying, “Here’s what a kid like you has got to watch out for.” In my experience, one of the most revealing questions that I can ask a new pastor is, “Who are your models for ministry? Whose example are you following?”

One of the most decisive examples given to me, in my first months of ministry, was a negative one. I was attending my first Annual Conference. Between one of the sessions, an older, self-presumed wiser pastor took me aside and said, “Son, you seem ambitious and talented. Let me give you some advice that I wish someone had given me when I was at your age. Buy property at Junaluska (Lake Junaluska, the retreat center now Methodist resort near our Conference).”

Property at Junaluska?” I asked in wide-eyed stupidity.

“Right. Doesn’t have to be a house. Perhaps start with an undeveloped lot. Eventually move up to a home at Junaluska,” he continued. “Name me one person on the Bishop’s Cabinet who doesn’t have a house at Junaluska,” he responded before moving on to offer advice to some other promising young pastor.

I thought to myself, “Four years of college. Three years of seminary. Three years of graduate school for the purpose of a lousy mortgage at Lake Junaluska. This is what it’s all about?”

That interchange was one of the most significant in my first days as a United Methodist minister. It was encouragement for me to lay hold of the vocation that had taken hold of me. Standing there in the lobby of the auditorium, I prayed, “Lord, you have my permission to strike me dead if I ever degrade my vocation as that guy has degraded his.”

That I am here today, over thirty years after my transition from seminary to the pastoral ministry, writing this essay, suggests to me that I kept the solemn vow I made that day. More likely is that the Lord is infinite in mercy, full of forgiveness, and patient with those whom the Lord calls to ministry.

Will Willimon

P.S. Last year I asked our churches to send us, as lay members to Annual Conference, their most promising, new, young leaders. Our theme this year is around our priority of empowering a new generation of United Methodist Christians. We will plan to equip EVERY congregation to reach more people in this new generation. I just received word that our lively First UMC Decatur will be sending lay members who are 23 and 24 years old! We are discovering that we CAN reach a new generation IF we will invite them and welcome them into the leadership of our churches. See you at Annual Conference and at the “Rush of Fools” concert at the ending of Conference!

Advice for New Pastors, Part Three

This past year Allan Hugh Cole, professor at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, has edited a book for new pastors, From Midterms to Ministry (Eerdmans). I was asked to write a chapter in the volume, recounting my own journey from seminary to the parish, drawing out any implications that my experience had for new pastors.

This month, thousands of new pastors will emerge from seminary, a few of them coming to join the ranks of the North Alabama Conference. I therefore offer these thoughts in the next few weeks, hoping that they will be helpful to those of us who are new in the pastoral ministry and those who are not.

Here is the rest of my list of unsolicited advice for those moving from seminary to parish:

1. Be open to the possibility that the matters that were focused upon in the course of the seminary curriculum, the questions raised and the arguments engaged, might be a distraction from the true, historic mission and purpose of the church and its ministry.
   
2. On the other hand, be open to the possibility that the church has a tendency to bed down with mediocrity, to accept the mere status quo as the norm, and to let itself off the theological hook too easily. One reason why the church needs theology explored and taught in its seminaries is that theology (at its best) keeps making Christian discipleship as hard as it ought to be. Theology keeps guard over the church’s peculiar speech and the church’s distinctive mission. Something there is within any accommodated, compromised church (and aren’t they all, in one way or another?) that needs to reassure itself, “All that academic, intellectual, theological stuff is bunk and is irrelevant to the way the church really is.” The way the church “really is” is faithless, mistaken, cowardly, and compromised. It’s sad that it is up to seminaries to offer some of the most trenc hant and interesting critiques of the church. Criticism of the church ought to be part of the ongoing mission of a faithful church that takes Jesus more seriously and itself a little less so. I pray that your theological education rendered you permanently uneasy with the church. Promise me that you will, throughout your ministry, never be happy with the church.
   
3. I pray that you studied hard in seminary, read widely, thought deeply because you are going to need all of that if you are going to stay long as a leader of the church. Your life would be infinitely easier and less complicated if God had called you to be an accountant or a seminary professor. Most of the stuff that you read in seminary will only prepare you really to grow and to develop after you leave seminary. Think of your tough transition into the parish as the beginning, not the end, of your adventure into real growth as a minister. Theology tends to be wasted on the young. It’s only when you run into a complete dead end in the parish, when you are aging and tired and fed up with the people of God (and maybe even God too) that you need to know where to go to have a good conversation with some saint in order to make it through the night. Believe it or not, it’s much easier to beg in in the ministry, even considering the tough transition between seminary and the parish, than it is to continue in ministry. A winning smile, a pleasing personality, a winsome way with people, none of these are enough to keep you working with Jesus, preaching the Word, nurturing the flock, looking for the lost. Only God can do that and a major way God does that is through the prayerful, intense reading, study and reflection that you can only begin in three or four years of seminary.
   
4. Try not to listen to your parishioners when they attempt to use you to weasel out of the claims of Christ. Much of the criticism that you will receive, many of their negative comments about your work, are just their attempt to excuse themselves from discipleship. “When you are older, you will understand,” they told me as a young pastor. “You have still got all that theological stuff in you from seminary. Eventually, you’ll learn,” said older, cynical pastors. Now it’s, “Because you are a bishop, you don’t really understand that I can’t….” God has called you to preach and to live the gospel before them and they will use any means to avoid it. Be suspicious when people encourage you to see the transition from seminary to the parish as mainly a time finally to settle in and make peace with the “real world.” Jesus Christ is our definition of what’s real and there is much that passes for “the way things are” in the average church that makes Jesus want to grab a whip in hand and clean house.
   
5. The next few years could be among the most important in your ministry, including the years that you spent in seminary, because they are the years in which you will form your habits that will make your ministry. That’s one reason why I think the Lutherans are wise to require an internship year in a parish, before seminary graduation, for their pastors and why I think that a great way to begin is to begin your ministry is as someone’s associate in a team ministry in a larger church. In a small, rural church, alone, with total responsibility in your shoulders, in the weekly treadmill of sermons and pastoral care, if you are not careful there is too little time to read and reflect, too little time to prepare your first sermons, so you develop bad habits of flying by the seat of your pants, taking short cuts, and borrowing from others what ought to be developed in the workshop of your own soul. Ministry has a wa y of coming at you, of jerking you around from here to there, so you need to take charge of your time, prioritize your work, and be sure that you don’t neglect the absolute essentials while you are doing the merely important. If you don’t define your ministry on the basis of your theological commitments, the parish has a way of defining your ministry on the basis of their selfish preoccupations and that is why so many clergy are so harried and tired today. Mind your habits.

Will Willimon

Advice for New Pastors, Part Two

Allan Hugh Cole, professor at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, has edited a book for new pastors, From Midterms to Ministry (Eerdmans). I was asked to write a chapter in the volume, recounting my own journey from seminary to the parish, drawing out any implications that my experience had for new pastors.

This month, thousands of new pastors will emerge from seminary, a few of them coming to join the ranks of the North Alabama Conference. I therefore offer these thoughts in the next few weeks, hoping that they will be helpful to those of us who are new in the pastoral ministry and those who are not.

Recently, I asked a group of our best and brightest new pastors what they would like most from the church and from me as their bishop. I was surprised to hear them all respond: “Supervision!” They yearn for help with the move between these two worlds because they realize the inadequacy of their preparation. Churches and judicatories must take this move more seriously and must develop better means of mentoring and supervising new pastors through this process.

As someone who now works with new pastors on that move from the world of the theological school to the world of the parish, I have some specific suggestions:

1. Devise ways to learn to speak their language. Laity sometimes complain that their young pastor, in sermons, uses “religious” words like “spiritual practice,” “liberation,” “empowerment,” “intentional community” (this is an actual list a layperson collected and sent to me) that no one understands and no one recalls having heard in Scripture. Such “preacher talk” makes the pastor seem detached, alien, and aloof from the people and hinders leadership.
   
2. At the same time, prepare yourself to become a teacher of the church’s peculiar speech to a people who may have forgotten how to use it. This may seem contrary to my first suggestion. My friend, Stanley Hauerwas, says that the best preparation for being a pastor today is previously to have taught high school French. The skills required to drill French verbs into the heads of adolescents are the skills that pastors need to teach our people how to speak the gospel. Trouble is, most seminarians are more skilled, upon graduation from school, to be able to describe the world anthropologically than theologically. They have learned to use the language of Marxist analysis or feminist criticism better than the language of Zion. We must be person who lovingly cultivate and actively use the church’s peculiar speech.
   
3. Keep telling yourself that the difference in thought between the laity in your first parish and that of your friends back in seminary is not so much the difference between ignorance and intelligence; it’s just different ways of thinking that arise out of life in different worlds. I recommend reading novels (Flannery O’Connor saved me in my first parish by writing true stories that sounded like they were written by one of my parishioners) in order to appreciate the thought and the speech of people who, while having never been initiated into the narrow confines of the world of theological education, are thinking deeply.
   
4. Remind yourself that while the seminary has an important role to play in the life of the church, it is the seminary that must be accountable to the church, not vice versa. It is my prejudice that, if you have difficulty making the transition from seminary to parish it is probably a criticism of the seminary. The Christian faith is to be studied and critically examined only for the purpose of its embodiment. Christians are those who are to become that which we profess. The purpose of theological discernment is not to devise something that is interesting to say to the modern world but rather to rock the modern world with the church’s demonstration that Jesus Christ is Lord and all other little lordlets are not.

Will Willimon