Anyone who reads this blog likely knows that a Pennsylvania United Methodist elder in full connection has been suspended for 30 days. He was convicted on Monday for officiating at a same sex union. His son was one of the people whose union was celebrated. The jury found that he did, in fact, violate the Book of Discipline, the United Methodist Church's law book. I think the verdict is insane because rather than revoke his credentials, they have given him 30 days to discern and then expect him to voluntarily surrender them if he won't uphold the discipline in its entirety. I hope he doesn't.
Jeremy Smith has shared a list of ways that many United Methodists don't uphold the Book of Discipline in its entirety yet aren't having charges filed or facing trials for them. He's also written about some of the shady background of the charges being filed — which local secular press covered as well. I spent four years as what I now call a transitional United Methodist.
My time with the UMC was mostly outstanding — I was welcomed whole heartedly into a new youth group as a high school junior and participated in the Wesley Foundation through all four years of college; I worked for it for two of them even as an Episcopalian. I served on the Steering Committee for the United Methodist Student Movement for a year. I started my discernment for ordination process with the United Methodist Church.
While liturgical tastes/expectations/practices and the candidacy for ordination process (not set up for undergraduates who go to college outside of their district or annual conference) were much higher on the list of reason I left the United Methodist Church, my sexuality was number three. Ten years after Gene Robinson was elected, consented to, and consecrated bishop in The Episcopal Church the United Methodist Church is removing a man for marrying his son. I happily entertain discussion about covenant, rules, civil disobedience and biblical obedience; unjust laws being no law and all and juries having to follow laws rather than ignore the ones they don't like.
I understand that. I worked for a pastor who didn't baptize infants and rebaptized adults, too. The annual conference where my campus ministry was has an elder in full connection who performed a Skype "baptism" years ago and the video has been on YouTube since then, with vows omitted, thanksgiving over the water omitted, etc. And how many bishops, when they instruct ordinands to wear black robes, ignore the paragraph of the Discipline that mandates following the ordinal — which is really clear that ordinands should wear an alb?
I don't think that any of them would have been put on trial if I'd filed a complaint — but then again, I don't think that trials are the way to settle disagreements in the church, particularly if punitive justice rather than restorative is what is being sought, especially if the sentence lets the jury not feel like the punishment is on them.
What I don't understand, though, is those who are staying in the United Methodist Church and waiting for it to change around them. I am not the only who to have made the comparison between individuals' relationship with the institution as one of an abusive relationship. I have watched dear friends be subject to processes of unofficial investigation with due process violated as they hoped a trial wouldn't emerge who love the institution. I have seen friends fight to hide their sexuality at all costs. No, not even hide their sexuality, but hide anything that might give suspicion that they might be LGBT and always looking over their shoulder, concerned who saw what and who is or is not "safe."
I particularly don't understand it when they stay they want to stay in the institution to work for change, but don't work for change. More than LGBT people saying that (which they do) I don't understand so-called allies that will say nice things in small groups about their support for LGBT people but won't speak against anti-gay resolutions as their annual, jurisdictional, or regional conferences. One of the reasons I like Jeremy Smith and his blog so much is that as a straight ally he doesn't hide his support for LGBT inclusion.
As many have pointed out, and with whom I agree, not everyone is called to surrender credentials in solidarity, to come out and have them revoked, or to officiate at blessing same-sex unions. But if someone is saying that those aren't their calls, what are their calls? I don't believe that God calls any of us to have secret safe groups as the only places where we express our support, approval, or beliefs that are different.
After learning his sentence Frank Shaefer said, "I feel I have to be an advocate, an outspoken advocate for all lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual people...I will never be silent again." For following his call, he's facing losing his credentials. If you are a United Methodist, what is your call in this? You can't be defrocked for publicly, vocally, advocating for changing the way things are. Your abstentions are just as hurtful as a no vote to the person you've just told you support completely.
If you are just way more Methodist than I am and staying with the institution to change it, how are you working for that change? Working, not just hoping. Are you organizing groups? Drawing attention to difference? Or hoping that someone with a little less to lose — or maybe even a little more — will do that?
This is probably a little heavy-handed, but I'm hurting. I'm hurting for my friends all over the church who love the church that keeps slapping them in the face and punching them in the gut. I'm hurting because I worry that staying in the system has turned into joining the system and that fear is beating love. I'm hurting, largely, because I'm wondering and worried when it will be someone I know who despite their best efforts at covering anything that hinted at queerness are found out and dragged through a trial. How are you working on this?
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Friday, August 30, 2013
Congregational, transformational change
Two weeks ago I started a series I expected to write over the next week, and that didn't happen. It just didn't. I haven't lost it, though. Two weeks ago I wrote about expecting personal change, inviting people to tell their stories of it, and sharing one of my own. I said there would be three, and here is part two — about the congregation.
My work as a diocesan staff person is not limited to working in the diocesan office, and I wouldn't let it be. I love being in the field, meeting with clergy and lay people of churches from around the Diocese of California. I hate to say it, but the people with whom I've met (although it's been at their choice and that may say something) have had a lot less anxiety about the kinds of changes I suggest and propose than leaders from congregations with whom I met in Provinces I and II while I was in seminary.
In my specific context and ministry I'm often advocating for a greater social media presence by congregations and encouraging them (enabling?) them to see that as part of their ministry to their flock and to those beyond the congregation. I can't count the number of times someone has said, "Well, no one in our church is on Facebook or Twitter." That is possible, if unlikely, but there are countless untold numbers who are on Facebook and Twitter and not in your church...and that's how I reply to that.
I met with a rector and a new staff member of his today, and the rector had a senior warden who used to say "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." Talking about how churches need to change is nothing new and it's something that something of an echo chamber online right now, but I've often seen it in a context of desperation and fear of dying or death — rather than changing the world, and being changed ourselves.
A few months ago at a conference of lay and clergy leaders a priest ask where the requirement to be a baptized, confirmed member to serve on some governing body (I think her vestry) came from — if it was canon or tradition. She said, "Because I have great people who want to serve, but none of them is confirmed. How do we change the canon?" Yes, changing the canon would be a change, that's certain, but why can't we ask the people involved in leadership to be confirmed? If they want to be a part of governance do we not want them more invested and committed — and given additional grace and strength of the Holy Spirit to perform that ministry?
The Gerasene demoniac was bursting with the Good News of what Jesus had just done for him. I asked two weeks ago how we are doing that and how we're enabling individuals to do that. Now, though, I am curious how we're encountering a Christ who is changing our congregations, a Christ who sets us free from always doing what we've always done (and thus getting what we've always gotten). Rather than assuming things will never change, where do we look for change to happen and trust God that it will?
In April I attended the Episcopal Communicators conference, where the keynote speeches were on social media. Communicators at various levels of church leadership spoke from their experience and some spoke of the difficulty they've had with churches that struggle and refuse to embrace newer media (which I think also speaks to a refusal to embrace or welcome new people and voices, let alone look for or recruit them). Someone at one of my tables said something that I latched on to and loved — let the dead bury the dead.
There are tools available for trying something new. There are tools available for asking how we might be church differently, how we might learn to burst with Good News as a community of what Christ has done for us. I think that suggesting that the dead bury the dead is actually one place where we can be expecting change; rather than coddling let there be a call to change and know it will happen. If it doesn't, ask why — starting with if the people there knew the Risen Christ in their daily lives.
When we as congregations are bursting with this Good News, we have to tell (and in turn change) our communities, too. As I read new-atheist rants about how bad religion is, I note that most of them have never studied theology nor have they cared to look much into the past of religion, certainly the past of Christianity. There have been awful things done in the name of Christ, certainly, but hospitality as a Christian virtue — welcoming the stranger, even if she is sick — led to the beginnings of hospitals.
Romans thought that Christians' giving food to whoever came to their houses was dumb, that people were scamming them going from house to house getting as much as they can. Maybe they were...but maybe someone needed help to get going again. The Good News of Christ changes lives and it changes communities. How are our churches changing themselves into new contexts and how are they changing the world around them? What would be missing in a neighborhood if a church ceased to exist there?
In my work with priests and lay leaders, talking about communication and communication strategy I get to reference two outstanding resources that the Diocese of California has produced. One is on welcome, and the other on new member incorporation...though it deals with changing communities and changing the world. They are both available here in the be::community library. They are series totally about two hours each. The ones I most highly recommend (in this context) are those by Bishop Marc Andrus and by Cn. Chuck Robertson.
The congregation with which I met today does outreach to inmates on death row and to teen mothers. They support a food pantry, too. They are changing their community if bit by bit. Today we worked on how to share that and broaden the laborers of the harvest. How is your congregation laboring, changing itself (with God's help) and changing the world around it?
My work as a diocesan staff person is not limited to working in the diocesan office, and I wouldn't let it be. I love being in the field, meeting with clergy and lay people of churches from around the Diocese of California. I hate to say it, but the people with whom I've met (although it's been at their choice and that may say something) have had a lot less anxiety about the kinds of changes I suggest and propose than leaders from congregations with whom I met in Provinces I and II while I was in seminary.
In my specific context and ministry I'm often advocating for a greater social media presence by congregations and encouraging them (enabling?) them to see that as part of their ministry to their flock and to those beyond the congregation. I can't count the number of times someone has said, "Well, no one in our church is on Facebook or Twitter." That is possible, if unlikely, but there are countless untold numbers who are on Facebook and Twitter and not in your church...and that's how I reply to that.
I met with a rector and a new staff member of his today, and the rector had a senior warden who used to say "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." Talking about how churches need to change is nothing new and it's something that something of an echo chamber online right now, but I've often seen it in a context of desperation and fear of dying or death — rather than changing the world, and being changed ourselves.
A few months ago at a conference of lay and clergy leaders a priest ask where the requirement to be a baptized, confirmed member to serve on some governing body (I think her vestry) came from — if it was canon or tradition. She said, "Because I have great people who want to serve, but none of them is confirmed. How do we change the canon?" Yes, changing the canon would be a change, that's certain, but why can't we ask the people involved in leadership to be confirmed? If they want to be a part of governance do we not want them more invested and committed — and given additional grace and strength of the Holy Spirit to perform that ministry?
The Gerasene demoniac was bursting with the Good News of what Jesus had just done for him. I asked two weeks ago how we are doing that and how we're enabling individuals to do that. Now, though, I am curious how we're encountering a Christ who is changing our congregations, a Christ who sets us free from always doing what we've always done (and thus getting what we've always gotten). Rather than assuming things will never change, where do we look for change to happen and trust God that it will?
In April I attended the Episcopal Communicators conference, where the keynote speeches were on social media. Communicators at various levels of church leadership spoke from their experience and some spoke of the difficulty they've had with churches that struggle and refuse to embrace newer media (which I think also speaks to a refusal to embrace or welcome new people and voices, let alone look for or recruit them). Someone at one of my tables said something that I latched on to and loved — let the dead bury the dead.
There are tools available for trying something new. There are tools available for asking how we might be church differently, how we might learn to burst with Good News as a community of what Christ has done for us. I think that suggesting that the dead bury the dead is actually one place where we can be expecting change; rather than coddling let there be a call to change and know it will happen. If it doesn't, ask why — starting with if the people there knew the Risen Christ in their daily lives.
When we as congregations are bursting with this Good News, we have to tell (and in turn change) our communities, too. As I read new-atheist rants about how bad religion is, I note that most of them have never studied theology nor have they cared to look much into the past of religion, certainly the past of Christianity. There have been awful things done in the name of Christ, certainly, but hospitality as a Christian virtue — welcoming the stranger, even if she is sick — led to the beginnings of hospitals.
Romans thought that Christians' giving food to whoever came to their houses was dumb, that people were scamming them going from house to house getting as much as they can. Maybe they were...but maybe someone needed help to get going again. The Good News of Christ changes lives and it changes communities. How are our churches changing themselves into new contexts and how are they changing the world around them? What would be missing in a neighborhood if a church ceased to exist there?
In my work with priests and lay leaders, talking about communication and communication strategy I get to reference two outstanding resources that the Diocese of California has produced. One is on welcome, and the other on new member incorporation...though it deals with changing communities and changing the world. They are both available here in the be::community library. They are series totally about two hours each. The ones I most highly recommend (in this context) are those by Bishop Marc Andrus and by Cn. Chuck Robertson.
The congregation with which I met today does outreach to inmates on death row and to teen mothers. They support a food pantry, too. They are changing their community if bit by bit. Today we worked on how to share that and broaden the laborers of the harvest. How is your congregation laboring, changing itself (with God's help) and changing the world around it?
Monday, August 19, 2013
Every long run needs a water element
I am running the New York City Marathon in November. I haven't written about that here because I haven't been writing here enough. I'm running with Colin Chapman (and at his suggestion/intervention). We're running together with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which works to fight childhood obesity. This is immediately where my mind went yesterday when I heard the end of the epistle reading (to the Hebrews), "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..."
An old friend of mine took up triathlons in college and referenced this passage on his blog. Yesterday it hit me for the first time how much better this imagery works now that I'm actually training for a big race that requites perseverance. It also works because I use the images of people who've donated to my fundraising goals to get me out of bed, off the couch, and keep putting one foot in front of the next. I have a cloud of witnesses that helps me run with perseverance the distance that has been set before me. I also rely on the strengths of people who taught me to run and were patient with me in the early days.
On my 8 mile run yesterday I had some other realizations. I ran through Golden Gate Park yesterday and realized as I passed the Prayer Book Cross and the waterfall behind it that my long runs need a water element. In baptism classes at Trinity, Wall Street I talk about how it's no accident that the church uses water, food, and drink as its primary tangibles. I regularly made mention of remembering my baptism as I ran along the Hudson.
I got to the Prayer Book Cross (waterfall, and creek) as my run was starting to get to me because I was doing a bigger distance. (I only realized later that it started to go downhill at that point which helped), and that's when I got the new mantra (which our running coach encourages) of "run with perseverance the distance that has been set before me." I just kept saying it to myself, too. All my long runs, really, have had a water element to them: the Seinne, the Liffey, the Hudson, the Golden Gate Straight, and now this little creek.
About this time, though I started to get to an area of the park that was foggy. Earlier in the day (in Oakland) I'd been anxious about the heat and humidity of my run. Running through the park was delightful, especially as I got to the fog. It was cool and made me feel cooler. It was also a nice visual for running into the cloud (literally) of witnesses who were supporting me — financially and emotionally, giving money to the goal and giving encouragement when I am discouraged, and harassing me to go for my run.
Later today I'm going to be messaging people who've supported me financially and ask them what they'd like me to listen to on my runs and race, a way of carrying them with me on my race, remembering who requested what song and thinking about them on my run, how they'd helped me and were continuing to help me run the race that had been set before me...and 26 miles is definitely going to need some perseverance.
If you'd like to join the cloud of witnesses helping me on my run — and helping to fight childhood obesity — you can donate here.
An old friend of mine took up triathlons in college and referenced this passage on his blog. Yesterday it hit me for the first time how much better this imagery works now that I'm actually training for a big race that requites perseverance. It also works because I use the images of people who've donated to my fundraising goals to get me out of bed, off the couch, and keep putting one foot in front of the next. I have a cloud of witnesses that helps me run with perseverance the distance that has been set before me. I also rely on the strengths of people who taught me to run and were patient with me in the early days.
On my 8 mile run yesterday I had some other realizations. I ran through Golden Gate Park yesterday and realized as I passed the Prayer Book Cross and the waterfall behind it that my long runs need a water element. In baptism classes at Trinity, Wall Street I talk about how it's no accident that the church uses water, food, and drink as its primary tangibles. I regularly made mention of remembering my baptism as I ran along the Hudson.
I got to the Prayer Book Cross (waterfall, and creek) as my run was starting to get to me because I was doing a bigger distance. (I only realized later that it started to go downhill at that point which helped), and that's when I got the new mantra (which our running coach encourages) of "run with perseverance the distance that has been set before me." I just kept saying it to myself, too. All my long runs, really, have had a water element to them: the Seinne, the Liffey, the Hudson, the Golden Gate Straight, and now this little creek.
About this time, though I started to get to an area of the park that was foggy. Earlier in the day (in Oakland) I'd been anxious about the heat and humidity of my run. Running through the park was delightful, especially as I got to the fog. It was cool and made me feel cooler. It was also a nice visual for running into the cloud (literally) of witnesses who were supporting me — financially and emotionally, giving money to the goal and giving encouragement when I am discouraged, and harassing me to go for my run.
Later today I'm going to be messaging people who've supported me financially and ask them what they'd like me to listen to on my runs and race, a way of carrying them with me on my race, remembering who requested what song and thinking about them on my run, how they'd helped me and were continuing to help me run the race that had been set before me...and 26 miles is definitely going to need some perseverance.
If you'd like to join the cloud of witnesses helping me on my run — and helping to fight childhood obesity — you can donate here.
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