Why I Dislike the "Your Best Life Now" mentality

Eugene Cho on "Success" in Ministry

Excellent advice from Eugene Cho...

Eugene Cho - The Nines 2010
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God loves you...

Willimon on Preaching

"Preaching is a debilitating activity; preaching is hard, and most of your work is invisible."

- Bishop William Willimon

Why I Dislike Contemporary Worship

The Missional Conundrum

"Jesus told us to go into all the world and be his ambassadors, but many churches today have inadvertently changed the 'go and be' command to a 'come and see' appeal. We have grown attached to buildings, programs, staff and a wide variety of goods and services designed to attract and entertain people.

"Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the 'come to us' invitations with a 'go to them' life. A life where 'the way of Jesus' informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower."

- Rick Meigs

5 Reasons Teens Are Avoiding Church

The daily newspaper USA Today recently published an article detailing why teens generally don't "go to church". While the article makes some good points, Shane Raynor disagrees with the article's take and offers five additional reasons why many teens have failed to make "church" a priority. In my opinion, Shane hits the nail on the head.

Shane's suggestions:

* Teens don’t show up because they don’t think God is showing up.
Our desperation to be "hip", "current", and "relevant" has often resulted in a shallowness that must be offensive to Jesus...shallow preaching, shallow music, shallow language, etc. The truth is that depth matters; relationships matter. Ministry is more than simply pizza and volleyball...

"Sooner or later, everyone wants substance, and if it isn’t there, they’re going to bail. There’s always going to be a church (or someplace else) with better pizza, a more talented band, a better gym and bigger crowds with hotter people. It’s okay to use draws, but you’d better have a good foundation for your ministry and back up the draw with something real."

* Teens don’t make church a priority because their parents don’t make it a priority.
As in every aspect of life, we lead by example. It is crucial for parents to be involved in worship and ministry if they desire to see their children involved in worship and ministry....weekly...daily.
Additionally, parents must begin to say, "Sorry; worship of Almighty God is more important than soccer or basketball or sleeping in. You can't participate in that league if they require Sunday morning participation." Shane adds, "I’ve realized that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making teenagers go to church."
That's Christian parenting. It's a shame if the kids have to miss out on sports or other activities, but what if...what if their souls are at stake? Is that a possibility? Parents ignore this piece of parenthood at their own peril, and at the possible expense of their children's spiritual walk. Priorities matter, and your children are watching...and learning.

* Teens are very connected to each other now and don’t need church to hook up anymore.
More could be said about this. We have largely forgotten in the church what real, authentic "community" is all about and why relationships founded on Jesus are far deeper than others. Shane makes the point that, "...there’s probably somewhere or something else that does community better than church." Penitence is needed on the part of the church. We need to be in prayer about this one.

* Unchurched teens see no significant difference between church kids and everyone else.
This was certainly true when I was a teen. The cruelest kids in my high school were often myself and other members of my church youth group. That isn't to say we didn't take Jesus seriously, but living that out is extraordinarily difficult.
As a parent and as a pastor, I see that teen members of the church I am serving are often just as drama-driven and hormone-driven as those who are "outside the church". It's heartbreaking but it's true. I certainly need to be more intentional about mentoring these fine young people, whom I truly love. We all need to do better and be more more faithful.

* Many teens get impatient with churches that major on the minors and try too hard to seem relevant.
Welcome to life in The United Methodist Church, where we have made this into an art form. We often teach our young people - either directly or indirectly - that aspects of the faith such as Jesus, his Lordship, Biblical study and reflection, and/or doctrine are secondary to ridding the world of malaria or to having an open heart, an open mind, and an open door.
Please don't misunderstand me. Fighting malaria is a noble cause, and if a pastor or congregation is passionate about it, then I am all for it. Likewise, it is appropriate to be available to discuss "out of the mainstream" ideas and approaches to life.
But these ministries should not be emphasized at the expense of other pieces of our journey in faith. Teens are not stupid. They can see when we are "majoring on the minors" and, if necessary, they'll find a community where all the means of grace are taken seriously, rather than just a few which have been carefully selected to be as least offensive as possible.

I commend to you Shane's original post, and urge prayerful reflection on this important subject.

T.O. reports to Cincinnati

Can't say that I blame him; I'd cry, too...

Clint Webb for Senate

Western PA Annual Conference 2010in Review

We had a tremendous Annual Conference last week! From June 10-13, the people called United Methodist in western Pennsylvania gathered at Grove City College in Grove City, PA for our annual gathering. It was a time filled with grace, peace, and joy. For me, it was a time of challenge, renewal, and great affirmation. The "best" Annual Conference session in which I've been a participant was likely 2005, our first with Bishop Thomas Bickerton. This year will rank for me as a close second.

Some highlights for me:

(Pictures courtesy of Richard Pearson)

The pre-Conference healing service was wonderfully affirming (and healing!) for me as I saw and connected with several folks I've met in my ministry journey who have gone on to great ministries. If I share in the smallest part of their own journeys, I am thankful and thrilled. It was great to worship Almighty God led by Jeff Painter, an outstanding musician who was a vital part of my initial commitment to Jesus in 1980s at Jumonville.

It may have been the best, most positive Clergy Session in which I've ever participated. The 2010 Class of the Order of Elder is one of the finest I've seen, and, having worked with them as a retreat leader for the provisional program, I was very, very proud of them. They are an oustanding bunch.

We also nominated folks from among us to serve as candidates for election to the 2012 General & Jurisdictional Conferences. While I was honored to be one of 41 nominees, I was even more proud when every eligible Elder was nominated by motion from the floor. I love these people!

Additionally, there was a "painful moment of grace" when a former Elder, who had resigned due to legal trouble stemming from inappropriate conduct, joined us to apologize for his behavior. We prayed for forgiveness and healing; may that continue to be our prayer.

Annual Conference then started in earnest with prayer, worship, and work. The signing of a covenant between our Conference and the two Annual Conferences in Zimbabwe was a beautiful highlight of the week. Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa of Zimbabwe was a powerful, inspiring speaker. This relationship will, in my opinion, bear great fruit for the Kingdom of God. We will help Zimbabwe with material goods and resources; they have much to offer us in terms of mission and renewal. Kudos to Bishop Bickerton and all who helped put this agreement together; it's a great thing.

Each morning, we started with Bible study as Rev. Steve Cordle took us through some of Luke's Gospel. Steve serves as senior pastor at Crossroads UM Church, a multi-site community of faith which Steve started in 1991. Steve, his associate pastor Rev. Jonathan Fehl, and their team are doing phenomenal, transformative work throughout the Pittsburgh area (and the world), and it was fantastic to hear from one of our own who is doing things well. The Bible studies challenged me a great deal. I can't wait to take my family to worship the Lord at Crossroads in a few weeks when we're on vacation!

There were, of course, many other highlights...connecting with sisters & brothers I don't see often enough...three youth pages from JUMC, all of whom did a terrific job...enjoying the USA vs. England World Cup soccer game @ a local tavern with some friends...challenging speakers...a good bit of "down time" to enjoy fellowship...praying for folks and being prayed for...budget discussion that was murky at times but ultimately fruit-bearing...the always amazing Youth Ministry Team...some good legislation passed...keeping pension benefits for clergy widows, largely thanks to Youth delegate Joel Peterson...on and on and on.

Like every Conference, this one had its moments of chaos, confusion, and concern, such as the bizarre new security procedures, too much on the "Imagine No Malaria" campaign (it's a good thing, but it's just become such a dominant part of our conversations, sometimes at the expense of other urgent issues...overkill is not far away), a grotesque rewrite of the Drifters' classic "Under the Boardwalk" which ably demonstrated all that is wrong about "contemporary worship", and the completely out-of-touch "Rethink Church" commercial, which sounded like a lost cut from Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em (I kept waiting for my brother Greg Cox to hold up his uninjured hand and yell, "Stop! Rethink time!").

But, all in all, our gathering in Grove City was a great gathering; I was extraordinarily blessed. May the positive spirit we enjoyed last week carry us through the year ahead, which holds many challenges and opportunities. Thanks to Bishop Bickerton and our Conference Sessions Team for a job very well done. Annual Conference 2010 was certainly a means of grace.

William Abraham on the Importance of Doctrine

"In the end, the church cannot endure without a body of systematic and coherent doctrine. This was not the problem Wesley faced two centuries ago. His challenge was to take the doctrine the church already possessed in her canonical traditions and make it accessible to the masses of his day. Hence, he did not make doctrine a high priority in his efforts to renew the church of his day.

"Two hundred years later, the situation is radically reversed. We have become so doctrinally indifferent and illiterate that the church is starved of intellectual content. Indeed in many quarters the church has become internally secularized. It has no shared public discourse of its own, other than that borrowed from the secular world, to think through its pastoral care, its mission in the world, its evangelism, and its internal administration. Hence pastoral care is reduced to therapy, mission to sociopolitical action, evangelism to church growth, academic theology to amateur philosophical inquiry, and church administration to total quality management.

"To be sure, only a fool would claim that we cannot learn from the best secular inquiries of our day...Yet it is patently obvious that the Christian tradition has its own special way of thinking about its healing care, its mission, its evangelism, its internal structures, and the like. That special way of thinking is inescapably doctrinal...

"The recovery of doctrinal identity is not then some abstract exercise in constitutional archaeology; it is integral to the deep renewal of the life and work of the church in the current generation."

(William Abraham in Waking from Doctrinal Amnesia: The Healing
of Doctrine in the United Methodist Church, pp. 104-105)

thx to Jonathan Marlowe

The Scandal That Doesn't Need to Be

The recent news that the Obama White House may have offered jobs to Democrat candidates Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff if they chose not to run for office against fellow party opponents seems to be gaining steam. Almost every day, a new bit of information is revealed, and it's looking more ugly.

In my opinion, however, this does not (or did not) have to be a major scandal. It may well be that folks in the White House were simply not aware of a law that, while important, is relatively obscure (at least to the public-at-large). Frankly, I'd never heard of this law, which prohibits job offers to potential candidates (considered institutional interference in democracy), prior to the Joe Sestak story. I assumed that this sort of thing happened a lot in BOTH parties, regardless of how dirty it looks.

True, ignorance of the law is no excuse, especially from the branch of government which exists to enforce the law. But I sincerely doubt that President Obama meant to do anything illegal in this instance; my gut feeling is that the people around him failed to act and advise appropriately. The president seems to have surrounded himself with some pretty mistake-prone people, in my opinion, and they've often given him some bad advice.

But the incident has been handled poorly from Day 1. I wish the President would simply have pulled a mea culpa, admitting that something inappropriate had occurred and that he was holding the proper folks accountable. A few firings could then have stopped the story dead in its tracks. Instead, we've gotten mysterious denials, incomplete statements, and a total lack of clarity. This relatively minor issue did not have to become a major scandal, but it is becoming such because of poor handling.

The other thing that bothers me about this story is the assumption that a political opponent is involved in scandal. Not every President is personally corrupt a la Nixon or Clinton. Bush and Obama, for instance, seem to be two decent men with whom I have disagreements, and who both have made mistakes. Both, however, have seen their opponents assuming the worst. The constant search in Washington for "the next scandal", the presumption that one's opponent is also one's enemy and that he/she must be up to no good is no way to run a nation. I pray we get to the point where we can disagree without assuming our opponent is evil or their administration scandal-ridden rather than simply wrong.

Thomas Oden on Inclusivity & Christian Tradition

"That word ('inclusive') remains the key shibboleth of my hyper-liberated generation. We sought to be inclusive but managed to be so only within the strict limits of modern ideologies trapped in secular premises. In this captivity we systematically excluded most premodern wisdom. Now I experience a gracious sense of multigenerational inclusion in the communion of saints. Those saints precede and transcend modern life and will survive its death. The faithful belong to a much more inclusive communion than is even conceivable within the limits of modern ideologies...

"Now I revel in the very premises I once carefully learned to set aside: the triune mystery, the preexistent Logos, the radical depth of sin passing through the generations, the risen Lord, the grace of baptism...

"Rather than interpreting the texts, I found the text interpreting me...

"It is the winter season for rigorous Christian teaching. Modernity is a winter season for classical Christianity. Spring will come, but only to those who have survived the winter."

(quotes taken from various places in The Rebirth of Orthodoxy
and Agenda for Theology, both by Thomas C. Oden)

thx to Jonathan Marlowe

Woody Allen & Roman Polanski, Justice & Forgiveness

Clearly, Woody Allen doesn't get it.

At the recent Cannes Film Festival in France, the Hollywood legend was asked about the plight of fellow director Roman Polanski. Polanski, as you may know, was charged in California with raping a 13 year old girl in the early 1980s. He fled the United States and has since been living comfortably in Europe (primarily France), where he has continued his career, winning an Oscar in 2002 for The Pianist.

Allen responded - amazingly:

It’s something that happened many years ago...He has suffered, he has not been allowed to go to the United States. He was embarrassed by the whole thing...He's an artist, he's a nice person, he did something wrong and he paid for it. They [his critics] are not happy unless he pays the rest of his life. They would be happy if they could execute him in a firing squad. Enough is enough.

I have to wonder if Allen realizes exactly what he said. He suggested - no, he unequivocally stated - that embarrassment is an acceptable punishment for raping a child. Is de facto exile from the United States - to live comfortably abroad while continuing a lucrative career - acceptable punishment? Should we not pursue criminal charges against someone who is a "nice person", evidence be damned?

Woody Allen is, like Polanski, an excellent filmmaker. But his notions of justice are bizarre, to say the least. True, if Polanski were to return to California and go to prison, that would still not be a "just" punishment for raping a child. But it would be a step in the right direction.

Kudos to actor Michael Douglas, who refused to sign a petition in support of Polanski (which Allen dutifully signed), saying that it would be "unfair" for him to sign a petition for "somebody who did break the law." I sincerely hope that the bulk of the Hollywood community and the rest of the American Radical Left favors Douglas' approach rather than that of Woody Allen.

The Christian faith is all about forgiveness, to be sure. But implicit in Jesus' call to discipleship is a call to repent that we might know forgiveness, both at the beginning of his earthly ministry and near its end. In fact, Jesus always connected penitence with forgiveness, and penitence carries with it the notion of "penance", a desire to be forgiven and to "make things right". Polanski can indeed know forgiveness for even this vile crime, but it seems to me that penitence needs to be a part of his plan if he is sincere. Being a "nice person", unfortunately, isn't enough.

Pre-Annual Conference Prayer list

As we prepare for Annual Conference, there are a few important items about which those of us in Western PA should be praying diligently.

* Bishop Bickerton, who will again be presiding over our Conference...pray that the Spirit would guide him, protect him & his family, and fill him with wisdom & joy;

* The Cabinet, which has done much appointive work in recent months (led, of course, by our Bishop), and which still has work to do...pray that the Cabinet will also have wisdom & an attentiveness to the Holy Spirit;

* The Conference Sessions Team, led by Barb Moore & Mark Goswick; these wonderful folks work tirelessly to make everything function in Grove City for us...pray that they would have the strength & stamina to finish their work for (and during) our 2010 session;

* Our Youth Ministry Team, led by Renaye Hoffman; one can hardly imagine how our Conference gatherings would look in any meaningful sense - functionally & spiritually - without the youth, who help with the proceedings and bring so much to the table in terms of mission & focus...pray that they are blessed & that the Spirit speaks to them & through them in Grove City;

* Our 2011 Conference Budget...pray that a missional heart will fill us all and that the Lord's will prevails;

* Prep for the 2012 General & Jurisdictional Conferences...pray that our work would bear good fruit & that those ultimately elected to represent Western PA will be filled with the Holy Spirit in every way;

* Legislation presented...pray that God will guide us & that every item passed would further Kingdom work in our region and around the globe.

* Additionally, we will likely begin work on a restructuring of our Annual Conference, as our Connectional Table is requesting permission to form a task force to present a plan possibly as early as 2011. Pray for the Connectional Table, chairperson Greg Cox, and the task force which will be formed, that the Lord will speak his vision to them.

Click here to view our Pre-Conference Journal .

Click here to see my friend Bob Zilhaver's take on our possible new staffing structure.

Click here to see Bob Zilhaver's take on the possibility of reducing the number of District Superintendents.

The Missional Church...simple

This is a good brief summary of 21st century missional reality.

Most United Methodists & United Methodist congregations are (in my humble opinion) "trapped" in the model that begins around 0:07.

Annual Conference & denominational leadership tend to be (in my humble opinion) somewhere around 0:40.

Those models have both been effective, but both are dated (they're SO 20th century).

21st century "missional ministry", which actually refers back to an earlier time, begins around 1:15.

Definitely worth some prayerful reflection...

My Favorite U2 song...

...and also the subject of today's sermon on John 20:24-29.

A Lenten parable

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death —
even death on a cross."

- Philippians 2:5-8 (NRSV)

One Sunday in worship, a congregation received a rather large family as visitors.

After the service, the family spoke with the pastor, explaining that they had been members of another neighborhood congregation but were looking for a new church home that would serve their needs. They proceeded to begin asking the pastor various questions about the ministry and life of her congregation.

The pastor interrupted them by asking questions about their family and their activities, both in and out of church. “I’m not sure that our congregation is the place for you,“ the pastor told them, “for when it comes to joining our fellowship, we are far more interested in those who are willing to serve than those who are willing to be served.”

Best Jesus movies

1 - Jesus of Nazareth (1977)

2 - Ben Hur (1959)

3 - The Passion of the Christ (2004)

4 - The Miracle Maker (2000)

5 - King of Kings (1961)

6 - The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

7 - Intolerance (1916)

8 - Jesus (2000)

9 - Jesus (1979)

10 - Mary, the Mother of Jesus (1999)

20 Most Important Methodist Theologians

Jonathan Marlowe has started a great series of posts on the "20 Most Important Methodist Theologians". John Meunier has started an aggregate page to collect the links.

Jonathan Marlowe's write-ups and his blog, "The Ivy Bush", can be read here.

John Meunier's aggregate list can be read here.

hat tip to Allan R. Bevere