Starfish & Spiders – The UMC as a Starspider

The past seven days have been a whirlwind! Back from Nashville, Asheville, and about to head to Nicaragua on a mission trip. I was in Nashville for a Connectional Table meeting and then had the pleasure of preaching at Lake Junaluska on Friday night as well as doing a Bible Study on Sunday morning for the South Carolina Laity Convocation. We had fun and great fellowship – in both places.  Well, almost, except that the Connectional Table is at a critical juncture for the denomination.

In the midst of thinking about both the UMC and the South Carolina Annual Conference in particular I am struck by a nagging question: “Where is God leading us next?” In South Carolina we have much to celebrate. We’re the 5th largest annual conference in the US. Professions of faith are on the rise in the Columbia District and we paid out 98.9% on our connectional giving responsibilities. Putting this district’s numbers on a dashboard of vital congregations is exciting. I just got off the phone with one of the clergy in the district who is doing an absolutely phenomenal ministry in partnership with extraordinary laity. The church is booming! That same kind of good news is happening all over the district!

I wish I could say the same about the denomination. Maybe I can? Regretfully, however, I saw the DVD “UMC Realities” with its somber Gothic-sounding music and terrible news that we’re graying out, dying out, less inclusive, and have fewer and fewer young people. That was the message. It may not be the reality that I see in SC and in the Columbia District, but it’s so true in too many places. I have hope, though! Aesop was correct and it wasn’t a fable: “Where water has once flowed, it can more easily flow again.” The waters of baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit have been the current we’ve ridden on before in the UMC and God float this boat again!

I don’t think changing the UMC’s structure will have as much to do with it as folks at the Connectional Table think. The Interim Operations Team (IOT) has offered its report. We approved it, though we went through multiple iterations to get to a place of semi-consensus. Honestly, do we think that buying into a so-called new business model is going to reshape the church and engender hopeful enthusiastic results? I certainly hope we’re not that tied to 20th century thinking! Aren’t we all tired of hearkening back to the good old days that must not have been that good or we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today? Isn’t Jesus the Lord of Resurrection which means that something has to die for there to be new life, that the New Jerusalem is our goal more than tired thinking that wants to go back to the Garden of Eden? Where we’re headed is better!

Just one example of old thinking that worries me from the Connectional Table’s work last week: a set aside bishop and a central office. Hey, I like bishops. I think they are critical for our denominational renewal, especially if they focus on their annual conferences. However, as the permutations of the IOT’s report dribbled out to the Connectional Table the set-aside Bishop was named at most the “Head of Communion” and at least “President of the Council of Bishops.” Either one is a little much for a denomination that has a historic balance between its two constitutive principles of conferences and bishops. This throws the equation off-balance. Now I can see why having a “United Methodist Center for Connectional Mission and Ministry” and a quasi-pope are great business ideas to those who like  20th century-like corporate structures and centralization. I’m worried that our going from our current model of 13 siloed boards and agencies with 565 directors to one single center run by a 13 member Board of Directors is more of the same but worse.

I’ve got a book I want you to read. On our Columbia District Clergy Retreat in early September we’re headed to Mt. Mitchell for camping and reflection. We’re discussing the book The Starfish and the Spider with its subtitle “The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.” Pretty much it says that 21st century thinking is about organic growth with catalysts who step out of the way and people who are invested as equal partners. My summary with implications for the UMC: Connectionalism works best when its horizontal and/or circular! Starfish that lose a point grow a new one. When they’re cut in two, they don’t die, they multiply! A spider, on the other hand, dies when you smack its head. I tend to smack the whole bug and that’s what has happened to the UMC. We’ve  been smacked. We have lost a lot of our relevance to people because we don’t talk enough about Jesus and we don’t just get out there and be like starfish and multiply!

Central control systems are easily killed, and we’re about to put almost all of our institutional eggs in a couple of baskets – a set-aside bishop, a central office of ministry, and a small board of directors? Give me a break! Now I don’t want to give away the hopeful chapter at the end of the Starfish book but I will say this much: When we are at our best as a denomination we are starspiders, a hybrid of centralization and decentralization. Yes, there’s an important role for the Council of Bishops, General Conference, and the entities whether they’re called Boards and Agencies or some sort of central office. The bottom line is that all of these centralized functions MUST resource the decentralized local churches that live where the tentacles hit the sand! Growth is not top-down and that’s what bugs me about this report. Hey, by the way, just to put a polity/legal bug, pun intended, in your ear: read Pars. 140 & 2509 in the 2008 Book of Discipline and see what hits you. I look forward to your thoughts!

Coming Clean

The great novelist Flannery O’Connor, known for surprise endings and plot twists that can turn a reader upside down, wrote these matter-of-fact words, “You shall know and do the truth . . . and the truth will make you odd.” We may feel odd in today’s world when we live truthfully. Ethics as defined by the dictionary is “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation.” I’m glad the definition started with the word, “discipline.” Doing the right thing, believing the truth and living truthfully, takes extraordinary discipline.

For example, 20,000 middle-and high-schoolers were surveyed by the Josephson Institute of Ethics–a non-profit organization in Marina del Rey, California, devoted to character education. Ninety-two percent of the teenagers admitted having lied to their parents in the previous year, and 73 percent characterized themselves as “serial liars,” meaning they told lies weekly. Despite these admissions, 91 percent of all respondents said they were “satisfied with my own ethics and character.” That’s a scary thing–when we knowingly misrepresent the truth and we are “satisfied with my own ethics and character.” Living truthfully may make you odd in today’s world.

Lenten season dares us to “fess up” to our shortcomings and that takes truth telling. Most of us would rather talk about what’s wrong with everybody else but ourselves. We have the Cleopatra Syndrome, so called because she was the Queen of DENIAL. Jesus came to expose the denying lies of those who felt smug in their self-righteousness and to bring relief to those who felt imprisoned by their unrighteousness. He told it like it was about both groups. He wanted both groups to come clean, tell the truth and experience the freedom that can only come from having no secrets from God.

With the woman at the well Jesus dodged her non-answers and went straight to the jugular about her many marriages and live-in lover. It was her honesty that finally opened her eyes to both Jesus and her own salvation. But she had to tell the truth to get there! Honesty is the best policy, especially honesty with God! He already knows what we’re thinking anyway, so why don’t we turn those ugly worrisome thoughts into prayers?

Only God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. Only God has the power to do all things, be all places, and know all things. Let’s give God his due. If God already knows everything about us, plus loves us, then aren’t we neglecting the best opportunity for real help when the going gets rough? Next time you find yourself in a predicament and are already planning your exit strategy with not-so-truthful ease, turn to God instead. Jesus is more than ready and able to help you. All He asks is for us to be honest. Sounds like a good Lenten discipline to me.

Ash Wednesday

As I ponder today as Ash Wednesday, I’m wondering how I will observe this Lenten Season. It may be easier this year than most to give up things for Lent. In these economic times it is an easy choice to give up tangible things, but what about the intangible attitudes and wrong thinking? As a District Superintendent it is easy to get out of the cyclic nature of the church year and yield to the Conference Year: Charge Conferences, Conference Meetings, Appointment-making, etc. I need today as a reminder to stay in touch with the Church Year and that God’s grace and spiritual nourishment are the only food for my soul. All the Conference stuff is secondary to my being in God’s will as an individual child of God. I need Lent!

Lenten season is a time set aside forty days before Easter, not counting Sundays, when we take an introspective look at our lives. The forty days are reminiscent of Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. The word “Lent” comes from an older root word, “lencten.” Our word “lengthen” has this as its source. Just as the days are lengthening with the approaching spring, we should also lengthen the time spent on spiritual disciplines like worship, Sunday School, prayer, Bible Study, and service to others. We should do everything possible to keep our minds out of trouble and on God.

 

Someone asked quite pointedly, “Why is it that opportunity knocks only once, yet temptation bangs on the door constantly?” Have you ever noticed that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to morality? Have you ever noticed that when we decide to do something wrong the means are so readily available? It is also a lot easier to point out the sins of others than our own.

An older priest and a novitiate were walking through the meadow when they came to a swollen creek. Beside the creek was a beautiful young maiden. The older priest offered to carry her on his back across the creek. The younger novice looked on with jealousy and desire. Miles later, long after they had left the maiden behind, the younger priest could not contain himself any longer. He asked the older priest why he had helped the young maiden. Didn’t he understand that what he had done looked improper at the very least? Hadn’t the older priest warned the younger man not to put himself in such situations? The older priest replied, “I left the maiden behind at the river bank, why are you carrying her now?”

What am I carrying that I don’t need to. Lent reminds me that Jesus is my All in All. Amen.