An ongoing war

It’s time to draw a few conclusions from the recent split of the United Methodist Church.

First, some background: At the 2016 General Conference, so-called “conservatives” created a path for disaffiliation for churches that did not agree with the draconian anti-gay measures they pushed through. The idea was that “progressive” churches could leave the church if they did not like the new rules.

A tidal wave of response made it clear that by the 2020 General Conference, “progressives” would be in control, and all the restrictions about sexuality that “conservatives” had jammed down everyone’s throats would be thrown out.

So “conservatives” bailed. They took the path of disaffiliation that they had created for “progressives” to leave, and they parted ways with their home church. More than 7,600 churches left – about one fourth the denomination. More than half of those leaving decided to join the new Global Methodist Church.

According to one study, 71% of disaffiliating churches came from the Southeast and South Central jurisdictions. These were always more conservative than other areas. In the Northwest Texas Conference, 81% of churches left. In the North Alabama Conference, 52% of churches left.

You should note that most churches that left were in the slave states that once tried to leave the union under the Confederacy.

In the years following the Civil War, these states fought Reconstruction hard. They created a “Jim Crow” system of near-slavery that was only partly dismantled during the human rights struggles of the 1960s. It remains in place, in part, in many areas today, though it goes by many misleading and prettified names.

In fact, I would argue that some of these states remain slave states today. They do not allow the legal enslavement of other human beings, but they still promote public policies that exalt some people at the expense of others and oppress or enslave other people to do it.

Some observers see the creation of the Global Methodist Church in terms of the 1845 split of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a split that created a Northern church opposing slavery and a Southern church embracing slavery.

I go even farther than that. I see the revolt against the United Methodist Church as a rebellion against freedom that seeks to form a new Confederacy where forms of human slavery are prettified, justified and promoted.

In their efforts to leave the United Methodist Church, many “conservatives” said that the UMC no longer believed in biblical authority. “Progressives” replied that the issue wasn’t biblical authority but rather biblical interpretation.

I think both sides were wrong. Though biblical authority was talked about a lot, the real issue was always culture. “Conservatives” don’t want to rub shoulders with gay and lesbian people, just as others before them (and many still today), don’t want to rub shoulders with Black people.

Southern culture was always about the pride of hierarchy. True Southerners always knew their place, from “poor white trash” to the elites who ruled the roost from their palatial plantation houses. Blacks fit in only as slaves. Gay and lesbian people don’t fit in at all. Their very existence threatens the social order.

White male supremacy ruled Confederate culture. It still does. White males dominate. There is no room for the non-white non-male, especially those who reject male supremacy altogether by rejecting the male-female binary where males always rule by divine authority.

Sometimes we talk about “culture wars” as if they take second place to political or ideological conflict. I don’t think so. I think culture wars are now, and always have been, the ruling factor in all our national conflicts. You’re either with me and my kind or you’re against me and my kind. My kind always has the blessing of God and history, because we’re better than you, and that’s God’s simple truth, so there.

The United Methodist Church is far from perfect, I can testify to that. But it opposes slavery of any kind, so it is standing on the side of truth, justice and the Jesus Way, against all other forces in today’s culture wars. The recent split in the church is still more evidence that our culture wars are far from over.

The question is how we are going to live together, as Methodists and as Americans, when one side simply denies the legitimacy of the other.

You may accuse me of harboring the very attitudes I condemn. Not so, I say. I am willing to live with those with whom I disagree. If only they were willing to live with me and others like me.

Summertime

We had a great family reunion in Colorado last week – both our daughters, plus Linda’s sister and her crew. We didn’t do much hiking. It’s just too early in the season, and some of us just weren’t up for it physically this time.

 As always, we stayed at near Nederland, at Arapaho Ranch, where 10 cabins are strung along Boulder Creek. As always, proprietors Kayla and Maryanne were friendly and accommodating. How many years, off and on, have we been staying at this place?

 The creek was running very high because of spring runoff from upper elevations. Instead of providing a comforting ripple in the background, the creek roared. There was no wading or even fishing; the water was running too fast and hard.

 The younger ones among us did hike to Lake Isabelle, more than three miles above Brainard Lake, but it was not the great experience they were hoping for. Too much snow yet.

 The parking lots at the trailheads above Brainard were closed; they won’t officially open until July 1. This is the Forest Service’s not-so-subtle way of discouraging hiking by making you walk an extra mile or so to the trailheads from the main parking lot by the lake.

Nederland is still a charming mountain town. It doesn’t appear to have changed much from last year. At Crosscut Pizzeria we recognized a wait person from the year before. And at Kaleidoscope Fine Arts Gallery, Jim was happy to chat with Danielle, a local artist he is pleased to see every visit.

Getting to and from Colorado was a trial. We fought a stiff southern wind on I-70 both ways. Driving west, we ran into a dust storm. I’m sure farmers were dismayed to see their topsoil gone with the wind. Happily, we were not part of a four-vehicle pileup a day or so later when visibility was zero.

Also happily, the state of Colorado has seen fit to pave at least some sections of the interstate, though the section east of Burlington is so far below interstate standards that I wonder how it still qualifies.

The weather was warm when we left but miserably hot when we got back. Our lawn mostly died for lack of water (the spigot opened again after we were home, but it’s probably too late for much of it). Opportunistic weeds invaded several flower beds and somehow grew 3 feet or more in only a week.

It’s good to be back, though. Dorothy was right. There’s no place like home – even if it is good to get away sometimes to remind you of that, and wherever you are, it’s always good to be with loved ones.

*  *  *  *  *

At church we are handing out a little Pocket Jesus to one and all. The theme is “Take Jesus With You Wherever You Go.” Of course, the plastic caricature is only a reminder that Jesus is always with us.

On Facebook and elsewhere we share photos of where Jesus has gone with us. The photo that accompanies this post was taken outside our cabin near Nederland. I tried several times to get a decent photo, and this is the best I got. It’s hard to focus on a tiny figure without losing the background. I guess I should have tried harder.

*  *  *  *  *

In the hopper awaiting finishing and publication:

– More thoughts on the United Methodist division.

– Why teaching religion and posting the 10 Commandments in public schools are bad ideas.

– Admirer, fan or follower of Jesus?

– And perhaps a surprise or two.

I hope you’ll stay tuned. I don’t write these things for therapy.

Renewing, not wasting away

What things do you do to renew your spiritual life day by day? What things do you do to strengthen your spirit?

 Here are some thoughts from a message I gave at Resurrection Spring Hill on June 9, 2024. My core text is 2 Corinthians 4:16. “So we do not lose heart,” the Apostle Paul says. “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”

 Getting old is not for sissies.

 I’ve heard that saying for many years, and I’ve listened to many older people say that it’s true. Since I’ve started getting older myself, I can now testify directly that it’s true.

 Call it a statute of limitations. After a certain age, each year seems to bring a new set of limitations.

 For instance, I’ve had periodic back issues for a long time. Lately, though, they’ve been more regular than periodic, and they have become more limiting in what I can do. I do not like this development.

The other day I was leaving K&M Barbecue at the same time that a woman was entering who I thought looked old enough to be my mother, if not my grandmother. She smiled sweetly and held the door open for me. I smiled in return and said, “Thank you.”

I will gladly accept any help I can get it, when I need it. But it sure galls me to admit it when I need it.

In the passage we just read from Second Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is not speaking directly to the indignities of getting older. But I think it’s one of the things he has in mind when he talks about our outer nature wasting away.

A bit earlier in his letter, he suggests that the gospel is both a fragile thing and a strong and resilient thing. “We have this treasure in clay jars,” he says, “so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” (4:7)

Hear that? The power of our message belongs to God. It is strong and resilient. We who proclaim the message are fragile. We’re like clay pots. We’re useful, but we break easily.

Lately I’ve become fond of an old saying that was popularized by New York Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle. He said: “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

I’m never going to run a marathon or have muscles like the Rock, Dwayne Johnson. But there are a lot of things I can still do to take better care of myself: more exercise, healthier diet, less salt, much less processed sugar – you know the drill.

One day, I’ll breathe my last. I can’t stop that from happening, but I can work to postpone it as long as possible.

Meantime, as Paul says, I do not lose heart. Even though my outer nature is wasting away, my inner nature is being renewed day by day. Though my body is growing weaker, my spirit is growing stronger.

That’s what I want to focus on now. What things can we do to renew our spiritual lives day by day? What things can we do to strengthen our spirits regardless of how much our bodies challenge us?

Some things are obvious to those of us who are schooled in the Wesleyan way. We automatically think of what John Wesley called the “means of grace.”

These are the channels that God normally uses to convey God’s grace to us. When we open ourselves to these channels, by acting in certain ways, God’s grace can more freely flow to us.

Some of these channels are of obvious spiritual value. We pray often, and we read scripture, sometimes daily. We worship with others weekly and receive Holy Communion frequently. At a good opportunity, we talk about our spiritual progress with other seekers.

Sometimes we even fast or engage in other acts of self-denial to prove to ourselves that we can live without some things but never without knowing God’s presence.

Other channels of grace are things we do in our daily interaction with other people. These acts fulfill our pledge to do no harm to anyone but to do good to everyone. They might be simple acts of kindness or compassion – such as holding the door for someone – or harder things such as working to feed hungry people or fighting for justice for those who are oppressed.

 Sometimes we do these things out of habit – and there’s nothing wrong with a good habit. Habit is just intentionality that’s embodied, that’s drilled into us through repetition. Such habits help us grow more like Jesus. They build spiritual muscle so that we can be stronger Christ followers.

 When I was a kid, I read a story somewhere that has stuck with me since then. A boy says to his grandfather, “How can I get muscles like yours?” His grandfather says, “Well, let me think about that. Meanwhile, could you chop some firewood for me?”

 Day after day, the boy asks the same question, “How can I get muscles like yours?” Day after day, the grandfather gives him some chore to do. Finally, the boy gets frustrated and asks, “Are you ever going to answer my question?” The grandfather says, “Let me see your arm.” And the boy’s eyes open wide when he sees the muscles he’s developed, through daily exercise of them.

 We build spiritual muscle the same way, by practicing the means of grace day by day. You may not realize it, but when you are intentional and habitual about your growth in grace, you are daily growing closer to Christ and closer to that blessed state we call sanctification.

Some of those means of grace that I mentioned, I’m just not good at. Ever try journaling to keep track of your spiritual progress? I’ve tried it, and I’m terrible at it. Can’t keep it up longer than a few days at a time.

Just the other day, I tried to remember something and discovered that I just couldn’t tie it to a particular time or place. Maybe at the least we should do is keep a journal-style listing of events, and when and where they happened.

Or as one woman suggested in our discussion at worship this morning, you can record big events on a calendar and keep transferring them to a new calendar every year. Whether you are turning the pages of a journal or a calendar, such “tickler” entries could well trigger deeper memories.

Thankfulness is another way of keeping our spirits alive to the work of God in our midst. Maybe especially important here is thankfulness for loved ones whom we know will not be with us much longer. What can we do to cherish and enrich the time we still have together?

Another person suggested self-guided meditation. I should have followed up more on that one, Dale. Meditation and contemplation, though not the same, are time-honored ways of connecting our spirits with the Holy Spirit.

I must confess that I’m not as good as I want to be at daily Bible reading. I can easily do a deep reading in the gospels or one of Paul’s letters, but maintaining a daily reading habit seems to be beyond me right now. I need to keep working on this.

Ever try reading the whole Bible in one year? Several people in our group this morning have done it. What a marathon! I did it once, and I vowed to never do it again. Too much pressure to read too much at a time and not enough time to absorb what you’ve read.

I read a Bible-in-a-year version of Ken Taylor’s Living Bible. It was a paraphrase of the Bible, not a real translation, and it was not always a faithful paraphrase.

I kept running across passages I’d never heard before, and I kept saying to myself, “I never knew that was in the Bible!” Then I looked up those passages in several Bible translations, and I discovered that those things weren’t in the Bible at all. They were just Ken Taylor’s imagination.

As to fasting – I’ve never been very good at it, and after I developed diabetes I’ve been advised to avoid fasting, so I guess I’ve got a good excuse to skip it. You don’t have to fast for long periods, such as several days in a row. A one-day fast, from sundown one day to noon or sundown the next, is one time-honored way of fasting.

OK, let’s wrap this up.

Regardless of how much our bodies are serving or failing us right now, and how much we have or haven’t been working on building spiritual muscle, still, Paul says we do not lose hope. Why is that? Because it ultimately depends not on us but on God.

We need to trust in the extraordinary power of God working in and through us. It doesn’t come from us. It comes from God. But it can flow through us in the same way that God’s grace flows into us.

Each of us is, perhaps inevitably, focused on our personal weaknesses and the ways we cannot fulfill God’s mission in our lives. But it doesn’t all depend on us, does it? Our story is important, but each of us has just a small part in a greater story – and that is God’s redemption of the whole world.

We look only at what we can see, and that is very limited. What we cannot see is God working throughout the universe making good things happen in ways that are visible and ways that are not visible, through actions large and small, sometimes taken by people just like you and me.

So we don’t lose heart. Indeed, we take heart because we know we serve an awesome God who is in charge of making good in all things.

In the wind

God’s Holy Spirit is always on the move, but not always in ways we can see or understand.

 In Chapter 3 of the gospel of John, a religious leader named Nicodemus visits Jesus at night. In honor of the Nickelodeon TV series, this scene (John 3:1-8) has long been known as “Nick at Nite.”

Why does Nicodemus approach Jesus at night?

It’s not because he’s afraid to be seen with Jesus in public in the daytime. That’s a sad bit of antisemitism poorly disguised as biblical commentary.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee, and Jesus often differs with Pharisees sharply, but they get along well enough that Jesus dines with them frequently, and in Luke 13:31 we read that Pharisees warn him when Herod plots to kill him.

 No, Nicodemus visits Jesus at night because he’s a genuine seeker.

 He simply wants to have an extended conversation with this exciting new teacher. Evening is the traditional time for such conversation. Work’s done for the day. Everyone’s tired physically but eager to engage mentally, so they get together and talk about God.

 Nick is no slouch. He goes directly to the source – and he gets a lot more than he bargained for.

 I’m going to skip over the part about his confusion over what it means to be “born again” or “born from above.” That’s a whole other conversation. I want to focus on Jesus’ statement about the work of the Holy Spirit.

He says: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

You live in Kansas, so you know about wind, don’t you?

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving south to Paola from my home in Spring Hill. I drove into a stiff and sometimes nasty south wind all the way. By the time I left town, the wind had shifted. Now it was blowing from the north. I drove into a stiff and sometimes nasty north wind coming home.

In our spiritual lives, it sometimes seems like we are moving with the wind of the Spirit, and sometimes it feels like we are driving against it.

This morning I want to talk about a couple of ways that United Methodists in Kansas are trying to move with the Spirit and are sometimes buffeted by a wind from somewhere – from where we may not be sure.

The first topic is Spring Hill United Methodist Church. It’s only a few minutes from our home, and Linda and I have become active there over the last year and a half.

In February, the church voted to close so we can become the seventh location of Church of the Resurrection. While some renovation is done on the main building this summer, services are conducted in the education wing. Linda and I and two others are leading worship until we reopen in the fall as Resurrection Spring Hill.

Angie McCarty, who has been our part-time pastor, will become full-time pastor and provide pastoral care and leadership. Resurrection pastor Adam Hamilton will preach most of the time via video screen.

This is a difficult transition for a church that’s 165 years old, but it offers great hope for a United Methodist presence in southern Johnson County, and Linda and I are happy and excited to be part of it. I’ll say much more about this in coming days, so stay tuned.

The second topic is redistricting in the Great Plains Conference. Several years ago we formed the Great Plains Annual Conference. We did it by combining  three smaller conferences – Kansas East and Kansas West and Nebraska – into one huge conference. Since then we’ve had this administrative nightmare involving too many districts and too many district superintendents.

When our annual conference meets later this week, lay and clergy delegates will be asked to reduce the number of districts from 17 to 10. That’s still a lot of districts, but we’re covering a huge amount of territory here.

The Five Rivers District, where I have served for nearly 20 years, gets split in half. The northern half, where I live, is combined with what is now the Kansas City District and part of the Topeka District. The southern half is combined with what is now the Parsons District.

The new district lines mean that a couple of longstanding charges are split.  Parker, Beagle & Fontana is no more. Beagle and Fontana stay with Paola in the northeastern district, but Parker goes into the southeastern district. Similarly, the New Lancaster-LyCygne charge divides, New Lancaster moving to the northeastern district and LyCygne to the southeastern.

The proposal also calls for an annual District Conference. That’s just what we all need, isn’t it? Another church meeting.

However you look at it, change is ahead. We have to trust the Spirit that good things are in the wind, even if it takes awhile for them to become apparent.

Understand, I’m not endorsing this new district map as the work of the Spirit. I’m just saying that however good or bad it is, the Spirit will be working for good in it. Whether a church structure is new or old, the Spirit is always working for good in it. Sometimes the new makes the Spirit’s work easier. Sometimes it makes it harder.

The next topic I want to mention is the General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

It concluded several weeks ago. Though it occurred in 2024, it’s technically the 2020 conference, but it was long delayed by covid and the related problems of overseas delegates having trouble getting visas so they could attend.

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about General Conference, and I guarantee you that much of what you have heard is a lie. The biggest lie you’ve probably heard is that the church is now turning gay, and that thousands, perhaps millions, of gay people are going to start flooding our doors to get in.

What actually happened is that the church is no longer violently anti-gay. But it is not now even remotely pro-gay. Rather, it is now more or less neutral. Our status is now a kind of a theological beige.

And for that change in direction do you really think gay people are going to come streaming into the church? Gimme a break.

For the last 52 years, the United Methodist Church has told gay people that they are dirt. We did it in 1972, when the first bit of anti-gay language was slipped into the Book of Discipline by a last-minute gambit at the end of our first General Conference after the merger that created the church in 1968. At every general conference since then, anti-gay forces have tightened the screws. It happened in 1976, and 1980, and 1984, and 1988, and 1992, and 1996, and 2000, and 2004 and 2008 and 2012 and 2016.

Given that track record, why would any gay person want to be United Methodist? Remarkably, a few stayed with us the whole time. Even more remarkably, a few who were kicked out of the church have decided to come back. Most will not.

 After giving you a little background, I’ll tell you what I think really happened at General Conference. In what follows, I will use the terms “conservative” and “progressive” only for convenience, because I think both terms are very misleading.

 At the 2016 General Conference, conservatives prevailed yet again. This time they passed what they called the Traditional Plan. It’s traditional only if your tradition includes the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.

 One example: Under this plan, If I as a pastor were to give a cup of cool water to a gay person and someone filed a complaint against me, I would immediately be hustled out of my job and out of the church without trial, without right of appeal, without any form of recourse.

There’d be no talk of my faith in Jesus Christ because that would be irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that I violated someone’s standard of purity regarding gay people.

Having passed this awful Traditional Plan, conservatives allowed churches that disagreed a way out: a path of disaffiliation. Then there occurred a seismic event that they did not anticipate. It was a wave of reaction so intense that it was obvious that progressives were going to undo all this garbage at the 2020 General Conference.

So conservatives bailed. They took the exit plan they’d devised for progressives, and they left the church in droves. Many of them went to the new Global Methodist Church.

That 2020 General Conference finally happened this year, in 2024, and progressives undid a lot of the damage conservatives had done over the previous 50 years. Time will tell whether it is enough to keep the church alive and healthy.

One thing the conference did is allow the ordination of all qualified candidates for ministry, regardless of their sexuality. This means that gay and lesbian pastors may soon be appointed to serve in our churches. But they will not be appointed to churches that might reject them because of their sexual identity.

This is longstanding practice. The bishop and the cabinet always work for a good match in appointments. They are not going to deliberately create a situation where church and pastor are at odds.

In fact, gay and lesbian pastors have been serving in our churches for years, and you haven’t heard much about it because the churches they serve have accepted them for who they are, whatever their sexuality.

The conference also removed a ban on clergy from officiating at homosexual unions and churches from hosting such events. However, clergy are not required to perform such services, and churches are not required to host them.

Again, this is just good practice. You cannot tell people to do something that goes against their conscience; you must allow everyone the opportunity to act on their conscience.

A lot of other things happened at General Conference. Not everything had anything to do with human sexuality. But the church has been stuck arguing over this stuff for more than 50 years, and it has greatly distracted us from doing genuine ministry.

(If I believed in conspiracy theories, I would argue that distracting us from our task was the whole point all along. )

We’re supposed to keep the main thing the main thing, but we’ve been sidetracked for a long time. Now finally we have cleared the deck (pardon the mixed metaphor), and we should be able to focus on what we’re supposed to be about, which is becoming and making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Change is always hard. As I said earlier, however good or bad a change proves to be, the Holy Spirit is always working for good in it.

And the Holy Spirit is always working for good in you as well. The question is how much you are cooperating.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, frequently asked his followers: “How is it with your soul?” Are you at peace with God and at peace with your neighbor? What is your relationship with God? What is your relationship with others? Is your heart filled with love, or has it been tainted by other things?

These are key questions in our spiritual life. They are far more important than our opinions about human sexuality. If you want to focus your spiritual life on the sex life of others, that’s your concern. But kindly keep Jesus out of it.

(Parts of this post come from a message delivered June 2, 2024, at Paola United Methodist Church.)

Special spaces

I really don’t have a “bucket list,” though there are a few places I have always wanted to see not in a photograph but with my own eyes. One of those is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

 Linda and I got to tour it during our “Second Missionary Journeys of Paul” cruise last fall. (No, Paul never got there, but when the cruise starts at Istanbul, you go to Hagia Sophia.) It was our first day off the plane, and I was feeling a little jet-lagged, but it was still a wonder-filled experience.

 Turns out, it’s a good thing we saw it when we did. Turkish authorities have now severely restricted visits by foreign tourists.

 Two reasons are normally cited: “overtourism,” and the desire of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to show off for his constituency.

 “Overtourism,” I get. To get inside, we had to stand in a long line (I didn’t time it, but the wait was at least an hourlong wait), and once we got inside, it was wall-to-wall people. The noise of voices and the constant jostling of people all around us made it difficult to fully appreciate the experience.

Still, it’s such an awesome place that just being there was enough for me.

Some background: Hagia Sophia began its life around 325 AD/CE as a Christian church built over a pagan temple. Over the years, earthquakes or fire destroyed the church several times. Finally, in 537, a magnificent Byzantine structure was built that has lasted to this day, though repaired and restored several times.

When Constantinople passed from Christian to Moslem control, the church became a mosque, and several minarets were added. When the Turkish government took a secular turn in the 1930s, it became a museum. In 2020, Erdoğan made it a mosque again, to considerable international uproar. Moslem symbols now conceal many Christian symbols, but until early this year the mosque was still open to all.

As of Jan. 15, Erdoğan tightened control over it. Foreigners now have to pay 35 euros ($37.80 at the current rate) just to get in, and they can’t enter the main area where you get the best interior views of the structure.

That’s a shame for tourists, though I imagine Muslim worshippers appreciate being able to pray in a space that’s no longer crowded with gawking visitors.

Some spaces are just special. They have an essential holiness about them. Hagia Sophia is one of those spaces. It’s a “thin space” in the Celtic vernacular – a place where heaven and earth meet and are so close together that you can feel vibrations from the other side.

Yes, it’s a magnificent structure. But it’s more than that. It’s a place where you can hear God whispering, “I am here” – and more: “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

I am sorry that more outsiders will not have the experience of standing in the heart of the Hagia Sophia and feeling God’s presence. It’s the result of a shortsighted policy pushed by an authoritarian leader.

Usually, buildings don’t “do it” for me. The Blue Mosque near Hagia Sophia is also an amazing place. Also amazing were many of the churches and other holy sites we visited last fall in Greece – especially the chapel of the Varlaam monastery built atop a sandstone monolith at Meteora.

But I generally prefer the outdoors for spiritual experiences: Spence Field off Thunderhead Mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains, or Lake Isabelle in the Indian Peaks Wilderness of Colorado.

Is there a special place where you can feel God speaking to you? If you don’t have one, maybe finding it should be on your “bucket list.”