The 12 Days of Christmas

Here's a copy of my column for the local paper that will come out today. Happy reading and have a very merry Christmas - all 12 days of it.

Soon the decorations will be put away. We’ll drive down the streets and see just white street lights. No colored lights, no decorated trees. Inside our homes snow globes and poinsettias, Christmas trees and ornaments, will all disappear. We’ve spent weeks getting ready, and on December 26^th we’ll start getting ready to take it all down. It wasn’t always that way, though. In the traditional Christian calendar a holiday or festival day is the beginning of a season, not the end. Easter marks the beginning of the 50 Days of Easter, ending on Pentecost. In the same way, Christmas Day is not the end of the Christmas season. It’s the beginning. Just like the song says, traditionally there are 12 days of Christmas, from December 25^th until January 6^th , the day of Epiphany when, depending on your tradition, Christians celebrate either the 3 Wise Men arrives to see Jesus or the Baptism of Jesus. Our society moves so quickly. One holiday ends and we’re ready for the next one to begin. We often suggest that we should try to keep the “Christmas Spirit” alive 365 days a year, but we don’t get very many suggestions for how we can remember to do that. Perhaps one suggestion could be simply that this year we slow down a little. Let’s wait to put the decorations away for 12 days, until the end of the traditional Christmas season. Let’s spend 12 extra days focusing on what we’ve been preparing for these last several weeks. Put away one or two decorations each day giving thanks for the person who gave it to you. Light a candle each day and say a prayer of thanksgiving for one reason you are grateful to God for Christmas and for Christ. Do a “random act of kindness” each of the twelve days. Keep playing your Christmas music (preferably music with more references to shepherds and wise men than reindeer and sleighs). Maybe most of us can’t spend the whole year in the “Christmas spirit” even though we know we should. If that’s you, let’s start simple. Try just twelve days and see how it goes. Maybe we’ll come away inspired to turn the twelve days into twelve months and we will truly celebrate the miracle of the baby born in Bethlehem the whole year long as God intends for us to do.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm taking a full 2 days off, which I haven't done for awhile, and then after Sunday have a full week off becasue of eye surgery (minor) on Monday. God's blessings to all of you

the election

Just got back from voting, and I voted for ... someone who's name I will not reveal! It's my right! But I'm happy to vote. Looks to me like as election day has neared the polls have tightened up. My guess is that it will be a closer election than Obama would want but not quite as close as McCain would want. I'll go ahead and predict wins in the electoral vote 302-236 and that the Democrats gain 8 seats in the Senate. I'll be up watching tonight just for the political intrigue.

Whoever wins, beginning on November 5th it's our job as Americans to be supportive of the President-elect and our job as Christian to pray for the person who will be in office to make decisions that will benefit our country and our world. The worst of us comes out in election season when people insult the opposing candidates, even threatening lives in some cases. There have already been reports of voter intimidation. This shouldn't happen in the U.S. When you look around the world, it is amazing how peaceful our transitions in government are. Riots are common in many countries after elections. Civil war breaks out. Leaders are deposed or killed. But not here. We elect a new leader, sometimes take a new direction as a country, and stick with each other for better or worse. For better or worse, I hope that you will stick in there with our country, encourage others to do the same, and discourage those who would insult, belittle, and begrudge the results, whatever they may be. No election stealing talk if McCain wins, no socialist/communist talk if Obama wins. Just be grateful that win or lose you had the opportunity that so many don't have to cast a vote for the person who will lead the nation.

KEEN

Several of us "younger" clergy in the Kansas Eat Conference are attempting to organize a new way of doing and being United Methodists in Kansas. Among our hopes is to truly live out a connectional polity - to really be one Church, one people, of Jesus Christ. I'm excited by the prospects of younger people taking leadership roles in the Conference and asserting effective leadership in local churches. At the same time, I am aware of some more experienced pastors who are leery. I would imagine that if I had been a pastor for 20-30 years and some of my younger colleagues began saying that we need significant changes in style and leadership that I might be offended or put off. I hope we can all agree that for better or worse we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us. I have too many mentors to count from those who have preceeded me in ministry. Many are still actively and vitally serving churches today. I imagine every generation thinks it can do some things better than the previous generation. I also think every generation gains more from the previous generation than we could ever realize on our own.

So, I am very excited about KEEN. I am excited for the future of the United Methodist "brand" of Christianity in Kansas. I am excited about young leaders stepping up in important ways, respecting but not being overly restricted by precedent and official polity. I also am very thankful for those who have helped shape my spiritual and professional life and who continue to inform my practice of ministry. I hope that we will continue to learn from each other and serve together for years to come.

Essentials and Nonessentials

Last Sunday I finished a series of sermons on "What Makes a Methodist." The last sermon I quoted liberally from Wesley's "Catholic Spirit" sermon. Our focus was on mutual love as a defining mark of Christians and one that takes precedence over many of the specific beliefs and opinions we have. Wesley was also clear, though, that this desire to share love for one another cannot make us mushy about what we believe. We should hold firm to what we beleive are the essentials of the faith while at the same time recognizing that others may hold just as firmly to another set of beliefs. I suggested in the sermon that traditionally for United Methodists, the list of essentials to the faith is pretty short. But I wonder where we might agree and disagree on what is essential. Not for the purposes of starting a debate, but just out of curiosity, what do you think are the "essentials" of Christianity? I'd start with the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, the divinity and resurrection of Jesus. What would you add or take away?

COR Leadership Institute

I'm in a sermon seires called What Makes a Methodist (for those concerned with technicalities I omitted the word "United" before "Methodist" because most of what we're talking about is common to all the denominations that come out of John Wesley's work). Last Sunday the focus was on the Connection. How appropriate that the sermon came just two days after Church of the Resurrection's Leadership Institute. I've been there probably 5 times before and it's always good. This one seemed like the best to me. I really appreciated the messages from Adam Hamilton and from Jim Wallis. The workshops were great. Closing worship was amazing. I thought the best part of all, though, was the simple fact that 500 churches and 1,600 people would gather together from around the nation to work together for a common purpose, making disciples for Jesus Christ. I think this is exactly what John Wesley would want for an Annual Conference (meaning the annual meeting, not the organizatoinal unit). I think it is a partial fulfillment of Jesus' prayer "that they may be one as we are one". I pray the spirit of cooperation and collegialilty will continue.

Church and Politics

A couple weeks ago I posted a blog about politics - not taking a stand for either presidential candidate, but just making a couple observations. A good friend of mine who is also a pastor questioned whether that was a wise thing to do. Members of my congregation could read the post, misunderstand what I was saying, and get upset. Other people think that the Church and pastors should stay out of politics entirely. At the same time, I've seen pastors on Facebook and other places go so far as to endorse a specific candidate. If a pastor does this as an individual rather than from the pulpit or in official church communciations I think it is legal. So here's a question for you: what is the proper relationship between the church (or pastor specifically) and politics? Is personal endorsement outside the pulpit OK? Or can a pastor preach about or make a statement about a particular issue? Are you a pastor who has done so?

How much of a decline are we really in?

I was visiting with a clergy colleague a few weeks ago when the conversation turned to the "decline" of the mainline church. He said we're not really in decline. I thought he'd lost his mind. But I listened anyway and found that his point intersects with a project I'm sorta kinda working on already.

When we say that the mainline churches are in decline, we point to the loss in membership and attendance. There can be no doubt that according to these measurements we are continuing in a multi decade slide. But is a decline in membership and attendance necessarily the same thing as a decline in the church? If the measure of a church is whether we are making and teaching Disicples, maybe not. The question of whether we are declining should really be answered based on whether we are making and growing more or fewer disciples than in earlier times. I think most people understand that membership is not a good statistice to measure disicpleship by. Maybe the apparent decline of the church is due to bloated membership numbers of people who were cultural Christians, not "real" Christians. Perhpas attendance is the same way - maybe we were bloated in the past by people attending worship who weren't really giving their lives to Christ.

I think those are good questions. I still think we're in decline, but I'm beginning to think that even if the numbers decline for several more years to come (as I would expect them to) that we're nearing the bottom. At least in the United Methodist Church I find more people talking about faith, living out their faith, and being excited about faith than ever before. I see a new generation of Christian leaders that have energy and vision. I wonder if the "discipleship decline" is not as steep as we perceive and if we are about to get it turned back around. What do you think?

Seeing Jesus face to face

Last Sunday we had our first Sunday evening worship service in Burlington. It went great - the band was fantastic, 73 people showed up, and there's a really good buzz around about it right now. About 2/3 stayed for dinner afterwards. This coming Sunday small groups begin, so we'll see how that goes!

Here's the best part, though. Some guy named Kevin showed up. Nobody knew Kevin, which in Burlington says something. But he had a great smile and seemed happy to be there. During dinner afterwards he had five servings. A couple church members engaged him in some good conversation. I went up to the Sanctuary to put some stuff away, and one of the members followed me up. She said, "I think he's homeless - he's headed south from Washington. We've got some leftovers - do you think we should offer them to him?"

Well, the sermon was the first in a new series on Methodism. For the first week I focused on Wesley's desire to bring head and heart together, to help people live out the Gospel instead of just talking about it. I even quoted Matthew 25. So of course my answer was yes. Kevin loaded up his food, had some more convesation, and left after giving me a smile and a wink.

On Monday the leadoff question my L3 Incubator group was asked was "where have you seen Jesus face-to-face since we last met." Not only had I seen Jesus, he even winked.

Dirty Politics

Once upon a time I thought both Barack Obama and John McCain were a different breed of politican, wanting to elevate the dialogue and campaigning for the benefit of the American people. I was wrong.

Several weeks ago McCain said that Obama would rather lose the war (in Iraq) than the election. It was maybe the worst thing that I've heard a candidate ever say. I'd have a hard time voting for someone who would say something like that about an opponent. Now, in the wak of Governor Palin's nomination as VP, Obama's Florida spokesperson has said, "Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan, a right-winger or as many Jews call him: a Nazi sympathizer."

First of all, the only evidence I've heard that Palin supported Buchanan is that she wore his button in 1999 when he was campaining in Alaska. She says she voted for Steve Forbes. Wearing a buton when someone is campaigning is more polite than an endorsement. Second, that statement calls Buchannan a "Nazi-sympathizer" and implicitly that Palin supports "Nazi-sympathizers". That is just as outlandish as what McCain said. Obama will undoubtedly distance himself from the comment, but as a self-proclaimed accomplished executive (which he said to butrress the rather weak argument that Palin has more experience than Obama) he should have better control of his organization than to allow such a statement to be released.

I'm an undecided voter, looking for a reason to believe in either candidate and increasingly finding less reason to believe in either of them.

Vice Presidential Candidates

Interesting pick today by John McCain. Interesting response by Obama and the media. So a quick recap:

Obama is the candidate for change. This is why it is OK for him to have so little Washington experience. America wants something new. I'm good with that - I want something new too. He picks Biden (actually my favorite of the early Democratic contenders) who was one of the youngest people to ever be elected to Congress but now is a career insider. He is in many ways the antithesis to Obama, but he definitely shores up Obama's foreign policy cred. He was probably picked for that very reason.

McCain is being portrayed by Obama as the status quo (I say portrayed because the "agree with Bush 95% of the time stat is a classic example of making statistics say what you want them to say). No question he's an insider. No question there's much less energy behind him. So he picks the ultimate outsider, Governor Palin from Alaska. There's probably some Americans who didn't even realize Alaska is a state! She shores up his conservative credentials and also potentially makes him look like more of a change candidate too. In her (very) brief time in office Palin has become legendary for bucking the party and instituting reform.

I find the early Obama response to Palin's nomination interesting. They say McCain can no longer argue that Obama lacks experience because he has put someone with less experience "one heartbeat away" from the Presidency. Two thoughts on how this argument may backfire:

1. On one hand, this may actually legitimize McCain's argument. If the experience issue wasn't an issue why is Obama glad it has now been refuted by McCain's choice? If it is an issue, it's still an issue McCain wins because he's the Presidential candidate, not Palin. If Obama's best argument is that he has more experience than McCain's VICE President then Obama is in trouble.

2. On the other hand, McCain could cede Obama's point. Palin's inexperience as VP nixes the argument of Obama's inexperience because the VP and President should be considered together. Then, using the same rationale, Obama's selection of Biden negates Obama as the candidate of change. Biden is not a change agent.

What's most interesting is that Obama's main selling point is change but the McCain-Palin ticket has more experience actually instituting change and working across party lines. In a different election year this would be their selling point. On the other hand, McCain's strong suit is stability and security. As a ticket, Obama-Biden is more stable and secure and has more foreign policy experience. The VP picks of both candidates may significantly alter the dynamics of the whole race.

None of this is an endorsement of either candidate, just observations from a political junkie

Contemporary Worship names

We're starting a new "contemporary" (whatever that means) worship service on Sunday evenings in a couple weeks. I have a couple pastor friends who have also started or soon will be starting simillar services. I'm excited about the possibilities, as this is something very new for Coffey County and certainly new for our church.

So I have a question: is it helpful for a new worship service and/or "praise band" to have a catchy name? I just figured we'd call our worship service "worship" and our band "the band" and figure people would pretty much know what they're getting into when they show up. Do you think having a catchy name legitimizes the worship/band as different or new and makes it more attractive to people? Or is there another reason for doing so that I'm missing?

I don't have much of an opnion on this, I'm just thinking about it...

A Multi-site Denomination

In my last entry I compared the trend towards multi-site churches to the forming of a denomination. The comparison could be made the other way, too, with what I think could be revolutionary results.

When I was a pastor in Kansas City, we were always very clear with each other that we were not in competition with each other for members. Under the surface, though, we always knew when a person moved on to another United Methodist church and were disappointed with that. There was, at least for me, a sense that we had to keep up with other churches or we would "lose" to them. In other words, without admitting it, we did feel in competition.

A few years later I helped start First UMC Lawrence's second site. We always enjoyed having a "guest" who normally worshipped downtown, but if that person went back downtown the next Sunday it was no big deal. We were still connected to them because we were one church. We truly were not in competition.

The difference between these two situations is obvious - in one case, we were functioned as one church in two places. In the other case we functioned as 20 churches in one metropolitan area. But what if a denomination (say, United Methodism, since that's what I am) understood itself as one church in multiple locations with one staff of multiple pastors and laity, one mega-megachurch with shared resources to reach the world for Christ? What would be different? In Kansas City, we could say it's OK for Church of the Resurrection to be a megachurch and for Leawood to be a program sized church and for DeSoto to be a pastoral sized church. We need different sizes to meet different needs. It's OK for one church to reach primarily to seniors and another primarily to postmoderns, for two or more churches to have a shared youth group or UMW, even sharing staff, because ultimately even if someone switches from worshipping in one location (i.e. church) to another location they are still part of the same Church.

This isn't really a new idea. this is the Body of Christ. This is, in UM lingo, the parish system that was popular several years ago. But perhaps the new multi-site movement will give us a new way of framing a conversation about what it really means to be United Methodist (or Lutheran, Baptist, or whatever you might be.)

The fall and rise of denominations

Outreach Magazine publishes an annual list of the largest and fastest growing churhes in the United States. It's no surprise to church watchers that the vast majority of the churches on this list are not affiliated with a denomination. It's probably also no surprise that many of the churches are multi-site churches (worshipping in more than one location). Eleven of the 100 largest churches are multi-site churches and an amazing 47 of the 100 fastest growing churches are multi-site. Seacoast has 10 sites and Lifechurch.TV has 11.

So it makes me wonder, what's the difference between a church with 10 or 11 worship sites and an early John Wesley travelling from place to place preaching? Is the "multi-site movement" with a handful of charismatic and inspiring preachers any different than the early Methodists (or many other denominations) that began as movements before turning into institutions? How interesting that while many non-denominational churches (and many within denominations) criticize denominations as institutional and having lost relevance multi-site churches are building quasi-denominations to take their place.

Perhaps a better example is the Willow Creek Association. The Willow Creek Association formed in 1992 "in response to a fresh movement of God’s Spirit in the work of the local church." Now there are more than 12,000 member churches. WCA is not a denomination, but they do have a statement of faith that member churches are required to agree with. Seems to me like the beginnings of a denomination...

I agree with many that we are in the midst of an important moment in church history. Many denominations will not exist 50 years from now. But it seems more likely to me that those denominations will be replaced by new denominations like WCA, Seacoast, and Lifechurch.tv than that denominations will go away entirely.

UM Homosexual Marriages in California

In the wake of the legalization of homosexual marriages in California, 2 United Methodist Annual Conferenes and the Western Jurisdiction have given varying degrees of support to those who want to wed and pastors who choose to perform or bless the weddings. Additionally, more than 80 United Methodist pastors and retired pastors have agreed to perform such ceremonies. Good News, a conservative group within the United Methodist Church, has published a statement expressing grave concern about this development. The UMC has consistently taken stands against same-gender marriage and a pastor who violates this stand risks forfeiture of ministerial credentials.

I'm not a huge Good News fan. Their "good news" doesn't always seem to be consistent with THE Good News. But I think in many ways they got this one right.

• The action of the conferences and individual pastors is, as Good News asserts, schismatic. It is in clear violation of well established UMC doctrine. This is not a judgement on whether church policy is correct, just a statement of fact. Deliberately acting in a way contrary to stated church policy is schismatic.
• Part of the job of Bishops is to represent the Church. As much as a bishop allows others to not follow church doctrine, that bishop fails to perform his or her responsiblity.

But I think a couple further points need to be made. First, Good News says actions like this will cause continued decline in the denomination. I'll blog about this specifically some other time, but for now let me just say that the decline in the UMC has much more to do with doing stuck in our traditional way of doing things than with decisions around homosexuality. Decline is occuring all over the country, not just in liberal areas, and growth in individual places is happening all over the country, not just in conservative areas.

Second, schism isn't always a bad thing. I don't think the supporters of change see schism as an objective. I think they see faithfulness to the heart of the Gospel as their objective. They are taking what they believe is a prophetic stance against institutional bias and injustice. The Church has taken positions on homosexuality based on theory, not based on people. A mass uprising against Church policy by real live people makes the impact of Church policy clear and real. That's a good thing.

So here's what I think should happen: Pastors, including retired pastors participating in a same-gender marriage should be brought up on charges and lose their credentials. Every pastor participating understands that current UMC policy calls for that action. Prophetic stands never come without sacrifice. This is true of every great movement in culture and faith. Perhaps taken such a stand and being willing to live with the consequences will move the conversation about sexuality in a different direction. Perhaps we'll find better ways of living with each other in community, or perhaps we'll realize that we can't live together in community any longer.

Jurisdictional Conference

Now that the conference season is over, some thoughts from the latest one: Juriscitional Conference in Dallas.

1. I'm really not sure why we have Jurisdictions. Perhaps other jurisdictions serve more of a purpose than SouthCentral, but in my mind there were only 2 1/2 significant decisions to make - election of Bishops, election of general agency board members, and (the 1/2) the vote on the Bush Institutute at SMU. The last gets 1/2 because if we didn't have jurisdictions SMU wouldn't be owned by the jurisdiction and we wouldn't have had to deal with that one. I have to believe there is a more efficient and equally faithful way for this work to be done. At a minimum it seems to me that Jurisdictional Conferences could meet for 1-2 days immediately following General Conferece, saving transportation costs and time.

2. The election of Bishops was a frustrating experience. I find it extraordinary that for 3 consecutive quadrenia an ethnic minority woman candidate has failed to be elected. Those who disagree with me say that there were good reasons that each of those women was not elected. Certainly a motivated person could find reason not to vote for any of them. But a motivated person could find a reason to not elect any of the candidates, including the ones who were elected. When the final result appeared inevitable a Kansas delegate commented that this election was proof that a candidate from Kansas or another northern state could get elected if that person was an excellent candidate. My complaint is that a candidate from Texas doesn't have to be excellent, just adequate, to get elected. I was also frustrated because after knowing for a full year who the candidates were, interviewing each of them, receiving written answers to questions from each of them, and having informal conversation with them, we were still subjected to two days of unsubstantiated rumors that I'm sure took some votes away from the two candidates running second and third in the election for the final spot.

3. There was some talk of resuming the "northern coalition" of Nebraksa/Kansas/Missouri and sometimes Arkansas. After my last comment you might think I think that's a good idea, but I don't. First of all, from a purely political point of view, those four states combined curently have 98 votes. If 100% of the delegations voted together in this year's conference they would still have need 80 more votes to get someone elected. In fact, from my count, if every non-Texas delegate voted for the same person there would still not be enough votes for election. Demographics suggest this trend will continue. From a purely political point of view, there has to be some kind of coalition with individuals, delegations, or caucuses from the south for someone from the north to get elected. Second, and more importantly, I'm not sure it's a faithful position. I don't know that regionalism is any better than sexism or racism in the election of Bishops. I would hope we could find ways to work with people from a variety of places. Perhaps we should start working now on building relationships with people from the southern part of the jurisdiction that we can work with in future years.