The United Methodist Commission to Study the Ministry is proposing an end to guaranteed appointments to the 2012 General Conference. If you're not familiar with this, the practice of the United Methodist Church for the last several decades has been to guarantee every ordained elder that they will have a church to serve. In theory, this makes some sense. We have always understood that a person's call to ordained ministry is confirmed by the Church. If it appears that the church made a mistake or that a person's call has changed, then the Church could respond by not giving that pastor an appointment. Having said that, there are a number of issues that I hope are seriously considered before the proposal comes to a vote.
1. In conversations that I've been a part of, the guarantee of appointment for bishops has never come up. Bishops are elders. They do not have a separate ordination. But bishops are consecrated as bishops for life. They are guaranteed to be bishop for life. If guaranteed appointments are removed, then we need to seriously consider going to a term episcopacy so that Bishops also do not have a guaranteed appointment. Just as guaranteed appointments for pastors in local churches could cause complacency, so too could a guaranteed appointment for a bishop.
2. The UMC also guarantees that every United Methodist church will have a pastor. As a friend pointed out to me recently, if we aren't going to promise pastors a church why do we promise churches a pastor? There are churches who have effectively ceased being United Methodist in theology and practice. There are many churches that have abandoned the mission of making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Why should we not hold the churches to a higher standard at the same time we hold clergy to a higher standard?
3. One reason that the guaranteed appointment began was as a protection for clergy that churches may not want because of sexism, racism, etc. I suppose the thought is we've moved far enough along now that this protection is no longer necessary. I could be swayed either way on this. I also wonder, though, if there needs to be protection for theology. Clearly the theological diversity within Methodism is a blessing and a curse. I treasure it, but I also understand that it makes conveying who we are and rallying around a common identity much more difficult. Could a particularly conservative bishop choose to appoint a marginally competent conservative pastor at the expense of a slightly more competent liberal pastor (or vice-versa)?
My hunch is that the denomination will move so slowly that the recommendation to eliminate guaranteed appointments won't pass in 2012. It is a topic that deserves deep discussion. I hope these three points will be part of the discussion
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Merry X-Mas!
A couple weeks ago I wrote about my dislike of the "Holiday Tree". Since then I've seen lots of people upset with the use of "X-mas" instead of "Christmas." I'm OK with the X. In fact I use the abbreviation all the time. I couldn't stand the abbreviation at all until I went to seminary. In the middle of class one day a proffesor abbreviated "Christian" as "Xian" and suddenly it all made sense to me. So if you don't know the origin of "X-mas", here it is:
The Greek word for Christ is Christos. If you were to write the word out it would look something like "Xpristos" (I don't know how to do Greek letters on an English keyboard, so this just approximate). The Greek r looks like an English p and the Greek "ch" looks like an English x. So X can simply be an abbreviation for Christ. Xian is Christian and Xmas is Christmas. So Merry Xmas and a happy new year!
The Greek word for Christ is Christos. If you were to write the word out it would look something like "Xpristos" (I don't know how to do Greek letters on an English keyboard, so this just approximate). The Greek r looks like an English p and the Greek "ch" looks like an English x. So X can simply be an abbreviation for Christ. Xian is Christian and Xmas is Christmas. So Merry Xmas and a happy new year!
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Initial Thoughts on a Special Session of General Conference
The big news yesterday is that the General Council on Finance and Administration is asking the Council of Bishops for a special session of General Conference. I could be persuaded otherwise, but at the moment this seems like an expensive waste at best and a colossal mistake for the future of the denomination at worst. Fortunately, I don't think a special session is actually likely to be called.
The biggest problem is the timing. The called session would discuss two issues: pension plans in the United States and recommendations from the Call to Action Task Force of the Council of Bishops. The Task Force is scheduled to make their recomendations in the fall of 2010. Unless the timeframe for their work is moved up, that means a special session could take place no earlier than the spring of 2011, roughly 12 months before General Conference is already scheduled to meet. Additionally, meeting that soon after the proposals from the task force are announced would minimize the amount of time for conversation and debate. For some matters a few months is plenty of time, but the scope of this task force is tremendous. There are only two tasks - reconsidering guaranteed appointments for elders and restrucuring the church (including the frequency and size of General Conference and the number, kind, and size of general boards and agencies) - but those are two of the biggest tasks we face as a denomination.
Changing guarateed appointments will generate tremendous debate. Personally, I've gone back and forth a dozen times on whether this would be good or not. The reccomendation to change the church strucuture is even more important. This is the kind of decision that we have to get right. We don't get a second chance. It definitely needs to happen. Anybody who has been to General Conference knows that it is broken. The world has changed so much since the formation of the UMC that all of our strucutres need to be reconsidered and reformed. But it must be done carefully and it must be done correctly. It is not a decision that can be rushed.
My opinion is not as informed about pensions. The Conference I am in is not struggling at all in meeting pension obligations. Perhaps we need a special session just to deal with this. If we do, I hope that the question will be broadened to include pensions of clergy from countries outside the United States. I am sure that many of them would feel fortunate to have the pension funding crisis that some of our conferences have. A partially funded pension is much more than most of them get.
The biggest problem is the timing. The called session would discuss two issues: pension plans in the United States and recommendations from the Call to Action Task Force of the Council of Bishops. The Task Force is scheduled to make their recomendations in the fall of 2010. Unless the timeframe for their work is moved up, that means a special session could take place no earlier than the spring of 2011, roughly 12 months before General Conference is already scheduled to meet. Additionally, meeting that soon after the proposals from the task force are announced would minimize the amount of time for conversation and debate. For some matters a few months is plenty of time, but the scope of this task force is tremendous. There are only two tasks - reconsidering guaranteed appointments for elders and restrucuring the church (including the frequency and size of General Conference and the number, kind, and size of general boards and agencies) - but those are two of the biggest tasks we face as a denomination.
Changing guarateed appointments will generate tremendous debate. Personally, I've gone back and forth a dozen times on whether this would be good or not. The reccomendation to change the church strucuture is even more important. This is the kind of decision that we have to get right. We don't get a second chance. It definitely needs to happen. Anybody who has been to General Conference knows that it is broken. The world has changed so much since the formation of the UMC that all of our strucutres need to be reconsidered and reformed. But it must be done carefully and it must be done correctly. It is not a decision that can be rushed.
My opinion is not as informed about pensions. The Conference I am in is not struggling at all in meeting pension obligations. Perhaps we need a special session just to deal with this. If we do, I hope that the question will be broadened to include pensions of clergy from countries outside the United States. I am sure that many of them would feel fortunate to have the pension funding crisis that some of our conferences have. A partially funded pension is much more than most of them get.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
A new era for Christmas?
I was "playing" Farmville last week on Facebook (if you haven't experienced it, I'm not sure you really play Farmville. I'm also not really sure why I spend any time with it except that it's the only place where you can grow a great harvest of fresh strawberries in only 4 hours). When I logged on I found that I had been given a "holiday tree." Apparently a holiday tree is like a Christmas tree except it's politically correct. I don't know what makes a Christmas tree politically incorrect. The holiday has been tamed enough (see a great blog on this subject here) that a Christmas tree seems pretty inoffensive. It made me think about
I'm not going to pull out my Christian history books to look up all the details, but I think it's pretty well known that before December 25th was chosen as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus it was a pagan holiday. The story goes that Christians knew the day would always be a feast day for most people so they coopted it and made it a great Christian holiday. This makes great sense as a public relations move and fits right in with the Imperial Christianity era that begins with Constantine in the 4th century. December 25 rolls around and Christians have a great opportunity to witness to their faith with a celebration at the same time that others are celebrating for a different reason.
Fast forward 1600 years or so and we see the exact reverse happening. Very few humanists and atheists suggest that we eliminate Christmas as a holiday. Instead, they are trying to redefine it. December 25th is to engrained in our minds and our common experience as a celebration for it to simply go away. Instead, it is being changed by the dominant culture into a non-religious, non-threatening holiday. Christmas will remain, but devoid of any of it's Christian meaning in the same way that the pagan celebration day remained a celebration day but devoid of its original meaning.
It seems to me that as Christians we have a couple choices. One option is to actively resist this movement. Vocally tell people to leave Christmas alone and keep it a Christian holiday. In a country that values separation of church and state this might mean there are no school "holiday" parties, much less Christmas parties. Maybe there's not even a "winter" or "Christmas" break. Instead of opposing what we perceive as radical atheists trying to take God out of the schools and government, we might support those decisions so that we can leave God in the holidays that we cherish. Perhaps we should be cheering the ACLU and others on - yes, the Nativity scenes do have religious meaning. Yes, the Christmas tree does represent a relgious holiday.
A second option is to let them have it. Surrender Christmas to the non-Christians. There's at least as much evidence for a summer or fall date of Jesus' birth than a winter date. Why not pick another date for the celebration? Or perhaps as many early Christians did we should reemphasize Epiphany
So we face a new era for the holiday celebrated on December 25: First was the pagan celebration, then the Christian celebration of Christmas, and now something else - either a reinvigorated Christian celebration or a completely vapid secular celebration. I think we have some choice in what this new era will be like.
I'm not going to pull out my Christian history books to look up all the details, but I think it's pretty well known that before December 25th was chosen as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus it was a pagan holiday. The story goes that Christians knew the day would always be a feast day for most people so they coopted it and made it a great Christian holiday. This makes great sense as a public relations move and fits right in with the Imperial Christianity era that begins with Constantine in the 4th century. December 25 rolls around and Christians have a great opportunity to witness to their faith with a celebration at the same time that others are celebrating for a different reason.
Fast forward 1600 years or so and we see the exact reverse happening. Very few humanists and atheists suggest that we eliminate Christmas as a holiday. Instead, they are trying to redefine it. December 25th is to engrained in our minds and our common experience as a celebration for it to simply go away. Instead, it is being changed by the dominant culture into a non-religious, non-threatening holiday. Christmas will remain, but devoid of any of it's Christian meaning in the same way that the pagan celebration day remained a celebration day but devoid of its original meaning.
It seems to me that as Christians we have a couple choices. One option is to actively resist this movement. Vocally tell people to leave Christmas alone and keep it a Christian holiday. In a country that values separation of church and state this might mean there are no school "holiday" parties, much less Christmas parties. Maybe there's not even a "winter" or "Christmas" break. Instead of opposing what we perceive as radical atheists trying to take God out of the schools and government, we might support those decisions so that we can leave God in the holidays that we cherish. Perhaps we should be cheering the ACLU and others on - yes, the Nativity scenes do have religious meaning. Yes, the Christmas tree does represent a relgious holiday.
A second option is to let them have it. Surrender Christmas to the non-Christians. There's at least as much evidence for a summer or fall date of Jesus' birth than a winter date. Why not pick another date for the celebration? Or perhaps as many early Christians did we should reemphasize Epiphany
So we face a new era for the holiday celebrated on December 25: First was the pagan celebration, then the Christian celebration of Christmas, and now something else - either a reinvigorated Christian celebration or a completely vapid secular celebration. I think we have some choice in what this new era will be like.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Church Multiple Personality Disorder
I've heard it said that over time a church takes on the personality of the pastor. It makes sense. It's also one of the problems with short term pastorates.
If a pastor stays for 3-4 years and takes on the personality of the pastor, then a different pastor with a different personality comes and stays 3-4 years, then another and so on, the church doesn't know what its personality is supposed to be. It gets the institutional version of multiple personality disorder. Who are we? Where are we going? How do we function? Just as a church is getting used to the pastor's personality, that pastor gets yanked for another one.
One partial solution is for pastors to be more patient. When the relationship between pastor and church gets rocky, it may not really be because of the pastor or the church. It may just be the multiple personality disorder kicking in. If instead of looking for a "promotion" or an "escape" the pastor is willing to stick with the church through the crisis then perhaps the church will move into a more consistent understanding of itself. If instead a pastor moves at the first hint of problems the cycle just continues for the next pastor and the next pastor and on down the line.
If a pastor stays for 3-4 years and takes on the personality of the pastor, then a different pastor with a different personality comes and stays 3-4 years, then another and so on, the church doesn't know what its personality is supposed to be. It gets the institutional version of multiple personality disorder. Who are we? Where are we going? How do we function? Just as a church is getting used to the pastor's personality, that pastor gets yanked for another one.
One partial solution is for pastors to be more patient. When the relationship between pastor and church gets rocky, it may not really be because of the pastor or the church. It may just be the multiple personality disorder kicking in. If instead of looking for a "promotion" or an "escape" the pastor is willing to stick with the church through the crisis then perhaps the church will move into a more consistent understanding of itself. If instead a pastor moves at the first hint of problems the cycle just continues for the next pastor and the next pastor and on down the line.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
What a Wonderful Person
A few weeks ago we were privileged to have George Mitrovich preach at our church. What a wonderful man! I usually schedule guest preachers for when I'll be out of town, but this scheduling didn't coincide with a time for me to get away. I was definitely blessed to hear his words. He preached 2 morning services, taught Sunday School, gave a lecture on James Arminius in the afternoon, then preached (a different sermon) at 5:00. He did great each time.
One of the things about George that I really respect is his ability to work with people from across the typical theological and political divides. Over the course of the day I heard countless stories about all sorts of people, many famous and a few that were not. What stood out most to me was not any of the stories, but rather a phrase that I heard over and over again. Almost every time George spoke about a person that he had met he would begin describing the person by saying, "He was a wonderful man" or "She is a great woman."
I've met a lot of people in my life, but I don't think I ever start describing someone by saying they are "wonderful" or "great". I start by describing what they do or what they look like. Maybe I'll eventually get around to saying they're great, if I actually think they are. I'm pretty sure that I describe my perceived negatives of someone at least as often as their positives. I'm as likely to talk about how I disagree with a person or differ from a person than I am how we are similar or what issues we agree on. I haven't even been aware of this until I heard George keep talking about how many wonderful people he's met in his life.
I imagine that if I start by thinking of the positives about a person, I will probably treat them more civilly. After all, there's no reason to think I'm any more wonderful than the next person who walks into my office.
One of the things about George that I really respect is his ability to work with people from across the typical theological and political divides. Over the course of the day I heard countless stories about all sorts of people, many famous and a few that were not. What stood out most to me was not any of the stories, but rather a phrase that I heard over and over again. Almost every time George spoke about a person that he had met he would begin describing the person by saying, "He was a wonderful man" or "She is a great woman."
I've met a lot of people in my life, but I don't think I ever start describing someone by saying they are "wonderful" or "great". I start by describing what they do or what they look like. Maybe I'll eventually get around to saying they're great, if I actually think they are. I'm pretty sure that I describe my perceived negatives of someone at least as often as their positives. I'm as likely to talk about how I disagree with a person or differ from a person than I am how we are similar or what issues we agree on. I haven't even been aware of this until I heard George keep talking about how many wonderful people he's met in his life.
I imagine that if I start by thinking of the positives about a person, I will probably treat them more civilly. After all, there's no reason to think I'm any more wonderful than the next person who walks into my office.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Why Conservative Christians Bug Me
OK, so not all conservative Christians bug me. Not even most of them. Actually, most of my friends would call me a conservative Christian. So really I'm talking about a select group of conservative United Methodist Christians who are particularly outspoken in matters of church politics.
I was reminded of this in the September/October issue of Good News magazine. Rev. Riley Case wrote an article called "The Church Will Live Another Day". It's a summary of 3 proposed constiutional amendments (one on inclusiveness, the world-wide nature of the church amendments, and local pastor voting rights). At the conclusion of each section he says, "So,...the church will live for another day." I don't intend to argue for the amendments in this post. But I'm bothered by the implication that if we don't grant local pastors rights that they have never had somehow the church will not live another day. Or that if we did restructure the church we would not live another day. Can't you just make your point without sensationalizing?
But that's what the Good News/Confessing Movement wing of the church does. Every four years we find out that the UMC is once again on the verge of heresy because of the impending change in our position on homosexuality. If we don't act now (and send in lots of money), the church won't live another day. The fact that the church's position has remained virtually unchanged since 1972 apparently has no relevance to the urgency of the vote. My biggest disappointment with the constiutional amendments is that by even being proposed we don't get even one year of peace this quadrenium.
Earlier in the same magazine Rob Renfroe writes on "Speaking the Truth in Love". He reminds us that Jesus tells us "we need the truth to be 'set free' of the lies and misconceptions and the sins that entangle us." But it seems as if the real truth is that the real motivator too often is politics, not seeking God's will. I mean really, it's not hard to figure this out. The Worldwide Nature of the Church amendments would take away the vote of the generally conservative Central Conferences in some matters. Clearly not in the most important and controversial matters. We want the conservative votes, so we'll pull out the homosexuality card and put that amendment to bed. We want the votes. Local pastors generally vote more conservatively. So in this case, it's an easy decision to say that the Discipline should be reformed.
To be clear, the reverse is true too. Liberal Methodists generally were in favor of the Worldwide Nature amendments. My rant is to those on the right because they spend more, are more outspoken, and are more blatant in their exageration of reality.
If you think I'm off base here let me know. I'd be glad to take back my words if I'm missing something.
I was reminded of this in the September/October issue of Good News magazine. Rev. Riley Case wrote an article called "The Church Will Live Another Day". It's a summary of 3 proposed constiutional amendments (one on inclusiveness, the world-wide nature of the church amendments, and local pastor voting rights). At the conclusion of each section he says, "So,...the church will live for another day." I don't intend to argue for the amendments in this post. But I'm bothered by the implication that if we don't grant local pastors rights that they have never had somehow the church will not live another day. Or that if we did restructure the church we would not live another day. Can't you just make your point without sensationalizing?
But that's what the Good News/Confessing Movement wing of the church does. Every four years we find out that the UMC is once again on the verge of heresy because of the impending change in our position on homosexuality. If we don't act now (and send in lots of money), the church won't live another day. The fact that the church's position has remained virtually unchanged since 1972 apparently has no relevance to the urgency of the vote. My biggest disappointment with the constiutional amendments is that by even being proposed we don't get even one year of peace this quadrenium.
Earlier in the same magazine Rob Renfroe writes on "Speaking the Truth in Love". He reminds us that Jesus tells us "we need the truth to be 'set free' of the lies and misconceptions and the sins that entangle us." But it seems as if the real truth is that the real motivator too often is politics, not seeking God's will. I mean really, it's not hard to figure this out. The Worldwide Nature of the Church amendments would take away the vote of the generally conservative Central Conferences in some matters. Clearly not in the most important and controversial matters. We want the conservative votes, so we'll pull out the homosexuality card and put that amendment to bed. We want the votes. Local pastors generally vote more conservatively. So in this case, it's an easy decision to say that the Discipline should be reformed.
To be clear, the reverse is true too. Liberal Methodists generally were in favor of the Worldwide Nature amendments. My rant is to those on the right because they spend more, are more outspoken, and are more blatant in their exageration of reality.
If you think I'm off base here let me know. I'd be glad to take back my words if I'm missing something.
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