It’s a bit of a (rare) lazy Saturday afternoon and I am catching up on my blog reading from the past week.  I just read this fantastic post about a Biblically inspired alternative to the typical, Modern “mission statement/vision statement” approach to church leadership.  It basically proposes a model based on Abraham, who was given a promise from God and sent forward without knowing where or even fully why he was going.  It’s not that visions and planning are bad, but this ambiguity of perception and trust in God’s leadership despite its inherent mystery (or perhaps because of it!) seems to resonate with postmodernity to me.

Of course there are other schools of thought…  I have come to the point where I cringe every time I hear the word “effectiveness” used in a United Methodist setting these days.  It’s not that I’m against pastoral/church effectiveness, of course, it’s that those who use such terms generally have a very narrow range of what they consider “effective.”  Have we really fallen so far that one of our most respected Bishops can talk so freely about numbers without even giving the standard, half-hearted, United Methodist disclaimer that, “Oh yeah, of course God can work in ways that aren’t numbers, too”?

With statements like the second link forming the very fabric of who we are as a system these days, is there any hope of minority voices like the first link dong any good at all beyond a localized setting (that might then be declared “ineffective” and duly punished)?

I love my tradition, not just the Wesley part, but specifically the United Methodist part.  But there are days I weap for it.  It’s a darn good thing church leadership isn’t up to us in the end.  Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow.

As I’ve explored the sense of call I feel both to the emerging church movement and to the United Methodist Church, I’ve often felt the “chafing” that leads many emergent-types to declare that postmodernity simply cannot exist within an organization as modern as the UMC.  I still feel deep in my gut, though, that postmodernity not only CAN emerge from within organizations like this one, indeed it is most healthy if it stays connected to it.  Therefore, I believe that a big part of my call is to be a sort of “postmodernity gardner,” doing all I can to nurture the signs of postmodernity I see emerging all around me.  The details of that I might go into later, but today I want to explore an observation I’ve had sitting here at the Annual Conference of the Kansas West Conference of the UMC.

One of the true hallmarks of the postmodern church (indeed of the church of any age) is true, authentic community.  The term I like is common in the emergent conversation: generative friendship.  (I vaguely remember hearing that Tim Keel coined the term???)  In other words, friendship that generates, that naturally works to create life within and outside of the individuals and the community.

One of the great things about Annual Conference is the “family reunion” aspect of it.  Most of the people here haven’t seen their closest friends/colleagues in a year, and so the bond of friendship is incredibly strong and very, very apparent.  It doesn’t spread much beyond the clergy into the laity (probably because of the “colleague” nature of it), but there is at least the beginning of this communal friendship spilling over into others.

But here’s the issue as I see it– most of it is not generative.  It is a very, very supportive friendship, but I see little “generated” from it.  Sure there are pockets of generative-ness, but as a whole it is more sustaining than life-giving, at least from my admittedly limited perspective.

If I am to fulfill what I see as a call to help postmodernity emerge from this Conference, one thing I don’t question is that it cannot be a “top down” leadership thing.  That puts me, who is much closer to the bottom, in the perfect place to effect positive change.  The idea I am playing with is, “How can I help move this wonderful, beautiful community to a place that is more generative?”  That in itself would be a tremendous force to move the Conference toward postmodernity.

I don’t quite know how to answer that yet, but perhaps the best way is simply to move “hallway conversations” away from the superficial, “catching up” nature they usually take, and instead instigate informal conversations about deeper matters, like for instance theological ways to think about whatever happens to be going on.

Just a few thoughts.  All I really know is that this community means a great deal to me, and nothing would make me happier than to see it move to the next level of being a truly creative force for the hundreds of churches that make it up– and to see it become a creative, life-giving force for the transitioning culture of our time.

I have lots of other thoughts from Annual Conference that will probably never make it to my blog (such as the incredible disconnect between a denomination crying out in pain from decline and an Annual Conference that spends it’s time celebrating– denial, anyone?), but here’s some food for thought.

I love Annual Conference.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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The past few weeks, Pat and I have been joining some incoming members of our church in conversation about who we are as United Methodists.  In the past decade or two there has been a resurgence of interest in John Wesley and in what makes the United Methodist tradition different from others.

So what makes a United Methodist?  That’s way too big of a topic to go into here…  We agree with most Christians on most of what we believe, things like Jesus and the resurrection or how God works in the world.  The differences are in what we choose to emphasize.  For instance, we emphasize the fact that God is working in people’s hearts and lives even before they are aware of it.  We also emphasize that it is God’s grace that saves us—but that grace continues to work in us afterwards, too, making us a better person.

We also emphasize that faith isn’t just something that happens in a church building—faith is something we live out in every day of our lives.  John Wesley wasn’t happy just preaching to the people who came to church every Sunday; he realized that the people that really needed to feel God’s love were the ones who weren’t there.  And so he took the gospel out to the coal miners and the field workers.  Talking about this made me wonder if maybe that isn’t a lesson we need to learn again today.

If you’re interested in learning more about Methodism; I’d be happy to talk your ear off sometime.  Or, there are some great resources on the internet.   It’s hard to print long web links in the newsletter, so if you find this article on my blog, http://ministrygeek.net, I will add some good links there.  May you experience ALL types of God’s grace this week!

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Here are the links:

For more on United Methodists beliefs…

For more on United Methodist history…

For more on how we are organized…