Final Thoughts on Virginia Tech

With the media feeding frenzy having run its course, those of us who do not live in Blacksburg, Virginia, can finally allow the busyness of our daily lives to distract us from thinking about what happened on the campus of Virginia Tech a couple of weeks ago. There is always Iraq to remind us of the senselessness of the organized killing of large numbers of people, of course, but the daily quality of news reports from that corner of the globe has a certain numbing effect.

Of course, not far into the future, there will be another horrific act for us to gawk upon. Whether it is planes flying into buildings, gunmen mowing down classrooms full of students, or armies and insurgent groups waging bloody conflict in cities half a world away, the moral depravity of human beings and human society ensure that the incident in Blacksburg will be repeated again (and again). When that happens, survivors will marvel that they came out alive, victims' families will beat their breasts and cry out to God, and the rest of us will watch from afar, thanking our lucky stars that it didn't happen to us.

Without a story that counters such tragedy, the best we can hope to do is remain stoic in the face of others' (or our own) suffering. We have to accept it as a part of the natural order of things, a byproduct of what it means for over 6 billion people to live in relatively close proximity on the same planet.

Thank God that we do have another story, one that offers us hope rather than simple endurance. At a prayer vigil on Duke's campus on the day following the massacre, Dean Sam Wells reflected on the terrible insight Virginia Tech gives us. He said that, in such terrible moments, we are able to see the world as God sees it: full of wonder and complexity and beauty, but also terribly deformed and mutiliated and full of evil. When we see it in an isolated event, it breaks our hearts. God sees it all the time, and it breaks God's heart everyday.

Because such events are tied up in the world's sin, and because God loves the world so much, we know that Jesus Christ has become incarnate in the world in order to break the power of that sin. It has happened, it is happening, and it will happen in fullness. We must claim this story not only because it is true, but because it offers the world the one real hope of overcoming Virginia Tech, or Iraq, or Darfur, or the disease and starvation that threaten so many of God's children in the world, or the ecological devastation even now wrought upon God's earth, or our own broken lives.

Story of Cain, Story of Cho, Story of Christ

Like most of us, I have really struggled the past few days to come to terms with what happened on April 16th on the campus of Virginia Tech. I have also tired of the endless media coverage. I found myself reading the new Newsweek this afternoon, taking in yet another account of the terribly sick mind of one young man and the tragic ending of 33 lives. It is overwhelming.

In my most recent UM Reporter column, I try to offer one way in which the story of Jesus counters the stories of Cain, Cho, and all the other senseless acts of violence human history has witnessed. I don't know if it will help you at all to read it, but it did help me to put it into words.

The stress of the end of another semester has undoubtedly compounded the mental and emotional funk I am experiencing right now. I would be interested to hear how your communities of faith have dealt with the recent events.

The error of church programming

Programming.

That is the contemporary Church's answer to relevance. If we can just come up with relevant, interesting programming, the Church of today thinks, then we can bring people into the church.

This is a complex issue, but there are at least two problems with it:

1) An error of ends - The end that the addiction to church programming points toward is a larger, more "active" congregation. The hope is to bring in young singles and families, making the church look more like the megachurches that appear on TV. So the church adopts programming that is designed to do just that (and which is often published by the very churches that supposedly deserve emulation). This is an improper end, of course. The only end that any church should aim toward is the salvation of its members and those outside the church to whom it offers the gospel. Salvation is a holistic process and may involve certain kinds of programming. But the end must be salvation - through the church - and all ministry efforts should be geared toward that end.

2) An error of means - Programming may be a useful means, but the church has bought into it as the absolute key to "success." In actuality, programming should be third or fourth down the line. Participation in the church should be understood as a way of life, the primary arena for human activity by those who call themselves church members. And that way of life must begin with a Eucharistically-oriented worship. Small-group prayer and bible study should be second. (Holy Communion, Scripture, and prayer, after all, are Wesley's three primary means of grace.) After these, I would suggest that outward-oriented mission should be third. Only after these should programming be listed. Interesting or fun activities and studies are great as far as they go, but they should never take the place of a form of church life centered on worship, bible study, corporate prayer, and mission.

I write about this in my current column in the UM Reporter. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

A prayer in the wake of terrible violence

Almighty God, in your keeping there is shelter from the storm,
and in your mercy there is comfort for the sorrows of life.
Hear now our prayer for those who mourn and are heavy laden.
Give to them strength to bear and do your will
Lighten their darkness with your love.
Enable them to see beyond the things of this mortal world
the promise of the eternal.
Help them to know that your care enfolds all your people,
that you are our refuge and strength,
and that underneath are your everlasting arms.

U.M. Book of Worship, p. 164

On this day of senseless violence, I pray that the families and friends of the victims at Virginia Tech University would be comforted by the promise of resurrection. May the peace of Jesus Christ be with them.

Electing Gen-X delegates

Guy Williams has an insightful post over at Guy's Mental Wanderings about electing younger delegates to General Conference. With a lot of talk - especially in the Methoblogosphere - about electing young adult delegates, Guy wants us to take a step back and ask some important questions about how we go about making choices.

For starters, Guy suggests that age should not be a determining factor. That is, he does not want to elect a young delegate just because that person is young. He wants delegates who represent faithful views, with regards to the doctrine and missional priorities of the church. He also wants to elect strong leaders, which may or may not correlate with a certain age range.

I think Guy's views are right on. I have been supportive of electing younger delegates to General and annual conferences. In fact, not long ago, I wrote a column specifically supporting the selection of younger delegates to annual conferences, as a way of familiarizing young adult laity with United Methodist polity and encouraging them to become involved in leadership. But Guy is right in insisting that age cannot and should not be a determining factor. As much as the UMC needs the energy and insight that young leadership brings, it needs truly faithful leadership even more.

So what does that mean for the push to elect younger delegates? It is still very important. But potential younger delegates should be put under the same scrutiny as their older counterparts, so that they will be elected for who they are and what they represent, not just how old they happen to be.

Happy Easter

O Splendor of the Father's light
That makes our daylight lucid, bright;
O Light of light and sun of day,
Now shine on us your brightest ray.

True Sun, break out on earth and shine
In radiance with your light divine;
By dazzling of your Spirit's might,
Oh, give our jaded senses light.

The Father sends his Son, our Lord,
To be his bright and shining Word;
Come, Lord, ride out your gleaming course
And be our dawn, our light's true source.

- St. Ambrose of Milan

Good Friday

In On the Incarnation of the Word, St. Athanasius describes the crucifixion in a way that echoes the Scriptures:

"For the sun hid his face, and the earth quaked and the mountains were rent; all men were awed. Now these things showed that Christ on the cross was God, while all creation was his slave, and was witnessing by its fear to its master's presence."

When we celebrate Holy Communion each week, we proclaim the death that occurred for us on this day. It is a death that forgives, because in it Christ takes all the sin of creation into his own body. Thus, the death suffered by the incarnate Word is not just his own death, but ultimately ours as well. Athanasius continues,

"And so it was that two marvels came to pass at once, that the death of all was accomplished in the Lord's body, and that death and corruption were wholly done away by reason of the Word that was united with it."

May we all gather together this evening at the foot of the cross and bear witness to the crucifixion of our Lord. And may we keep the Easter vigil together.

Testimony in text

Sharing our faith is important. That's the only way the gospel is really spread, in fact. And oftentimes, a personal faith testimony is worth 100 regular sermons, because it connects people with real stories of faith.

So I was glad to see that Amy Forbus, a friend and fellow Methoblogger, recently shared her testimony about "Why I am a United Methodist" in the United Methodist Reporter. You can read her story here.

Amy is a good example of how ministry is not just limited to clergy serving in local churches. Her work with UMR Communications is an important aspect of our connectional church. I'm glad she's a Gen-X'er out there, showing the world that our generation thinks the United Methodist Church is a vital place to be a part of the body of Christ.

Oh, and you can read her blog here. Dogblogger power, activate!

Three options for the UMC

The United Methodist Church is full of potential. It is a truly international church, with membership in the United States at 8 million, and membership worldwide at something over 10 million. It relates to other Methodist bodies both in the U.S. and abroad through a wide sense of connectional identity. Even though it is autonomous from these bodies, it shares a sense of history and identity with them as arising out of a small movement that originated almost 300 years ago in England. The UMC's theological heritage is strong, rooted as it is in personal piety, social holiness, and a commitment to pursuing justice and compassion in the world through evangelistic outreach. Its capacity to reach countless souls through zealous witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ is huge.

But like any such body with great positive potential, the flipside of that potential is the potential to fail in its mission. And in that sense the UMC is like so many mainline churches in our culture. It stands at a pivotal point in its history, when it must make a decision about whether it wants to accept the Holy Spirit's desire for renewal or else fade slowly into obscurity.

I see three possibilities for where we might head from the present, and I mean today: April 2, 2007. They are:

1) A Slow Death: We could continue the decline that has occurred in our denomination for over three decades. We could continue to practice that lukewarm faith that has resulted in a diminuation in the successful pursuit of the mission given to us by the Holy Spirit through Wesley himself: to save souls, to make disciples for Jesus Christ, to spread scriptural holiness, and to reform the nation (or, you might say, the nations). Continuing to decline in this way doesn't require a single thing from us. We just have to keep doing what we're doing. And what we are doing is acting like 'being the church' is just living comfortable, consumerist lives that assume that God's work in the world will happen apart from the committed discipleship embodied in Scripture's call. Pastors can keep going about lukewarm ministries, concerned more about the state of the pension system than about the radical call of the gospel. Laity can keep going about their nominal participation in the life of discipleship, treating their membership in the church as nothing more than the socially respectable thing to do. In short, we can keep ignoring the principle call of Christ, which is the salvation of the world (with the holistic sense in which Wesley understood that term).

2) Leaner and Meaner: Or, we could allow the wheat to be separated from the chaff over the course of time, until the church is small enough that the only people who actually fill the pulpits and pews are the ones who are truly Wesleyan in their appraoch to the faith. This would mean a much smaller church, more like the early Methodist movement than the large denomination of the present. Such a development may seem far off, but it really isn't. At the rate we are going, by some estimates, membership in the UMC will be only 1 or 2 million in the U.S. by 2040. That's 25% or less than what it is right now. And truth be told, that might not be entirely bad. It is possible that a smaller, leaner, and more committed church could be a more effective witness to Christ's salvation than the large, lumbering denomination we know in the present. It would certainly allow for the church to be more committed to its mission and historical identity, but it would also sacrifice the breadth of its reach in favor of a greater depth of discipleship for those who remain. One interesting aspect of this second possibility is that it would make the United Methodist Church more international in its character more quickly, which, again, might not be bad for the church as a whole. Anyone who has experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in the so-called "Third World" knows that Christians in those areas (and here I am thinking specifically in terms of the Global South) tend to be more serious about their faith, on the whole, than Christians in Europe and the U.S.

3) Radically Renewed: The third possibility is that the church could learn to embrace its heritage and historical identity in a way that allows for the Holy Spirit's renewal of the whole of Methodism as it is embodied in the UMC. In this possibility, the church would experience a great increase in all aspects of its witness and mission. Anyone who reads this blog knows that the increase I mean is not primarily about numbers, although I believe that an increase in commitment and understanding of the gospel will surely lead to a reversal in our numerical decline. This third possibility would see a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the People Called Methodists, to the point that men and women, boys and girls, young and old alike would be empowered to pursue their personal discipleship in the context of a renewed community of disciples. We would stop arguing about those doctrinal questions that divide us the most, because we would realize that they are really more about American culture than about Christian discipleship. We would treat the church as the community where we find our identity rather than the place we are obligated to show up for one hour each week (or less). We would come to understand ourselves as Methodists because God called a people known as Methodists into existence for a very specific purpose: to pursue the evangelistic love of God and neighbor in a way that truly represents Christ's saving gospel to the world.

Some might say that options 1 and 2 are much more likely than option 3. Perhaps so, according to the ways of the world. But then again, it is exactly our captivity to the ways of the world that has gotten us into this mess in the first place. I have a friend in the Th.D. program here at Duke who says that the primary work of the Christian in the world is to learn how to pray. I agree with him, as long as we consider that 'learning how to pray' is that work where our entire lives are clothed by the understanding of how to live as this community called the church, constituted by the call and presence of Jesus Christ.

When John Wesley was asked how one defined a "Methodist," he responded by offering a list of qualities that most people would attribute to any Christian of any time or place. But then he added that what distinguished a Methodist from the great mass of Christians was that the Methodist was the one who truly practiced his faith, in all aspects of his life.

We can be such Methodists again. God has not left us. The only question is whether we will repent, recommit, and return to the calling that God has given us from the beginning of our history as a church.