2011, Right around the corner...

Melissa Rymer over at United Methodist Communications (UMCOM) recently sent me info about the new 2011 United Methodist program calendar.

I can tell you that - as a pastor who has served in both local church and academic settings - the program calendar is a big aid to ministry planning. I know a lot of people keep their calendars digitally on a laptop or handheld device, but I still prefer that oh-so-old-fashioned feel of paper betwixt me fingers!

You can find out more about the available varieties of the program calendar at this link. From the cover, it looks like the new program calendar emphasizes the Four Areas of Ministry Focus that the Council of Bishops and Connectional Table have developed as the key ministry initiatives for the church. These include:


1) Developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world.

2) Creating new places for new people by starting new congregations and renewing existing ones.

3) Engaging in ministry with the poor.

4) Stamping out killer diseases by improving health globally.

An article on the Four Areas of Focus can be found at this link. (And though the language often gets overlooked in these types of programmatic statements, I think the idea is that these are all ways that we can bear praise to Jesus Christ and live faithfully as his church -- all that his salvation might be proclaimed to the nations. The theological framework is, as I will always argue, important.)

Channels of Love

A lot of my writing in the United Methodist Reporter this year has been focused on the means of grace in Wesleyan theology. These are those practices of the Christian faith that serve as mediators of God's grace in our lives. I think of them as channels of love, those ways by which we realize the presence and power of God in our lives for our salvation.

Because I didn't blog about the column series I did on the means of grace, I thought I'd offer links here in case you'd like to read them. I have also archived the columns under the "UM Reporter Columns" tab in the left-hand sidebar.

Here is the column list:

Renewal is found in Wesley's 'means of grace' - An opening look at the means of grace, explaining what they are and why they are important in our lives as Christian disciples of Jesus.

Trading new patterns for old - A look at the place of the means of grace in our understanding of salvation, including how the means of grace can direct our attention away from the distractions of this world and toward God.

Searching the Scriptures - An exploration of that practice that John Wesley called, "searching the Scriptures," which helps us to know God's grace by reading, hearing, and meditating on the Bible.

Practicing what we preach - With reference to a recent essay by Bishop Will Willimon, this column emphasizes the need to understand the means of grace not as ends-in-themselves, but instead as practices which point toward Jesus Christ.


Recommit to Communion as a means of healing grace - A column that looks the place of Holy Communion in Christian worship and the Christian life. (This column created quite a bit of controversy because of comments I made about baptism. One of the few posts I published on this blog during the spring was in regards to that column; you can find the post here.)


Finding God's grace outside the norm - This column looks at what Wesley calls the "prudential" means of grace, which include those channels of love that find through the practice of our discipleship.


From ordinary grace to extraordinary grace - A view into the way in which our use of the means of grace can prepare our souls for those extraordinary encounters with grace that are sometimes received as gifts in our lives.

What's at the heart of the Christian life - This is the concluding column in the series on the means of grace, which takes one final look at the central role of the means of grace in the practice of our faith. The means of grace are truly channels of love, whereby we receive God's grace in the midst of our life in the church and are restored to the image of God in which we were created.

Long, Hot Summer

Hello there, gentle readers. I've not posted much - well, any at all - this summer. Part of that has been the difficulty of getting my blog transferred over to a new type of publishing. And part of its has been a commitment on my part to focus my energies on a few select areas in my life that are calling for a great deal of attention right now.

I've gotten e-mails from some of you asking if I planned to continue blogging at all. The answer is "Yes!" I have just needed to back off this year somewhat, which is why Gen-X Rising has been semi-dormant for periods of time.

I have continued to write in a variety of other venues, though. And I thought I might write some brief posts over the next few days to point to those for anyone who is interested. In particular, I am still writing my column for the United Methodist Reporter -- and you can find my most recent column here.

A few weeks ago, Bishop Will Willimon also invited me to write a guest post for his blog on the contentious issue of the "guaranteed appointment" in the United Methodist Church. That post can be found on Bishop Willimon's blog at this link.

Thanks for not giving up on me, especially for those of you who have e-mailed this summer! I'll try to pick up the pace of my blogging, particularly as summer stretches in fall.