Jason Micheli's Blog, page 108

Episode #196: Diana Butler Bass — Birthing Something New (Live from GC2019)

The team caught up with Diana Butler Bass on the eve of the conclusion of the UMC’s Special General Conference. She offers thoughts about the historical and theological significance of a denomination’s discernment over human sexuality.

Also, while I’ve got you check out some of the other interviews we’ve done here at General Conference in St. Louis: digesting the first surprising news about the failure of the One Church Plan with Christy Thomas and a conversation with Jeff and Steve Mullinix, a married couple from Ohio.

 

 

 

 

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Roberts Rules of Order is Not Holy Conferencing So Stop Petitioning for the Holy Spirit to Show Up

Watching the United Methodist Church at General Conference skate along the knife’s edge of schism, up from my perch in the press box it’s shocking to me how the future of a denonmination has become handcuffed to a parliamentary process that is in no way intelligibly Christian. The UMC suffers a paralysis of leadership, to be sure, but Roberts Rules of Order are one of the chains not one of us appears to be able to see.


When in the hell did we all agree as Christians to hitch our communal life to RRoO where the ‘winner’ almost always is determined by who can master the passive aggresive rules of arcane prodedure?

At least casting lots over the UMC’s inclusion or exclusion of homosexuals would be biblical; in fact, deciding the fate of gay Christians by lot would be as biblical as traditionalists who come to this argument armed with a few lone verses from the holiness codes.

I’m not sure exactly when the United Methodist Church and other mainline churches accepted giving away the spiritual practices of discernment, reconciliation, and consensus-building to Roberts Rules of Order. I do know, for example, that St. Luke does NOT tell us this in his Pentecost reporting:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, the prayers and Roberts Rules of Order. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

And I know, whenever we went all-in for this unChristian practice, it was likely sometime in the 20th century. Roberts Rules of Order was first written in 1876 by Henry Martyn Robert who was an engineering officer in the regular Army. 


In other words, the Methodist Church adopted a secular means of deliberation in the industrial age at the same time the Methodist Church was adopting bureaucratic denominational and congregational structures that intentionally mirrored the corporate practices of the time, which produced, as my friend and mentor Dennis Perry says:

“a conflation of effectiveness with efficiency, so that we now care more about process than outcomes to the point that our outcome is our process.

If asked most United Methodists can tell you who should be around the table and how to use parliamentary procedure, but few would have any words for how to create and lead a Gospel-centered community.”

Our adoption of RRoO coincided with our idolization of machines and factories. As a result, Dennis Perry argues, we seek a mass produced, top-down (what we call ‘connectionalism’) one-size-fits-all Christianity rather than a mentored, hand-crafted one; mass produced by a machine-like-culture where there is an artificial separation of management and labor, brain and brawn, producing a denomination that treats its laborers as unskilled and needing supervision:

“We trust statewide and national organizations more than local leadership.

We believe and act as if the larger organization is the real church while the local church exists for the greater church’s good.”

The impulse that gave us RRoO begat these structures and dynamics as well, structures we’ve largely left unchanged even as best practices in business have since evolved, flattened, and streamlined.

In an era where Amazon doesn’t even show me the same products it shows you, RRoO is but one of the ways we’re still trying to be Sears. 

 

I know in my pastoral experience generations of Christians raised on Roberts Rules of Orders has produced members of an institution not a movement. RRoO has produced leaders who think discipleship is about raising their hand yay or nay at a meeting.


This is a devaluing of discipleship which in turn disempowers pastors into chaplains whose role is chiefly to pray at those meetings.  

This is seen at our General Conference level where our bishops do not actually have the authority to lead our Church; their given only the authority to preside over parliamentary procedure.

Which gets to the real problem with Roberts Rules of Order- as any one who follows Congress knows is that it’s an inherently coercive, oppositional process for an ecclesial setting. In this Roberts Rules of Order is but an antiquated form of the binaries lobbed on Twitter. When a challenging issue hits the floor, for instance, responses are generally limited to three for the proposal and three against, and each response also has a time limit.  Not to mention the amendments, sub-amendments, calls to table, etc. which follow. The more controversial motions passed then get litigated at our Judicial Council, Methodism’s version of the Supreme Court- another troubling not very Gospely attribute of how we’ve agreed to arrange our lives.

Roberts Rules of Order is not Holy Conferencing. 

The very nature of pro/con debate and parliamentary maneuvering is not dialogue and leaves the body more polarized.

As my e-friend Christy Thomas says: “Roberts Rules of Order is not the way to bring renewal to the church or bring the good news of Jesus, the one who sets us free and brings us redemption, to the world. [Christian] Dialogue is very, very different from parliamentary discussion.


“Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you. My peace Roberts Rules of Order I give you.’”


Where the first Christians once accepted martyrdom in coliseums rather than betray their loyalty to the Caesar called Jesus, today Christians’ worked to determine the future of the United Methodist Church with discourse that more nearly resembled Caesar asking the crowd for a thumbs up or a thumbs down. 
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What If We’re Not Really Fighting About Sexuality?

What if, despite all the rhetoric and rainbow flags, the Westboro Baptist bystanders and debates about what constitutes a lifestyle incompatible with Christian teaching (FYI, we’re all incompatible with X’n teaching— that’s X’n teaching), we’re not really arguing about sexuality?

In 2016 the General Conference asked the Council of Bishops to lead the Church. The bishops chose to “lead” by appointing a commission to draft a proposal— that, as my friend Drew Colby says, was their leadership. The commission submitted a plan. The institutional Church and Council of Bishops spent much time and treasure advocating for the Commission’s recommendation. Presentations were convened. Websites developed. FAQ’s written. Even badges were distributed. In every respect it resembled the run-up resembled the red and blue hued campaigns that run parallel in our culture.

When we arrived here on Saturday to pick up our press passes, we ran into several “mainstream” leaders of the institution who expressed confidence in both the imminent success of the One Church Plan and the demise of the Traditionalist Plan.  The next day, on Sunday, a clear and surprising majority of the Called General Conference rejected both the leadership of the Council of Bishops and the Commission on the Way Forward. Bishop Will Willimon says that while it’s too early to know if we’re watching the dissolution of the United Methodist Church, we ARE watching the dissolution of the General Confence as a decision-making body. 

I wonder—despite all the impassioned speeches, the faith-based lobbying and parliamentary manuevering, the anxiety among pastors and the fear among gay Christians in congregations— if we’re not really arguing about sexuality at all? 

Wouldn’t it be naive, if not close-minded, to suppose that we’re immune to the currents roiling our civics and upending our politics?

The rejection of the One Church Plan is a big F-You to the Institution which backed it. 
There’s a lot of F-Bombs being thrown in our culture.

What if the UMC, as it’s currently structured, is but another institution a large (and—self-perceived- alienated) segment of our world want to burn down to the ground? What if what the antagonism that ails the UMC is but a symptom of a larger cultural affliction?

Many pastors here at General Conference sounded like they’d been gut-punched earlier today when the Traditional Plan passed for debate and decision on Tuesday while the One Church Plan failed. Many of those pastors compared the shocked, disheartening experience to what they felt on election night in 2016 when the Donald beat out the prognostications and defeated Hillary, the establishment’s presumptive winner. 

I do not think the analogy a bad one.

We are at the end of the age of curators and top-down answers. The last election proved it when voters stunned the pundits and rejected the heirs of both legacy brands in American politics – the Bushes and the Clintons. Every institution in American society is buffeted by this fundamental societal change – it’s why the number one department store in the world is do-it-yourself Amazon has left Sears is in bankruptcy. In the smartphone era, citizen make up their own minds and don’t look to top down hierarchies for cues or direction.

It’s why Budweiser is buying Goose Island, Devil’s Backbone, Wicked Weed, and 7 other craft beer companies. The world’s best marketing company has realized it cannot manufacture authenticity. Keep in mind that was not their first plan. They first tried “Budweiser American Ale” in 2008 (now defunct) to compete with Sam Adams and then created Shock Top and LandShark (it’s why both those beers suck). You cannot force people to do what you want them to do— even if what you want them to do is holy, righteous, and good— in the age of the smartphone.

Obscured in our debates about what constitutes a lifestyle incompatible with Christian teaching is a larger debate (indeed it’s a global one) about how historic, hierarchial institutions themselves are being judged incompatible with the 21st century landscape on which we live. This isn’t to dismiss the strongly held convictions about how we include gay Christians in the Body of the Church; it’s to wonder if the struggle is larger than we see— a struggle which might otherwise make common allies of those who today find themselves quite the opposite.

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Survey on Sexuality and the Way Forward

Earlier this fall, I had a friend in my congregation, who runs Republican political campaigns, compile a quick survey of my congregation about their thoughts on the Way Forward. I think Annandale United Methodist Church is fairly representative of the larger UMC and provides a snapshot about the possible consquences of what the proposals before the General Conference this week in St. Louis. I received a total of 343 surveys over 1 week.

Interestingly— or, tellingly— over 80% of the congregation said they would support same-sex weddings performed in their sanctuary.

The more you localize the question, in other words, the more inclusive they responded.

It’s also true, however, that a traditionali perspective does not correspond to a lack of familiarity with LGBQT people personally.

1. The UMC’s Book of Discipline presently states that ‘homosexuals are persons of sacred worth’ while also stating that ‘homosexuality is a lifestyle incompatible with Christian teaching,’ Currently, LGBTQ Christians are barred from ordination and pastors are prevented from celebrating same-sex weddings. Which of the following best captures your thoughts:

68.5%

I would support changing Book of Discipline to allow both ordination of LGBTQ Christians and the celebration of same-sex weddings by UMC clergy.

23.5%

I would support leaving the language in the Book of Discipline as it is.

2. If the UMC decides to keep the current policy but also decides to increase enforcement of it (for example, revoking the credentials of pastors who celebrate same-sex weddings):

18.3%

I would definitely leave the UMC

39%

I would lean towards leaving the UMC

22.1%

I would definitely stay in the UMC

20.7%

I would lean towards staying in the UMC

 

3. If the UMC decides to revise the current policy, allowing for gay ordination, I would:

10.3%

I would definitely leave the UMC

10.3%

I would lean towards leaving the UMC

58.7%

I would definitely stay in the UMC

20.7%

I would lean towards staying in the UMC

 

4. If the UMC decides to revise the current policy, allowing same-sex weddings, I would:

12.2%

I would definitely leave the UMC

8%

I would lean towards leaving the UMC

61%

I would definitely stay in the UMC

18.8%

I would lean towards staying in the UMC

5. Some members of the UMC have argued that should the global Conference preserve the existing language in the Book of Discipline, a degree of autonomy should be granted to regional conferences or congregations to enforce or not enforce the Book of Discipline. Would you support or oppose that practice of allowing disagreeing conferences to disregard the Book of Discipline’s official policies and adapt its own policies.

Support: 62.4%

Oppose: 37.6%

 

6. Should the UMC change the Book of Discipline and allow clergy to celebrate same sex weddings, but grant congregational automony to make that decision, how would you prefer Annandale respond to requests for same sex weddings in our sanctuary?

88%: I would believe same-sex weddings could be conducted at AUMC

12%: I would not believe same-sex weddings could be conducted at AUMC

 

7. If the Book of Discipline is changed to allow ordination of LGBTQ Christians and a member of Annandale UMC asks for the congregation’s recommendation to go through the ordination process, would you:

53.1%

Support recommending

16.4%

Oppose recommending

23.9%

Defer to SPRC’s decision

6.6%

No Opinion

 

8. I feel the ‘Way Forward’ for the UMC’s future is by…

71.4%

Focus on becoming more welcoming and inclusive

28.6%

Focus on biblical teachings and not contemporary social issues

 

9. Some Christians feel that the UMC has spent too much time and money (over 20% of our budget goes to the larger denomination and the General Conference, where this debate will be decided, will cost approximately $14K/minute) dividing and distracting the church on the divisive subject of sexuality while other Christians believe that adapting our policies regarding same-sex relationships to modern reality is central to our calling. Which comes closest to your belief?

70.4%

We are overdue to adapt our policies regarding same-sex relationships.

29.6%

Too much time has been spent dividing the church by trying to change policies on sexuality.

10. One possibility is that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church would allow for a “gracious exit” of individual congregations to leave the denomination with their property and assets. If the UMC maintains or makes the Book of Discipline’s policies more restrictive, would you support or oppose AUMC leaving the denomination?

55.4%

Support

44.6%

Oppose

 

11. If the UMC makes the Book of Discipline’s policies more progressive, would you support or oppose AUMC leaving the denomination?

73.2%

Oppose

26.8%

Support

 

12. I have…

37.1%

An LGBQT person in my family

78.1%

An LGBQT friend

53.5%

An LGBQT co-worker or neighbor

12.2%

Not sure

6.7%

I am an LGBQT person

 

13. Age

10.8%

19-35

23.5%

36-50

32.4%

51-65

31.9%

66+

 

14. Gender

57.3% – Female                                    39%- Male

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Episode #195: Bishop Will Willimon- Live from the Special Sex Convention

I feel like we’re on the Titanic and all of us are acting like Billy Zane, po’d about who’s sleeping with whom.

The posse from the podcast arrived in St. Louis yesterday for the Special General Conference of the UMC, called for the purpose of finding a way forward through our impasse over the issue of sexuality. As I pulled up to the airport yesterday morning, NPR was a playing a story about the conference. The woman in front of me on the flight, a lawyer, was reading a Wall Street Journal story about the conference. The man across the aisle was playing an NCAA game too loud on his phone, and reading a Washington Post story about the conference.

About how United Methodists will or will not include in its ministry those gay Christians in its Body.

Oh, and the usual crowd of protesters from Westboro Baptist Church are here with their bullhorns and their “God Hates Fags” placards.

As I mention below, it’s hard for me to think about this issue from anything other than a personal perspective. I might not be a pastor were it not for the influence of my first theology professor in college, Dr. Eugene Rogers, a conservative Karl Barth scholar who also happened to be gay. I think too of my friend Andy, clearly called by God to ministry and went all the way through seminary before coming out and culling himself from the ordination process before a committee of strangers did it for him. I think too of the various congregations I’ve served, all of which had LGBTQ folks in them and about whom none of these local churches needed lobbyists and bureaucrats from the larger institution telling them how to do their ministry.

Off my soapbox.

The posse recorded our initial thoughts about being here, below, and then we sat down for whiskey with Bishop Will Willimon last night. Here’s Will’s wisdom in a nutshell: “There’s a difference between a problem (which has a solution) and a condition (which does not). Methodism doesn’t have a problem; it has a condition. Maybe the best way forward is for the larger church to allow local churches to continue to muddle their way through this issue.”

Here are those episodes:

 

 

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Episode #193 – Professor John Goldingay: The First Testament

Soylent Green may be people, but old geezers are among my favorite guests on the podcast. Not only is Dr. John Goldingay an Oxford professor and the author of a new translation of the Old Testament, he’s a fan of Wilco, saw the Beatles perform live, and showed touching devotion to his late wife.

This goodness isn’t easy nor is it cheap. Before you listen, help us out:

Go to iTunes, look up Crackers and Grape Juice and give us a rating— it helps others find out about the podcast.

Like our Facebook Page— how easy is that?

Go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com and click on “Support the Show.”

There you can sign up to be a monthly or one-time donor for PEANUTS.

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Episode #193 – Professor John Goldgingay: The First Testament

Soylent Green may be people, but old geezers are among my favorite guests on the podcast. Not only is Dr. John Goldingay an Oxford professor and the author of a new translation of the Old Testament, he’s a fan of Wilco, saw the Beatles perform live, and showed touching devotion to his late wife.

This goodness isn’t easy nor is it cheap. Before you listen, help us out:

Go to iTunes, look up Crackers and Grape Juice and give us a rating— it helps others find out about the podcast.

Like our Facebook Page— how easy is that?

Go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com and click on “Support the Show.”

There you can sign up to be a monthly or one-time donor for PEANUTS.

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Marriage is for Sinners

“For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.” 

The marriage vows mark marriage out as an ascetic discipline. 

As the Wesley hymn explains:

“The Church’s one foundation/ Is Jesus Christ her Lord/ . . . From heaven he came and sought her/ To be his holy bride;/ With his own blood he bought her,/And for her life he died.” 

The controlling New Testament interpretation of marriage relies upon Genesis, yet— notice—Paul does not associate marriage with procreation or with complementarity, but with typology: with God’s plan to love and save his people, one God, one people. 

Same- and opposite-sex couples seek to participate not in something natural but in something unnatural— something known to us only by revelation— this typology of marriage. 

It belongs to the church’s mission to introduce them into that witness and discipline.

The question of same-sex marriage therefore comes to the church not as an issue of extended rights and privileges (this is why the language of “full inclusion” is insufficiently Christian language, I believe) but as a pastoral occasion to proclaim the significance of the gospel for all who marry, because marriage embodies and carries forward the marriage of God and God’s people. 

Because the marriage rite itself presumes that marriage is about sanctification, to deny committed couples marriage deprives them not of a privilege but of a medicine. 

“It deprives them not of a social means of satisfaction but of a saving manner of healing. Those couples who approach the church for marriage– and those whose priests prompt them to marry—are drawn there by the marriage of Christ and the church, which alone makes it possible for human relationships to become occasions of grace” (Eugene Rogers).

Couples who delay marriage are like those who previously waited for deathbed baptism.

They unaccountably put off the grace by which their lives might be healed. Likewise, the Church which denies them marriage may be like the priest who fails to show up and offer them a saving rite.

There is no question of whether the marriage of Christ and the church is available to sinners.
 Only, how it is so.

The church must know how to respond both to couples who seek marriage and those who delay it. Among those who seek marriage are same-sex couples who offer their relationship in witness to and imitation of Christ’s love. Among those who delay are same-sex couples waiting for the church to discover and proclaim the significance of its marriage to Christ for their relationships. In both cases, the church faces a test of its understanding of atonement, posed in an immediate pastoral query. How will the church receive the couple that would approach the altar, and how will it suffer the couple that delays?

How the church marries couples shapes its witness to Christ’s atonement. Whom the church marries testifies to its understanding of its own sanctification. The church’s practice of marrying is an evangelical practice, proclaiming that the love of God for God’s people is real, that the atonement is real, that reconciliation is real, that salvation is real. The Spirit calls all Christians to witness to that reality, and the church offers practices for doing so.

Because the love of God for God’s people is real, and the declaration “this is my body given for you” is true, the church needs as many witnesses as the Holy Spirit and its mission may draft. Same- and opposite-sex couples who want to marry in the church bear witness to the love of God for God’s people and to the power of that love to atone, reconcile, and heal. Not that they can do those things by their human power alone, but the Spirit can attest their witness to the atonement and healing of Christ.

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The Decision

Over the years, Tamed Cynic has grown far larger than I ever countenanced when I first began blogging by Tony Jones’ urging— several thousand readers a day. I get a lot of correspondence, much of which I regrettably don’t have the time to engage. Sometimes, something catches my eye and its worth reposting here.

As the UMC nears its global gathering to debate a way forward through the impasse over sexuality, I received this note from a UMC pastor in the MidWest:

Every United Methodist pastor since 1773 has answered the same nineteen questions in regard to entering the life of ordained ministry. 

In the Conference I serve in, every candidate for full membership is paraded in front of the entire clergy session at the beginning of Annual Conference and are asked, as a group, to answer those questions. Some see it as a profoundly holy moment in which we are tied to the clergy of the past who answered similarly, whereas others treat it as a mere formality before kneeling in front of, and being prayed over by, the Bishop.

During my time as a provisional candidate I did whatever I could to serve God at the local church to which I was appointed, and when I received word from the Board of Ordained Ministry that I was to be fully ordained I rejoiced.

But then I worried.

I worried because for a very long time I was afraid about one question that I would have to answer before the clergy session: 
 
“After full examination, do you believe that our doctrines are in harmony with the Holy Scriptures and will you preach and maintain them?”
 
For months I desperately prayed for a way forward. On one level I thought that just saying yes would be okay because then I could get ordained and keep doing the work I love. But on another level I knew that I couldn’t faithfully say yes.

There is a particular doctrine of the UMC, one that has driven us to the point of schism, that I believe runs counter to a full and canonical reading of the Bible. That doctrine is as follows: “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Until the day of the clergy session I was still wrestling with what to do, and I finally resigned myself to say “yes” and continue to work from within the church to change our doctrine. It’s how I felt years ago when I first felt God calling me to the ministry, and it’s how I still feel today. 

But then when I stood in front of all my clergy peers, and was asked the question, I was physically unable to open my mouth. 
I really felt like God was preventing me from speaking. 

I stood there with my eyes on the floor while all of my soon-to-be fully ordained brothers and sisters shouted, “Yes.”

And I said nothing.

The service continued and the room erupted in applause, and the next night I knelt before the Bishop and was fully ordained in the United Methodist Church.

The following Monday I received a voicemail from my District Superintendent. “You need to come to the District Office today for a meeting.”

So I did.

And within the first few minutes my DS cut straight to the chase:
“I watched you during the clergy session, and I saw that you didn’t answer the question about our doctrine. So I need you to swear to me right now that you will not marry two men or two women at your church.”

For years I feared having this sort of question being placed before me, and perhaps I felt a new boldness from the stole having so recently been draped over my shoulder that I answered simply, “No.”

We went back and forth for awhile about the ins and outs of the church’s current theological position, and my disagreement with it. I expressed that at the moment there were no gay couples at the church I was serving, but if a couple did arrive and demonstrated the same qualities of a faithful and monogamous relationship as a heterosexual couple I would not say no to presiding over their marriage.

———————-
When I was a teenager one of my best friends came out to me before even telling his parents. They disowned him and so did his church.

And when  I was at my first appointment I discovered that a former pastor had told that church that if anyone was gay in the pews they needed to come to his office where he would “pray the gay away.” 

When some of my friends outside the church discovered the doctrine of the UMC in regard to homosexuality they all asked me the same question, “How can you believe that?”

I don’t.
I never have.

Before I got ordained I had hope that we would’ve repented of our wrongness and hard-heartedness before I had to stand before the clergy session. But I was wrong. And even in the moment of my silence, I believed in the possibility that the United Methodist Church could change.

But when I was called into my DS’ office, my heart grieved for my church. 

I don’t know what will happen at the Special Session of the General Conference toward the end of February. 
We might change, we might stay the same, and we might be ripped apart. 
 
I am not ashamed of the Gospel, and I love getting to do what I do.
But sometimes I sure am ashamed of the church. 
 
-Anonymous 

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I’m in a Book! — Preaching Romans: Four Perspectives

It releases today!

Eerdmans has published a collection of scholarly essays and sermons on Romans, including yours truly. I’m thrilled to be a part of a book that I’d likely have bought anyway, and I’m even more humbled to be grouped among mentors who’ve become friends.

Here’s the official press on the book. here.

First-rate scholars and preachers on four interpretive approaches to Paul and Romans

Pauline scholarship is a minefield of differing schools of thought. Those who teach or preach on Paul can quickly get lost in the weeds of the various perspectives. How, then, can pastors today best preach Paul’s message?

Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica have assembled this stellar one-stop guide exploring four major interpretive perspectives on the apostle Paul: Reformational, New, Apocalyptic, and Participationist. First elucidated by a scholarly essay, each perspective is then illuminated by three sermons expositing various passages from Paul’s magisterial letter to the Romans.

Coming from such leading figures as Richard Hays, James Dunn, Fleming Rutledge, and Tom Schreiner, these essays and sermons splendidly demonstrate how each perspective on Paul brings valuable insights for preaching on Romans.

Contributors:

Michael F. Bird

Douglas A. Campbell

James D. G. Dunn

Timothy G. Gombis

Michael J. Gorman

Richard B. Hays

Suzanne Watts Henderson

Tara Beth Leach

Scot McKnight

Jason Micheli

Joseph B. Modica

Fleming Rutledge

Thomas R. Schreiner

Carl R. Trueman

Stephen Westerholm

William H. Willimon

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