Prayer, Stewardship, Evangelism, Bible are not in the UMC?

October 15th edition of the United Methodist Reporter had two articles which I thought great for me to consider.  One has to do with the need for mentors written by Andrew Thompson. This article connects with the work that the Elisha Advocates (you can find the group page on Facebook. You can also find the evolving “Visioning Document” as well as the evolving “Theological Underpinning”) are attempting to do in the Central Texas Conference.   

However, this post is not about Thompson’s article, but about Dan Dick’s article entitled “Message from UM laity: teach Christian essentials”. Dick’s argues that what he has heard from laity over the past 20 years is that “Prayer, stewardship, evangelism and Bible are not being taught in our churches.” 

I am not sure what this really means. Does this mean churches are really not teaching these areas or is what is being taught not understood or is what is being taught not what we want to hear? 

I cannot image a UMC congregation not pray in worship or at meetings or gatherings of any sort. It is my assumption that prayers are heartfelt and meaningful. It is my assumption that prayers are rooted in our ground of being and that they attempt to express the deepest parts of the human soul, but maybe I am mistaken.

I cannot image a UMC congregation not talk about stewardship each year, at the very least a stewardship of finances. It is my assumption that the growing awareness of stewardship of our resources, time, energy, money and the like are addressed in the life of the congregation each week through the collection of tithes and offerings. It my assumption that we do not have committees of “Finance” or “trustees” but committees of “Stewardship of finances” or “Stewardship of space”, but maybe I am mistaken.

I cannot image a congregation not engaging in evangelism, sharing Good News, through the lives of the community members. I assume that we are as excited to be in conversation around the water cooler talking about how we are being transformed each day by Grace and Love as we are to talk about the Kardashians or the Dallas Cowboys. I assume we are inviting people to engage God with the same tenacity and excitement when we are throwing a Super Bowl Party or Bridal shower, but maybe I am mistaken.

I cannot imagine a UMC congregation not talking about the four areas at some point. Each Sunday Scripture is read and the Word proclaimed. It is my assumption that preachers are not giving three stories and a poem in the Proclamation. It is my assumption that preachers cannot help but be open to the Spirit working through Scripture, but maybe I am mistaken.

I am not perfect by any means and I am willing to take my share of the fault on the UMC’s lack of making these four areas less vague. I am even willing to say the lay knowledge and interaction with these four areas reflect, in part, clergy’s knowledge and interaction of these areas. It is my prayer that any community for which I am connected with will have these four bedrocks of the Faith. Additionally I will, with my prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness, do my best to make sure these are present.

Will you join me?

Beethoven's 9th Symphony

I encountered this when listening to RadioLabs from WNYC.  This is Beethoven's 9th Symphony (which usually lasts about an hour) stretched out to last 24 hours.  The high movement and fast pace of the musical piece is quickly removed and is replaced with a melodious musical arrangement which I have been using for prayer and meditation.

On a similar "note", the entire site of oddinstruments.com is worth your time to just explore what people are doing with music around them.

Prayer from Sunday

I was asked by a few people for a copy of this prayer I shared on Sunday. It was inspired by the opening chapters of Almost Christian by Kenda Creasy Dean (which by the way is a great book, but seems a bit redundant through the opening sections).

As we breathe in the breath of life we become aware that we are dependent upon you Spirit of life. We cannot make it on our own; we cannot do this thing called life on our own. If it were not for you we could not even breathe. We are completely dependant upon your grace in our lives but the fact of the matter is, most of the time we think we can do just fine without you.

We are caught up in a great deception and lie. We live our lives saying all the “Christian” things and being “nice” to people all the while believing we have submitted ourselves to your Will of sacrifice and de-centered ourselves. It is embarrassing to even admit it in these quite moments that we live with the expectation that you a butler waiting on us to snap our fingers so as to meet an immediate desire we have. It is amazing that even in our arrogance and refusal to change our life to reflect Your desire and mission, you still love us. You still traverse time and space, life and death in order to enter into our lives, defrost our hearts and call us to sacrificial love. Why do you do it? Why do you have compassion for a people who constantly push you away and treat you like a parlor trick? In this very moment, in our collective embarrassment and awareness of our shame, please forgive us. Transform our minds to the point where our desires are your desires, transform our heart so that what you have compassion for we too would have compassion for.

You are a God of great compassion not only in dealing with us individually but with the entire world. While we are blaming other people for the problems of the world, you have compassion for them. While we are busy looking for a way to make ourselves look good, through Jesus Christ you died for the very people we demonize. Your demands of compassion are high and your grace calls us to a greater love than we embody at this time, but we seek to move toward being made perfect in love. For being perfect in love we are transformed to embody your Love and Grace; for it is the embodiment of Grace that we follow as we join our voices with the Great Cloud of Witnesses, the Saints of the Church past and present in the unending prayer which Jesus taught all his disciples to pray saying: Our Father...

I do not remove black from my home but...

I am a fan of the book “The Evolution of God” even though it is at times laborious to read and sometimes feels like a conspiracy theorist making his/her case. While I do not have the time to go though the entire book I wanted to share a line from the book and then what it evoked in me.

The author is talking about the rituals that a fisherman and canoe builders in ancient tribes would do in order to ‘please the gods’ of their home or tribe. Some of these things that were done seemed rather odd and seemingly unrelated to fishing or canoe crafting, but the author writes, “is indeed hard to argue that removing all black from the home is, in and of itself, time well spent for the ambitious angler. Still, the combined effect of all these rituals was to cloak the business of canoe building and fishing in an air of solemnity that presumably encouraged exacting and conscientious performance.”

While it seems sort of silly for me to think that people believed a bigger catch or better canoe would result in the removal of the color black from their homes, I can appreciate it.

What I mean is that I too have my rituals and my disciplines which, to some viewing them from afar, might seem silly or unrelated. I read the Bible. I engage in conversations on theology. I maintain a blog. I cross my forehead, wipe my face and kiss my left ring finger after a prayer. I worship on Sunday. I even have a ritual when I get to work each day.

Ritual is something in my life that is very helpful not because I believe I am persuading the ‘gods’ to work on my behalf as though my wishes are first on God’s ‘to do list’. Nor do I engage in rituals in order to keep ‘the gods’ happy. I do not worship to persuade or keep God happy. I worship, I partake in ritual in part because it “encourages exacting and conscientious” living.

Everyone has rituals in their lives. You might not even be aware of them. So the next time I see someone praying in a certain way, walking in a certain way, or even to the extent of practicing what I might consider “superstitions”, I will give pause to consider that perhaps their ritual may not be as silly as it looks.