Racism and the UMC

Someone asked me to provide a brief background of race and racism in the Methodist Church, and why there are separate African-American Methodist denominations, and so this last Wednesday of Black History Month seems like a good time to do that.

We should start with the fact that John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, was the first theologian of any stature or significance to come out in opposition to slavery. More importantly he did so on theological not economic grounds, saying that what he witnessed in slavery in America did not match his understanding of who God was or of God’s love. The last letter we have from Wesley was to William Wilberforce advocating him to continue in his fight to end slavery.

That anti-slavery position, among other things, led Methodism to have huge success in African-American communities, both freed and slaved, in the early days of the church. That included ordaining black preachers at the founding of the church in America in 1784, including Richard Allen.

Rev. Allen was involved in St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. After a renovation of the sanctuary, the black members of the congregation were told they were no longer welcome to sit on the ground floor, but would have to sit in the balcony. Because they had helped pay for the renovations, and because this was a change from what had happened before, they led a walkout and formed their own church. St. George’s claimed ownership of the black church, since they were still technically members of St. George’s, a claim that went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, who ruled in favor of Richard Allen.

With that victory, now Bishop Allen formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Francis Asbury, one of the first bishops in America had been supportive of Allen, and was present at the dedication of their first church. Similar events led to the founding of other black Methodist denominations including the AME-Zion and the African Union Church.

Even though the Methodist church in America was founded in opposition to slavery, that quickly began to change as the movement spread through the mid-Atlantic and other southern slave holding states, leading to arguments, especially when we began to have slave-holding bishops. That led to a proposal at the 1844 General Conference to split, forming the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) and the Methodist Episcopal Church South (MECS), roughly along slave-holding lines although the boundaries were not as clean as everyone hoped. They were proceeded in this split by the Presbyterians, and the Baptist church split north and south shortly after the MEC.

Because the MECS did not want to have any blacks in their church, and especially not any black preachers, they formed the Colored MEC, which is now the Christian MEC. The AME and AME-Zion both tried to incorporate the Colored MEC churches into their denominations without much success.

Jumping forward into the 20^th century, in 1916 the MEC and MECS began conversations about reunification, but the question of what to do with the African-American members, preachers and soon bishops in the northern church became a point of contention. Several plans were proposed and rejected, until in 1935 a plan breaking the nation up into 6 administrative units, five by geography and one by race, was proposed. While that plan was adopted and the churches merged in 1939, the plan was rejected by all African-American delegates to the General Conference.

What the plan did was to combine all black churches and black congregations into the central conference so that no white church would ever be served by either a black minister or black bishop. It legislated segregation into the church both south and north. This plan was officially abolished when the United Methodist Church was formed in 1968, although it still continued to exist in reality through 1972. Our current Bishop was a member of the central conference where his father was a preacher.

Now obviously there is a lot more history there and we continue fighting some of these same struggles. I know that there are churches that refuse to accept African-American ministers or abuse the ones they do get. Just as there are still churches that fight against female clergy appointments. There are also churches that object to being led by African-American bishops. And those churches are both north and south. No one held or holds a monopoly on racism.

But, while we should recognize where we have fallen short, we should also note where the church fought racism and discrimination. Boston University, which was a Methodist school, was the first predominantly white school to hire a black dean of the chapel, which is the reason that Martin Luther King, Jr. went there to earn his Ph.D. and where he learned about non-violent protests.  A Methodist camp in Mississippi was the only place in the US where African-Americans had access to a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. To name just a few.

In 2000, the General Conference participated in a service of repentance for the church’s racism, and in 2004 they recognized those churches who stayed in spite of the racism that was directed at them. We have also begun doing acts of repentance for the role the church has played in racism towards indigenous tribes, which is not even covered here. We are making progress and we still have a long way to go, but, with God’s help, we will become the church that God has called us to be.

Spiritual Disciplines: Fasting

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:9-15:

On this first Sunday of Lent, we are beginning a new worship series looking at some of the spiritual disciplines. And we are doing so because the season of Lent is a time of the year in which people often take on one of the disciplines, or at least have greater interest in them than at other times. That is especially true with the first spiritual discipline that we are going to discuss, and that is fasting. Now just a little background, normally when we hear the word discipline today, we think of punishment for someone who has done something wrong, especially for children. But that is not the only definition of that word. Another definition is that of a rule, or series of rules, that govern conduct or activity or operation, which is why the United Methodist Church has a book of discipline. But the definition that better applies here is training that molds, corrects or perfects. And so athletes, for example, have certain disciplines that they undergo in order to work to get better or maintain themselves. This can be found in other areas as well, including in academic disciplines, another meaning of the word, but for us as Christians it is the word that comes before that describes our disciplines and that is that they are spiritual.

There is not a set list of the spiritual disciplines, or maybe a better way to say that is there is not an exhaustive list. Any activity that helps you focus your life in Christ, that helps you become more Christ-centered as our core values call for, or that helps you deepen your faith or relationship with God, could be a spiritual discipline. But there are some disciplines that most people talk about. Some of them include prayer and service, which we are not going to talk about in this series because we just talked about them in our series on our core values. But, in what is probably the best book on the spiritual disciplines, called Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, who is a Quaker and was born in New Mexico, he lists 12 disciplines, four of which we are going to discuss, fasting, confession, scripture reading and worship and then we’re going to look at another that he doesn’t cover, but which is also crucial to a deepened spiritual life and that is giving, which I know you are all looking forward to. But, again, the purpose of all of the activities is to help us grow in our faith and our relationship with God by being intentional, by disciplining ourselves to a certain activity. We do not do these so we can check off some box, or so that we can brag about it, so that it becomes a rote law, which can lead to spiritual death. We practice the disciplines so we can grow and become freer in our faith and relationship with God.

Call to Lenten Practices

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. While we talk about the 40 days of Lent, there are actually 46 days if you count the Sundays. But, we don’t count the Sundays because every Sunday is a “little” Easter and so they exist outside of Lent. Normally when I say that someone will then ask, “Does that mean I don’t have to do [whatever it is they are doing for Lent] on Sundays?” And my response is that if you are looking for ways to get out of it, loopholes as it were, then perhaps you might not be doing whatever it is for the right reason.

While people often think of Lent as being a depressing time of the church, it doesn’t have to be. After all, as Richard Foster, the author of Celebration of Discipline, probably one of, if not the, best book written about the disciplines, says, celebration is a discipline. Additionally, since every Easter is a little Sunday, that means that we gather to praise God and celebrate what was accomplished through Christ’s resurrection every single week. Although we don’t sing or shout alleluias in Lent until Palm Sunday.

In our worship series for Lent we will be looking at a few of the spiritual disciplines, which are those things that we do in order to deepen our relationship with God. And while most often we talk about the personal disciplines, there are also corporate disciplines, things we do together, and so we will be looking at a couple of those as well. That, hopefully, well help us encounter some of these practices in a new or different way.

So, while Lent doesn’t have to be depressing, it should be intentional. It should be a time for us to intentionally take on a spiritual practice in order to deepen our relationship with God and/or to make us better disciples. But, here’s the catch , which I tend to say every year, once you start something don’t stop. Make it a permanent behavior.

I knew someone who stopped eating red meat every year for Lent, and in doing so he would talk about how red meat is not really good for your body in the amounts we eat it. Plus, it’s not good for the environment. But, if it’s healthy to stop for 40 days and not good for the environment for 40 days, isn’t it also unhealthy and not environmentally unsustainable for all of the 325 other days? So why not keep going?

Several years ago for Lent I decided I was going to be a more patient driver and not yell at other drivers who were doing dumb things around me. And you know what? It was a great experience and I kept doing it. Now I’m not as dedicated to it as I once was, but I still think about it and try and check myself when it’s getting to be too much, and I hope it’s made me more patient not just in driving but in other areas of my life. That was a successful Lenten practice for me.

And so I would encourage the same for you. Find something in which you need some improvement, or try something entirely new, and then keep doing it. They say you need to do something for at least 28 days for it to become a habit, and now you have potentially 46 days in which to make something a part of your life.

I would also recommend using the daily devotional that some of the churches, including ours, put together for Lent. We have hard copies, including large print, available at the church, or you may use the electronic version which you will find in this newsletter.

I also hope you will join our Ash Wednesday service tonight at 6 pm. Since we are not together for worship, you can make your own ashes either by burning up some paper, or old palms if you have them, or take some ashes out of a fire and grind them up into fine particles and have them available during worship, possibly with some olive or vegetable oil available as well, and I will give some instruction on how to apply them.

I pray that you will have a meaningful and purposeful Lenten season this year.

Core Values: In Service and Mission

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was 1 John 3:11-24 and Mark 10:35-45:

Shortly after I was appointed to my last church in Albuquerque, a member of the congregation came to me with a service project that he wanted to do, which is the best place for service to begin. Albuquerque did not have a food pantry anywhere west of the river and north of the interstate, which is a pretty large section of town. There was one way up in Rio Rancho, and one in the south, but none close to us, and so he wanted to start one. I was totally supportive of that effort, and having some experience with food banks, I told him that it would be great to have some other churches involved because I didn’t think we would be able to support the pantry by ourselves, especially to do what he was hoping it would do. So he went off and met with the 3 churches that were within a ½ mile of us, two of whom were immediately on board and another said they would think about it, so we were off to a great start. He then went to meet with another church that was close by which happened to be one of the largest in the city, and also the 10th largest in their denomination in the country, which I am not going to name in order to protect the guilty.

But, he sat down with them and explained what we were doing and asked if they would be willing to be a partner. The pastor he met with then asked how they could get new members of the church from the pantry? He wasn’t sure what they were asking, and so asked for clarification, and was told that unless they could be guaranteed that new people would start attending their church because of the pantry then they weren’t interested in participating. That is, the only reason to be of service to the world, the only reason to help others in need, the only reason to offer Christ’s love was if, to be a little blunt, it would put more butts in the seats.

Authentic and Aspirational Core Values

As I was doing research for the series on our core values, I read about a church that named one of their core values as being outreach. As they were looking for a new pastor, since they weren’t Methodists, they named that as one of the core things they wanted their new pastor to do: Help them welcome new people and grow. The pastor they choose said that he was passionate about reaching new people and was excited that they wanted to do the same thing.

When the new pastor got to the church he began making changes to help the church reach more people. It started with some changes in worship, then to the leadership, then to policies and procedures, and their faith development activities, and the changes worked. New people started coming, and staying, and the church was growing. And then reality struck. The members who had been there before realized that these new people were different. And even worse, they liked the changes that had been made and wanted to make even more!

And that’s when the truth emerged. They said they wanted to grow, but what they really wanted was for everything to stay exactly as it had been before, when, honestly, they weren’t growing, and get new people. They wanted new people, but only if the new people would change and become like everyone who was there before. They had articulated a value of outreach, but what they said and what they actually wanted was not the same thing. Their articulated value was disconnected from their reality.

There are two different types of core values: authentic and aspirational. Authentic core values are the ones we live every day, even if we don’t recognize them, and they are hard to change. That means we may also have core values that are negative, or that we do things that are different from whom we want to be. That could then lead us to create aspirational core values, values that state who we want to be, or what we want to be true, and begin to strive to make those a reality.

In the church above, outreach turned out to be an aspirational core value, but their true core value was safety and identity of the group. When their authentic value conflicted with their aspirational value, they wanted to stick to who they truly were and abandon outreach.  Aspirational values are great and important because they can cause us to change, if we are willing to do it. But authentic values are more often what drive us.

It’s also possible to have values that are both authentic and aspirational, and I think/hope that is what our core values represent. The One Board even had this conversation when we were naming them last year. For example, one of our values is that of being prayerful. I know there are some dedicated prayers in this congregation, who have that as one of their spiritual gifts, and I also know that there are some who rarely pray. We also do a good job of bathing a lot of things in prayer, but not everything. And so we are both aspirational and authentic in that value. 

We have also set an expectation that everyone will pray at least once a day, and as we approach making that a reality, I would expect that we will increase our expectation, and so then it becomes more aspirational again. And I think that is true for all of our values. These are not static things that have no movement. We should always be pushing to be better in all of them because there is always room for growth, or as John Wesley would say, we are moving on to perfection.

So, as we complete our series this Sunday, I hope that together we will hold these core values as being authentic to whom we truly are, and also as aspirational as to whom we want to become.

Core Values: Caring and Compassionate

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Colossians 3:12-17:

One of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day, and I watch it at least once a year on February 2, Groundhog Day, a moment where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather. And of course it’s sort of ironic that I do the same thing every year on Groundhog Day, because what the movie is about is Phil Connors, a weatherman, played brilliantly by Bill Murray who has to relive the same day over and over and over again. Every day is Groundhog Day. And when he starts out realizing that there is not tomorrow, Phil gives into a hedonistic lifestyle. But what he finds out is that this lifestyle doesn’t bring him satisfaction or true joy. In fact, it leads to him being miserable, which is probably best summed up by an exchange with his producer, played by Andie McDowell, whom he thinks he loves, or at least lusts for, and she says “I could never love you, because you’ll never love anyone but yourself,” to which Phil responds, “I don’t even like myself.” Not being satisfied, he then tries to end the endless cycle of being in the same day, which also doesn’t work, and finally there is a change and he begins to improve himself, not to impress others, but to make himself better, which also leads him start helping others.

At the beginning of the film he keeps walking past a homeless man asking for money, and he pretends that he doesn’t have anything, until eventually he is buying him meals and trying to help him survive through the night. Every day he goes to the same spot to save a young boy falling out of a tree, and performing the Heimlich maneuver, so that he endless repeat of the same day is helping people all day long. In many ways, the movie is a metaphor for Christian conversion. Moving from the ways of the world, to the ways of God. Moving from being self-centered and thinking only about ourselves, to becoming caring and compassionate towards the world, giving of ourselves for the needs of others. I think it’s a great metaphor for the core value that we look at today that we have identified as a congregation, and that is being compassionate and caring.

Different Learning Styles in Worship

On Sunday when we talked about growing spiritually, I noted that this is not just about taking more classes or gaining more knowledge. Because there are lots of learning styles and ways people connect with God, there also needs to be multiple ways for people to learn. For some people, sitting in a class talking and reading is fulfilling, for others they can’t imagine anything worse. That means we have to encompass a multiple ways of learning, and for us to also push ourselves by trying different things. The same thing is also true in worship.

I’ve mentioned that I did a learning sabbatical a number of years ago to study worship, and studying how to integrate multiple learning styles into worship was one of the things I spent time learning about. As I was talking with my counselor about what I was learning, he told me about a friend who couldn’t sit still. She was always moving, or needing to move, which led her to a career in personal training. But, he said, there was no way she could sit through a “normal” worship service because she would be too fidgety.

More than likely, she is a kinesthetic learner, that is she leans by doing, and by not recognizing that learning style we are ignoring a large portion of the population in what we do in worship. There are some “emerging” churches that are catering specifically to this learning style in having a lot more movement, including worship stations, that allow people to be moving around and learning by doing.

Now, we are not going to go that far, except maybe for some special services, but when we allow people to come forward to light candles, or even to move to make their offering, we are breaking up the worship service making it easier for this type of learning style. Allowing for more bodily worship, such as putting your hands up or clapping also helps them. It may not work for you and you may wonder what’s going on, but it is very helpful to others, and I know there are other things we can do to help.

Now, as you might guess, especially since I read so much, I learn through reading and writing. I am also an auditory learner. That’s part of the reason that I did well in school, and why most worship services work for me. In most churches, those are also the predominant learning styles of most of the congregation as well. And so I have to push beyond my comfort zone in order to think of the other learning styles.

The other major learning style is visual. For our visual learners, they noticed right away when we started putting images in the worship guides in order to break up all the words. And I know that some of you who are not visual are now saying, “There are pictures in the bulletins?” You didn’t notice, or maybe didn’t notice for a long time, because that isn’t where your eye instantly focuses.

The decorations we put up in the sanctuary also fulfill this role for those who need to have something to look at. We also change them out somewhat regularly, and with each series, so that interest can be kept up throughout the year. I would like to increase what we do in our visuals, and so if you are artistically inclined and would like to participate, please let me know.

Now this is not anything new, but a recovery of what worship used to look like. If you’ve ever attended worship in an Orthodox church (Greek, Russian, etc.), there is tons of stuff to keep your eye moving, and there is movement throughout the service, and bodily participation plus reading and speaking and singing/chanting. That may be one of the reasons why Orthodox churches are growing. But, much of that was removed during the Protestant Reformation, and so now we are learning to regain much of what we lost when we tossed the baby out with the bathwater.

Now for those who are hearing this and panicking that I am going to be changing worship up, please rest assured that the vast majority of worship is going to remain exactly the same. And remember, as I have said before, while some things we do in worship may not work for you, they will work for others in connecting them with God and allowing them to be free in worship, and vice versa. That’s part of what it means to be inclusive and also part of what it means to be in community and to worship in Spirit and in truth.

Core Values: Growing Spiritually

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:21-28 and Hebrews 5:11-6:4:

This week we had to submit our annual statistics to the annual conference, which includes reporting on our finances, but then also about worship attendance, and membership, and how many people are impacted by the ministries of the church, and baptisms and participation in Sunday school and other classes. That is they are asking me to report things that they can count to try and account for how we are making disciples. The problem is, none of the things we have to report really say anything about that ultimately. Because you could have a youth group of 50, but not have them coming into relationship with Jesus, and you could have a youth group of five that is making deep disciples. So which is better? Well off of straight statistics, the conference is going to be happier with the 50, than with the five, even though our goal is making disciples. Of course you could have the opposite as well, I am not saying that big is bad, but it’s a matter of what is actually happening in those groups, which is harder to define.

In 2004, Willow Creek Community Church, which is located outside of Chicago and is one of the largest churches in the country, did try and quantify their ability to make disciples and to deepen people in their spiritual journey. Willow Creek, which began in 1975, was one of the primary pushers of the idea of creating a seeker church to bring in unchurched people by removing all the things that people associated with being church. And so, in their own admission, they undertook this survey to really prove how successful they had been in fulfilling the great commission and making disciples of Christ. But, the survey showed the opposite. That while they were great at getting people through the door, they were not moving them past seeking into discipleship.