Reaching a New Generation

One of our Conference priorities is empowering and reaching a new generation of United Methodist Christians. A rising median age of our church indicates that we have much to do to position ourselves to reach our youth.

A huge step forward has been our appointment of Clay Farrington, a Deacon, to oversee our Conference work with youth. Clay is leading us in some exciting ways.

Clay says that Conference Youth Ministry exists for two reasons:

1.     To develop youth ministry leadership – both students and adults

2.     To host excellent student events that strengthen the local church

To those ends, we're doing a few things…

August 25: Bread & Butter: Youth Ministry Training

A jam packed one-day youth ministry training event. $20 registration fee!. Last year Duffy Robbins was our featured speaker with around 20 breakout sessions covering the gamut of student ministry. This year our featured speaker is Jason Gant from the Church of the Resurrection. The event will be at Trinity UMC in Homewood. This event is perfect for our smaller congregations who want to get back into youth ministry.

Encounter!

The cherished event in Gatlinburg has been reborn. This winter we had more than 500 students and leaders from throughout the North Alabama Conference present. We gleaned a huge number of names of young persons who feel called into ministry. Dr. Thomas Muhomba and the office of Ethnic Ministries partnered with Conference Youth Ministry to help reach a number of ethnic United Methodist youth.

Battle of the Bands

In an ongoing effort to develop student leadership for ministry, this year we will host a youth battle of the bands in Munger Auditorium during Annual Conference. The winning band will lead worship for Bread & Butter and a set during Encounter 2013. Clay says, “If Annual Conference gets a little boring, come on over to Munger and see the future of the North Alabama Conference.”

Restructuring

Clay is doing a remarkable job drawing upon the youth ministry leadership talent we already have in many of our churches. By this Annual Conference each district will have a Youth Leadership Team (DYLT) made up of 2-3 of the best youth workers in the district and 8-12 stand out student leaders (some of whom responded to the call to ministry at Encounter). The DYLT's will be given a budget from Conference. Districts have been asked to match funds. And the DYLT's will be charged with planning and implementing a youth ministry event for their district – student led as much as possible.

How well is your congregation doing in reaching and retaining youth? If you want to do more, write Clay!

Will Willimon

P.S. Join me in praying that we will have a productive and invigorating Annual Conference this week. The North Alabama Annual Conference will meet on the campus of Birmingham-Southern College May 31-June 2. 

Fear of God

When Jesus rose from the dead the disciples were told, “Don’t be afraid.” Those who knew Jesus best, and were in turn known best by him, knew that, while friendship with Jesus is sweet, it is also demanding, difficult, and, at times, even fearsome.

As the Bible says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Presumably, it’s not fearful to fall into the hands of a dead god, an idol who never shocks or demands anything of you, who is no more than a fake, a godlet, a mere projection of your fondest desires and silliest wishes. Out in Galilee—a dusty, drab, out-of-the-way sort of place, just like where most of us live—the disciples of Jesus were encountered by the living God. That Jesus could not only give death the slip but also be in Galilee suggests that the risen Christ could show up anywhere, anytime. And that’s scary.

Here is God, not as a high-sounding principle, a noble ideal, or a set of rock-solid beliefs. Here is God on the move, moving toward us; God defined by God, God ordering us to be on the move into the world with God. And that’s a joyful thing—but more than a little scary too. When it dawns on you that the living God is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah we didn’t expect, the Savior we didn’t want, God in motion—well, fear is a reasonable reaction.

The modern world has many ways of turning us in on ourselves, eventually to worship the dear little god within. Christianity, the religion evoked by Jesus, is a decidedly fierce means of wrenching us outward. We are not left alone peacefully to console ourselves with our sweet bromides, or to snuggle with allegedly beautiful Mother Nature, or even to close our eyes and hug humanity in general. A God whom we couldn’t have thought up on our own has turned to us, reached to us, is revealed to be someone quite other than the God we would have if God were merely a figment of our imagination—God is a Jew from Nazareth who lived briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly. This God scared us to death but also thrilled us to life.

- From The Best of Will Willimon, Abingdon, 2012

Jesus’ Family Values

On the cross, Jesus gets into it with his mother. “Woman, behold thy son,” he says to her. Mary, look at the child you are losing, the son that you are giving over for the sins of the world. Maternal love is that love that loves in order to give away. In Mary’s case, it was particularly so. When Jesus was born, old Simeon had predicted, “A sword will also pierce your heart.” From the first, it was not easy to be the mother of the Son of God. And now, even from the cross, Jesus is busy ripping apart families and breaking the hearts of mothers. Because he was obedient to the will of God, because Jesus did not waver from his God-ordained mission, he is a great pain to his family. “Woman, behold thy son.”

In that day, in that part of the world, there were no social attachments as rigid or determinative as that of the family. Family origin determined your whole life, your complete identity, your entire future. So one of the most countercultural, revolutionary acts of Jesus was his sustained attack upon the family.

In a culture like our own, dominated by “family values,” where we have nothing better to command our allegiance to than our own blood relatives, this is one of the good things the church does for many of us. In baptism, we are rescued from our family. Our families, as good as they are, are too narrow, too restricted. So in baptism we are adopted into a family large enough to make our lives more interesting.

“A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you,” he said elsewhere (John 13:34). Watch closely. Jesus is forming the first church, commanding us to live as if these foreigners were our relatives. Church is where we are thrown together with a bunch of strangers and are forced to call these people with whom we have no natural affinity, nothing in common, “brother,” “sister.”

So after this moment, never again could the world say family without Jesus’ people thinking church.

On campus one evening, debating the future of our fraternities and sororities, this student says, “One reason why I love my fraternity is that it has forced me to be with a group of guys, many of whom I don’t like—guys of a different race and culture from my own—and call these losers ‘brother.’ That’s made me a better person than if I had been forced to stay with my own kind.”

“I’ve never thought of a frat as a church,” I said.

That day when they came to Jesus saying, “Your mother and your brothers are looking for you,” Jesus responded saying, “Whoever does the will of my Father, he is my brother.” In other words, Jesus is naming and claiming a new family for himself, that family made up of disciples. Now anybody who attempts to follow Jesus is one of the Family.

- From The Best of Will Willimon, Abingdon, 2012

Lost and Found Loving the Lost

I am sometimes asked why so many of our Methodists have actively opposed Alabama’s controversial Immigration Law. Many of our leading educators, law enforcement personnel, and business persons have criticized Senator Beason’s law. From what I’ve seen, the motivation of many Christians in opposing the law arise from our own experience with Christ; we were aliens from the love of God, lost, then we were found.

One reason that Christians tend to move toward those on the boundaries, tend to feel responsibility for the hungry and the dispossessed is because we worship the sort of God who has moved toward us while we were famished and out on the boundaries. God looks upon us all, even us fortunate ones, as the hungry and dispossessed who need saving. This is just the sort of God who commands, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed” (Luke 14:13-14). Here is a God who, for some reason known only to the Trinity, loves to work the margins inhabited by the poor, the orphaned, and the widowed; the alien and sojourner; the dead and the good as dead in the ditch. It is of the nature of this God not only to invite the poor and dispossessed but also to be poor and dispossessed, to come to the margins, thus making the marginalized the center of his realm. “Truly I tell you, just as you did it unto the least of these . . . you did it unto me” (Matt 25:40).

The story “I once was lost but now am found” is the narrative that gives us a peculiar account of lost and found, a special responsibility to seek and to save the lost. If we want to be close to Jesus—and that’s a good definition of a Christian, someone who wants to go where Jesus is—then we’ve got to go where he goes. Christians go to church in order never to forget that we were strangers and aliens out on the margins (Eph 2:19).

“You know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exod 23:9). We were lost and then found. That continuing memory of the dynamic of our salvation—lost then found—gives us a special relationship to the lost, the poor, and anybody who does not know the story of a God who, at great cost, reaches far out in order to bring to close embrace.

- Adapted from The Best of Will Willimon, Abingdon, 2012.

Nonviolent Resurrected Jesus

On the night a squad of soldiers arrested him, Jesus mocked them, undaunted, asking if they were armed to the teeth to arrest him, an unarmed rabbi, as if he were a common thief. Ironically, the soldiers were not the only ones with swords. Peter, the most impetuous of Jesus’ disciples, the “rock” upon which Jesus promised to build his church, whipped out a sword and nicked off a bit of an ear—despite Jesus’ clear commandment that his disciples not carry weapons. Jesus cursed Peter: “Those who take up the sword die by the sword.” That night, Jesus once again refused to practice violence, even in self-defense.

“Those who take up the sword die by the sword” is one of the truest proverbs of Jesus. Both the victor and the vanquished must finally submit to the power of the sword. The sword we thought we were using to secure ourselves becomes our ultimate defeat.

As everybody knows, there is no way to get anything really important done without swords. That’s why we have the largest military budget of any nation in the world—to achieve security and then preemptively to spread peace and freedom everywhere. What war has been waged except from the very best of motives? To call Jesus a “Prince of Peace” is an oxymoron. A political leader who doesn’t make war when national security is threatened is no prince. And peace that is based on anything other than a balance of military power is inconceivable.

Thus, one of the most perennially confusing qualities of Jesus was his refusal of violence. “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer them your left cheek as well. Some Roman soldier commands, ‘Jew, carry my backpack a mile,’ take it one mile more. Pray for your enemies! Bless those who persecute you! Do not resist the evil one!” As if to underscore that his kingdom was “not from here,” Jesus healed the daughter of a despised Roman centurion. Was this any way to establish a new kingdom?

It would have been amazing enough if Jesus had said, “I always turn the other cheek when someone wrongs me,” or “I refuse to return violence when violence is done to me.” After all, Jesus is the Son of God, and we expect him to be nice. Unfortunately, Jesus commanded his disciples—us, those who presumed to follow him—to behave nonviolently. How do we get back at our enemies? “Love your enemies!” What are we to do when we are persecuted for following Jesus? “Pray for those who persecute you.” Thus, we have many instances in the New Testament of people violating and killing the followers of Jesus. But we have not one single instance of any of his followers defending themselves against violence, except for Peter’s inept, rebuked attempt at sword play.

This consistent, right to-the-end, to-the-point of-death nonviolence of Jesus has been that which Jesus’ followers have most attempted to modify. When it comes to violence in service of a good cause, we deeply wish Jesus had said otherwise. There are many rationales for the “just war,” or for self-defense, capital punishment, abortion, national security, or military strength. None of them, you will note, is able to make reference to Jesus or to the words or deeds of any of his first followers. You can argue that violence is sometimes effective, or justified by the circumstances, or a possible means to some better end, or practiced by every nation on the face of the earth—but you can’t drag Jesus into the argument with you. This has always been a source of annoyance and has provoked some fancy intellectual footwork on the part of those who desire to justify violence. Sorry, Jesus just won’t cooperate.

William H. Willimon
from The Best of Will Willimon, Abingdon, 2012

My Call To Action

“Competent employees crave accountability; incompetent ones flee it,” writes one of our management consultants. I’m pleased that the North Alabama Conference, through the invention and use of our Dashboard, has pioneered a renewed culture of accountability. The spirit has caught on with the bishops’ Call to Action – a plan to build in accountability for mission into the life of our connection. Of course, like any innovation, the plan has its critics, most of whom see no need for increased accountability in our church [1].

Paul Nixon has become a very helpful coach to our pastors and churches who want to improve their mission engagement. Recently Paul published a piece on how measurement and accountability, inspired by the Holy Spirit, have motivated his own ministry.

- Will Willimon

I was sixteen years old, traveling with my church youth group in the New Mexico mountains: listening to an American missionary talk about his work in Korea. Blah, blah, blah the speaker went on. Calling us to action. It meant nothing to me. But it just so happened, as I zoned out from whatever he was talking about, that the Spirit of God started chattering in my soul. I experienced that night what my faith community confirmed to be a "call to ministry." I had no idea what I was getting into, but the sense of God's calling that began that night, has guided and motivated me now for more than 33 years….a Call burning in my soul.

So I have benchmarked my work constantly (and a bit ruthlessly) across the years. I cannot imagine not doing so! No bishop or DS asked me to do so. I did it because I believed the work mattered! Because I believed God demanded it!

In my first appointment out of seminary, as associate pastor to a suburban church, I decided in my first week on the job (the last week of June) that we needed to double the number of children's church school classes from 9 to 18. This would entail quadrupling the number of teachers by August. I convened a group that walked with me through the church membership roll, discussing each name, in terms of their potential to teach. I started calling with A, and secured my last teacher somewhere in the W's in early August. That year our church school attendance rose from 370 to over 500….

A few years later I was appointed to a church that was consistently taking in 200 new members a year. But I wanted 300. So I began to calculate, and to work a series of strategies that would kick that number over 300 within a couple years.

Some would say I was driven. Yeah, maybe... But I always took my day off, came home for dinner, played with my kid, and so forth. I just believed this work was really important - and so I kept careful score about key metrics that seemed connected to fulfillment of the mission. I constantly re-arranged my time to make sure that the most strategic things happened.

I now coach pastors. And I cannot count how many times in the past month I have gently but directly asked my pastors "How are you going to know you are making progress in the next six months? How will you know that you are on track in your mission?" Ultimately, they set benchmarks for themselves and I help them reach those goals. It is a ministry of accountability and encouragement. I believe in accountability.

I have learned over the years that accountability has very little to do with motivation, and that it rarely ever motivates a person to work harder. Pastors work hard because they are passionate about their work. That passion is almost always connected to their experience of God's call. It grows from within their soul.

My denomination is moving into a season of renewed accountability. Long past due! Some of our bishops now want a report card from their pastors every week. Maybe overkill, but a little accountability will not hurt The United Methodist Church.

What might hurt is the disappointment five years from now…, if we assume that accountability will produce the motivation now lacking. The motivation that produced the Book of Acts came from a place higher than the Council of Bishops.

If the United Methodist Call to Action yields anything, it may be because the bishops themselves take action to remove ineffective pastors from vital places of service when those persons persistently fail to grow their churches or meet reasonable benchmarks in changing community situations. If the Call to Action yields anything, it could be because conference leaders do what it takes to help their conferences recruit women and men passionate and competent for the work of growing the church….

To my friends in the episcopacy, thank you for caring about our church enough to call us to action - but now the church looks to you for action. When we see some $20,000 salary cuts begin to show up across the connection in response to pastoral ineffectiveness, that is when we will know you all were serious.

Hold us accountable!

Paul Nixon
The Epicenter Group

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[1] For example, see the compromised UMCPlanB.org

Following Jesus After Easter

I am still haunted by a long conversation I had with a man who was a member of one of my early congregations. He told me that one evening, returning from a night of poker with pals, he had a stunning vision of the presence of the risen Christ. Christ appeared to him undeniably, vividly.

Yet though this event shook him and stirred him deeply, in ten years he had never told anyone about it before he told me, his pastor. I pressed him on his silence. Was he embarrassed? Was he fearful that others would mock him or fail to believe that this had happened to him?

“No,” he explained, “the reason why I told no one was I was too afraid that it was true. And if it’s true that Jesus was really real, that he had come personally to me, what then? I’d have to change my whole life. I’d have to become some kind of radical or something. And I love my wife and family and was scared I’d have to change, to be somebody else, and destroy my family, if the vision was real.”

That conversation reminded me that there are all sorts of reasons for disbelieving the resurrection of crucified Jesus, reasons that have nothing to do with our being modern, scientific, critical people.

Theologian Jurgen Moltmann says that a major reason for disbelieving in the truth of the resurrection is that, if the resurrection is true, then we cannot live as we previously have lived.  We must change or be out of step with the way the world really is.  If the world is not in the grip of death and death-dealers, how then shall we live?

William H. Willimon
-  from The Best of Will Willimon, (Abingdon Press, 2012)