Goodbye First Methodist

My time at First Methodist has come to an end. I packed up my office this week during off hours. I brought two highly skilled individuals to help the moving process.

The most difficult part of that process was finding a place to store 500 books. Fortunately, a good friend had a vacant room in their home and let me stack boxes of obscure monographs there. I learned a tremendous amount at First Methodist – much about leadership, people and their spiritual desires, and (above all) about myself. I was afforded opportunities there that I otherwise would never have been given. I had moments of success, failure, and everything in between…all in three and a half years.

Over the last two years, I encountered some specific struggles in ministry I had not experienced up until that point. Some I handled well. Others not so much. I learned a lot about myself in that process. I also learned a very important lesson: some situations have nothing to do with me whether I’m personally affected by them or not. I found my ability to correct those situations is limited. I’m sure I’ll reflect on my time there over the next several years. I am extremely thankful for that time. I’ll take the lessons I learned there into future ministry. I imagine some day I’ll be having coffee with a church staff member or another pastor and I’ll hear myself say the words, “When I was at First Methodist…”

Over the last three years, I began to collect sayings and tape them to my computer monitor…tacky, but necessary. Some days I followed them to the letter. Other days I failed to follow them at all. I thought I’d share them with you. You might find it interesting that there is not a single Bible verse listed. Nor is there a well-known theologian quoted. Maybe they will mean something to you, too. If so, why not tape them to your computer monitor?

Hereafter, if you should observe on occasion to give your officers and friends a little more praise than is their Due, and confess more fault than you can justly be charged with, you will only become the better for it. Criticising and censuring almost every one you have to do with, will diminish friends, encrease Enemies, and thereby hurt your affairs.                                                                                                 -  Benjamin Franklin to John Paul Jones, July 5, 1780

The greatest need of my congregation is my own personal holiness.                                                                                                             –  Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Most unsolicited feedback is for the sender.                                                                                                                                                 – Harvard Business Review Article

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.                                                                                                                                 – Plato of Athens (apocryphal)

In the end, everything will be okay. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.                                                                                                               – Playwright Carolyn Myers

Book Review: Kissing Fish

I just finished a really interesting book yesterday. It’s by Roger Wolsey and it’s called Kissing Fish. The book is somewhat of a spiritual manifesto on a movement that is taking shape in America: Progressive Christianity. Notice I didn’t say liberal Christianity or modern or postmodern. I said progressive. Roger is an extremely approachable guy. He’s ordained Methodist and ministers at the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado – a place not exactly known as a bastion for conservative Christianity. And that’s what I like about this book: it gives real and practical thoughts about ministering to a generation where they are, not where we think they should be.

Roger puts it this way in his opening chapter: “I discovered the disappointing gap between idealistic notions of what the Church can and could be – and the decidedly non-ideal, petty, political, conflicted, dysfunctional beautiful messes that most of them are” (45).  Hopefully, that doesn’t put you off…particularly since Paul Tillich voiced similar sentiments in his History of Christian Thought: “…the gap between its claim and its reality.” Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski has said the same about primitive religions. So, Roger is in good company.

Progressive Christianity seeks to develop a something other than a religion about Jesus. It focuses on the religion of Jesus: “his actual beliefs, practices, and lifestyle” (58). Sanctification is at its core: the slow gradual growth towards Christ-likeness in individual piety and social justice. Not one of the other. Both. Progressive Christianity is more tolerant for the sake of inclusion, reconciliation, and healing. Along with that is a level of inclusivism for other religions and alternative lifestyles and a blending of religious traditions that may make conservative evangelicals nervous.  That’s okay. The label “progressive” appeals to a different demographic. And as a wise woman told me a few weeks ago, “alternative” is quickly becoming “mainstream” where religious preference is concerned.

For the first half of the book, Roger works his way through a loosely knit systematic theology, tweaking it as he goes. He says gems like “…what Jesus talked about most wasn’t himself…”(161) or “”[Progressives] concern is more upon living and loving in God’s Kingdom right now and faithfully helping to manifest it all the more” (177).  These quotes don’t sound progressive to me – they sound like accurate notions of biblical Christianity. Even in the deep South (where I live), people are whispering similar phrases in dark alleys where it’s safe.

The second half of the book is a more practical outworking of these ideas. Roger starts off this way:

As the old Swing era hit put it, “‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing” and brother-sister, love is that swing. You can meditate and pray, go to church, get baptized and take communion, light candles and burn incense, read sacred texts, chant, fast and do yoga, and even help out at soup kitchens, but if you aren’t doing them with love, it’s all a bunch of vapid, empty horse apples. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve got a shed full of them (250).

See why I like this guy?! He then spends several chapters unpacking the practical nature of love in action. He covers everything from practical acts of kindness to the spiritual discipline of “centering prayer.” Now, what’s great about that is usually we lean to one side of the other: we focus on Christianity as meeting the needs of others or meeting our own needs. Roger holds them in tandem…just like God probably designed to begin with.

This is good book. Particularly if you’ve never read something from this paradigm before. I have one drawback: it could’ve been shorter and had the same impact. The word “redaction criticism” should’ve never made it in this work simply because those concerned with hermeneutics won’t be reading it. Still, it’s a fun, personal and engaging book. I liked it. Roger tells you in the postlude that’s he’s not saying anything new…and that’s true. I would add the names, Richard Rohr, Dallas Willard, Henri Nouwen, John Wesley, and (my theological hero) Horace Bushnell to the list. But what Kissing Fish  does represent is a growing ensemble of voices originating in places other than what some would call “left field.” There was very little I disagreed with in this book and I consider myself to be a “post-conservative” evangelical. Roger may use the word “progressive” but what he is describing is very quickly becoming the norm. And for that, Kissing Fish is worth the read.

Making Lent Relevant Again

Lent has a rich and storied tradition in the church – forty days of self-denial, reflection, and prayer. I must confess that I have not been overly enamored with Lent (which isn’t the best frame of mind for those who serve a church that places emphasis on the liturgical calendar). There’s a good reason for this – Lent became something else for me to do. Some other rule to keep among a host of others. I gave up rule-based Christianity for a heart-based version about eight years ago. In doing that, my relationship with God improved drastically and I became a tolerable individual. Plus, it keeps my heart-rate down. Now, I run away screaming from anything that resembles legalism in the slightest.

Lent for most folks today is a second chance at recouping the losses of New Year’s Day resolutions…only this time, there’s a little divine intervention. Others opt for silly self-denials – caffeine, sugar, candy. I happen to agree with the eleven year old boy who told me last week: “I’m denying myself coke and candy right after I eat and drink it.” Evidently the futility of such tactics is not lost on any age. We are left to stress out over Lenten commitments or to trivialize them. Neither does anything for the soul.

What’s more, I understand the importance of fasting, but am put off by people gearing up to fast for a specific period of time without being prompted by the Holy Spirit. Once God began to show me the importatnce of living a fasted life, my need for a calendar date to start a fast went out the window…and with it, the relevance of Lent. But (as is often the case) I’m wrong. Not for decrying triviality or legalism, but for not approaching Lent in a different way. Lent is important when it promotes serious reflection, healthy spirituality, and improves relationships. Okay. Great. But how? Well, this is what I’ve come up with. You’re welcome to adapt it as you see fit.

I no longer fast sweets or sodas. I try to fast things that will improve my quality of Christianity. Here are two examples. First, I have fasted people for Lent before. Rather I should say that I fast a person’s influence over me. Let me explain. We all have people in our lives that irritate us or get under our skin – classmates, co-workers, relatives, even our friends. I don’t fast their presence in my life – they are gonna be around me anyway. But I do fast their control over my emotions and ability to wreck my mood. I fast those sleepless nights where I continually play a conversation I had with them while thinking up extremely clever comebacks to say. I figured out that when I do those things I am giving that person extreme control over my thought life that would be better used for something that actually matters. So I “fast” that person for 40 days. It’s absolutely liberating.

Another example: I have fasted expectations I have for another person for 40 days. Often times, my disappointment with another has to do with what I believe they should be willing to do rather than what they actually are doing. Of course, this can be a problem in marriages, but it applies to all the same people groups I mentioned above as well. Most times our anger towards others involves a big SHOULD: how we believe others should behave rather than allowing them the liberty to live their own lives as they please. So, I will locate an individual upon whom I have placed unrealistic expectations – a spouse, child, co-worker, church leader – and I’ll completely relax any expectations of them for those 40 days. Of course, I don’t tell them, but I do notice that our relationship improves dramatically simply because they can feel that freedom in our relationship. The great thing is that after the 40 days, the relationship is usually going so much better that I continue that relaxed state. Truthfully, God means for our relationships to be that way all the time – Lent is just a way to jump start that process.

Be creative with Lent this year – you can always adjust your Lenten commitments if needed. If used correctly, Lent can be a liberating way to create new avenues of spiritual health in our lives. Forget the cokes and candy. Go after something truly transformative!

 

“Feeling” God

I believe people need to “feel” God. In order to explain this I need to go into egghead mode. I’m gonna ramble for a bit if that’s okay with you…

Church ministry is a tricky business. Taking concepts developed in an innocuous vacuum of journal articles, magazine op-eds, and…well…blogs and translating them into real life is difficult. Rarely is the transition a smooth one. There’s a reason for this: while theology involves concepts, pastoring involves people. Though everyone lives from a place of personal theology, the outworking of that personal theology is often drastically different from one person to the next. Nurturing the growth of such a diverse group of folks can be the undoing of the most industrious minister. But I’ve noticed something that helps direct my personal ministry. One of the things I feel most “called” to in ministry is to help people understand and facilitate their ability to “feel” God.

I like to describe this idea idea using the term of somatization: the conversion of cognitive, emotional, or spiritual aspects into physical or tangible expressions. For spiritual purposes, it’s the work of  the Holy Spirit in bodily manifestation. Normally in the psychiatric/medical community, that term has negative connotations. But honestly, anything - good or bad, happy or sad – affects us physically. It’s the same idea found in the ridiculously overused term “psychosomatic.” Internal issues result in physical expression.

Over the years, I’ve watched many individuals have a spiritual encounter that completely shifted their personal paradigm of God’s nature and immanence. In each of those scenarios, experience (of some sort) confirmed the power of God available to them on a personal level. Personally, it struck me as odd that God would initiate a strong spiritual encounter when I knew that many of those who received it had little to no doctrinal knowledge. I believed God was doing things backwards; after all doctrine comes first, right? But it occurred to me that throughout the history of the church, many people openly rejected any attempt of indoctrination without a prior or accompanying spiritual experience to validate that doctrine’s truth. Once someone has an encounter where they “feel” God, they will desire to know more about the God who provided that experience. God anchors faith in experience until one becomes grounded in proper belief. I began to understand my pastoral role was to disciple a healthy and balanced Christian upon the foundation of those spiritual encounters – not denying their legitimacy or downplaying their appropriateness.

How Christianity translates the supernatural into daily life is the most important aspect of personal spirituality today. Many pastors and theologians are struggling with this. Contemporary Christians are eager to cast off strict, doctrinally-oriented approaches to Christianity without accompanying experience. We ask Christians all the time  to follow their beliefs with actions – that our love relationship with God requires corresponding expression in a personal way. But today’s Christians have turned the tables: they actually expect to understand God’s love through the experiences he provides. 

Christianity has always been a two-pronged religion. One side involves doctrinal ascent to a set of beliefs centering on the finality of Jesus Christ. The other side is more “subjective” – it involves the prospect of “feeling” God through experience. That experience becomes an anchor for faith that can be leaned upon as doctrinal maturity develops. Of course, ministers and theologians get this backwards all the time - we teach doctrine in hopes that it will lead to experience for our congregations. But people’s actions tell us differently. When they are forced to choose between experiencing something on a spiritual level or adopting a particular set of dogma, they most often choose experience, since they ultimately believe that experience will correctly inform their doctrine, not the other way around. In other words we’ve been doing theology backwards. Postmodern Christians don’t say “I believe because I know;” they say “I believe because I feel.” It doesn’t have to be crazy charismatic stuff…but it’s gotta be something.

Do you “feel” God?

The Preachers

In two potentially narcissistic posts, I’d like to share some of the preachers/teachers and books that have really shaped my worldview, influenced my reading of the Bible, and transformed my preaching style.

Now, as I’ve said before, I’m a spiritual “mutt.” I have no problem with this. Mutts can be good dogs, too. And I think this becomes fairly clear when I start listing influences in my spiritual life. Though I’m Wesleyan through and through, there aren’t many Methodists in this list. It’s also interesting that I’ve met very few of those that have influenced me the most.

Malcolm Smith. Hands down, this guy is the most spiritually influential teacher in my life. Somewhere along the way, my grandmother pulled out a series of tapes (yes, tapes) by a Charismatic Episcopal Bible teacher named Malcolm Smith. He said more about theology, practical living, and pastoral guidance in one sermon than all the sermons I’d previously heard combined. I listened for hours. I’m still listening.

Martyn Ll0yd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones is an icon in Christian circles. Pastor of Westminster Chapel in later years, he is one of the most articulate and precise preachers I have ever heard. For years, Lloyd-Jones was a medical doctor and when he answered the call to preach, he brought that same “surgical” expository style to his sermons. Listening to ”the Doctor” is like watching someone peel back layers of an onion. For him, the gospel was only as good as it was practical.

Greg Boyd. Theology professor turned pastor, listening to Greg is like listening to a mad man. He’s all over the place. But his understanding of God and his ability to relay the importance of the cross is unmatched. Greg goes where many preachers do not go – he always has a fresh perspective. Rarely have I seen a male pastor give so much attention to soul care and the emotional, intuitive side of Christianity. He’s a joy to listen to.

John Lynch. This guy is a new find for me. Mix a dry wit and a message of radical grace and you’ll get John’s sermons. He’s the teaching pastor at Open Door Fellowship Church in Phoenix, Arizona. I love the fact that John never gets tired of his central message: the love and grace of God. But more than a conceptual model, John talks about how grace makes its way into our practical lives. Good stuff.

There are others I listen to: Andy Stanley, John Eldredge, Craig Groeschel, etc. But for many people, the guys above are off the radar. Give them a listen when you have time.

There’s one more preacher I should mention: my former boss, Leigh Ann Raynor. She’s the Senior Minister at Porterfield UMC in Albany, Georgia. The first time I heard Leigh Ann speak, I was fascinated. Previously, I had preached countless sermons in a more extemporaneous style…and all the pitfalls that came with it: lack of clarity, rambling, and flippant regard for the time of those listening to me. Somewhere along the way God began to convict me that if I couldn’t say what I needed to say within about 25 minutes, then I was being a bad steward of the time I was given to speak. Now, that’s not for everyone – it’s just what I felt God was saying to me. So, while attending her services and serving on her staff I took notes not only on what Leigh Ann said but how she said it. Every word was chosen carefully and delivered with an extemporaneous feel…but she was preaching from a transcript. After a slow marriage of the two, I now preach in a style that is similar to hers. The point? Don’t ever underestimate the influence of a local minister. If you are one, take heart –  people are listening more than you think.

The Sin of Losing Hope

For those that follow this blog regularly, I posted about my personal devotional practices a while back. Part of that process has been to read through the monastic tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Those writings are compiled in a series called the Philokalia. I love the theology of Eastern Orthodoxy. That may be strange since I work at a Protestant (Methodist) church. But much of Wesley’s theological flavor can be traced back to his love of the Eastern monastic tradition.  For example, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the term “theologian” had little to do with propositional truths and systematic theologies. A “theologian” was a guy who gave up his former existence for the chance to go pray on a mountain top for the rest of his life. A “theologian” was a person who could talk about God accurately simply because he spent all his time in prayer with God. Novel concept, huh?

 I came across a quote in the writings of St. John of Karpathos the other day that really got me thinking. He was writing to a group of monks in India who were struggling to keep the faith. He said this: “It is more serious to lose hope than to sin.” I stopped to absorb the quote…simply because it flies in the face of everything we are taught in Protestant Christianity. Sin is at the center. The cross happened because of sin. Guilt over sin is often used as a “motivator” for better living. And here’s this 7th century monk making sin take a back seat to losing hope. 

So, I began to cross reference conversations and actions of the past few months. And as I sat there, the common theme with many that I spoke with was hopelessness. People who had been “beat up” by life: co-workers, family, bosses, “the economy,” etc. Some of them had been viciously skewered by the church. And all around them they had well-meaning people cheering for their return – rooting for them to get up and dust themselves off and jump back in the ring of life. But all they wanted to do was lay there. They had lost their hope.

Funny thing is, all these people are really good people. They love God, they love their families, they are all accomplished, well-educated, and respected by their peers. Their problem was not some over-the-top sin or tragic character flaw. They would be the envy of many…they had done things “right.” Yet, it didn’t protect them for the hopelessness they felt. I told them the opposite of most of the other counsel they received. I told them to take their time. Heal their wounds. Regain their hope. Take as much time as you need. And when you’re ready, get up.

I think John of Karpathos is on to something here. He discovered something we rarely consider in Western Christianity. It is more serious to lose hope than to sin because hopelessness leads us to do things we would never consider otherwise. In many Christian circles sin is more important than hope, but the potential for sin lies in losing our hope. That’s why the Apostle Paul wrote things like this to the Ephesians: “I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance” (3:18). Find your hope first. The rest will follow.

Experimenting with “Abide”, Part 4

Abide starts this coming Sunday. The workbooks are in, the facilitators are ready, and Maxie Dunnam will be here to kick things off on the 12th. So, I thought I’d finish up my thoughts on what decisions led to doing this church-wide program in a way that worked best for TFUMC.

At the core of Abide is the issue of discipleship. That’s part of my job description – to help a healthy congregation give out of the overflow of their own spirituality rather than dishing up the dregs from an anemic spiritual life. And for those of you in church leadership you’ll recognize this next part as unique: I am over Sunday school classes and small groups. Why is this strange? Because no one in their right mind assumes that both of these models can be fostered in a church environment at the same time. They are opposite models of church education/discipleship. Yet, for some reason, our church thinks they should exist simultaneously…and they gave me the task of growing both groups without hurting the other. So, Abide (among other things) is meant to solve that problem. Sunday school groups are taking part while “open groups” meet throughout campus during the same time. The design is simply this: get people in a group (regardless of whether they like Sunday school or small groups) and then simply ask them at the end of their time together if they would like to continue meeting together. So, by programming all services/events around a set of themes from a workbook, the artificial lines between contemporary/traditional or Sunday school/small group should hopefully disappear. After all, who cares how they meet as long as they keep meeting?

Another part of Abide that is unique to TFUMC is the type of committee leadership we chose. Now, I already told you about the facilitators here. But there is a smaller committee that is making administrative decisions about the program along with the staff. The “churchy” thing to do would be to pick the same leaders from past events or the most “pastoral” of our congregation. We didn’t do that. We picked business people. Why? Because they have built business “initiatives” like this from the ground up. They also hate inefficiency and wasted funds. That’s important. In the midst of thematic programming, streamlining is essential to getting the main point across. If your main theme is hindered by other agendas, you’ve lost your ability to impact the church with your main point. This committee is stacked with people who understand that concept from a business perspective. I didn’t call on their business prowess too much but when I did, they immediately responded with the same filtering criteria that they would use in a business meeting. Honestly, it was down-right refreshing.

And here’s the final issue the staff struggled with during Abide: the stewardship campaign. Around the same time of planning for Abide, the staff and lay leadership also began to recognize some changes that needed to be made in our annual stewardship campaign. Nothing drastic – a little branding, some “user-friendly” changes, and the like. So, we undertook changes for stewardship while also planning for an all-encompassing fall campaign as well. That was a mistake. Abide became so big and took the majority of our time to the point that the stewardship campaign didn’t receive the same attention. But something really great happened: the lay leader in that area took a  step of faith that I was less ready to take. She said, “Well, if Abide is supposed to do what we think it will, then our volunteerism and giving as a church should be even better than last year.” Now, that’s faith.  And I have no doubt that our stewardship campaign will reflect that.

We’ll see how all of this turns out over the next several weeks. If this sort of blog series wasn’t exactly your cup of tea, thanks for your patience. Back to regular blog topics…

Experimenting with “Abide”, Part 3

For an introduction to this series, go here.

On to Malcolm Gladwell. How does a columnist from The New Yorker influence the programming decisions of a church in South Georgia? Well, Gladwell has written several books. But one of the most poignant ideas he’s introduced to the general public is the idea of a “tipping point.” It’s a simple idea, really. In his book by the same name, Gladwell talks about the factors that go into making a small movement or phenomenon turn into something much bigger. Many of these involve people and their buying habits or communication styles. I’ll leave the subtle nuances of that idea for him to explain in his book. But the main point is that the confluence of several little things can turn into something much greater.

So how does that affect a discipleship program in a Methodist church? Well, anything with lasting impact in church starts with people. Abide is built on the total “buy-in” of a group of people who will then affect a larger group of people. Now, here’s the difference between “church world” and business or politics. Tipping points in church life have to do with the spiritual vitality of its membership. If a subset of people have their hearts transformed, they will in turn seek out others with which to share this transformation. 

In our case, we (staff, Abide committee, key volunteers) hand-picked 35 leaders from within the church. But they were not chosen based on their  social influence, financial status, etc. That’s called posturing or “stacking the deck”…and that’s something I personally despise. This is different. The people in this list represent every demographic in the church: they attend either a Sunday school or a small group (or both), have been life-long members or fairly new ones, are equally represented male and female, and are equally divided between traditional and contemporary service attendees. So, with them there will be little chance for politics simply because there’s no majority “factor” around which to rally. So how were they chosen? Simply by asking, “Who exhibits the type of passion for Jesus that we hope to see in every church member at TFUMC?” We took a smattering of those folks – some were natural leaders but others were not. Then we applied a second “filter”: who do we think has the potential to be in that category that we can show we believe in them by choosing them? We had just a few turn us down. And though we explained very little to them about the program, their passion of Christ and their desire to see transformation in the church compelled them to say yes.

We contacted these folks months in advance of any training we asked them to do. And we asked them to commit fully to being at all the trainings. But by contacting them months out from the training, it gave them the opportunity to prioritize calendar dates. And here’s the most important thing we did with these folks. Rather than sit them down and have them participate in absorbing our propaganda about Maxie’s workbook, we gave them a copy of the workbook and asked them to bring their own ideas to the table about facilitation. You see, people aren’t stupid. There’s no need to practice “groupthink for Jesus” (though I’ve seen some interesting examples recently). It’s not about telling people what they should believe. That’s something you were taught in high school history class: a coup d’etat. Rather, it’s about empowering them by creating a context where the Holy Spirit can transform them. Then, because they have experienced that transformation (and its solely their own experience), they of their own initiative will pass it along to others. The tipping point.

Experimenting with “Abide”, Part 1

Sorry for the lack of posts lately – I have some things to blog about but haven’t really had the time to get my thoughts on (cyber)paper. Much of this has to do with the administration of something we are doing at TFUMC.  Back in Winter of last year, Methodist leader/pastor Maxie Dunnam sent some chapters of a new workbook called Abiding in Christ that Upper Room would be publishing in August to a mutual friend. I had the chance to review them.  Later, I was on the phone with Maxie one day and he asked if I thought the church might want to go through the workbook together. I told Maxie I thought it was a great idea. The staff agreed and we began the process of putting a Fall program into play that would use the book to deepen spirituality at the church. Eight months later, we are at the cusp of launching Abide for the entire church. Countless hours have gone into this project and so I thought I’d share with you what interests me about it.

The basic premise of Abide is simple: 1) take a piece of devotional literature and extract the common themes, 2) train a group of facilitators to look for and teach those themes in the literature, 3) and revolve all sermons, Sunday School lessons, small groups, and media around them. That sounds simplisitc but the administration of this program has been an absolute beast. And in many ways, we are keeping things flexible so that we can accomodate the church’s needs as we go. Most of the church and leadership have been focused on the content of Maxie’s workbook and how to get their Sunday School class to participate. I read the workbook months ago and so my interest has been in areas like: how far out do we have to use images in order for the congregation to pay attention when they see a logo or hear a catch phrase? If Sunday school and small groups are competing church models, how can I unify both systems around one workbook? Can I create a small core group who is passionate about Abide and use them as a “tipping point” for the rest of the congregation? That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. I figure if I share some of the organizational decisions we made and how we assimilated all aspects of worship into a ten-week thematic undertaking, it may be beneficial to those who are crazy enough to try the same thing.

This is important to understand from the beginning - TFUMC has never done anything like this at any point in its existence. Ever. Founded before the Civil War, it has generally been a traditional Methodist church with a recent burst of growth within the last decade revolving around a new contemporary service . But there has never been a synthesis of all programming around a central theme. Other churches may have done this type of programming countless times, but TFUMC never has. Because of this, we have had to rethink everything about how we do church. In that way, Abide has been a chance to “experiment,” learn from others, and think outside the box. And it has challenged every staff member and leader at TFUMC. I’ll start by writing several posts on the behind the scenes decisions about Abide.  Then with its launch in September I hope to update as to what has gone well and what has failed miserably. This congregation always surprises me – they are so willing to try something different and really trust the staff. I hope you enjoy the “real-time” leadership/pastoral lessons that come from Abide.

Craig Groeschel’s Take on the Methodist Church

Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv started a series of posts on the present state of Methodism. They are certainly worth reading since Craig started as a Methodist and now pastors a radically innovative 20,000 member church movement. 

Here are all six parts…

http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2010/02/22/suggestions-for-my-umc-friends-part-1/

http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2010/02/22/umc%e2%80%94part-2/

http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2010/02/23/umc-part-3/

http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2010/02/24/umc%e2%80%94part-4/

http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2010/02/25/umc-part-5/

http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2010/02/26/umc-part-6/

Enjoy!