Faith Works 3-2-19a

Faith Works 3-2-19a

Jeff Gill

 

A way forward, or side-stepping issues?

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As for the United Methodist Church and its recent General Conference, let alone the Roman Catholic bishops' gathering at the Vatican that happened earlier, they overlapped in more ways than one.

 

I am a semi-professional church geek, so even though I'm neither Methodist nor Catholic, I actually have had these two scheduled events on my calendar for some time. They are the kind of gatherings from which great things can be expected.

 

Or not. Church conferences and conventions and consultative assemblies are infamous for how little they often produce. It was often said before, during, and after the recent special General Conference (the UMC normally has them every four years, the next regularly scheduled one coming up in 2020 in Minneapolis) that it was being done somewhat in a hurry and moderately on the cheap, and it cost $3,600,000 to put together for 840 delegates and four days.

 

That doesn't include the amounts spent by groups pushing one agenda or another in the weeks and days ahead, clogging my social media with ads and emails and messages – probably a couple million there. Call it $5 million in total to accomplish . . . what?

 

The end result was essentially a reaffirmation of the current Book of Discipline, the guide book and laws of the UMC clergy and conferences and churches. One group hoped for a relaxation of limitations and restrictions on LGBTQ clergy, another wished to see them maintained and even tightened.

 

You could say the latter side won, but I think in Christian life it's always something to worry about when you start talking about sides, and definitely I pause before declaring anyone this side of the Throne of Heaven a "winner." The standards will not be relaxed, and progressives are starting to look for the exits. No one looked good in the four days of parliamentary maneuver and endless voting; to many within and without of the Methodist communion, it didn't look like what we want to see when we are trying to talk about faith communities at work.

 

The bishops in Rome didn't give them a good lead in, having built up expectations perhaps unreasonably, and ending up with a "more of the same" result of regrets, promises to do better, and a slightly more vehement statement by the Pontiff of "soon and very soon." When it comes to child abuse and consequences for abusers, the word "soon" doesn't sound very encouraging.

 

In other words, organized religion did not come off well in general media over the last two weeks. And while I'm not surprised, I had hopes. Let's say they weren't dashed, but they certainly weren't raised.

 

When Christians gather in large numbers, I'd like to hear more strong preaching and teaching, see dramatic acts of service and mission to the area where we came together, and know that God's good news is more widely known for our having met. Bluntly, that didn't happen. I teach history and polity to seminarians, so I know why it didn't happen, and why in many ways it happened the way it did, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

 

In my own tradition, when I'm teaching our basic outlines to groups in churches and in classes for ministry preparation, I often say that the Disciples of Christ hold that there are three sacraments. Ancient liturgical traditions usually call for seven sacraments, and the Reformation churches in many cases boiled that down to two – baptism and communion. But for the Restoration Movement of which we're a part, there's baptism (by immersion), communion (weekly if not more often), and voting on stuff.

 

Is "voting on stuff" a sacramental act? No, not to anyone. Not really. But our life and activity makes it look as if we believe the act of voting on things has the power to bring the Holy Spirit to bear on a problem, that it can be a conduit of grace from the Divine realm into this broken world.

 

It doesn't work, of course. Voting on stuff is not a fast track to the will of God. American Protestant traditions like the Disciples or Methodists have a belief rooted in our relationship to frontier American history that voting fixes things – we may be getting over that. I don't know.

 

Yet the bishops in Rome showed us that their polity is not a guarantee of wisdom and swift justice, either. How do we wrestle with hard questions and wake up knowing that we have wrestled with God, and been in a holy place? Jacob did it in the wilderness, not a convention center. We may have to find a special place of our own to come and listen and learn.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not a Methodist, but he knows plenty of John Wesley quotes. Tell him where you see the traffic heading in this and other areas of church life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.