Shortly (actually not so shortly as my flight has just been delayed) I leave for Portland, Oregon to observe and write about the General Conference of The United Methodist Church. As always, it promises to be contentious.
In my sleepless moments last night, I pondered the whole nature of Christianity.
Here we are, trying to send out a current and impactful message of hopeful grace but . . .
Our faith is built upon a religion that sprang from the ancient middle east with it’s tribal/clan rule of law and a bunch of wanderers who sensed a call to move from polytheism to monotheism, begun and perpetuated by violence, codified in captivity, preached in a radically different way by an itinerant, poor, unprepossessing rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth, explained in its early days by a Greek-educated Pharisee, saw rapid growth under extreme persecution, and proclaimed a power of the state and codified yet again under the Emperor Constantine.
From that time on, Christianity becomes strongly identified with politics, kings, and rulers. Henry the VIII of England forces the English Roman Catholic Church to separate from Rome so he can divorce and marry again. He becomes the head of the Church of England.
John Wesley, a Church of England priest, finds that he knows little to nothing about being a real Christian. He eventually comes up with a series of methods to help both himself and others go deeper into Christian theology and practice. Wesley, blessed with enormous energy and unusual organizational gifts, founds the Methodist movement with its traveling preachers, although he himself never left the Church of England.
Those Methodist circuit-riding young men, sans ordination credentials, head to the colonies and implement the structure created by the indefatigable Wesley. After the American Revolution, Wesley, operating without permission from the Church of England, ordains a couple of US bishops. Under their leadership, the US Methodist church explodes, moving ever westward as the people move.
With every movement, every societal shift, every change in leadership and politics, the church changes, adjusts, re-thinks theology and her way of interacting with current cultural realities.
It’s never been easy. The church in general and the UMC specifically experience angry splits, tentative reconciliations, the inclusion of the formerly excluded, and shaky mergers. The Book of Discipline, the organizational principle for Methodists originally set up by John Wesley, has been modified and expanded every four years for several hundred years to accommodate those changes. But never, ever, without a fight. Never has this been accomplished smoothly.
Institutional changes can only happen at one of these conferences. In a world that sees earthshaking shifts at the tweak of computer code, the UMC plods along, preparing our fights over the tiniest wording in an unworkable and incomprehensible book, always behind the curve, now more than ever.
The $12 million dollar boondoggle known as the 2012 General Conference essentially accomplished nothing.
Will we do better this time?
I go to this conference as a newbie in attendance although I watched the entire 2012 GC by Livestream and blogged my way through it.
But this one . . . I go with fresh eyes, seeking to see and experience this as the outsider that I am. What will it look and feel like? What atmosphere will permeate the time? I will ask why we do what we do, and question everything–kind of like walking into a brand new and utterly different world. Most of the work will be posted on the United Methodist Reporter site, but some will be here, and I will post links as I write.
I invite you to come along with me into the mysterious world of grace, of church politics, of a worldwide gathering of differing ways of being Methodists, of fights and tears, of joy and worship. It promises to be a wild ride.
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