Call to Change

Christians believe in new life, in changed lives.  We are baptized into new life in Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  But just like everyone else, Christians are often nervous about change.  Some leaders of the United Methodist Church have issued a “Call to Action”, naming some of the deficiencies in the organizational structure of the UMC and proposing some changes that might improve the effectiveness or fruitfulness of the ministries of the world-wide United Methodist Church.  Pretty much everyone agrees that something needs to change so that the ministries and people of the UMC can be more fruitful and faithful (especially since our current structure dates back to the early 1970’s), but we do not agree on what or how to change.

Discovery UMC, where I serve as the senior pastor, just celebrated its 20^th Easter (2013 marks the official 20^th anniversary of Discovery as a chartered church) and much has changed in our relatively short church life.  The people of Discovery have implemented all kinds of new ministries, new organizational structures, and new missions.  And we are still not done changing.  God continues to bless and challenge us with a growing ministry and congregation, and we continue to seek how to best live as a faithful community and respond to Jesus’ commission to make more disciples.

Each person changes over a lifetime—even over the course of a single, eventful week sometimes.  We change because of new experiences, new relationships, and for the sake of survival.  When we want to change or renew our lives, we have to try something different from what we have being doing, we have to explore new things, learn new skills. 

Whether we seek to grow as an individual, as a community, or as the world-wide United Methodist Church; we must try something new.  This is where the trouble starts.  We don’t like to be uncomfortable, we fear the unfamiliar, and we prefer to avoid struggles.  Change and growth require all these things.  We fear what might happen if we choose the wrong path, if we make a less than perfect decision, but if we don’t take a step in some direction the growth that we need will not come. 

For me, as I prepare to participate in General Conference, as I continue to lead the ministries of Discovery, and as I seek ongoing growth in my life of faith; the scariest thing is not what new things will bring, but what will happen if I stay just where I am.  

Ready or Not: General Conference 2012

For the next few months, I will be using my blog (hopefully more often than I have been!) to focus on the upcoming General Conference of the United Methodist Church in April-May, the North Alabama Annual Conference in June, and the Southeast Jurisdictional Conference in July.  You can learn more about what GC is at this site. I will share my own experiences as the first alternate delegate to GC and as a delegate to JC.  I will also post some from other people's writings on these subjects.  Feel free to add your comments and posts, but also please remember to "tell the truth in LOVE".

First, just check out the amount of reading that is required to know what all is happening at General Conference--and the papers in the picture are only the beginning!  I understand we get new material pretty much every day of GC.  I am so thankful for my new refurb ipad2 so that I can download all these documents and not have to carry around 2 full reams of paper with me for the whole of GC!

Speaking of all the reading...much of the reading is of petitions and proposals sent in by groups and individuals of the world-wide United Methodist Church.  Anyone who is a member of the UMC can submit a petition.  This particular fact became a part of the discussion early on for the North Alabama's Delegation.  Thinking of the process of discernment that we practice when people want to be ordained (that an individual's experience of a call to ordained ministry must be affirmed by their local church community), the great majority of our group agreed that it would be an improvement to the process of submitting petitions to GC if individuals were no longer allowed to submit proposals without the support of a larger group.  This would mean that if you wanted to submit a petition GC, you would need your Sunday School class, your UMW, your UMM, or some other UMC group to support your petition prior to submitting it--so that all petitions would come from a group of people.  The idea is that if you are the only one who thinks it is a good idea and you can't find anyone else to support it, then maybe that is a sign that it won't get any support at GC either.  This could also have the added benefit of reducing (mayby only by a few) the number of petitions that come before the GC, leaving more time to discuss those petitions that more people agree are important to the life and work of the UMC.

This is just one item we have discussed.  The things that have taken up most of our discussion time as a delegation are the future of the organization of the UMC and the future of the clergy retirement program--more on those later.