Ministry and Power

(A guest blog by Rev. Ginny Hathaway)

We know that in the UMC we have a bifocal approach to a call to ministry.  We affirm that God calls persons into the ministry; but we also affirm that the Church has an important role in calling the called into ordained ministry in a denomination.  We, in the UMC, have a very particular process for that and a structure that carries the responsibility for that process. But, if we are a community of discipleship, a community of persons intent on following Jesus, then it is necessary for there to be mutuality in that structure and process.

We still struggle with the role of power in our institution. I believe that "community" is characterized by a dedication to radical equality and lived out grace if it is to be true to the vocation of faithfulness to Jesus. Power must be exercised as power for others and power with others. If it is exercised as power over others, then it is not faithful to its role in the faith community.

In his book on the subject, "Church, Charism, and Power" Leonardo Boff talks of power in community as being faithful only when it is conferred in recognition of the gifts persons have for administration, for instance, or the ordering of the work of the institution. Those gifts are called into the service of the faith community.  The position in which a person is called to exercise his or her gifts does not make that person better than, superior to, or more powerful than anyone else in the community.  So any individual or group in whom particular responsibilities might be vested has a calling to be very, very careful about how they exercise their responsibilities in mutuality, with grace and humility.

Here is where I particularly take issue with the Board of Ordained Ministry of our conference (Southwest Texas) and their decision to remove Mary Ann from candidacy. If they had an understanding of faithful exercise of power with and for the community which they serve in the capacity in which they have been called to responsibility, they might have drawn back from the way they did relate to Mary Ann and found a more grace-full process. It stuns me that a group of persons who profess Christian values would not feel any responsibility to get to know Mary Ann. They would have been the better for seeking to understand what gifts she brought to the faith community that resulted in two churches and two districts recommending her as a candidate. They owed her, if they had any concept of their duty being to be in a relationship of mutuality with candidates, a process in which they heard from her about her call, in which they were in dialogue with her about her desire to be in ministry, about her faith and commitment. They owed it to themselves to get to know her. They had an absolute responsibility, if they were to dare to exercise the kind of responsibility they are given by the Conference, to spend time and effort with her, to see what they all had to offer each other.

Given the wording of the Discipline, I can't help but think the Board would have assumed they would get to the point of turning her down eventually; but there could have been and should have been a long road to travel between now and "eventually". There should have been a willingness on their part to travel that road together with Mary Ann. There should have been enough openness and imagination in persons invested with such consequential duties to want to learn about this person, to listen to her, to respect her voice.

No one, no group should have the heavy responsibility that the Board has if they are inclined to make decisions without dialogue, if they feel they can exercise power without doing the work of relationship, if they hold themselves apart from or above the possibility of growing with and learning from those who entrust their love for the Church and the work of ministry to them.

It is sad for the Church and its future that its servants would deal with such a gifted candidate and such a complex issue and such a continuing struggle in the institution with what appears to be an utter disrespect for Mary Ann's call, an obliviousness to the possibilities and imperative of a relational approach to this situation that would enable them to be better stewards of their duties, and an inability to imagine that they might yet have something to learn and some growing edges, whatever the individual perspectives and opinions of various members might be.

Does 'All Persons' Really Mean All?

Two weeks ago at the Southwest Texas Annual Conference, a petition to General Conference was presented by our Conference Church and Society Board. Here’s the text from The Book of Discipline with the proposed changes in bold.

¶ 4. Article IV. Inclusiveness of the Church—The United Methodist Church is a part of the church universal, which is one Body in Christ. The United Methodist Church acknowledges that all persons are of sacred worth. All persons without regard to race, color, national origin, status, economic condition, sexual orientation, or gender identity and expression shall be eligible to attend its worship services, participate in its programs, receive the sacraments, upon baptism be admitted as baptized members, and upon taking the vows declaring the Christian faith, become professing members in any local church in the connection. In The United Methodist Church no conference or other organizational unit of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member or any constituent body of the Church because of race, color, national origin, status, economic condition, sexual orientation, or gender identity and expression.

We debated the motion in standard fashion—Mr. Roberts would have been proud. A lay person gave an excellent rationale for the changes. I also spoke in favor of the motion and the text of what I said is below. A young seminarian and candidate for ministry, Peter Borhauer, gave an emotional plea for inclusion. Here’s what I said, more or less:

"I understand that all of us are not on the same page in our theological understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Southwest Texas Conference is a big tent. However, I think all of us are on the same page with respect to offering radical hospitality. This was the theme of our opening worship service, it’s vital to the culture of growth and it’s the hallmark of our common life together.

"As we strive together with God to create this culture of growth, I hope and pray that we might include with specific language, all of God’s people, especially those in the LGBT community who have felt excluded from the UMC in the past. Young people with gay friends, parents of gays and LGBT people themselves are searching for faith communities that are truly inclusive. They’re watching us to see if we indeed embody the radical welcome of Jesus. May we have the courage to respond today! Thank you."

The speeches “for” were each followed by speeches against the motion. One pastor argued that including “gender identity and sexual orientation” would take away the prerogative of the pastor to decide who could and could not be members. A lay person from University UMC in San Antonio spoke about the difference, in her view, between “race, class, and gender” which are not sins and “homosexuality” which is a sin. She read one of the “clobber passages” in support of her view.

Following the debate, there were two different attempts to remove the motion from consideration, both of which failed. The final vote was 382 to 325 in favor of the petition to General Conference, or about 54% of those present.

Some other conferences who are opposed to this kind of language have observed that anyone can petition the General Conference, so why should we spend time in annual conferences debating these sorts of controversial motions. I would argue that this is exactly what holy conferencing is all about. Why should conference be reduced to the lowest common denominator of what we think everyone will agree on? And surely that the petition is coming from an annual conference in the South Central Jurisdiction is of great significance. I’m hoping that it signals that perhaps the times are a changin’ in the church and that we are ready to open our arms as wide as Jesus.

Is Reconciling Reconciling?

I appreciate the opportunity to speak at this Reconciling Service. I’m grateful that you’ve created space for talking about what it means to be a “reconciling” church. One of the definitions of salvation in the Old Testament is the creation of a wide space and I hope that’s what we’re doing in our churches—creating that space for real engagement of what it means to be reconciling.

The very first thing I want to do is give thanks for the reconciling movement of lay people in Austin who have faced down so much opposition and so many obstacles to create communities of reconciliation in a city that, while progressive on the surface, has many deep pockets of prejudice and much work to do on reconciliation. I know that George Ricker and Chuck Merrill, my predecessors at UUMC took tremendous heat for welcoming gays and lesbians to University church and I’m forever grateful for their brave witness.

I hope you’ll forgive me if my “sermon” this evening is not a formal or even an informal exegesis of the second chapter of Ephesians. The quick and dirty version is that for Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s time, reconciliation meant that they would no longer be enemies, but in right relationship, in a mutually productive and enriching relationship. Ephesians 2 and so many other passages of scripture are the horizon toward which we head in any kind of reconciliation work.

Reconciliation is a gift from God, but it comes with marching orders: namely, to partner with God in creating the kind of community that we see in the life and teachings of Jesus. It’s difficult work, as those groups, for example, gays and straights, who have been separated learn how to be in a community, how to love and trust each other, how to worship and serve together, how to be healers and to receive healing.

Our beloved DS, Bobbi Kaye, says that all United Methodist churches are reconciling churches. Becoming reconciling should not be a scary project for us. The United Methodist church brings together so many different traditions, because reconciliation is in our DNA. Not that we’re done with it by any means. For all of us, even those churches that have been reconciling twenty years or more, reconciliation is still unfinished work; whether it’s our relationship with the GLBTQ community, with racial and ethnic communities, with the disabled and the poor, with all those who have found that they don’t have the right key to get in the front door of our churches, we are none of us done and now dear God please give us some other more meaningful work to do. I don’t think we’re done at University just because we had a vote; I know that I’m not done and I’m guessing that God has much work to do on each one of us.

At University church, reconciliation has taken concrete form in the work of the laity over the last 10 or 12 years. A small, active group of leaders have shared with Sunday school classes, home rooms, UMW circles, basically any group of people in the church who would listen, about the real life experiences of gays and lesbians. They fielded difficult questions, shared personal stories, shed tears together, prayed and over time, almost all of our small groups at University voted to become reconciling. Those reconciling groups were like the starter kit for the fermentation of reconciliation and without them becoming a reconciling congregation would have been a very different and much more difficult project.

This past fall and winter, our reconciling committee stepped up the pace in preparation for a vote on affiliating with RMN in February. They prepared some excellent discussions, held a movie night, visited Sunday school classes, even sponsored a lecture from Dr. L. Michael White on the clobber passages. We had over 250 people stay after church for a called Church Conference with our DS, Bobbi Kaye and almost 95 % of those in attendance voted to affiliate with RMN.

The opposition to the vote, which popped up along the way, was unexpected, at least from my perspective. With a few exceptions, no one who opposed “reconciliation” was opposed to the participation of gays and lesbians in every aspect of church life. I know … you’re wondering, well, if you’re okay with that, then why would you be in opposition to reconciling, right? Did I say that reconciliation is confusing and messy?

What I found was that the opposition fell roughly into two groups. The first group felt that we were already reconciling and saw no benefit from our participating in RMN. Our arguments that this was partnering with others, working against the exclusionary language of the Discipline, all of that fell flat. My pastoral intuition tells me that some of the opposition probably had nothing to do with any of this, but it’s difficult to suggest this to members of your congregation without sounding condescending.

The second group was opposed to making a public statement about who we are. Our arguments that proclamation is the essence of what it means to be the church, that we must say out loud where we stand again fell flat. One variation of this position was the idea that becoming “reconciling” would be a turnoff to young people. I actually found that the opposite was true—we have young people coming to University and wanting to be part of a declared reconciling community. Last week a couple who will join the church later this month told me that if we had voted against “reconciling” they would have continued their search for a church home elsewhere.
The recent book unchristian, by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnamon, used the Barna group research to detail the main reasons why young people in the age group 18 to 35 do not attend church anywhere. The perception that most churches are anti-gay is a huge turnoff to most young adults. Now I’m not sure I’m ready to write the book on reconciling as a church growth strategy, but it’s worth reflecting on all of this in these declining times.

When we became a reconciling church, two UM pastors, both of whom are intelligent and compassionate, made fun of the decision. One wrote to me: “After the decision, UUMC will still be the same white, upper middle class educated university church it was before. Nothing will change.” While on a very superficial level that may be true, it misses the powerful healing dynamic of welcoming others with open arms. That’s what folks experience in a reconciling church and to make that any less than revolutionary in our day is to deeply misunderstand the dynamics of reconciliation. To say that we accept you and welcome you, but … you must become heterosexual or you must live a life of celibacy, which is the stance of the vast majority of congregations … that is not welcoming, it’s barely toleration and it’s certainly not love. There is no other group in the church that we single out for this kind of attention. And for someone who perhaps has only recently begun to understand and accept their own sexuality, this stance cannot be anything other than judgmental and painful.

For reconciliation to happen, there is work for each of us to do. I think it’s time for the “gay issue” if it’s even appropriate to call it “the gay issue,” to come out of the closet in our churches and in our annual conferences. It’s time for us to study the stories of gay men and women who have been persecuted and taunted for their sexual orientation and who come to church for sanctuary and healing and find more hurt. If we’re ever to make any progress on reconciling, these stories need to be heard and the “Believe out Loud” curriculum should be standard curriculum for our adult Sunday school classes.

Over the years, I’ve found so many moving testimonies to the complexity of being gay or lesbian and navigating the church. Rev. Dawson Taylor is just one. Taylor was a UMC pastor, but transferred several years ago to the UCC, which has become an all too familiar scenario. This is part of an address that he made to the Texas Conference at a “Breaking the Silence” luncheon.

“The march for justice is long and tiring. I am certain that there are times when you can begin to wonder if it is making any difference whatsoever. But hear me out: When Michelangelo was asked how he was able to carve his great sculpture of David, he responded: ‘I saw the angel in the marble and chiseled until I set it free.” My friends, we see the Church that God intends in the marble and we must continue to chisel until we set it free. Every time you stand up to a heterosexist joke, you chisel another piece. Every time you tell someone that it is impossible to love the sinner and hate the sin, you chisel another piece. Every time you look into the eyes of a young gay person and say ‘I believe in you,’ you chisel another piece. Every time you make a stand that my Annual Conference, the birthplace of my faith, will not be in the grips of fear or untruth, you chisel another piece.”

I remain hopeful tonight, because each one of sitting here has moved along that toleration continuum, each one of us has, by the grace of God, moved from somewhere around mere tolerance or perhaps even rejection to appreciation and celebration of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons. May God grant each of us the courage to take up our chisels, and guided by God’s spirit of truth and love, begin carving out a new path that truly reflects the all-embracing love of God for all of God’s children.

(A sermon given on Sunday, May 1, at First United Methodist Church, Austin, Texas at a Reconciling Ministries worship service.)

Progressive Church

So here’s a brand new look to my old blog site. My hope is that we can engage the radical claims of Jesus as they impinge on life in the Christian community under the shadow of the empire.

To kick off my newest start, I’ve provided a video. Check out the link below.

Actually, before you check it out, be prepared. It’s a spoof of progressive churches using the cute/annoying Progressive Insurance schtick.

Here’s the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgYDE-mW7Nw

What do you think? Fair? Unfair? Cheap shot? High five?

Can a church be progressive without surrendering everything to culture? What does it mean to be progressive?