Jesus Would Be So Proud!

As I was composing yesterday’s entry I realized that I was inadvertently wandering into the realm of jargon esoteric to the Methodists. Since this monologue is primarily for my own therapeutic edification I decided to briefly describe the structure and polity of this uniquely American denomination. What began as a grassroots movement gradually evolved into the bureaucratic monstrosity that exists today.

Laypersons become members of a local parish that is headed by a pastor-in-charge. If that pastor holds only a local pastor’s license s/he is also a member of that local congregation. Local churches are grouped geographically into districts which are headed by superintendents that are appointed by the presiding bishop of the Annual Conference. For the most part, these Annual Conferences are also determined by geography, and the resident bishop for each Annual Conference is elected by the General Conference which meets quadrennially (GC is the big enchilada of Methodism). When a pastor is ordained by an Annual Conference s/he gives up membership in the local church to become a member of the Conference. Much like the military, the ordained pastor agrees to go wherever the resident bishop appoints her or him, just as local congregations agree to accept whoever is appointed to their parish by the bishop. Local church property is held in trust by the Annual Conference (which turns out to be a nifty way of keeping control over renegade parishioners).

This is more than anyone ever wanted to know about The United Methodist Church, but it is basic to a better understanding of the institutional challenges that confront anyone who believes that they should respond to their calling through the UMC. If I had known then what I know now, I probably would have gone ahead and endured the ecclesiastical gauntlet anyway, but an objective outsider would certainly be justified in wondering why?

I Fight Authority and Authority Always Wins

How I managed to go all this time without realizing that John Cougar Mellencamp’s Authority Song should be my life’s theme song I don’t know, but while exercising this morning I really listened to the words for the first time and voila!

Serving three internships (Havelock United Methodist Church and St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Arvada United Methodist Church in Arvada, Colorado) impressed upon me that the “new and improved” United Methodist church was giving no credence to the apprenticeship model that had seemingly served it well for nearly two centuries. Even my employment at Dad’s church was contingent upon successfully completing an undergraduate degree in preparation for admission to a seminary. I had become aware of the historical—and not academic—route into the ordained ministry known as the Course of Study, but the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference would not even acknowledge that such a thing existed even though it was explicitly provided for in the Discipline.

And so it was that I embarked upon the journey of Everyman that introduced me to sales, banking, labor, and finally law enforcement. Even if I was to move to an Annual Conference that accepted the Course of Study, I had to wait until I was old enough (the Discipline requires one to be thirty-five years old to obtain a Local Pastor’s license, something akin to having to be old enough to be elected President of the United States, I suppose). Every endeavor accepted me for my demonstrated abilities instead of credentials, and I hope that it is without bragging that I report I attained the highest levels of achievement in each. My churchmanship remained impeccable and I was finally successful in becoming a certified lay speaker at age thirty.

Just Look What She Started!

The Gestalt of Mary’s unconditional love served as horizon-expanding proof of that to which the Gospel originally testifies. The affirmation that I was nothing less than a child of God lent credence to John Wesley’s (the founder of Methodism) notion of prevenient grace and flew in the face of somehow having to justify my worth—academically or otherwise—to my Creator. The spirit underlying the notion that “all men are created equal” is bona fide in spite of the seeming impossibility of ever practically implementing it. The social climate of questioning unquestionable authority complemented the growing rebellion within me. Jesus did not include the beatitude of blessed are the scholars for they shall be deemed superior. The scholars invented such self-serving ideology in order to promote themselves up the ladder of power and control over the common people. The priestly ability to transubstantiate the bread and the cup (among other things) was part of what the Protestant rejection was all about, but even the Protestant clergy had to devise ways of putting themselves a cut above the rest. My faith was becoming more and more at odds with the beliefs I had been taught.

From Worthless to Worthy

The clear message I received from family, church, and society in general is that there is nothing inherently worthy about me, and that the avenue to earning the respect of others is through achievement; in my case, specifically of the academic sort. While this didn’t jive with my understanding of the teachings of the Christ I was repeatedly reminded that my interpretation counted for naught until such time as I could scholastically justify it. There was to be none of this sentimental “but I was called by God” nonsense; what counts is being able to say “what I think about this or that matters because I have the academic credentials to support my position.” Try as I might, I was unable to reconcile this attitude with the biblical message that the least shall be the greatest, that the last shall be first, and that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.

This is not the first time that I have confessed to the selfish aspect of the love that has bound Mary and me for the last thirty-six years, but in the context of the outside conditions I found being placed on my worthiness it was literally awesome to discover that someone apparently loved me unconditionally! Mary didn’t ask for a copy of my transcript before agreeing to date me. She didn’t require that I produce my SAT scores or my acceptance into graduate school. Mary loved me for me, and in turn that empowered me to love her in the same way. In Mary I found the true, unconditional love of which the Christ taught, and in so doing I discovered my value as nothing more—and nothing less—than a child of God. To those who were expecting me to authenticate my calling through academic achievement this was a great disappointment, but in terms of my own sense of self it was nothing less than an exhilarating sign from God!

At the Pearly Gates

St. Peter: Admission will be based on what we find in your book of life. Let’s take a look and see what we have.
Me: Sounds fair.
St. Peter: Hmmm…it looks like you have some problems with authority.
Me: So I’ve been told.
St. Peter: Do you really have a complete lack of respect for authority as some of your references say?
Me: I haven’t been overly impressed with their authority.
St. Peter: So whose authority do you respect?
Me: My understanding of the Christ is that there is but one true authority.
St. Peter: And that is?
Me: God.
St. Peter: You’ll get no argument from me on that one! But many of the authorities you have so little respect for have been vested in their power by God haven’t they?
Me: So they say.
St. Peter: Well, what they say seems to have been generally accepted by the masses.
Me: If the masses already knew the truth, then why is the Christ necessary?
St. Peter: With all due respect, why do you honor the authority of the Christ?
Me: Isn’t it of God?
St. Peter: By whose authority would you say such a thing?
Me: Just how long is the waiting list for purgatory?

Let the Contest Begin!

Human development consists of, among other things, forming a sense of self and esteem. The questions who am I and what am I here for are nearly universal, although it is true that they are more pronounced in societies that are relatively free from poverty and warfare. Abraham Maslow explained why this is so by proposing a hierarchy of needs which has since generally been accepted as valid. Coming from the idyllic W.A.S.P. environment which defined Jefferson County, Colorado, I had more than enough protection from worldly distractions like hunger, homelessness, racial inequality, etc, to supply ample time for this self-reflection. In the course of this introspection, however, I discovered that there were varying degrees of disparity between how I viewed myself and how others viewed me. For the most part, I sensed that my worth to others was conditional. Parents love me if I am a good boy. Teachers love me if I am a good pupil. Peers love me if I fulfill particular criteria of friendship that I to this day do not comprehend. While I was supposed to be building a solid sense of self-esteem, I could not avoid the fact that it was highly dependent upon what others thought of me. This understanding eventually generalized from personal relationships to the way that I interacted with larger institutions. While I knew in my own mind what constituted a calling from God, such knowledge was irrelevant to the university and the church because their evaluation of me was based upon how well I conformed to their structure and how well I was able to regurgitate what they deemed to be important. As I grew in wisdom and in stature I found myself increasingly at odds with the society in which I was living.

Oh, Those Sixties!

It seems to me worthwhile to reiterate that these Monday through Thursday musings are strictly off-the-cuff because I choose to write them in the second-half of my mandatory lunch hour. Whatever weaknesses in construction and development that may be discovered can be blamed on this rather than on my lack of ability (this shortcoming may be easily observed in those occasional Friday through Sunday entries that, according to my excuse, should be evidently superior because I spend more time on them).

It occurs to me that I have belabored my formative years beyond what is necessary or helpful, and so I will attempt to put succinctly where it is that I’ve been trying to get. While my academic achievement during college was anything but stellar (until the later years) I did learn many things while at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Chief among them was that neither the university nor the church was the least bit interested in my calling, my theology, or my spirituality. The United Methodist Church was intensely focused upon seminary serving the graduate school function of producing professional ministers, and the university was therefore focused upon preparing undergraduate students for postgraduate studies.

My impression of the sixties and seventies as a time of revolutionary change in our country has been affirmed by any number of studies, documentaries, etc. One of the things that were increasingly being questioned by my generation was the authority of the status quo, the notion that things are the way they are because they have always been that way. Also under fire was the very notion of the source of authority itself. Was Richard Nixon above the law because he was President of the United States? Was the Pope infallible and inerrant by virtue of being the head on the one true church? Was The United Methodist Church’s movement in the direction of academically achieved professionalism justified? There was a lot to think about.

The Business of Business

To be in business implies that there is either a product or a service being offered for remuneration. Businesses that sell a product usually have customers, while businesses that offer services more often have clients. So, if the church is a business what product or service does it have to offer? Since “church” is a Christian term it seems fair to say that one way or another Jesus is the product to be marketed or the service to be promoted. While I know this sounds harsh, I believe that it is functionally and historically accurate. The legalization of Christianity in the 4th century opened the door for franchising a now politically correct institution that had been a couple of centuries in the making. I was affected by this to the degree that I failed to understand that the church is a business because I was regarding it as the environment in which Christian discipleship could be practiced. Reflection upon those two prospects reveals that they are as different as night and day.

For those who are in the least bit interested in the veracity of what I’m saying, may I recommend the cover story of the September 18 issue of TIME magazine: Does God Want You To Be Rich? I found it to be a rather uncanny coincidence that a national publication would so powerfully support my personal ramblings.

Sabbath Soliloquy

Abba,

Did you hear us? Did you receive us? My wife, youngest daughter, and a group of your children heretofore unknown to me gathered yesterday at Willow Springs in Red Rock Canyon—a place I coming to understand as sacred ground—for a global lifting up of a prayer for peace:

We are a global Family
All colors, All races
One world united.
We dance for peace and the healing of our planet Earth
Peace for all nations.
Peace for our communities.
And peace within ourselves.
As we join all dance floors across the world,
let us connect heart to heart.
Through our diversity we recognize Unity.
Our love is the power to transform our world.
Let us send it out
NOW…

Only you know how many of us around the world prayed at the appointed hour. Only you are able to sort out the heartfelt prayers from the insincere lip service. Only you know how many of your children work with you and those who work against you. May I be granted the courage to change the things that I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Your loving son

Mary recommends...

This Hole in the Ground
by Keith Olbermann

Reclaiming The Issues: Islamic Or Republican Fascism? by Thom Hartmann

We Won't Be Quiet
by Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson
Washington Square
Salt Lake City, Utah
August 30, 2006

Vote for Me!

Having already partially violated the taboo against discussing religion and politics, I might as well go all the way by expressing some thoughts on the latter. Anywhere there are people there is going to be politics, the word having its origins in the ancient Greek polis, meaning a state or society having a sense of community; Plato then develops this into statesman. It seems to me that politics becomes more pronounced in a competitive environment than in a cooperative one simply because it is one means to achieving superiority and control. It was Jesus’ apolitical mindset that drove his contemporaries crazy just as it has continued to frustrate generations of hopeful disciples since. The first shall be last, the greatest is the least; these are concepts utterly incompatible with the competitive spirit. That Jesus’ “victory” was achieved through submitting to crucifixion rather than conquering his foes continues to mystify. The long and the short of it is that the Church failed early on to embrace its Savior’s apolitical way and became paramount among political institutions. So, not only do I find myself having to authenticate my calling through academic achievement but through participating in the politics of power.

Anything You Can Do…

While I’m playing with semantics, I might as well explain what I see to be the difference between education and academic achievement. At the most basic level I understand the former to be a cooperative venture while the latter is competitive in nature. The distinction has become so blurred in our American society that the two are regarded as synonymous, much the same way that religion and faith are (erroneously) used interchangeably. A childhood example might serve to illustrate. My mother taught (educated) me to tie my shoelaces. Without the pressure of competition she patiently instructed me in the intricate moves that I still employ today. If this lesson, however, was transposed into an academic setting it would surely become a competitive matter of determining who can tie their shoelaces the best and fastest. The “winner” would go to the head of the class while the rest of us would be clumped together as average and normal. In such a scenario the basic lesson learned becomes secondary to the successful achievement of outstanding performance which distinguishes the superior from the inferior. I mistakenly set out for college thinking that I was going to further my education, when the truth of the matter was that I was entering the academic arena to scholastically prove myself worthy of the calling I had sensed my entire life.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Obviously, I find great satisfaction in examining the subtle nuances of the English language. Now that I have “accused” the church of being a business, I really need to attempt a clearer distinction between vocation and occupation (see Who Cares?) by introducing profession. It has helped me clarify the difference by understanding that occupations, for the most part, have customers, while professions have clients. This is particularly important to understand when it comes to defining just what kind of business the church is in. Certainly, to regard parishioners as customers just doesn’t sound quite right (although this is an increasing popular paradigm with today’s megachurches), and so the more sophisticated paradigm of professionalism treats them as clients of sorts. Customer-oriented occupations are more apt to lean toward experience-based apprenticeships while client-oriented professions tend to weed out unworthy candidates by selection based on academic achievement (I wish I had a nickel for every time I was told that if I required surgery I would want nothing less than a medical school graduate operating on me). As far as I can tell, it was following World War II that the United Methodist church shifted its focus from a vocational to a professional view of the ordained ministry, striving for its ministers to dwell in the same realm as doctors and lawyers rather than that of barbers and farmers. It is very similar to the same paradigm shift that took place in public education whereby “normal” teachers (such as my grandmother) were no longer thought of as being as qualified as those with college degrees. I can understand how this must have seemed progressive at the time, but I have always felt that something was lost when professional servanthood became the norm (not to mention an awkward oxymoron).

Getting Down to Business

One of the labels I have chosen to describe myself is that of ‘romantic idealist.’ I have a strong sense of how things should be combined with a somewhat misguided belief in the possibility of things eventually being as they should. This perhaps explains why I feel so attuned to that line from Desiderata which promises that—even if I am not aware of it at the time—the universe is unfolding as it is supposed to.

This facet of my worldview held me fast to the notion that my vocation (being called by God to a prophetic ministry of service to others) was most compatible with an occupation in the church, and my father’s example naturally led me to think that this meant the ordained ministry. I have elaborated upon my childhood and adolescence development—perhaps more than I needed to—in order to bring me to what I now realize to be one of the most important discoveries of my life: the church is a business!

Had I been quicker to accept this truth I might have done some things differently, but my idealism (and naiveté) caused me to hang tight to the belief that the Church was, like the church I had grown up in, primarily in the business of theologizing and social action. But as James Burke argues in his book, The Day the Universe Changed, the function of the institution ultimately becomes to preserve the institution. So, had I been born a couple of millennia earlier than I was I might have encountered the authentic community of faith inspired by Jesus the Christ, but instead I ran headlong into the political bureaucracy that is The United Methodist Church of today.

Sabbath Soliloquy

Abba,

I’m sitting here watching CBS Sunday Morning. The subject is predictably the fifth anniversary of 9/11. There are highlights of progress made in security, etc, but there is equal emphasis upon how little has been accomplished in terms of resolving the hatred that is aimed at us (or the government that supposedly represents us). If 9/11 has accomplished nothing else it has managed to convince Americans that we are the victims. Evil is doing a masterful job of focusing upon isolated events that support such thinking while diverting attention away from the truth that we are not as innocent as we’d like to believe.

The President has finally admitted that he is at war with Islamic fascism, and in so doing he has confirmed pathetic ignorance of his simultaneous confession of Christian fundamentalism. In the end it will finally be revealed that a greedy military industrial complex of which we were warned over a half-century ago plotted and executed the “terrorism” that it now continues to use to propagate and engender chronic fear. We are at “war” with an enemy of our own making, and the gluttonous eco-terrorists driving their Escalades, Excursions, Hummers and Navigators are literally throwing fuel on the fire daily.

Here’s my confession: Why does the human mind immediately reject the revelation of the Christ that loving our enemies is the only godly response to hatred? Is it a cruel joke? Have you provided a solution to the problem that is humanly incomprehensible? Your “old testament” of an eye for an eye makes so much more sense, and we have repeatedly demonstrated our ability to comprehend and implement it. I’m beginning to think that this Jesus thing is just some sort of institutionalized concoction that was somehow used to take advantage of the oppressed and downtrodden. I can’t think of an historical instance when love trumped violent destruction—including Jesus’ story. Maybe our only real hope is to just bomb the hell out of them and be done with it!

Love,
Your gullible child

Who Cares?

Just as subtle as the distinction between pantheism and panentheism is that between occupation and vocation. As has already been established, Dad’s way of doing things at his church was significantly different from others. This was perhaps nowhere better seen than in his approach to membership training. Yes, if you wanted to become a member of Dad’s church, you had to go through membership training. The novitiate version of this process was confirmation, something that I did concurrently with earning my God and Country award through the Boy Scouts (that was a rather intense year). One of the concepts that most impressed me from that instruction is that there is difference between an occupation (a job) and a vocation (a calling). As best as I was able to understand it at the time, the ideal was to strive for an occupation that was consistent with and supportive of one’s vocation. In other words, pursuing the occupation of minister was a reasonable response to God’s call to be of service to others. Again, as I burst my bubble and entered the real world I discovered that such a distinction was not regarded as an especially important one, even to the church.

Oh, What A Foolish Boy I Was

It unfortunately cannot be overemphasized how naïve I was as I entered college. The embarrassingly best example was my belief that after having had a few fun tag skirmishes during the summer that occasionally involved some “tackling” I would be equipped to play football at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Mind you, I had not played any ball prior to this delusional decision made on the assumption that because NWU was a Methodist school it would be just as collegial as the games played with friends in the park. My idiocy was further compounded by my desire to join my family in a final vacation trip to South Carolina which led me to inform the coach that I would arrive two weeks late for practice. Upon settling into the freshman dorm I was spared practice the next morning by a typical Lincoln rain, but the sun shone on my afternoon massacre. After spending a grueling half-hour or so in the locker room with my fellow victims Paul and Rob trying to figure out where things such as knee pads are supposed to go, I sprinted out onto the practice field to get personally acquainted with the coach. When asked what position I played I had to respond that I honestly didn’t know, and the look on Coach Chaffee’s face should have been my first clue that I was making a horrible mistake. He bemusedly instructed me to take a crack at defensive back. The real football players saw me coming and must have been gratified at the pummeling they gave me. There was really no choice about whether I went to practice the next morning or not. I simply could not even get out of bed. The final insult was that Wesleyan’s team didn’t win even one game that season, so I was pounded senseless by the weakest and the worst.

I’ve gone to great length here to detail the authenticity of my naiveté as a way to illustrate how it affected my worldview in general. It affected the way I perceived what college was all about. And it most certainly affected my understanding of the way my “calling” was going to be assimilated into the United Methodist church. Lowell Jorgenson and I (I haven’t thought of him in a long, long time) discovered one Sunday morning that we were the only two out of the entire freshman dorm that were headed for church, and what we experienced was very foreign to both of us. My need for a place to conduct my “good” churchmanship prompted a search of over a half-dozen UM congregations before I finally found my spiritual “home” at Westminster Presbyterian (this encompassed a whole range of other issues that I will not bore the reader with now). Just as I thought because I had had fun playing football with friends would qualify me for a college team, I was still under the delusion that being a regular churchgoer would eventually result in my being ordained into the ministry.

Has Anyone Seen My Church?

The United Methodist Church I discovered in Lincoln, Nebraska was quite different from my father’s. Take the Bible for example. In Dad’s church scripture was a means to an end. In the Midwest churches (which I eventually came to understand were more typical) scripture was just the opposite being an end unto itself. I was exposed to lectionary preaching that was more explanatory than it was inspirational, more popular than it was confrontational. And the times they were a changin’! The church to which Americans had flocked by the millions in the early sixties were somehow proving to be irrelevant to the societal upheaval that was taking place in the latter part of the decade, and substance was succumbing to appearances as folksy coffee house guitar strumming attempted to halt the growing exodus from mainline sanctuaries. I, still being of the belief that “good” churchmanship was the appropriate way to respond to my calling, began a frustrating church to church search for anything that seemed vaguely in alignment with my understanding of the faith as it had been taught me.