Are You Brave Enough to Read the Entire Article?

My heartfelt thanks to Mary for sharing this incredibly disturbing article:

A Fraud Worse than Enron by Elizabeth de la Vega

I Yield the Floor...

…to two of the prophetic voices of our time:

Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do…a letter from Michael Moore

Inadvertent Wisdom from George H.W. Bush by Joe Klein

Happy Birthday, Rebecca!

Twenty years ago today Rebecca brought new life, light, and joy into our world and that is certainly sufficient reason to take a break from the dreary Mark vs. The United Methodist Church saga. Beneath the San Francisco Peaks of Flagstaff, Arizona, Rebecca didn’t waste a lot of time entering our lives. The two decades since have been filled with wonder and awe as we have witnessed our two little girls blossom into beautiful young women. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, Rebecca has been the yang to Rachel’s yin, never ceasing to amaze her parents that two such completely different personalities could contain essentially the same DNA (although I have always had my suspicions about the milk man). Rebecca was marching to Thoreau’s different drummer from the start, and she continues as a champion of idealism and compassion that often makes me think she pays a price for being too much like her father. Our daughters are a good example of John Wesley’s prevenient grace: a magnificent blessing unearned and undeserved. And so, dear daughter, your mother and I wish you the very happiest of birthdays, and we thank you for having chosen us to share your miraculous life!

Et tu, Marcus?

To his credit, Dick Carter felt that it was important that I do some preaching, a role coveted by most senior pastors because it places you squarely in the center stage spotlight. I’ll never know whether this was a purely charitable act on Dick’s part, or if it was prompted by parishioners who were tiring of his somewhat disjointed homilies, but at any rate I ended up delivering a sermon about once a month. Once again my close attention to Dad’s style and content served me well, and it wasn’t long before some of Dick’s detractors were urging him to let me preach more often. Although this was flattering, it was also politically dangerous, and I had been in the United Methodist church long enough to know that this was a recipe for disaster for me as the associate pastor. It also wasn’t helping that those program areas that Dick had assigned to me were beginning to produce results. It was known throughout the district and the conference that Dick suffered from a kind of ineptitude for most things ministerial, particularly administration. It didn’t help that such was highlighted by the three associates that Dick had had in about as many years, and it was my luck of the draw to be number three. In other words, I was perceived as a threat by the man who managed most of the time to be his own worst enemy.

With Great Thanks

Among my fondest memories of Rockbrook United Methodist Church in Omaha, Nebraska, is the Thanksgiving dinner at which the entire family gathered in the church parlor. The parsonage wasn’t large enough to hold everyone, and the parlor with its adjoining kitchenette provided all of the amenities necessary to accommodate the festive feast. In preparation for tomorrow’s celebration, it seems a good time to recall the many things from my time at Rockbrook for which I am grateful:

• We were near family again. Mary’s Nebraska roots were restored, and we were far more accessible to my Colorado family than we had been in Flagstaff.
  
• We were provided with a parsonage to live in, something that the Flagstaff church had not been in a position to provide their associate pastor.
  
• I had the nicest office that I’ve ever had before or since. Who cared that it was originally furnished as an expression of admiration for my predecessor?
  
• I had the freedom to be with Mary, Rachel and Rebecca just about whenever I needed or wanted to.
  
• I benefited from the collegiality of a number of United Methodist pastors, something that Flagstaff’s two UM churches just couldn’t offer.
  

With the experience I had gained moderating Dad’s radio program from the Arvada church, I worked myself into the fun spot of being the announcer for the Nebraska Conference’s weekly broadcast over KFAB, and I had the opportunity to take some classes in communications at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. The Midwest lifestyle was perfectly suited for raising our young family, and I was doing well with my studies which, for practical reasons, I had transferred to Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. Life was good!

Between a Rock and a Brook

More often than I would have liked, I’ve seen senior pastors pitted against their congregations in a struggle for power. There was a little of this going on at Trinity Heights in Flagstaff as the congregation adjusted to the extreme difference in the personalities of Bill Denlinger and Hal Cowart. Hal, however, was easy going and not all that fond of the northern Arizona climate, so to be appointed elsewhere was not a great catastrophe to be avoided. Richard Carter, on the other hand, came to Rockbrook with plenty of conference baggage that included a reputation of being an “absent minded professor” at best and something of a jerk at worst. There was a pronounced division within the congregation between Dick’s friends and supporters and his detractors. He had angered many by arranging my predecessor’s ouster, an exhibition of the cronyism among district superintendents past and present. Dick took every opportunity to explain to me what had been so unsatisfactory about Pat which I perceived as a tutorial on what I was and was not to do as the new associate. Then there were the disgruntled parishioners who had no reservations about informing me of the myriad of reasons that they didn’t care for Dick and why they wanted to see him replaced. Somewhere in the midst of all this I remained convinced that there was still merit to the life and teachings of Jesus the Christ that deserved to be communicated as gospel.

Where's Waldo?

The careful reader has perhaps noticed something that has been bothering the author. Any mention of theology has been markedly absent as the saga of my ministry in The United Methodist Church has progressed. It was Dad that taught me that church and theology are—or at least should be—intertwined. One’s hermeneutic, ecclesiology, Christology, eschatology and general philosophy are all grounded in one’s theology/worldview, and yet little to no emphasis was being placed by the institutional church on the development of what Claremont’s Jack Verheyden called “a rational discourse about God.” Biblicism was the practical focus of both the general and local church which made any theological inference accidental at best. What good does it do to profess Jesus of Nazareth to be the Son of God if the only rationale is that the Bible says so? How can one claim to be a follower of Jesus the Christ without attempting to explore and understand the Nazarene’s own theology? Interestingly enough, I discovered that these were topics that laypersons hungered to address; it was the church to which they turned for their spiritual development that relegated theology to the exclusive realm of scholasticism while feeding them biblical pabulum with the expectation that it be unquestioningly swallowed.

Mary recommends...

Not to be outdone by her father-in-law, Mary encourages you to hear from another raving liberal:

A Re-Look-See at the Constitution by Bill Maher

A Liberal's Pledge

My thanks to Dad for sharing this with me so that I may share it with you:

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives by Michael Moore

Please Read!

Learning that 100,000 new blogs are created each day with an estimated 1.3 million posts added daily has given me a whole new sense of journalistic freedom seeing as how I truly am talking to myself. At times I permit myself to enter into the monologue of another, and I found Michael Kinsley’s essay, When “Oops” Isn’t Enough, to be well worth sharing. I just pray that Mr. Kinsley does not take offense at my bringing him to this remote part of cyberspace.

The Blessed Hierarchy

I’ve obviously never had a good grasp on church politics; otherwise, I would not be writing this from my 8’ x 8’ cubicle tucked away in the dark recesses of a government office building. Particularly difficult for me to understand is how the selection of district superintendents in The United Methodist Church is made. As a rule they are not the most successful parish pastors because those folks need to be left in their local churches to continue the success (the UMC at large is funded by what is essentially a tax on local congregations dubbed “apportionments”). Nor are district superintendents the persona non grata of an annual conference; those folks are needed to fill the appointments that no one else wants. Bishops choose their cabinets, and I can only guess that their choices are made on the basis of how much adoration and obedience they can expect from their chosen ones. While it is not written in the Book of Discipline that bishops are inerrant and infallible—that just wouldn’t be Protestant—the presumption is submissively accepted by the rank and file that are kept in line by the episcopacy’s lieutenants. The reason that I’ve expounded upon this subject at some length is this: the Reverend Richard G. Carter was a district superintendent prior to being appointed to Rockbrook UMC.

So This Is What "No Win" Means

The function of an associate pastor is basically determined by the pastor in charge (senior) in conjunction with the desires of the congregation which are hypothetically communicated through the Staff-Parish Relations Committee (SPRC). The associate’s role is rightfully supportive of the senior pastor, but the converse is—at least from my experience—rarely reciprocated. Senior pastors are by their position entitled to the limelight positions: preaching, administration, funerals and weddings. Associate pastors are as likely as not to be ex officio education/youth directors, substitute church secretaries and janitors, and stand-ins at those functions that require a pastoral presence but are essentially beneath the dignity of the senior pastor (the United Methodist Women often fall into this category, and I discovered attending their meetings to be absolutely delightful; and, it was just one more opportunity for the associate pastor to become more endeared than the senior pastor to one the congregation’s more formidable forces). Add to this political cocktail the fact that many—if not most—of Rockbrook’s parishioners were not happy with Dick as their senior pastor and you end up with an unstable and volatile church environment. I discovered that you cannot assist someone who sees himself as above assistance, and I eventually learned how senior pastors who perceive they are cornered react.

Learning the Ropes

Richard G. Carter was the quintessential scholastic snob. He delighted in esoteric trivia. His view of parishioners as pathetic little paeans fueled his elitist arrogance. But this is not to say that Dick was a bad person. He was just odd. And he was the kind of oddity that strangely defines the rule rather than the exception for United Methodist clergy. Two independent studies conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s both concluded that over three-quarters of clergy in the United States are clinically codependent (now there’s a fact to ponder for at least the next couple of seconds). Dick always made me think that he would have been happier as a teacher, but a mere teacher doesn’t enjoy the same status and prestige as a minister who as often as not fulfills the additional roles of principal, superintendent, and board member within the local church. As is true with many pastors, Dick didn’t try to hide his preference of particular parishioners over others. This was okay for those who found themselves in his favor, but was a chronic irritant to those he chose to ignore. This basically explains the working environment I entered at Rockbrook UMC. My predecessor had been beguiled by the disenfranchised parishioners who led him to believe that they might succeed in ousting Carter (again, this scenario will eerily repeat itself a decade later). The only thing that this treachery accomplished was the appointment of a new associate—yours truly.

On Being Number Two

Becoming an associate pastor is akin to an arranged marriage. Compatibility and camaraderie have little to do with it. Subservience and obedience have everything to do with it. I was aware at the time what a rare working relationship existed between Nate Holt and me, but Richard Carter impressed upon me the brutal reality of what most senior/associate relationships are like. In retrospect I can see that even Dad’s batting average with associates wasn’t high. Lonnie Johnston, Wilber Benham, and Charles Cooper managed to work with Dad more amicably than almost a dozen others who found themselves on the receiving end of his wrath and disdain. Congregations unwittingly contribute to the tension that exists between seniors and associates by expressing that they like this or that about the associate; if this is done while expressing what they like more about the senior pastor, then the coexistence can progress smoothly. But if it ever appears that the associate is somehow favored over the senior, then look out! This is a direct threat to the hierarchical homeostasis, and I personally don’t know of any instance where the associate came out on top. My first mistake at Rockbrook was to get along with the parishioners.

What's a Rockbrook?

There is a particular protocol within The United Methodist Church for being appointed. It begins with a telephone call from the superintendent of the district in which the prospective appointment is located. In the spring of 1988 my call came from the Reverend Donald Bredthauer whom Mary and I both knew as a former associate at First UMC in Lincoln. Don was now superintendent of the Omaha District, and there was an opening for an associate pastor at the somewhat prestigious Rockbrook UMC on Omaha’s west side. The senior pastor, Richard Carter, was unhappy with his current associate, the Reverend Patrick Culligan, and was looking to replace him (this scenario will eerily be repeated nearly ten years later). Viola! Enter stage west the fledgling local pastor for whom the choice between Williams, Arizona and Omaha, Nebraska was a genuine no-brainer. For what I later discovered was more to maintain the appearance of consulting the local congregation than anything else, it was arranged for me to fly to Omaha to meet with Rockbrook’s Staff-Parish Relations Committee (SPRC). I say that this is just going through the paces for good reason. The principals involved (the bishop, the district superintendent, and the senior pastor in charge) have already met and agreed to the prospective appointment which is then presented to the local congregation not on the basis of would you like to consider this appointee but rather here is your opportunity to meet the person we have selected for you. The SPRC could theoretically reject the proposed appointment but it would be much to the local congregation’s detriment for having challenged the authority of the bishop, etc. It was, therefore, perfunctorily agreed that the Nebraska Annual Conference would welcome my local pastor’s license with open arms so long as I would attempt to work with the Reverend Richard G. Carter.

With Deepest Sympathy

I extend my heartfelt sympathy to the congregation of the New Life Church and to supporters of the Rev. Ted Haggard. I, too, have experienced the almost indescribable hurt that results from being betrayed by one’s pastor. The born-again variety of American Christianity has repeatedly failed to prove immune to this kind of disgrace even as the most progressive of churches have managed to also defile the sacred trust of parishioners. The contemporary American evangelical movement, however, continues to bleed more because of the additional injuries inflicted by hypocrisy, bigotry, deceit, and false piety. The “better-than-thou” attitude embraced by these megachurch giants does lead to a harder fall that validates the skeptical view of these profiteering zealots that claim to head the moral majority, and I can only pray that our country is finally recognizing and rejecting the movement’s political counterpart. As has been the case far too many times over the past two millennia, the true victim of this evil is the Christ whose name has once again been profaned and besmirched. Beware that Haggard and his ilk will try to spin themselves as the victims in all this. Do not let yourself be further deceived by this evil posing in the guise of righteousness. It is the Body of Christ that suffers each and every time such treachery is perpetrated. We are called to forgive, but we are also called to a repentance that will never allow us to forget.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise! (you go, Gomer)

It was a typically grey wintry day in Lincoln, Nebraska, where we were spending vacation time with Mary’s family. Mary and I had been deliberating what changes were about to be imposed upon our young family if I remained in the local pastor’s program. Quite innocently she wondered what opportunities might be open in the Nebraska Conference, and confident that inter-conference moves are difficult even for ordained elders I saw no harm in inquiring. As I sat in the lobby of conference headquarters who should walk by but Warren Swartz? Warren, now a district superintendent, had been the senior pastor of St. Mark’s UMC where I had done a student internship while attending Nebraska Wesleyan, and he also knew Dad as an Iliff School of Theology alum. To dispel any notion that this was anything less than fate, the cabinet was in session for the purpose of lining up appointments for the next session of annual conference and Warren surprised me by saying that Nebraska would be happy to have me back in their ranks. Somewhat stunned I returned to give Mary's family the news that it might not be so difficult to visit us in the future.

Go West, Young Man?

There is a kind of logic to the Roman Catholic dictum that its priests remain unmarried and celibate. I don’t agree with it, but being married and the father of two cast a whole new light upon the appointment system employed by The United Methodist Church of which I was becoming a part. As the newly formed Desert Southwest Annual Conference began deliberating and defining the role of the local pastor, I was first exposed to the hypocrisy of the consultation process. United Methodist congregations and pastors alike agree to accept the appointments made by the resident bishop, but the supposed checks-and-balances provision of the agreement is that pastors and congregations will be consulted by the bishop and her/his cabinet to try to ensure a “good fit.” Just as there is nothing in the Discipline which states that the exclusive route to ordination is through seminary, neither does the Discipline prohibit a licensed local pastor from being appointed associate pastor to a church large enough to support that position (indeed, the Discipline does not prohibit a local pastor from being appointed as the senior pastor). I was happy to be the associate pastor at Trinity Heights; Nate was amenable to me being his associate, and the congregation was favorable to the two of us being its pastoral team. None of this mattered, however, to the conference hierarchy. Having moved to Flagstaff from Denver the city felt small and remote, but it now seemed mammoth in comparison to Williams and its population of 2,500. A drive by the parsonage revealed a substandard house, and it was known throughout the conference that the church building was sorely in need of expensive repairs. Had I been single the appointment might have been viewed as a challenge that I’d like to take on, but taking Mary, Rachel and Rebecca into account made finding some sort of alternative an absolute necessity.