This fall in Adult Sunday School, we will be reading and discussing a book entitled, Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity by David Felten and Jeff Proctor-Murphy. Originally Living the Questions was a DVD series (which I own) which was very popular amongst clergy. The authors realized (correctly, I think) that the “wisdom” in the DVD needed to reach a broader audience and therefore created the book. Chapter titles include, Taking the Bible Seriously but not Literally, Thinking Theologically, Evil, Suffering and the God of Love, Practicing Resurrection, The Myth of Redemptive Violence and Honoring Creation. I have no doubt that this book will generate good discussion amongst the wonderful people who have attended our class.

Parenthetically, the book generated controversy in the Phoenix area where David Felten in the pastor of Fountain Hills UMC. Eight neighboring churches organized a six part series challenging the book – the title of the series was “Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction,” and the six sessions were: Why Does it Matter that God Doesn’t Change, Why Does it Matter that the Bible is Reliable (inerrant), Why Does it Matter that Jesus is God, Why Does it Matter that Jesus was Born of a Virgin, Why Does it Matter that Jesus was Resurrected, Why Does it Matter that Jesus is the Only Way? One can well imagine what was preached at those sessions – all the more reason for us to become both clear and open about our faith. My hope is that this book will assist us in becoming articulate about how we believe – and what we don’t believe. It will help us in forming our identity, crystallizing our message (as relative as it may be) and giving us the means to be in dialogue with the folks like those in the eight churches in Phoenix.

We meet every Sunday morning beginning September 13 at 10:00 am. I have ordered 17 books – if you would like me to reserve one for you please let me know. Or, you may buy one yourself – for your Kindle. I’m looking forward to sharing with everyone again. P.Jim

P.S. If you would like to read about the controversy in Phoenix go to Patheos.com.

This coming Sunday is Peace with Justice Sunday, one of six designated special Sundays in the UMC. On each of these Sundays a special offering is taken and we are encouraged to build the worship service around this theme. The title of this week’s sermon will be, A Profound Ignorance, and I will be talking about the relationship between thinking and being about to work for peace with justice in our world.

The United Methodist Church has always been on the forefront of working for peace and justice: Starting with John Wesley who indentified two issues in his time: slavery and debtors prisons. We have always seen a part of our spiritual vocation of engage the world with all of its issues, suffering and problems. Annual Conference is coming up, and again we will address various petitions concerning social, economic and political matters. In this way, we engage each other too – we Methodists are known to talk about everything! I’m proud of that.

I am also proud of our Social Principles. I don’t agree with everything in them, but I am proud of what it says about our desire to engage the world. The Social Principles are guidelines regarding various issues in our world from poverty to technology, the rights of women and the needs of children. During confirmation I present the Social Principles to the youth hoping that they will read them. Even more it would be great to know that adults in our Church are both aware of them and read them. Alas, experience says this isn’t so. Therefore, I will present a few quotes from the Social Principles for us all to consider. If you have any response to these or questions by all means contact me. P.Jim

Science and Technology

In acknowledging the important roles of science and technology, however we also believe that theological understandings of human experience are crucial to full understanding of the place of humanity in the universe. Science and theology are complementary rather than mutually incompatible. We therefore encourage dialogue between the scientific and theological communities and seek the kind of participation that will enable humanity to sustain life on earth and, by God’s grace, increase the quality of our common life together.

Suicide

A Christian perspective on suicide begins with an affirmation of faith that nothing, including suicide, separates us from the love of God. Therefore, we deplore the condemnation of people who complete suicide, and we consider unjust the stigma that so often falls on surviving family and friends.

Information Communication Technology

While the Internet can be used to nurture minds and spirits of children and adults, it is in danger of being overrun with commercial material. Therefore, the Internet must be managed responsibly in order to maximize the benefits while minimizing its risks, especially for children.

Corporate Responsibility

Corporations are responsible not only to their stockholders, but also to other stakeholders; their workers, suppliers, vendors customers, the communities in which they do business, and for the earth, which supports them. We support the public’s right to know what impact corporations have in these various arenas, so that people can make informed choices about which corporations to support.

Restorative Justice

In the love of Christ, who came to save those who are lost and vulnerable, we urge the creation of a genuinely new system of the care and restoration of victims, offenders, criminal justice officials, and the community as a whole. Restorative justice grows out of biblical authority, which emphasizes the right relationship with God, self, and community. When such relationships are vi8olted or broken through crime, opportunities are created to make things right.

Most criminal justice systems around the world are retributive. These retributive justice systems profess to hold the offender accountable to the state and use punishment as the equalizing tool for accountability. In contrast, restorative justice seeks to hole the offender accountable to the victimized person, and to the disrupted community. Through Gods transforming power, restorative justice seeks to repair the damage, right the wrong, and bring healing to all involved, including the victim, the offender, the families, and the community. The Church is transformed when it responds to the claims of discipleship by becoming an agent of healing and systemic change.

War and Peace

We believe war is in incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. WE therefore reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy. We oppose unilateral first/preemptive strike actions and strategies on the part of any government…We insist that the first moral duty of all nations is to work together to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among them.

Pastor Jim’s Blog: During our work in the Beta-Vitality Committee we have generated all sorts of suggestions: reviewing our systems, creating shepherding groups, working on marketing, just to name a few. And as is always the case if suggestions are to turn into plans they require people committed to seeing them through. The Church is in one sense a volunteer organization – that is how the world would categorize us – but we are also a people called to be in ministry in some way. Some people like to work on the more functional aspects of the Church: finance, trustees, SPRC, etc. I am forever thankful for these people – without them the Church would not run at all. But there is also the work that is more directly related to our mission: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world: Working with youth and children, being on the Missions or Welcoming Committees, for example. Since we started the Beta-Vitality process we have added our Caring Committee which has been very successful in nurturing our members. The Beta Vitality Committee has identified one area where we need some more structure and help – and then I would like to add another.

Since I came to Cedar Cross now nearly 5 years ago I have been creating, administrating and leading the ministry of Adult Education on my own. There has never been a committee for this ministry and there needs to be one. Our Bishop and Annual Conference has identified “Adult Spiritual Formation” as a priority in the making of disciples – each year in the annual report we submit to the Conference we are asked about the number of “disciple making” groups we have started in the past year. The kinds of things that we have been doing that are a part of this ministry is Adult Sunday School, the Wednesday class and the Lenten Study. Much more could be happening and included: Having a Younger Adult group and a Parenting class, for example. I am looking for people who would be excited about participating in this ministry. It is the kind of ministry that can be very fun and rewarding. If you are interested please let me know.

There is one other area of ministry that is not on the priority list with Beta Vitality, but it is something that is close to my heart. In one of our class times on Wednesday morning we were talking about faith in action, and specifically about the issue of social justice. There is an organization called Faith Action Network – FAN, for short – that serves as the ecumenical connection between churches in the region and what is happening in Olympia. I would like to see us establish an relationship with them and be involved in some of their activities. At least to publicize the issues that are happening in Olympia so that we all know and can act either together or on our own. I think we also need a Social Justice Committee. Relating to FAN would be the initial step, but it wouldn’t have to end there. We could decide to take on a particular issue where we see injustice in our community and/or in the world and in any way possible try to bring God’s justice to it. If you have a passion for this ministry I would like to hear from you.

We are a growing Church now and I think we need to consider ways we can grow in ministry too. P.Jim

In our Adult Sunday School class we continue to talk about the story of our faith in an historical context. Hopefully not in some dry fact based way that we may have learned history in high school, but looking at the spirituality of our fore fathers and mothers. How did they relate to God? How did they understand prayer? What was the source for their faith? We have passed the Reformation and Enlightenment now – two movements that greatly influenced how we see the world. Through the Reformation we inherited the belief that the primary source for our life and faith is the Bible. In most of Protestant Christianity this remains the case. At the extreme end you have “Bible Believing” churches. But even in our own Discipline of the four sources of faith in our Methodist Quadrilateral scripture is identified as “primary.” But in the lives of people today that may be changing.

In the first chapter of their book If Grace is True Philip Gulley and James Mulholland essentially say that it is experience that is primary. They are Quakers and since Quakers have always believed in the Inner Light of God within each person this may not be such a revolutionary idea to them, but to Baptists, Presbyterians and especially those Bible Believing churches it is somewhere between a curious idea and an anathema. I think that logically it is hard not to see experience as foundational. Once one acknowledges that the Bible was written by living people both gifted and flawed; that what they wrote was filtered through their experience then doesn’t experience precede the Bible almost by necessity? When I calmly observe myself I have to say that I experience even before I feel or think – feelings emerge out of experiences and thoughts give shape to experiences, much more than the words I now type which are one step further from my experience. If we begin to acknowledge this what could it mean for our life in the Church?

I think we would begin to see the Bible differently. Neither as an historical account nor as a rule book for life but as the story of our faith – the story of the relationship of God with the people of God. We would understand that the Bible is an expression of the experiences of people who come before us written down in narrative, poetry, prose, sayings and song – through the tools that they had to express those experiences and the feelings and thoughts that emerged from those feelings. Bible study would be less about what the meaning is, and more about how we enter into the story. We would also be telling more of our own stories of life and faith in the Church. Never in an individualistic fashion as if we could be extracted from our context and all of our relations but in and through that context and relations. In one of our Wednesday class sessions we were talking about seeing our “selves” in a more fluid way, not as a ball that remains the same traveling through time bumping into other like balls, but as an ever changing web or experiences and relationships. We cannot talk about our story outside of our relations and hopefully not outside the stories both of the Bible and the history of the faith – call it biblical relativity theory.

In a sermon a few weeks back I shared about Harvey Cox’ new book, The Future of Faith in which he claims that we are in the middle of a paradigm shift. He sees three stages in the story of Christianity: the first was the Age of Faith when a feeling of awe and wonder and trust was what defined spirituality. Then with the advent of Constantine and Christianity as the religion of the Empire there came the Age of Belief: Religion was focused on accepting proposals about Jesus and God – that is, the Creeds. Now, he says we are entering the Age of Spirit where we concentrate on spiritual experience, story and again, trust. How would our life in the church be different if we considered this – and we concentrated less on considering what we believe and more one how we experience God?

Marcus Borg, who recently passed away, wrote a final book, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most, and one of those things that matter most is religious experience. This coming from a very intellectual person, he describes his spiritual experience and says of them: “these episodes of sheer wonder, radical amazement, radiant luminosity, often evoke the exclamation, “Oh my God!” So it has been for me. And for me that exclamation expresses truth. It is the central conviction that has shaped my Christian journey ever since. God is real, “the more” in whom we live and move and have our being.” Amen to that. P.Jim

At our last Beta Vitality meeting we discussed Church Systems (the apostle Paul would probably talked about the body and its parts, and whether they were functioning well.)  Church Systems are areas of ministry such as Evangelism, Finance, Youth Ministry; to think of these as systems is to consider how they work – is there good communication?  Are things taken care of?  Is it a sustainable system?  Does it invite new ideas and new people into its ministry?  As one might expect we were given a set of criteria by which to assess if a system in the church is working – from Christian Schwartz:

1. Fruitfulness:  Does this system produce visible fruit for the Kingdom of God?
2. Multiplication:  Does this system contribute to the multiplication or merely to addition?  (And the difference is…?)
3. Interdependence:  How does this system affect other areas of life?  (Does it run independently?)
4. Symbiosis:  Does this system foster a fruitful cooperation between different activities?
5. Energy Transformation:  Does this system take advantage of the resources in the environment?
6. Sustainability:  Do the results of this system have built-in mechanisms to sustain themselves?

I always feel like these kinds of lists are a mouthful – at the same time that I know they are needed.

The next step for the Beta Vitality Committee is to use these criteria to assess our Church Systems.  I  have identified these systems:  Church Council, Finance and Stewardship, Congregational Care (Caring Committee, pastoral care), Children, Youth, Adult Spiritual Formation and Discipleship Making, Evangelism, Worship, SPRC, Leadership Development, UMW, Communications (webpage, facebook, Crossings, etc.), Trustees, Mission Outreach, Preschool, Fellowship (Saints & Sinners, Spotted Cow, etc.).  Let’s look at a system that is working well:  The Trustees.  They may be spending over budget but they are getting things done – they are a good group that genuinely like each other; they have regular meetings; they communicate well with the Church; they look ahead; they even met once at McMineman’s, now that’s a good system!  (Of course we all know that this is working well largely due to the dedication and enthusiasm of the Chair… one of those Larrys I think.  A system that is less than perfect is Adult Spiritual Formation and Discipleship Making.  Most significantly there is no committee for adults as there is for youth and children.  Every year we are asked by our Superintendent, Rev. Daniel Forster and our Bishop whether we have discipleship making systems.  It is appropriate for them to ask considering that the mission statement of our denomination is, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.  This is a system that needs more attention and energy.  To that end, I would invite anyone who would like to be a part of a committee committed to the transformation of our adults to let me know.

I invite you to consider the systems I have listed above.  The Beta Vitality committee welcomes your feedback.  I welcome your feedback.  Please share with us about any of these systems – are they being fruitful?  Are they communicating well?  Is there a focal point for the system?  Is there energy in the system?  Is it set up to grow or just exist?  Is it sustainable?

I just thought everyone ought to know.  P.Jim