Minutes of Meetings with God
and with Myself

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An Off-hand Question ...

Clergy colleagues and I were leaving a restaurant after our regular, weekly breakfast meeting. It had been one of those meetings in which so many pastors showed up that we had to push a couple of extra tables together to make room for us all; more than a dozen showed up. Mostly, we had indulged in small talk, catching up with one another about what had happened during the past week. During breakfast, much of the talk centered around dealing with nitty-gritty pastor stuff, like stewardship. Some talked about pastoral care situations they faced and asked for advice and prayer support.

We shared some last minute banter as we made sure we left our tips for the server. As we headed for the cashier, and I was rooting around in my coin purse for the exact change (I think I'm developing some "old person" behavior), a clergy friend asked one of those deep, important, semi-rhetorical questions that suddenly comes to mind, and gets "thrown out there" without expectation that it will be answered in any meaningful way.

He asked, "Why is the United Methodist Church continuing to lose membership and does any body care?"

My unexpected answer to his question was: "It's because the United Methodist Church has tried too hard to be all things to all people and as a result has become nothing to anybody! And, 'yes,' some of us do care!"

Boy, did the conversation take a turn from there. We paid the cashier for our breakfasts and some of us continued talking under the restaurant's portico. I can only imagine what entering and leaving customers must have thought as they passed the small cluster of preachers in a friendly, but animated exchange about the church.

Mostly I found myself saying to the others things that "homed-in" on questions of "identity". Who are we, the United Methodist Church? And, what does it mean to be who we are in terms of how we live and work as individuals and the Church?

Mostly, I found myself saying that I thought we have lost who we are both as Christians, followers of Jesus, and as followers of the Methodist traditions. It seemed that I was realizing, again, that the Church, particularly the United Methodist Church, has lost the meaning of who we are and what we are about.

A symptom of the severity of the condition of the Church is our inability to answer the "so what difference does that make?" questions. You are a Christian? So what difference does that make (either in you, yourself, or in the people and in the world around you)? You are a United Methodist? So what difference does that make (either in you, yourself, or in the people and in the world around you)?

What is particularly sad for me is, when we are most honest in our answers, they are variations of "not much difference at all, especially not in terms of a difference for the good." The good that the Church accomplishes is too often over shadowed or negated, not only by the evil outside of it, but by the failure and evil within it.

It seems that, in many respects, we are further from where we are called to be and what we are called to do, now, after some 2,000 years, than when Jesus came into Galilee, preaching, and saying, "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

Thinking back on the conversation, it seems I was really wrestling with a fundamental question that Langdon Gilkey framed years ago as: "How can the Church minister to the world without losing itself?" And, it seems that I could not escape the realization that in it's efforts to minister to the world, the Church has, once again, lost itself.

The Church, in it's various institutional forms, seems caught in an ever deepening malaise. It's feverish, sluggish, and ever so uncomfortable. It, like the culture and individuals around it, is obsessed with itself, its own survival, its own wants, and its own comfort. At very least, it is indulging in a sort of institutional narcissism. At worst, it may be dying.

The Church persists in trying to bury Jesus in the past so that he is not the Living Word of God, today. Jesus too often ends up being nothing but history rather than the Living One, ever present with us and somehow appearing to us (unrecognized???) on the road of life, comforting us, causing our hearts to burn within us, opening the Scriptures to us, and leading us to change for the better right down to the very core of who we are, not only as individuals, but as people living together as families, neighbors, and nations.

The Church has forgotten, or worse, trivialized, it's core teachings. In the language of modern marketing, the Church has diluted its "brand," its distinguishing characteristics that give it a unique identity, to the point that it has become a commodity, a generic, qualitatively ordinary version of the original. "Being a Christian" has become so bland and empty of specific, meaningful content, that increasing numbers of people are turning to other, Eastern or primal religions, seeking something spiritual and life-changing that they haven't found in the Church.

Repentance has degenerated from Jesus' original call to a fundamental change in being, believing, and living to the guilt-tripping and neurotic over-scrupulousness of today's "being converted."

Self-righteousness and an empty perfectionism in regard to appearances, more concern with "looking good" than "being good", have replaced the self-transcending love, the humility, the simplicity, the generosity, and the witness against decadence that is the holiness which Jesus lived.

Apocalyptic rage or rational resignation (one generation passes away, another generation takes its place; but the earth abides forever) has replaced the simple hope that "the Kingdom of God is at hand."

What will it take to get our identity back as Christians, as the Church, and as United Methodists? The answers aren't easy ones.

Often, when we look for the answers about our identity, our impulse is to reach back into the past, to try to discover who we are in who we have been. However, the most important answers about the question of our identity very likely aren't there.

In a heated exchange about discipleship, Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62 NIV)

We tend to forget that our vision of the future, our hope for the Kingdom of God, influences our identity as much or more than the past. Who we hope to be shapes who we are, now, in powerful ways.

The Kingdom of God is at our finger tips. Will we reach for it and find ourselves?