Bishops Forum

Recently First Church was honored to host the first ever Bishop's Townhall Meeting in preparation for General Conference this summer.  I was very excited about the message that the leadership of our church communicated.  Below are some of the things I appreciated followed by a few of my concerns.

Things to celebrate:

1) A renewed emphasis on being missional.  The church doesn't have a mission; the mission of God has a church.  I think our bishops understand that.  They want us to be increasingly outward-focused rather than maintaining our tradition of being a "holy huddle."

2) A call to embrace ethnic diversity in our ministries.  My favorite moment of the evening was when Lead Bishop David Kendall stated very matter-of-factly, "We are a white church.  We are homogeneous.  And we need to change that."  Such honesty is refreshing from our leadership.

3) An emphasis on networking and reaching today's youth culture.

4) An emphasis on the need for the church to return to its roots:  raising the standard of holiness and preaching the good news to the poor.  I see the divide between social justice and personal piety being bridged and I am thrilled to witness it.

5) A refusal to get in bed with the religious right.  This is really big.  For so long Free Methodism has been part of the Republican Party.  I no longer hear that coming from our leadership (although it remains strong among many laity and clergy).  I truly believe the bishops want to allow for a diversity of opinions on this matter and refuse to play partisan politics any longer.

Concerns:

1)  We still seem to be immersed in the Pastor-as-CEO model (or Bishop).  This didn't come out in the forum, but you can see that more and more decisions in the church are being made by fewer and fewer people.  The fact that the General Conference delegations will only have ONE DAY to discuss business matters reveals the fact that more decisions are being made behind closed doors.

2)  We are still dominated by pragmatism.  Whatever works is seen as best.  I find this contrary to Scripture.

3)  We're not going far enough in embracing God's preferential option for the poor.  We are on our way, but it still remains an "add-on" in our theology rather than central to it.

I would love to hear your feedback.  You can read an article about the event here:  Townhall Meeting or view the actual event here: Video of the event