Why Christians Need to Talk about Trayvon

I am a Free Methodist through and through.  In fact, my Free Methodist credentials are quite impressive if I do say so myself.  To my knowledge, I am the only sixth generation ordained Free Methodist pastor.  In the world.  And so, I have devoted a good deal of my academic career to researching and thinking about my denomination's history and unique place within the larger witness of the church, probably because it has played such a large part in the formation of my own identity.

Several years ago I researched a very simple question:  What did Free Methodists have to say during the tumultuous decade of the 1960s?  Did they weigh in on Vietnam?  Did they back the civil rights movement or oppose it?  I set about reading as much as I could of the literature produced by my denomination during that decade.  I pored over the articles printed in the denominational magazine.  And you know what I found?  I found one -- ONE! -- article that even remotely questioned the legitimacy of the war in Vietnam.  It was the only article (more like a short blurb, really) that reminded Free Methodists of our Christian commitment to peacemaking and hatred of violence.

I did not find a single article addressing civil rights.

Think about that.  On the national level, what was taking place was unprecedented.  Martin Luther King was traveling the nation, legislation was being enacted, major strides toward racial equality were taking place... and my church was largely silent.

Remember: this is a denomination that boasts of roots in (and owes its name to) the 1860's anti-slavery movement.  I believe its silence, just a century later, is nothing short of tragic.  It's not like the church was filled with vocal racists and bigots.  Free Methodists weren't donning the white hood and burning crosses (and least, I don't think they were).  But they also weren't marching with the protesters, practicing civil disobedience, and attending the rally to hear about Dr. King's dream.  (By the way, if anyone who reads this knows of evidence to the contrary, please contact me.  I would be delighted to be proved wrong on this).

When my grandchildren ask me about the Trayvon Martin case, I don't want to tell them that I was silent.  I don't want to be found on the wrong side of history.  I want to tell them with pride that my church entered into the conversation and that, in fact, we were on the front lines, demanding that our nation talk about problems of systemic injustice.

Does the gospel have anything to say about what has transpired recently?  Some Christians evidently think that it does not.  According to the Christianity Today poll I participated in today, over 86% of churches did not even make the slightest mention of the Zimmerman trial.  That silence must be broken.  The gospel DOES have something to say here.  The gospel is a message of liberation, a message of hope, a message of reconciliation.  I believe that if Jesus had been alive in 1963, he would have applauded Dr. King's dream and worked to see it come to fruition.  And I believe that in our own day, Jesus would be standing with the family as they grieve over Trayvon's death. (He'd also be seeking to redeem Zimmerman from his violent ways.  Can't you hear him say, "George, put down your gun.  Those who live by the gun, die by the gun"?).  I can see Jesus wearing a hoodie.  It's in his nature to become like us and enter into our pain and our own struggle for justice.  That's what the incarnation is.

Is it any wonder why young people are turning away from the church in droves when the witness of the church has been so silent for so long?  God stands on the side of the victim, the poor, the outcast, the disfigured, the misunderstood black men of our day.  He calls his church to do the same.  And when we remain silent in the face of injustice, we betray the gospel.  Christians need to talk about Trayvon because the whole reason Jesus came to earth was to set prisoners free, give sight to the blind, proclaim good news to the poor, and initiate the year of Jubilee (see Luke 4).  He only asks that his people bear witness to that reality.

Hoodies up, y'all.  Can I get a witness?

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

Free Methodism and the Poor

Last Thursday I gave a presentation to the Family Camp of the Wabash Conference that I am part of. I'm posting this because a number of people asked to have access to it. It is free for anyone to use.

View it at this link:

PowerPoint Presentation: Free Methodism and Ministry to the Poor

The Medium is the Message

"The medium is the message" was a famous statement made by Marshall McLuhan and I am reflecting on its veracity. Having been raised in the evangelical tradition, I have always been taught that the media we use to present the gospel does not have any significance -- the unchanging message is the only thing that matters. But does something about the message of the gospel become cheapened or compromised by plastering it on a billboard or summarizing it in a pamphlet or blaring it on the radio or broadcasting it on TV? Evangelicals have always been at the forefront of harnessing new technologies for the sake of "winning souls." Whether it was the dawn of the printed page or the radio or the TV or the internet or Facebook, evangelicals have had no hesitations about adopting such media for their cause.

But something within me fears that our uncritical inculcation of new forms of media has actually changed the message. Let's take Jesus for example. What were Christ's media? First, it was the spoken word and the telling of stories. Second, it was in eating; the bread and the wine communicated the gospel to people. Both of these methods are what I would call incarnational. They meet people where they are in the flesh. They are personal, intimate, and community-oriented. Contrast this with the new "Drive-thru churches" or "e-churches" popular in our day. Such media communicate that the gospel is essentially about information rather than relationship, about abstract propositions instead of community. The spoken word and food seem to be the preferred media of God because the form of media that we use is not morally neutral. Media itself communicates a message and can either strengthen that message or undermine it.

When I preach on Sunday before a small, intimate audience of hurting people who are haunted by fears and anxieties and I declare, "Take heart for God has overcome the world!" this is a very different experience than a televangelist impersonally pleading for money before a video camera and persuading his listeners with the words, "Take heart for God has overcome the world!"

I believe that it is no coincidence that teens and twenty-thirty somethings are flocking to churches which use liturgy, symbols, proclamation, and ancient forms of worship such as the Eastern Orthodox Church. In an age so saturated with multiple forms of media, young people hunger for intimacy, community, and incarnationality. Perhaps we would do well to return to the ancient practices of the church rather than trying to innovate by planting churches in hollowed out movie cinemas. Let's trust Christ's preferred media and assume that he knows what he's doing by offering us Word and Sacrament.

(Credit to Warren Cole Smith, author of A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church, for inspiring me to write this post).

My Annual Conference Report

Next week as the senior pastor of a Free Methodist Church I am required to turn in a report to my superintendent in which I must enumerate how many people in my church have been "converted." Being a the fussy, troublesome little pastor that I am, I asked the conference to define for me "conversion" to which I was greeted by the following very brief reply:

"The directions for lines 4 and 5 say that conversions are those
who have prayed to receive Christ as their personal Savior..." So, that would mean salvation. How many youth and how many adults were saved during 2008?"

I knew, of course, that such would be the answer. But having taken an entire graduate course on Christian conversion, I was curious to note how my denomination defines "salvation." Evidently, what they want me to report is how many people I was able to cajole into saying the magic words (i.e. the "sinner's prayer" -- Notice that we call this the "Sinner's prayer" and not the "Sinners' prayer" denoting our individualistic outlook on sin and salvation). But I have come to believe over the past 10 years of biblical and theological study that the reduction of the mystery of salvation to the pronouncement of a few magic words is an absurdity and does a grave injustice to the biblical concept of soterios or telios or sozo.

I would like to offer an alternative conference report to the one I am being forced to turn in this week. It would look something like this:

Number of prostitutes who have been told that they are made in the image of God and wept over that fact: 3

Number of addicts who have admitted their bondage, confessed their sin, and sought help through group accountability: 10

Number of sexually abused women who have thrown themselves down at the altar and asked God to heal them: 4

Number of dysfunctional or mentally ill teenagers who have been educated by patient people in the church and listened to for hours on end: 5

Number of hungry mouths fed: easily over 2,000

Number of inner city kids who have now memorized over 3 chapters of the Bible: 5

Number of pastors who have been completely and totally broken down before God and cried out for his help: at least 1

Number of men weekly attending AA in our church basement: 6

Number of people who have smiled and said, "Thank you for what you do; it has given me hope": at least a dozen.

Number of times members of the church have responded to insult or abuse with kindness and patience: thousands.

Now I know that the conference wants the "bottom line." They want me to tell them how many I "got in" so that they can do their little denominational tally. I know that if my number were high enough, my church's name would be read on a list at annual conference as a role model for others. But I don't really want to give them that. Instead, I'd rather tell them stories, show them pictures, and let them eat at our table alongside the poor.

But, alas, this is America. We want numbers -- numbers of "conversions." My suggestion is that we stop counting conversions and start counting conversations.

Fork in the Road: Another Post about Free Methodism

I published this on the Free Methodist Soul Searching blog which can be viewed at http://www.fmcna.typepad.com/soul_searching/

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The Free Methodist Church is in the middle of an identity crisis. All of us who follow the church closely know this. Once a sect on the margins of society, we have become a primarily middle-class, mainstream evangelical denomination with little to offer America that is distinctive from the other church down the street.

As a new pastor working in the inner city, I am beginning to understand the importance of co-operating with other churches in accomplishing God’s mission. And this leads me to ask the very important question: What makes the Free Methodist Church different than any other church? What do we have to offer that is unique as part of the body of Christ?

In my opinion, two options lie before us. First, we can return to our roots by once again becoming a sect which devotes itself to ministry among the poor. We can, like the early Free Methodists, choose to live lives of radical simplicity and generosity, shunning the upward mobility of American culture and standing prophetically against the increasing materialism of our age. We can do this both in families and as churches. As churches, we can decide to relocate our buildings out of the suburbs and into the inner cities of America. We can stop spending God’s precious money on padding for our pews and indoor basketball courts. (If I sound radical here, please read B. T. Roberts and I think you’ll find him much more abrasive). We can channel our funds into food pantries, community centers, homeless shelters, and soup kitchens. And as families, we could reject the middle-class American way of life with its brand name clothes, new cars, and suburban houses. All of this sacrifice is, of course, so that we could live in solidarity with the poor and provide more for their needs. As a community, we could decide to “live simply so that others might simply live.” But this option would require a deliberate shift from our focus on reaching middle to upper class America. We would make this shift not because we are convinced that middle class America needs no church -- for they certainly do -- but because this need is being met by many denominations and OUR place in the body of Christ is to minister to the marginalizes of society.

The other major option I would propose is this: we continue to target not the poor, but middle class America. However, if we choose this option, I believe we ought to overcome the denominational boundaries which separate us from other Christians. We ought to merge with the Wesleyans, Nazarenes, and other holiness denominations. As it is now, we are simply duplicating what they are doing, but oftentimes not doing it nearly as well. It would be better to extend to them our hand of fellowship and stop trying to fill the exact same niche in American evangelicalism. If this means the end of Free Methodist identity, then so be it. In my opinion, we lost our identity long ago.

The status quo will not suffice. We must choose to either become distinctive again or to merge with others who are doing the exact same things we are doing and bring unity back into the body of Christ. Personally, I prefer the first option because I think it is more “Free Methodist,” but I would be happy to see us move in either direction. We simply cannot continue with business as usual or we will miss out on what God is doing in our part of the world.

A Remarkable Life

This semester I have been able to sit at the feet of a truly remarkable woman, Meesaeng Lee Choi, a Korean Christian who now teaches the History of the Holiness Movement here at Asbury. Dr. Choi testifies to having experienced entire sanctification in August of 1981 while kneeling beside her bed one evening after several hours of prayer. Through the death of her father at a young age and a very painful childhood, Dr. Choi eventually came to Christianity in college and experienced the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" a few years later. To my knowledge, she is the one person I have come across who will look me in the eye and say, "I have been entirely sanctified."

This fascinates me. Why is it that an experience so central to the fabric of the historic American holiness movement of the 19th century is so rare? Why does this Korean woman alone testify to having had the experience of full salvation, inner cleansing, and Christian perfection? I must admit that the culture gap between Dr. Choi and myself is huge. Many things she says and testifies to do not fit well with my Western, modernistic framework. And yet, even from a Western scientific perspective, I must admit her testimony as evidence and weigh it carefully. Here are some of the more radical claims that she makes:

1) She claims to only sleep about 4-5 hours/night because she is so excited to spend time in prayer. This was not the case before her 1981 experience.

2) She has witnessed multiple miraculous healings and believes that the American church has forgotten the fact that divine physical healing was the primary method for spreading the gospel during the first three centuries of the church. She regularly participated in meetings in Korea on Friday nights which would last for 6-7 hours each -- a room filled with loud prayer and miraculous healings of those with even terminal diseases. She attributes the radical growth of the church in Korea to this fact.

3) She claims that most miraculous healings take place after 3-7 days of communal fasting.

4) When I asked her why the Korean church seems so vibrant and the American church seems so apathetic, she answered with one word: prayer. Korean Christians pray like mad (usually in large groups for 2-3 hours early each morning before breakfast).

5) Dr. Choi claims to be almost insanely happy. She admits that she is often troubled in her spirit and that she still suffers a great deal (from spiritual forces), but she radiates with a joy and vibrancy I have not seen before. For Dr. Choi, holiness and happiness are the same. And she is perfectly happy.

6) She likes to say that "death is the final healing." She does not fear death in the least.

Sitting at the feet of this woman for the past 12 weeks has challenged me in many ways. I have realized that my own view of Christianity is far too small. God is doing things in cultures that I barely even understand. My modernist, Western culture predisposes me to look askance at the supernatural. And yet I cannot deny the testimony of this woman any more than I can deny the testimonies of hundreds of thousands of Christians in Asia, Africa, and South America. In my search for Truth (aka God), I must listen to her voice.

From Monument to Movement

I remember vividly watching the 1998 film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and seeing the young idealistic student Marius Pontmercy standing atop a box in the middle of a crowded street. He proclaimed the dawn of a new era for France and encouraged young and old alike to join him in the revolution. As I watched, something within me envied this young man. He had a cause and he believed in it; he had found something worth living and dying for.

As a young idealist myself, I long to be part of a movement that is radical, edgy, and nonconformist – one that challenges the status quo and invites its members to a place of radical (and dangerous) action. And, much to my delight, as I have studied the history of the Free Methodist Church I have found that this is exactly what we once were.

According to Donald Dayton, B. T. Roberts “pushed his followers to a radical discipleship that affirmed simple lifestyle, polemicized against the ‘modern, easy way of people getting converted, without repentance, without renouncing the world,’ and insisted that such renunciation of the world include such social sins as ‘slavery, driving hard bargains, and oppressing the hireling in his wages.’” The tone of the early Free Methodist movement carried seeds of dissent from the increasingly bourgeois church of the late nineteenth century leading its followers to a radical simplicity of lifestyle for the sake of the poor.

The dual concern for complete holiness and social justice lies at the heart of Free Methodist DNA. Our founders were convinced that these two were completely inseparable. For holiness means nothing more and nothing less than perfect love and this perfect love will drive us to “follow in the footsteps of Jesus... by seeing that the gospel is preached to the poor” (B. T. Roberts). Unfortunately, the 20th century convinced us that we must choose between doctrinal purity and what is now called the social gospel movement – creating a split which still haunts us to this day.

This young idealist in his late twenties wishes to see the Free Methodist Church denounce the unholy divorce of personal and social holiness as demonic and return to our roots – to a place of radical self-denial and sacrificial love which motivates not only our prayers, but our pocketbooks as well. We must reject a hyper-spiritualized gospel which tells us that God only cares about souls and not about physical needs as well. We must embrace holistic ministry which meets people where they are and presents them with the fully-orbed, robust gospel of Jesus Christ in all of its personal, social, and political glory.

In many ways, the Free Methodist Church has become that very denomination against which we rebelled. We have become a “respectable church” rather than a church on the margins and on the fringes of society. We have traded in the plain dress and unadorned church buildings of the early Free Methodists for middle-to-upper class luxuries and padded pews.

I suggest we take our cue from the founders of the church of the Nazarene (close relatives of ours) who wrote the following: “We can get along without rich people, but not without preaching the gospel to the poor... Let the church of the Nazarene be true to its commission; not great and elegant buildings; but to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and wipe away the tears of the sorrowing; and gather jewels for his diadem.”