Have we really come to this? GC Special Session 2019, Reflection from the historical imagination

Most people know that I am a straight up, card carrying United Methodist Nerd. So, much so that while doing some work at Drew University I couldn’t wait to go to the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History’s Library on the campus. I walked in and did cartwheels. I made my way to the section on conference minutes and went to the minutes of the General Conference of 1848. My hands sweating with thrill and excitement I turned to the exchange on the conference floor that ultimately led to the Great Methodist schism that would divide the church for a little under 100 years. Yet, what caught my eye however, was the Episcopal address of that year.

The Episcopal address was centered around, are you ready for it, it was centered around the local church! The majority of the address was a conversation with clergy (there weren’t lay delegates at that time) on following the class system, Sunday School and other matters. It was a phenomenal report but it was a very large commentary for me on how far away we have come from the centrality of the local church in our denominational work.

Truthfully, its understandable. Our connectional system has given us a high sense of global communion, high bureaucracy and fascinating missional work with amazing servant leaders. But, I worry, that this in some cases has been an escape from the drudgery and the pull of the local church.

I was given the high honor once of serving on a conference staff and I remember the tug of war that I had trying to hold on to my “pastoral” dynamic as opposed to being turned into a corporate executive. Whatever position I hold in this church, it must be grounded for and by people. Administration is good and necessary. But, it can not take the place of the simple but joyful work of providing resources for pastors and congregations to thrive; being the basic unit of the church and the connection to the global work of health care, disaster recovery, education, and administrative maintenance, such as pension, insurance and financial fitness. I don’t want to be apart of anything that moves me (or the church) away from the local church and its power to transform the world in Jesus’ name.

But, I get it. The local church is not for the faint of heart. The local church is diverse with an assortment of spiritual locations and levels. It can be claustrophobic. There are the advanced believers and those who are still very skeptical. There are budgets to meet. There isn’t always a larger audience peeping in on the work you’re doing. It’s often bumpy territory getting a church from point A to point B. For some, it’s just plain hard, having to stand, week after week, in the same spot, preaching to the same individuals a Word from on high. Everyone, can’t do it. Getting a congregation from 100 to 200 is incredibly exhaustive work. Trying to keep buildings standing mold free, roof leak-free, paint-peeling free, lawn manicured and sanctuary cooled and heated is exhausting.

The local church is tough work. But, without it, truthfully, the United Methodist Church has no connection to the street or the real world. The ugly, poverty driven, crime laden, racial dividing, gentrifying, human trafficking, politicking, urban, rural, suburban street would be out of balance without a little church on the corner helping to remind its community that “God is in the neighborhood. Without the local church, there is absolutely no real ministry of the United Methodist Church.

This is why I struggle as we approach this special session of the General Conference. I struggle because I have to represent the denomination that is hosting a hugely expensive meeting while the local church has lost its missional zeal while dealing with low pastoral morale and the disappearing of congregations.

This is not to slight the LGBTQIAPK conversation, but you have to forgive me. I am a black clergy person, baptized in a historic African American church and through many dangers, toils and snares, my folks have already come with this evolution of American Methodism. African Americans have been jumping through hoops for years. Truthfully, some left forming what is now the African Methodist Episcopal Church but even then, it was not a denominational crisis. Have we really come to this point? African Americans have struggled long and hard in a church in which they’ve often been forgotten, left behind or not taken seriously. This makes me sad. Even in this conversation we are currently having, no one has mentioned how the African American LGBTQIAPK community is still struggling to find a job, buy a house that they were denied not because of their sexual orientation, but by the color of their skin.

At that 1848 General Conference the entire church split over the matter of a slave. The subject of a black man that happened to be the gift of an Episcopal spouse. In 1939, the merging church, lumped the African American church in one jurisdiction not really resolving the racial challenges that were presented 91 years before. Years later, two Methodist bishops in Alabama, wrote and urged the citizens to not follow the work of Dr. King as he was being rather disruptive. I have inherited some of this story. But, I can’t leave. I stand at the door every Sunday, begging some of my young folks, who are also dismayed by life’s harsh reality, to not leave the church, because its hard.

I have inherited some of this story as a black sojourner in the United Methodist community. Even naming these things would be considered as trouble making and hateful by some.

It is not. It is just my awareness that a silenced preacher by the culture that ordains her is one with no authority or power to claim love and to show the possibility of a more excellent way, grounded in unity. It is just my awareness that a denomination that is disconnected with its missional zeal and instead burdened with the weight of bigotry, racism, misogyny, and toxic religious streams that support exclusion and division is on a dangerous path, as perhaps it was, in 1972 when a Texan laymen offered the language we never had until then, but one we’ve been burdened to live with ever since.

My prayer is that we return to Wesleyan Piety. My prayer is that we return to pouring into local contexts and the pastors that serve them. If you haven’t noticed, we are officially in a post denominational world. This world has lost hope on the religious claim that the dude that got up on Sunday morning after a rough weekend is still able to heal, renew and save. If not the claim, they have lost hope in the folks who make it.

May we stop our squabbling, get back into the neighborhood, focus on our deteriorating witnesses in communities and set the world on Fire.

May we do this…before and after…the Special Session of General Conference 2019.

~ by bkevinsmalls on February 7, 2019.