Taking Responsibility in the UMC

I've had a tremendous privilege in my ministry, especially in recent years, to mentor many young people in vocational ministry.  Mentoring keeps me fresh.  It helps me to continually talk about ministry with folks whose passion has not yet been diminished by the grind of daily church life.  It keeps me talking about theology, calling, new ideas, new books.

The youth pastor at our church is beginning candidacy and applying to seminary.  Like me, he comes from a different tradition.  We talk about Calvinism more than I care to.  We talk about reaching people, organizing for effective ministry, dealing with God's people.  It's a very cool thing.  I hope I never get to a place in ministry that I'm no longer surrounded by people who are just starting out and are constantly asking questions.

He's trying to figure out if he's called to be a United Methodist clergyperson.  Today, we drew a scale on the white board.  We put the pro-UMC stuff on one side and the not-so-pro-UMC on the other side.  One surprise: Itineracy was on the pro-UMC side.  We agreed that our system of sending is apostolic and biblical.  We agreed that it is unpleasant.  We agreed that our issues with itineracy (we all have them) are a matter of struggling to take up the cross.  They are our problems, not the UMC's.

I shared the underside of the itineracy.  Biblically, it makes all the sense in the world that clergy (and all Christians) should lay down their lives and make themselves available to Christ to be sent wherever the mission sends them.

The problem is in practicality.  We all have reasons that we find itineracy inpractical.  Here's mine.

The problem, as I see it, is that our system creates the perfect opportunity for everyone within the system to blame everyone else.

Pastors who are unhappy in their appointments blame the cabinet for sending them where they see little opportunity.  They blame religious politics.  They blame recalcitrant congregation members.

Congregations blame the cabinet for sending them pastors they don't like.  Because they do not choose pastors, they can easily avoid responsibility for making things work.  If they had hired their pastors, they could at least say that they had chosen the pastor and ought to live with their decision.  They can blame the decline of the congregation on the pastor and feel slighted if they feel that they had been overlooked for a better pastor.

Cabinets can blame the pastors and congregations for failing to be effective in reaching their communities.

Everyone can blame seminaries.  Everyone can (and does) blame the general church.  We are a big denomination, so we have factions, so we can scapegoat whoever is not in our camp (liberals, conservatives, minorities, majorities, big churches, small churches, on and on it goes).

I suppose all of us have given into this temptation at one time or another.  I have.  I've had times I've felt passed over.  I've had times I've grumbled inside myself about a congregation, a community, a DS, the ineffectiveness of this or that committee, board, plan, or vote.

It's exhausting.  It's fruitless.  It sucks the life out of ministry.  It makes us bitter.  It's a downward spiral.  It produces no life.

There's nothing more invigorating then deciding that wherever we are is the placed we are called to be. And so we can commit to do whatever we can to leverage the life we have been given to do the very most we can to be a catalyst for the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God.  We can be happy in this system, no matter where we are.  But we have to own where we are, what we are doing, the opportunities around us, the people we have been blessed to serve and serve with.  We cannot let ourselves get lost in what someone else got that we should have gotten, how much more money someone else gets paid, or how this or that group said something that's destroying the denomination.

None of us can do anything about the decline of the UMC.  But we can do a whale of a lot to keep ourselves from declining.  We can do more than we probably realize about the decline of wherever we are serving.  I can't do one thing about anyone else.  I can't change anyone else.  But I can do something about me.  I can let Jesus Christ change me.

The UMC gives us an opportunity to preach the Gospel.  For those of us who are ordained, we are promised a lifetime paycheck and benefits.  The upside is that we are free to live a life of adventure following God's call in places we never would have chosen.  The downside is that our system breeds a sense of entitlement.

I don't believe that the UMC can be saved by a program, a speech, better appointment making, an influx of cash, "systemic change," or anything else.  I do believe that I can reach more people with the grace of Jesus Christ tomorrow than I did today.

If I fail, it's no one's fault but mine.