Cynthia B. Astle of United Methodist Insight has written a lovely article entitled "Key Mission Statement Holds Vision for UMC's Future." It is a response to last week's publication on this site of a compilation of all of the UM & Global posts reassessing the denominational theology of mission, Grace Upon Grace. In her piece, Astle reflects on the beauty and ongoing potential of Grace Upon Grace. She writes:
"I believe that the compilation issued by UM & Global will benefit both The United Methodist Church and the hurting world it seeks to serve. These days the UMC needs grace as much (if not more) as the world around it. We need to be reminded of who we are as people wooed to faith by grace, convinced of our need for God by grace, and continuously refined to embody grace so that the world might believe."
UM & Global and I (David Scott) are grateful for this piece by Astle, for her commendation of Grace Upon Grace and our series of comments on it, and for her long-time support of the work of this blog.
Dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church
Showing posts with label Grace Upon Grace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grace Upon Grace. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2020
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
UM & Global Collection: Grace Upon Grace Commentary
One of the early foci for UM & Global was a reappraisal of The United Methodist Church's official theology of mission statement, Grace Upon Grace, originally released in 1988. From November of 2013 through December of 2014, in forty-five posts by over thirty authors, the blog did a thorough discussion of the document upon its 25th anniversary to determine what held up and what had shifted within the realm of missiological thinking. Now, for the first time, the entirety of that series is available in a single file. This collection will allow scholars and students to read Grace Upon Grace and the series of comments on it together in a single, book-length document. We at UM & Global hope this gives new impetus to theological reflections on the nature of the mission to which God has called United Methodists.
Here is the link to the file: Grace Upon Grace Commentary
Here is the link to the file: Grace Upon Grace Commentary
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Hendrik Pieterse: Make Disciples, Transform the World: Reflections on United Methodist Mission (Pt. 2)
Today's post is written by Dr. Hendrik R. Pieterse, Associate Professor of Global Christianity and World Religions at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Dr. Pieterse contributed this piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
Given the danger of focusing too much on human initiative in mission, as I outlined in my last post, what should we do, then? For a denomination wracked by anxiety over perceived decline, is the temptation to take matters into our own hands simply too great, unwittingly perpetuating the distortions of which Bosch and others have warned? Therefore, should we abandon the Matthean commission in favor of, say, Johannine or Lucan themes of mission and discipleship? Some have argued as much.
I, for one, am not yet persuaded. What we need, I think, is not a new mission statement but a coherent ecclesiology to give our disciple-making task the theological depth and missional flexibility fit for a global context. And to that end Grace Upon Grace and GBGM’s Theology of Mission, reflective of the ecumenical consensus summarized in Together Towards Life (TTL), offer important resources. I will mention just one or two.
We should pause to insist, however, that we dare not do our ecclesial reflection without substantive exegetical attention to Matt. 28:19-20—and to do so in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole. This exegetical work serves not only to resist the all-too-common habit of using “making disciples for the transformation of the world” as a free-floating mantra in denominational discourse, deliberation, and communication. It serves also—and more importantly—to anchor our mission statement in Matthew’s total account of Jesus’ identity and mission. Surprising, perhaps even transformative, insights might result.
Take, for example, the fact that Matthew intends chapter 28:19-20 as a summary of his Gospel. “[T]eaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (v. 19) thus lifts up the entirety of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, recounted in the preceding chapters, as the pattern of discipleship. The result lends discipleship a prophetic, even costly, edge. Comments Bosch: “To become a disciple is to be incorporated into God’s new community through baptism and to side with the poor and the oppressed. . . . This is what Jesus has commanded his disciples . . .”
As a further example, consider that verse 20, promising Christ’s abiding presence with the disciples is not intended as a spiritual “back up” for however the church happens to define its mission. Rather, it reminds the disciples of mission as divinely generated and directed gift and promise. The church’s mission depends upon and endures as long as Christ’s promised presence.[1] To use mission parlance: the church’s mission is always and forever a function of and a grateful response to the missio Dei. Does the absence of this concluding promise in the Discipline’s citation of the Great Commission confirm the above suspicion that United Methodists tend to sublimate the priority of grace in mission?
Which brings us, briefly, to Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission as resources in constructing a coherent missional ecclesiology. In both documents, and beautifully and succinctly in the latter, United Methodists encounter at least three crucial affirmations:
(1) Mission is always and irreversibly the work of the triune God. Mission is a function of the doctrine of God. Mission is missio Dei.
(2) This means the church’s mission is always and irreversibly derivative, as instrument and servant of the divine mission. Foregrounding the church’s disciple-making charge at the expense of the divine initiative contradicts the logic of the missio Dei and compromises the church’s call.
(3) Mission is a journey of discovery, surprise, repentance, and transformation, as the church encounters in the neighbor a divine initiative that always and irreversibly precedes even our loftiest visions and best-laid plans. Thus mission regains its sense of expectancy and unpredictability. And, as the GBGM document notes, the virtues appropriate to an ever-surprising divine initiative is “openness” and “gratitude,” as we “await the leading of the Spirit in ways not yet seen as God continues to work God’s purposes out in our own day in a new way.”
This understanding of mission, and these virtues of missional discipleship, we Methodists once knew well. Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission are ready resources in recovering these seminal affirmations, however counterintuitive to a denomination so anxious to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
Given the danger of focusing too much on human initiative in mission, as I outlined in my last post, what should we do, then? For a denomination wracked by anxiety over perceived decline, is the temptation to take matters into our own hands simply too great, unwittingly perpetuating the distortions of which Bosch and others have warned? Therefore, should we abandon the Matthean commission in favor of, say, Johannine or Lucan themes of mission and discipleship? Some have argued as much.
I, for one, am not yet persuaded. What we need, I think, is not a new mission statement but a coherent ecclesiology to give our disciple-making task the theological depth and missional flexibility fit for a global context. And to that end Grace Upon Grace and GBGM’s Theology of Mission, reflective of the ecumenical consensus summarized in Together Towards Life (TTL), offer important resources. I will mention just one or two.
We should pause to insist, however, that we dare not do our ecclesial reflection without substantive exegetical attention to Matt. 28:19-20—and to do so in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole. This exegetical work serves not only to resist the all-too-common habit of using “making disciples for the transformation of the world” as a free-floating mantra in denominational discourse, deliberation, and communication. It serves also—and more importantly—to anchor our mission statement in Matthew’s total account of Jesus’ identity and mission. Surprising, perhaps even transformative, insights might result.
Take, for example, the fact that Matthew intends chapter 28:19-20 as a summary of his Gospel. “[T]eaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (v. 19) thus lifts up the entirety of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, recounted in the preceding chapters, as the pattern of discipleship. The result lends discipleship a prophetic, even costly, edge. Comments Bosch: “To become a disciple is to be incorporated into God’s new community through baptism and to side with the poor and the oppressed. . . . This is what Jesus has commanded his disciples . . .”
As a further example, consider that verse 20, promising Christ’s abiding presence with the disciples is not intended as a spiritual “back up” for however the church happens to define its mission. Rather, it reminds the disciples of mission as divinely generated and directed gift and promise. The church’s mission depends upon and endures as long as Christ’s promised presence.[1] To use mission parlance: the church’s mission is always and forever a function of and a grateful response to the missio Dei. Does the absence of this concluding promise in the Discipline’s citation of the Great Commission confirm the above suspicion that United Methodists tend to sublimate the priority of grace in mission?
Which brings us, briefly, to Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission as resources in constructing a coherent missional ecclesiology. In both documents, and beautifully and succinctly in the latter, United Methodists encounter at least three crucial affirmations:
(1) Mission is always and irreversibly the work of the triune God. Mission is a function of the doctrine of God. Mission is missio Dei.
(2) This means the church’s mission is always and irreversibly derivative, as instrument and servant of the divine mission. Foregrounding the church’s disciple-making charge at the expense of the divine initiative contradicts the logic of the missio Dei and compromises the church’s call.
(3) Mission is a journey of discovery, surprise, repentance, and transformation, as the church encounters in the neighbor a divine initiative that always and irreversibly precedes even our loftiest visions and best-laid plans. Thus mission regains its sense of expectancy and unpredictability. And, as the GBGM document notes, the virtues appropriate to an ever-surprising divine initiative is “openness” and “gratitude,” as we “await the leading of the Spirit in ways not yet seen as God continues to work God’s purposes out in our own day in a new way.”
This understanding of mission, and these virtues of missional discipleship, we Methodists once knew well. Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission are ready resources in recovering these seminal affirmations, however counterintuitive to a denomination so anxious to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
[1] David J. Bosch, “The Structure of Mission: An Exposition of Matthew 28:16-20,” in Paul W. Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner, eds., The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church (Eerdmans, 2008), 84, 87-91.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Hendrik Pieterse: Make Disciples, Transform the World: Reflections on United Methodist Mission (Pt. 1)
Today's post is written by Dr. Hendrik R. Pieterse, Associate Professor of Global Christianity and World Religions at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Dr. Pieterse contributed this piece as part of our reflections on the WCC's new document on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. You can find more posts in this series by clicking on the "Together towards Life" tag at the bottom.
In reading Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL) alongside Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission (the mission statement of the United Methodist mission agency), it is heartening to note the resonance of major themes in mission theology and practice over the past several decades: mission as initiative of the triune God; the church as missionary by nature and so servant of the missio Dei; mission as holistic (i.e., embracing “dynamism, justice, diversity, and transformation” within the divine aim of “abundant life” for all creation [TTL, 6, 7]), and more.
One difference is striking, though—the absence of the so-called Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) in the ecumenical statement. This passage seems to play no interpretive role in TTL; in fact, it appears nowhere in the document. Instead, Lucan and Johannine commission themes predominate. Now, arguments from silence are notoriously shaky; and so I will resist the temptation to divine the document’s motives for the omission. Yet, given that the Matthean commission serves as the basis for United Methodism’s mission statement (Book of Discipline, ¶¶120-21), its absence in TTL should at least prompt United Methodists to ponder the implications of the emerging ecumenical consensus about church and mission for our continued appeal to the Great Commission as an aspiring global denomination.
Most readers of this blog are well aware of the checkered, and often deeply troubling, career of the Great Commission in the history of Western mission, especially in its heyday during the late 1880s and into the first third of the twentieth century. Interpreted as a command to be obeyed (“Go!”), and riding the tide of Western social, economic, and political power in league with a taken-for-granted inferiority of the receiving cultures, Matt. 28:19-20 was often pressed in the service of Western Christian expansionism. At least in part bolstering this Western missionary chauvinism and its resultant cultural tone-deafness, as David Bosch has pointed out, was a gradual foregrounding of human autonomy and agency, reflecting the contest with divine providence and power in some quarters of Enlightenment thought. Tellingly for us Methodists, Bosch calls this foregrounding of human agency “the gradual ‘Arminianization’ of Protestantism, evidenced . . . by the rapid growth of (Arminian) Methodist and Baptist churches in the United States . . .”[1]
Now, we would surely want to debate Bosch’s claim. Yet it is worth noting that a significant cadre of United Methodist scholars have detected a similar dynamic at work in our current employment of the Matthean commission. The foregrounding of “making” language in the Discipline’s description of our mission (¶¶ 120-122), they complain, obscures the priority of grace in mission, focusing on “what ‘we’ do, rather than the primacy of God’s grace and power.” In so doing, and perhaps inevitably, disciple-making becomes a “system,” with disciples as “output” or “product.”[2]
Should it surprise, then, given the deep anxiety in the U.S. church, fuelled by decades-long rhetoric of decline, that the already tenuous depiction of the grace-faith dynamic noted above should deteriorate into a full-blown obsession with “fixing”—with rightsizing church structures, with membership metrics and “dashboards”?
Buried in this frenzy is our deep-seated Methodist commitment to an accountable faith—a discipleship that is actively guided and shaped in all its dimensions, from individual devotion to denominational structures, by the rhythms of the means of grace. As Randy Maddox and others have reminded us, at our best, “making disciples” is always the function of that delicate synergy of divine initiative and human response.[3]
In reading Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL) alongside Grace Upon Grace and Theology of Mission (the mission statement of the United Methodist mission agency), it is heartening to note the resonance of major themes in mission theology and practice over the past several decades: mission as initiative of the triune God; the church as missionary by nature and so servant of the missio Dei; mission as holistic (i.e., embracing “dynamism, justice, diversity, and transformation” within the divine aim of “abundant life” for all creation [TTL, 6, 7]), and more.
One difference is striking, though—the absence of the so-called Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) in the ecumenical statement. This passage seems to play no interpretive role in TTL; in fact, it appears nowhere in the document. Instead, Lucan and Johannine commission themes predominate. Now, arguments from silence are notoriously shaky; and so I will resist the temptation to divine the document’s motives for the omission. Yet, given that the Matthean commission serves as the basis for United Methodism’s mission statement (Book of Discipline, ¶¶120-21), its absence in TTL should at least prompt United Methodists to ponder the implications of the emerging ecumenical consensus about church and mission for our continued appeal to the Great Commission as an aspiring global denomination.
Most readers of this blog are well aware of the checkered, and often deeply troubling, career of the Great Commission in the history of Western mission, especially in its heyday during the late 1880s and into the first third of the twentieth century. Interpreted as a command to be obeyed (“Go!”), and riding the tide of Western social, economic, and political power in league with a taken-for-granted inferiority of the receiving cultures, Matt. 28:19-20 was often pressed in the service of Western Christian expansionism. At least in part bolstering this Western missionary chauvinism and its resultant cultural tone-deafness, as David Bosch has pointed out, was a gradual foregrounding of human autonomy and agency, reflecting the contest with divine providence and power in some quarters of Enlightenment thought. Tellingly for us Methodists, Bosch calls this foregrounding of human agency “the gradual ‘Arminianization’ of Protestantism, evidenced . . . by the rapid growth of (Arminian) Methodist and Baptist churches in the United States . . .”[1]
Now, we would surely want to debate Bosch’s claim. Yet it is worth noting that a significant cadre of United Methodist scholars have detected a similar dynamic at work in our current employment of the Matthean commission. The foregrounding of “making” language in the Discipline’s description of our mission (¶¶ 120-122), they complain, obscures the priority of grace in mission, focusing on “what ‘we’ do, rather than the primacy of God’s grace and power.” In so doing, and perhaps inevitably, disciple-making becomes a “system,” with disciples as “output” or “product.”[2]
Should it surprise, then, given the deep anxiety in the U.S. church, fuelled by decades-long rhetoric of decline, that the already tenuous depiction of the grace-faith dynamic noted above should deteriorate into a full-blown obsession with “fixing”—with rightsizing church structures, with membership metrics and “dashboards”?
Buried in this frenzy is our deep-seated Methodist commitment to an accountable faith—a discipleship that is actively guided and shaped in all its dimensions, from individual devotion to denominational structures, by the rhythms of the means of grace. As Randy Maddox and others have reminded us, at our best, “making disciples” is always the function of that delicate synergy of divine initiative and human response.[3]
[1] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts In Theology of Mission (Orbis, 1991), 343. See also David J. Bosch, “The Structure of Mission: An Exposition of Matthew 28:16-20,” in Paul W. Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner, eds., The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church (Eerdmans, 2008), 84, 87-91.
[2] Thomas Frank, Polity, Practice, and the Mission of the UMC (Abingdon, 2006), 163. See also Sarah Heaner Lancaster, “Our Mission Reconsidered: Do We Really ‘Make’ Disciples?”, Quarterly Review 23/2 (Summer 2003): 117-30.
[3] See Randy Maddox, “Wesley’s Prescription for “Making Disciples of Jesus Christ”: Insights for the TwentyFirst-Century Church,” Quarterly Review 23/1 (Spring 2003): 7-14.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Valuable Themes and Unresolved Concerns: Thomas Kemper on Grace Upon Grace: Renewal (Part II)
Today's post is the the second of two concluding posts in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church today. This piece is written by Thomas Kemper, General Secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries. Mr. Kemper is commenting on the last section of the document, "Renewal." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
We come now to the end of this series of blogs that has explored the continuing relevance and value for mission of Grace Upon Grace, the last official and comprehensive United Methodist statement on mission theology adopted in 1988, closing with the document’s final paragraph (66), 18 lines on the topic of “Renewal.” Having already enumerated two themes from Grace Upon Grace that I find enormously valuable for the renewal of our understanding of and involvement in mission in the first quarter of the 21st century, I now conclude by proposing two clusters of concerns I think were undeveloped in 1988 but must be satisfactorily addressed today if we are to be viable as a church engaged in the missio Dei. Again, my reflections are those of a missional professional, a practitioner, a layman, not a formal theologian, having been a missionary in Brazil with my wife from 1986 to 1994, and now serving as a mission agency executive.
I find Grace Upon Grace lacking in two major ways. First, at least to my mind, it neglects health, healing, and the care of creation as dimensions of the missio Dei. By health and healing I mean more than humanitarian relief and medical services. I also mean spiritual and emotional healthiness, wholeness of person and wholeness of community. Care of creation relates to individuals, families, communities, nations, and to international relations. It incorporates ecology and the use of resources, which has strong economic implications. Mission needs to grapple with broad economic challenges, especially regarding the poor and the conservation of nature.
A second cluster of concerns is the failure of Grace Upon Grace to discern and take into account the mission energy of mission-founded churches in the Global South and Asia. That could even be seen in 1988. We Methodists have been deplorably slow in noticing something that was evident as early as the world missionary conferences of the late 1940s and 1950s that the younger churches are alive and potent with the Gospel and seen by other communions. We have too long navel-gazed about our denominational “worldwide nature” and allowed our structures get in the way of letting loose the gospel energy of our mission progeny. This relates, of course, to the shifting Christian center of gravity from Europe and North America to the global South.
The World Council of Churches’ 2013 statement on Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes—a wonderful title for excellent work—takes serious account of the implications for mission of the shifting demography. It recognizes and celebrates not the hope but the reality of mission from what was once seen as the margins—mission in Africa and Korea and Brazil that is alive in indigenous cultures but also reaching into the old Christian heartlands of Italy, Canada, England, and Oklahoma City with the ringing, compelling word and work of the Lord. We of the West may still have the dollars and euros but we are not the only, maybe not the primary, proponents of the missio Dei anymore. God has other missionaries too, and we are thankful that some of them from the Congo, and Colombia and Hong Kong and Ivory Coast are enlisting in service through The United Methodist Church. There will be more—of that I can promise you. There will be many, many more. I truly believe that God really is in charge of mission and will see to that.
Grace Upon Grace will remain a worthy landmark—a clear statement of faith and hope—in our mission pilgrimage. It is dated more by its omissions than its commissions. I keep a copy ready at hand on my desk.
I also keep handy a much shorter document, a statement of only some 850 words on mission theology drafted and adopted at the end of the last quadrennium by the directors of the General Board of Global Ministries. It contains a paragraph on grace at work but it is the last affirmation I want to quote in ending these reflections, for it reminds us of an essential reality of the missio Dei in this and any century:
"The Spirit is always moving to sweep the Church into a new mission age. With openness and gratitude we await the leading of the Spirit in ways not yet seen as God continues to work God’s purposes out in our own day in a new way."
(The full statement can be read online at http://www.umcmission.org/Learn-About-Us/About-Global-Ministries/Theology-of-Mission)
We come now to the end of this series of blogs that has explored the continuing relevance and value for mission of Grace Upon Grace, the last official and comprehensive United Methodist statement on mission theology adopted in 1988, closing with the document’s final paragraph (66), 18 lines on the topic of “Renewal.” Having already enumerated two themes from Grace Upon Grace that I find enormously valuable for the renewal of our understanding of and involvement in mission in the first quarter of the 21st century, I now conclude by proposing two clusters of concerns I think were undeveloped in 1988 but must be satisfactorily addressed today if we are to be viable as a church engaged in the missio Dei. Again, my reflections are those of a missional professional, a practitioner, a layman, not a formal theologian, having been a missionary in Brazil with my wife from 1986 to 1994, and now serving as a mission agency executive.
I find Grace Upon Grace lacking in two major ways. First, at least to my mind, it neglects health, healing, and the care of creation as dimensions of the missio Dei. By health and healing I mean more than humanitarian relief and medical services. I also mean spiritual and emotional healthiness, wholeness of person and wholeness of community. Care of creation relates to individuals, families, communities, nations, and to international relations. It incorporates ecology and the use of resources, which has strong economic implications. Mission needs to grapple with broad economic challenges, especially regarding the poor and the conservation of nature.
A second cluster of concerns is the failure of Grace Upon Grace to discern and take into account the mission energy of mission-founded churches in the Global South and Asia. That could even be seen in 1988. We Methodists have been deplorably slow in noticing something that was evident as early as the world missionary conferences of the late 1940s and 1950s that the younger churches are alive and potent with the Gospel and seen by other communions. We have too long navel-gazed about our denominational “worldwide nature” and allowed our structures get in the way of letting loose the gospel energy of our mission progeny. This relates, of course, to the shifting Christian center of gravity from Europe and North America to the global South.
The World Council of Churches’ 2013 statement on Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes—a wonderful title for excellent work—takes serious account of the implications for mission of the shifting demography. It recognizes and celebrates not the hope but the reality of mission from what was once seen as the margins—mission in Africa and Korea and Brazil that is alive in indigenous cultures but also reaching into the old Christian heartlands of Italy, Canada, England, and Oklahoma City with the ringing, compelling word and work of the Lord. We of the West may still have the dollars and euros but we are not the only, maybe not the primary, proponents of the missio Dei anymore. God has other missionaries too, and we are thankful that some of them from the Congo, and Colombia and Hong Kong and Ivory Coast are enlisting in service through The United Methodist Church. There will be more—of that I can promise you. There will be many, many more. I truly believe that God really is in charge of mission and will see to that.
Grace Upon Grace will remain a worthy landmark—a clear statement of faith and hope—in our mission pilgrimage. It is dated more by its omissions than its commissions. I keep a copy ready at hand on my desk.
I also keep handy a much shorter document, a statement of only some 850 words on mission theology drafted and adopted at the end of the last quadrennium by the directors of the General Board of Global Ministries. It contains a paragraph on grace at work but it is the last affirmation I want to quote in ending these reflections, for it reminds us of an essential reality of the missio Dei in this and any century:
"The Spirit is always moving to sweep the Church into a new mission age. With openness and gratitude we await the leading of the Spirit in ways not yet seen as God continues to work God’s purposes out in our own day in a new way."
(The full statement can be read online at http://www.umcmission.org/Learn-About-Us/About-Global-Ministries/Theology-of-Mission)
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Valuable Themes and Unresolved Concerns: Thomas Kemper on Grace Upon Grace: Renewal (Part I)
Today's post is the the first of two concluding posts in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission
professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement
and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church
today. This piece is written by Thomas Kemper,
General Secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries.
Mr. Kemper is commenting on the last section of the document, "Renewal." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Begun last November, this series of blogs has explored the continuing relevance and value for mission of Grace Upon Grace, the last official and comprehensive United Methodist statement on mission theology adopted in 1988. We come now to the document’s final paragraph (66), 18 lines on the topic of “Renewal.” This short section presupposes everything that has come before on vision, mission heritage and reform, mission scope and agenda, and the transforming, supporting nature of grace itself. A range of deeply committed missiologists have looked at every section asking whether Grace Upon Grace provides foundation and/or vision for United Methodist engagement in God’s mission in the present century. My reflections here under the banner of “Renewal” must begin by acknowledging with appreciation all of the earlier blogs. They have significantly informed my mission understanding.
By and large, the contributors to the series find continuing value in the more than 25 year-old document, especially the emphasis on the inseparability of grace and mission. There is widespread agreement on mission as grace in action, and near unanimous appreciation for both the Wesleyan interplay of personal piety and social holiness, the Methodist capacity for missional contextualization, and reliance on the Holy Spirit. There are divergent views on Grace Upon Grace’s treatment of Christian mission history in general and Methodist mission history in particular and on whether sections heralding diversity point to realities or are merely oratory. I would agree with both these values and these questions.
The final lines on “Renewal” offer little new to the document. They are valedictory in much the same way as the ending of some of Paul’s epistles: confident, grateful, a bit flowery. The passage quotes the Great Commission, and actually concludes with the benediction from I Thessalonians 5:28: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” Amen is about all that could be added to that.
I will use my space in this blog post to enumerate two themes from Grace Upon Grace that I find enormously valuable for the renewal of our understanding of and involvement in mission in the first quarter of the 21st century, and in a following post, I will identify two clusters of concerns I think were undeveloped in 1988 but must be satisfactorily addressed today if we are to be viable as a church engaged in the missio Dei. My reflections are those of a missional professional, a practitioner, a layman, not a formal theologian, having been a missionary in Brazil with my wife from 1986 to 1994, and now serving as a mission agency executive.
The two aspects of Grace Upon Grace that I find most profound, most useful, for mission today and in the future are:
1. “Missio Dei” as our starting point. The term has grown steadily more pervasive in the mission vocabulary since 1988. The phrase, borrowed, I understand, from Augustinian roots, surfaced in post-World War II international missionary conferences [notably at Willingen in 1952] but did not gain strong traction until the early 1980s, partly in the context of preparation of the 1982 World Council of Churches document on mission and evangelism. I have informally heard that the late David Bosch, a Roman Catholic from South Africa, strongly influenced that covenant; at least, Bosch became one of the most well-known advocates and interpreters of missio Dei. It has become commonly used in most communions and confessions. The recognition that mission is of God is a major corrective to thinking that we are as humans have a mission to which we invite God’s endorsement and seek divine approval in building the kingdom. Mission and grace comingle, are inseparable. This was powerfully emphasized in my missionary training. But the very commonality of the term and concept gives me pause, as I will explain in my next post.
2. That mission/grace is active is a point strongly underscored in Grace Upon Grace and an insight to which current missionaries, especially the younger one, strongly resonate. I find in our classes of new Global Mission Fellows—42 this year—an enthusiasm to follow an active God. Yet I do not think that we have yet honed or refined an adequate language for speaking of how we as people of faith link into the active, grace-filled missio Dei. What terms and images do we have to name the “how” of church and people becoming part of God’s mission? Very few. We say that God is at work in all places and we must discern the where and join in, but what is the process of discernment that leads to grace-filled affiliation with the divine intention? We cannot resort to a “what is to be will be” theology. How do we decide which mission opportunity to seize upon? I found it instructive in the series of posts that when confronted with the practicalities of discernment, as well as to illustrations of what we mean by “global,” missiologists tell stories of heroic missionaries or other servants of God and the church. Perhaps this is not only appropriate but necessary, that we incarnate the concept of missio Dei in specific disciples, real people whose lives illustrate the action component of mission/grace. Have we any other option? Was not the mission originally incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, a human being? We must pray that God continues to give us compelling examples of heroic mission.
Begun last November, this series of blogs has explored the continuing relevance and value for mission of Grace Upon Grace, the last official and comprehensive United Methodist statement on mission theology adopted in 1988. We come now to the document’s final paragraph (66), 18 lines on the topic of “Renewal.” This short section presupposes everything that has come before on vision, mission heritage and reform, mission scope and agenda, and the transforming, supporting nature of grace itself. A range of deeply committed missiologists have looked at every section asking whether Grace Upon Grace provides foundation and/or vision for United Methodist engagement in God’s mission in the present century. My reflections here under the banner of “Renewal” must begin by acknowledging with appreciation all of the earlier blogs. They have significantly informed my mission understanding.
By and large, the contributors to the series find continuing value in the more than 25 year-old document, especially the emphasis on the inseparability of grace and mission. There is widespread agreement on mission as grace in action, and near unanimous appreciation for both the Wesleyan interplay of personal piety and social holiness, the Methodist capacity for missional contextualization, and reliance on the Holy Spirit. There are divergent views on Grace Upon Grace’s treatment of Christian mission history in general and Methodist mission history in particular and on whether sections heralding diversity point to realities or are merely oratory. I would agree with both these values and these questions.
The final lines on “Renewal” offer little new to the document. They are valedictory in much the same way as the ending of some of Paul’s epistles: confident, grateful, a bit flowery. The passage quotes the Great Commission, and actually concludes with the benediction from I Thessalonians 5:28: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” Amen is about all that could be added to that.
I will use my space in this blog post to enumerate two themes from Grace Upon Grace that I find enormously valuable for the renewal of our understanding of and involvement in mission in the first quarter of the 21st century, and in a following post, I will identify two clusters of concerns I think were undeveloped in 1988 but must be satisfactorily addressed today if we are to be viable as a church engaged in the missio Dei. My reflections are those of a missional professional, a practitioner, a layman, not a formal theologian, having been a missionary in Brazil with my wife from 1986 to 1994, and now serving as a mission agency executive.
The two aspects of Grace Upon Grace that I find most profound, most useful, for mission today and in the future are:
1. “Missio Dei” as our starting point. The term has grown steadily more pervasive in the mission vocabulary since 1988. The phrase, borrowed, I understand, from Augustinian roots, surfaced in post-World War II international missionary conferences [notably at Willingen in 1952] but did not gain strong traction until the early 1980s, partly in the context of preparation of the 1982 World Council of Churches document on mission and evangelism. I have informally heard that the late David Bosch, a Roman Catholic from South Africa, strongly influenced that covenant; at least, Bosch became one of the most well-known advocates and interpreters of missio Dei. It has become commonly used in most communions and confessions. The recognition that mission is of God is a major corrective to thinking that we are as humans have a mission to which we invite God’s endorsement and seek divine approval in building the kingdom. Mission and grace comingle, are inseparable. This was powerfully emphasized in my missionary training. But the very commonality of the term and concept gives me pause, as I will explain in my next post.
2. That mission/grace is active is a point strongly underscored in Grace Upon Grace and an insight to which current missionaries, especially the younger one, strongly resonate. I find in our classes of new Global Mission Fellows—42 this year—an enthusiasm to follow an active God. Yet I do not think that we have yet honed or refined an adequate language for speaking of how we as people of faith link into the active, grace-filled missio Dei. What terms and images do we have to name the “how” of church and people becoming part of God’s mission? Very few. We say that God is at work in all places and we must discern the where and join in, but what is the process of discernment that leads to grace-filled affiliation with the divine intention? We cannot resort to a “what is to be will be” theology. How do we decide which mission opportunity to seize upon? I found it instructive in the series of posts that when confronted with the practicalities of discernment, as well as to illustrations of what we mean by “global,” missiologists tell stories of heroic missionaries or other servants of God and the church. Perhaps this is not only appropriate but necessary, that we incarnate the concept of missio Dei in specific disciples, real people whose lives illustrate the action component of mission/grace. Have we any other option? Was not the mission originally incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, a human being? We must pray that God continues to give us compelling examples of heroic mission.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Struggle and Triumph of Grace: Jacob Dharmaraj on Grace Upon Grace: A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church today. This piece is written by Rev. Dr. Jacob Dharmaraj,
President of the National Federation of Asian American United Methodists.
Dr. Dharmaraj is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Mapping the struggle:
Our world today is relentlessly threatened by ruthless tyranny, soulless greed, exploitative human trafficking, wide economic disparity, and environmental degradation. In the religious front, old models of ecclesial life and traditional forms of spiritual practices have been reduced to and deemed as antiquated and inadequate observances. Systemic barriers relating to race, class, gender, and other discriminations have created impoverished communities worldwide.
By 2050, global population will balloon to 9 billion. In coming decades, mass consumption, economic transition and limited natural resources will intensify competition for basic human necessities such as water, housing and food. It will create tension in multiple levels. It will also defy nature’s sustainability, accelerate global warming, and further endanger the fragile ecosystem.
The United States is rapidly changing. The nation will morph into a majority-minority country in a couple of generations. Our potential church membership base will change. Further, the traditional map of the aged church has become archaic and obsolete; the functional compass of our historic mission is warped and broken. The spiritual navigation system of our congregational gathering and worship has radically been altered. The religious topography has become pluralistic and new-fangled.
Contrary to the conventional notion that modernization and globalization would usher in the decline and demise of religious beliefs and practices, we watch and observe endemic resurgence of radical forms of religions in world affairs.
As a faith community, we have a great stake in preserving God’s creation for future generations, preventing any form of global disaster, and work for shalom.
Grace for grappling with the issues of our times:
We need to move beyond being mere wearers of faith badges. We must be ready to reach beyond denominational boundaries and religious fault-lines to connect with those around us – partners and allies -who are engaged in the transformation of the world. We need to be in “the womb of mutuality and we need to be swimming in the same water as everybody else” engaged in bringing about transformation.
Since the task before us is immense and monumental, our ecclesiology must have room to accommodate “secular prophets” such as environmentalists and human rights organizers who are already active in the kingdom of God.
Therefore, we need to work for the transformation of structures of injustices by critically analyzing social realities through lenses of race, class, gender, and ethnicity, and identifying the interconnected web of oppressive forces, and finally, honoring the agency of the marginalized, and working with the beleaguered in seeking a just solution. This progression involves building alliances and coalitions with secular and other faith-based agencies, collaborating on strategies for transformation, and walking in solidarity with those at the margins.
We also need to remind ourselves that change is inevitable and transformation is a choice. The path to transformation runs straight through action. This is the right time to put our knowledge into practice. Action is a kind of everyday miracle. Knowledge certainly helps, but transformation occurs only when we enact our ideas and implement our visions. We must bear in mind, If we want to save the drowners, we need to be swimmers.
Witnessing to Christ in times such as this:
The United Methodist Church has been called to witness to the Gospel and invite persons to experience the fullness of life Jesus Christ offers. As a first order of business, the church’s mission and ministry today is to be relevant and become effective.
I submit the following recommendations for consideration as we strive to be authentic witnesses to the Gospel:
While we, as a denomination, are determined to stay the course, we also need to create a meta-mission-theology which takes the mosaic landscape of changing migration patterns which impacts the global nature of the church, plurality of cultures, and resurgence of world religions into serious consideration. This theology also ought to interact between the global and local, intercultural and transcultural, monolingual and polyphonic, mission and evangelism, proclamation and social justice, and Christianity and other living faiths.
Since the connectivity and engagement of a vast majority of members of the UMC are un-tethered, we are to create a UM Christology that clearly defines and distinguishes our belief in Christ from other competing allegiances. A theology or a set of guidelines that blithely confess “all religions are the same” would undercut the very foundation of the church and the new and abundant life offered in Jesus Christ.
Creating and fostering synchronous collaboration between the diasporic community that is readily available in the pews and pulpits of our denomination and the denomination’s leadership at various levels, and crossing borders to employ these rich but much neglected U.M. diasporic communities would yield positive and lasting results. It would richly enhance our interactions with people of other religious faiths and in witnessing to the neo-immigrants who move into our neighborhoods as well.
Receiving the gifts from the margins of the growing church at the global south helps us, as we strive to “update” and “recalibrate” our missional engagements, I strongly believe that mutuality in mission as a designed mission theology will fill in the gap, serve as a catalyst, and enable us to confront the current storm; for mutuality doesn’t just react to crises, but proactively prevents them.
In the final analysis, we should never hesitate to migrate from the spirit of scarcity to the spirit of abundance, from the spirit of defeat to the spirit of opportunity, from the spirit of abandonment to the spirit of empowerment, and from the spirit of helplessness to the spirit of confidence and come up with contextual theological paradigms for mission today. I am convinced that the iterative theology of mission in the 21st century is the theology of mutuality.
We are not alone in this journey. The God of the Bible is with us. This is not the first time we have gone this way before. Just as T.S.Eliot has said in his poem, The Rock, “And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.” We are reminded to break the shackles of the past and emphasize newness, openness, innovation in order to be transformed and be transforming. God’s abundant grace and assured presence is with us: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65: 17). In times such as this, may we unapologetically “account for the hope that is in us,” the grace we received in Christ (I Peter 3: 15).
Mapping the struggle:
Our world today is relentlessly threatened by ruthless tyranny, soulless greed, exploitative human trafficking, wide economic disparity, and environmental degradation. In the religious front, old models of ecclesial life and traditional forms of spiritual practices have been reduced to and deemed as antiquated and inadequate observances. Systemic barriers relating to race, class, gender, and other discriminations have created impoverished communities worldwide.
By 2050, global population will balloon to 9 billion. In coming decades, mass consumption, economic transition and limited natural resources will intensify competition for basic human necessities such as water, housing and food. It will create tension in multiple levels. It will also defy nature’s sustainability, accelerate global warming, and further endanger the fragile ecosystem.
The United States is rapidly changing. The nation will morph into a majority-minority country in a couple of generations. Our potential church membership base will change. Further, the traditional map of the aged church has become archaic and obsolete; the functional compass of our historic mission is warped and broken. The spiritual navigation system of our congregational gathering and worship has radically been altered. The religious topography has become pluralistic and new-fangled.
Contrary to the conventional notion that modernization and globalization would usher in the decline and demise of religious beliefs and practices, we watch and observe endemic resurgence of radical forms of religions in world affairs.
As a faith community, we have a great stake in preserving God’s creation for future generations, preventing any form of global disaster, and work for shalom.
Grace for grappling with the issues of our times:
We need to move beyond being mere wearers of faith badges. We must be ready to reach beyond denominational boundaries and religious fault-lines to connect with those around us – partners and allies -who are engaged in the transformation of the world. We need to be in “the womb of mutuality and we need to be swimming in the same water as everybody else” engaged in bringing about transformation.
Since the task before us is immense and monumental, our ecclesiology must have room to accommodate “secular prophets” such as environmentalists and human rights organizers who are already active in the kingdom of God.
Therefore, we need to work for the transformation of structures of injustices by critically analyzing social realities through lenses of race, class, gender, and ethnicity, and identifying the interconnected web of oppressive forces, and finally, honoring the agency of the marginalized, and working with the beleaguered in seeking a just solution. This progression involves building alliances and coalitions with secular and other faith-based agencies, collaborating on strategies for transformation, and walking in solidarity with those at the margins.
We also need to remind ourselves that change is inevitable and transformation is a choice. The path to transformation runs straight through action. This is the right time to put our knowledge into practice. Action is a kind of everyday miracle. Knowledge certainly helps, but transformation occurs only when we enact our ideas and implement our visions. We must bear in mind, If we want to save the drowners, we need to be swimmers.
Witnessing to Christ in times such as this:
The United Methodist Church has been called to witness to the Gospel and invite persons to experience the fullness of life Jesus Christ offers. As a first order of business, the church’s mission and ministry today is to be relevant and become effective.
I submit the following recommendations for consideration as we strive to be authentic witnesses to the Gospel:
While we, as a denomination, are determined to stay the course, we also need to create a meta-mission-theology which takes the mosaic landscape of changing migration patterns which impacts the global nature of the church, plurality of cultures, and resurgence of world religions into serious consideration. This theology also ought to interact between the global and local, intercultural and transcultural, monolingual and polyphonic, mission and evangelism, proclamation and social justice, and Christianity and other living faiths.
Since the connectivity and engagement of a vast majority of members of the UMC are un-tethered, we are to create a UM Christology that clearly defines and distinguishes our belief in Christ from other competing allegiances. A theology or a set of guidelines that blithely confess “all religions are the same” would undercut the very foundation of the church and the new and abundant life offered in Jesus Christ.
Creating and fostering synchronous collaboration between the diasporic community that is readily available in the pews and pulpits of our denomination and the denomination’s leadership at various levels, and crossing borders to employ these rich but much neglected U.M. diasporic communities would yield positive and lasting results. It would richly enhance our interactions with people of other religious faiths and in witnessing to the neo-immigrants who move into our neighborhoods as well.
Receiving the gifts from the margins of the growing church at the global south helps us, as we strive to “update” and “recalibrate” our missional engagements, I strongly believe that mutuality in mission as a designed mission theology will fill in the gap, serve as a catalyst, and enable us to confront the current storm; for mutuality doesn’t just react to crises, but proactively prevents them.
In the final analysis, we should never hesitate to migrate from the spirit of scarcity to the spirit of abundance, from the spirit of defeat to the spirit of opportunity, from the spirit of abandonment to the spirit of empowerment, and from the spirit of helplessness to the spirit of confidence and come up with contextual theological paradigms for mission today. I am convinced that the iterative theology of mission in the 21st century is the theology of mutuality.
We are not alone in this journey. The God of the Bible is with us. This is not the first time we have gone this way before. Just as T.S.Eliot has said in his poem, The Rock, “And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.” We are reminded to break the shackles of the past and emphasize newness, openness, innovation in order to be transformed and be transforming. God’s abundant grace and assured presence is with us: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65: 17). In times such as this, may we unapologetically “account for the hope that is in us,” the grace we received in Christ (I Peter 3: 15).
Thursday, October 2, 2014
A Cooperative Ecumenism: Glen Messer on Grace Upon Grace: A Church Formed By Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church today. This piece is written by Dr. Glen Alton Messer, II, the Associate
Ecumenical Staff Officer of the Office of Christian Unity and Interreligious Relationships of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church. Dr. Messer also
teaches Christian History and Methodist Studies and is currently an Adjunct
Lecturer at Yale Divinity School. Dr. Messer is commenting on paragraph 54 on "global awareness," from the ninth section of the document, "A Church Formed By Grace." Use the "Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Paragraph 52 of Grace Upon Grace gives a strikingly clear statement about how United Methodists are to understand ‘ecumenism’ — and in so doing, gives important guidance as to how the relationship between mission and ecumenism is to be understood. Among those working in the field of Ecumenism, there are many variations upon what the word means. The Vatican Council II statement on the subject (the decree on ecumenism entitled, “Unitatis Redintegratio”)[1] makes clear in its name the understanding of the term from a Roman Catholic perspective — the goal of ecumenism is reintegration of Christians separated through centuries of schism. Among many Protestants of Europe and the United States, ecumenism — or “Christian unity” — has been less an institutional goal than one of varying degrees of co-operation and fellowship. Many of the social reform movements, tract societies, and Sunday school efforts in the 19th century are good examples of this practical understanding of ecumenism. Striving for greater co-operation, we find the 1910 Edinburgh Conference trying to avoid competition among Christian churches and unnecessary duplication of efforts (e.g., building one hospital instead of two, etc.). And, while the Edinburgh Conference is often mentioned as the birth of the modern Ecumenical Movement, the Conference did not push in the of direction institutional consolidation.[2] With many options for how to understand the concept, Grace Upon Grace gives some shape — with the authoritative voice of General Conference to back it up — to how to understand the goals of United Methodist ecumenism and how these relate to the work of mission and the overall life of the church.
Central to this paragraph’s “ecumenical affirmation” are ecclesiological claims regarding the basic understanding of the very nature of the meaning of “church.” It states that, “Mission is ecumenical as we seek to live in cooperation and communion with the many authentic Christian communities that God in grace calls into existence.” This is not a vision of God’s church as broken and shattered into parts because of its various institutional manifestations and groupings of people into various Christian traditions. Instead, the communities are called into being through God’s grace — as expressions of God’s creativity — with the expectation of mutual recognition of kinship in the faith and life of God in Christ Jesus. Just as God did not make only one person to be “the” Christian, neither did God make only one institutional expression of church to be “the” church. Our unity is found in God and in our living the Christian life shown to us in the earthly ministry of Jesus. Our unity is in the grace of God experienced through God’s Spirit. And so, paragraph 52 concludes, “We desire to live in communion with all who are in communion with Jesus Christ. We are thankful for all sisters and brothers in Christ and we seek unity amidst our diversity.”
In many respects, this statement expresses a positive view of God’s creativity in multiplicity (expressed in our “unity amidst our diversity”). Typical of many Wesleyans over time, United Methodists often have tended to look at the glass half-full and have held to the expectation of its being filled (to overflowing); rather than moaning that it is half-empty and that God’s calling new Christian communities into being is evidence of the shattering of the one church. What is at stake is the question of relationship. How will we live together with other Christians in faithfully giving witness to the Gospel and the active love of Christ Jesus in the world? United Methodists have expressed in this statement that they are willing to call “Christian” all those who are in “communion with Jesus Christ.” There are no doctrinal or ecclesiological litmus tests that must be performed before we are willing to extend our hand in love and fellowship towards those who are fellow laborers called by God to work for God’s Kingdom. Our energy is applied elsewhere — in the desire to heal a broken world, feed the hungry, heal the sick, and offer hope to those in despair. It is a practical sense of ecumenism, a practical sense of ecclesiology — and a practical sense of mission.
That said, this “ecumenical affirmation” is in no way a surrender of a Wesleyan Methodist identity or a timidity about expressing that identity in how we live the Christian life. Just as other Christian communities have been affirmed in their authenticity, the statement no less applies to United Methodists as well. While we can look upon this statement as declaring that we seek to embrace other Christians in an effort to co-operate in mission together, it is important to be authentic in ourselves as expressions of God’s creative grace, not hiding our light under a bushel. Unless we make ourselves “present” by offering ourselves as ourselves to others, we invite others to an empty embrace in which their arms circle around nothingness. Being United Methodists in mission and ecumenism “inseparably bound” together we need to be more than ‘polite’ — trying to draw attention away from any possible points of difference. We need to add our voices to conversations and add our ideas to co-operative efforts. Our “ecumenical affirmation” in this paragraph is a challenge to be confident in who we are and affirming of others whom God calls to the Christian life in different communities.
One of the great gifts of the Mission Movement of which we are a part — out of which Methodism came into being, in fact — is that mission work has called various communities of Christians together. The work of love has drawn us from relative isolation in our own communities to realize that the ‘scandal of disunity’ is a failure to be united in love and compassion towards all Christians, all persons, and all Creation. United Methodists in mission are engaged in the work that strives towards unity through our faithfulness in the work of ministry by which we love as Christ loves and live as Christ lives.
Paragraph 52 of Grace Upon Grace gives a strikingly clear statement about how United Methodists are to understand ‘ecumenism’ — and in so doing, gives important guidance as to how the relationship between mission and ecumenism is to be understood. Among those working in the field of Ecumenism, there are many variations upon what the word means. The Vatican Council II statement on the subject (the decree on ecumenism entitled, “Unitatis Redintegratio”)[1] makes clear in its name the understanding of the term from a Roman Catholic perspective — the goal of ecumenism is reintegration of Christians separated through centuries of schism. Among many Protestants of Europe and the United States, ecumenism — or “Christian unity” — has been less an institutional goal than one of varying degrees of co-operation and fellowship. Many of the social reform movements, tract societies, and Sunday school efforts in the 19th century are good examples of this practical understanding of ecumenism. Striving for greater co-operation, we find the 1910 Edinburgh Conference trying to avoid competition among Christian churches and unnecessary duplication of efforts (e.g., building one hospital instead of two, etc.). And, while the Edinburgh Conference is often mentioned as the birth of the modern Ecumenical Movement, the Conference did not push in the of direction institutional consolidation.[2] With many options for how to understand the concept, Grace Upon Grace gives some shape — with the authoritative voice of General Conference to back it up — to how to understand the goals of United Methodist ecumenism and how these relate to the work of mission and the overall life of the church.
Central to this paragraph’s “ecumenical affirmation” are ecclesiological claims regarding the basic understanding of the very nature of the meaning of “church.” It states that, “Mission is ecumenical as we seek to live in cooperation and communion with the many authentic Christian communities that God in grace calls into existence.” This is not a vision of God’s church as broken and shattered into parts because of its various institutional manifestations and groupings of people into various Christian traditions. Instead, the communities are called into being through God’s grace — as expressions of God’s creativity — with the expectation of mutual recognition of kinship in the faith and life of God in Christ Jesus. Just as God did not make only one person to be “the” Christian, neither did God make only one institutional expression of church to be “the” church. Our unity is found in God and in our living the Christian life shown to us in the earthly ministry of Jesus. Our unity is in the grace of God experienced through God’s Spirit. And so, paragraph 52 concludes, “We desire to live in communion with all who are in communion with Jesus Christ. We are thankful for all sisters and brothers in Christ and we seek unity amidst our diversity.”
In many respects, this statement expresses a positive view of God’s creativity in multiplicity (expressed in our “unity amidst our diversity”). Typical of many Wesleyans over time, United Methodists often have tended to look at the glass half-full and have held to the expectation of its being filled (to overflowing); rather than moaning that it is half-empty and that God’s calling new Christian communities into being is evidence of the shattering of the one church. What is at stake is the question of relationship. How will we live together with other Christians in faithfully giving witness to the Gospel and the active love of Christ Jesus in the world? United Methodists have expressed in this statement that they are willing to call “Christian” all those who are in “communion with Jesus Christ.” There are no doctrinal or ecclesiological litmus tests that must be performed before we are willing to extend our hand in love and fellowship towards those who are fellow laborers called by God to work for God’s Kingdom. Our energy is applied elsewhere — in the desire to heal a broken world, feed the hungry, heal the sick, and offer hope to those in despair. It is a practical sense of ecumenism, a practical sense of ecclesiology — and a practical sense of mission.
That said, this “ecumenical affirmation” is in no way a surrender of a Wesleyan Methodist identity or a timidity about expressing that identity in how we live the Christian life. Just as other Christian communities have been affirmed in their authenticity, the statement no less applies to United Methodists as well. While we can look upon this statement as declaring that we seek to embrace other Christians in an effort to co-operate in mission together, it is important to be authentic in ourselves as expressions of God’s creative grace, not hiding our light under a bushel. Unless we make ourselves “present” by offering ourselves as ourselves to others, we invite others to an empty embrace in which their arms circle around nothingness. Being United Methodists in mission and ecumenism “inseparably bound” together we need to be more than ‘polite’ — trying to draw attention away from any possible points of difference. We need to add our voices to conversations and add our ideas to co-operative efforts. Our “ecumenical affirmation” in this paragraph is a challenge to be confident in who we are and affirming of others whom God calls to the Christian life in different communities.
One of the great gifts of the Mission Movement of which we are a part — out of which Methodism came into being, in fact — is that mission work has called various communities of Christians together. The work of love has drawn us from relative isolation in our own communities to realize that the ‘scandal of disunity’ is a failure to be united in love and compassion towards all Christians, all persons, and all Creation. United Methodists in mission are engaged in the work that strives towards unity through our faithfulness in the work of ministry by which we love as Christ loves and live as Christ lives.
[1]For the full text of this document in English, please see,
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html.
[2] John N. Collins, "Theology of Ministry in the Twentieth Century: Ongoing Problems or New Orientations," Ecclesiology 8 (2012), 12-13.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Overcoming religious divisiveness: Robert Hunt on Grace Upon Grace: A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission
professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement
and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church
today. This piece is written by Dr. Robert Hunt,
Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian
Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director, Center for
Evangelism and Missional Church Studies
at Perkins School of Theology.
Dr. Hunt is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Grace upon Grace draws upon a central concept, “Grace received is motive of mission.” (Para 61) to address two issues that remain as relevant today as when it was written: the ways in which humans are divided by "nation, color, clan, creed, or culture,” (para 62) and the reality of plurality of religions and ideologies. (para 63)
What is interesting at a distance of decades is that nation, color, clan, creed, and culture are seen as almost intrinsically divisive so that mission is “resisting principalities and powers to love across boundaries,” while religions and ideologies are characterized as part of the “broader community” in which God’s grace is preveniently present. Thus grace received motivates resistance on one hand and "listening sensitively" on the other.
Reading these paragraphs in 2014 I am struck by the naiveté with regard to religious differences, as if they could be dealt with in the framework of a universal prevenient grace in tension with the universal claims of the gospel rather than the divisiveness of the principalities and powers.
The fact is that we find across the Muslim world Islamist zealots engaged in the systematic killing of all non-Muslims and even Muslim sectarians as well as the complete destruction of non-Muslim culture. In Europe we have rising anti-Jewish acts and vitriol from across Europe’s religious and political spectrum. And in Jewish Israel there is the specter of rising violence toward Arab Muslims. In India a Hindu nationalist party has taken power, shaking further the tenuous ground on which non-Hindus, and particularly Christians already stand in a nation where thousands have died in recent years in Hindu attacks on Muslims and Christians. In Burma the UN has confirmed Buddhist attacks on Muslim minorities, leading to both death and widespread destruction. Nor are American Christians free of guilt in this regard. If not yet expressed so violently, Pew Foundation surveys show that Christian attitudes toward many non-Christian religions range from negative to virulently hateful.
But let us assume, for a moment, that those reading this document are, or want to be, free from that kind of bigotry. Is it enough to listen sensitively and with equal sensitivity present the claims of Christ?
I fear not. Religions and ideologies are every bit as much a creation of and tool of human sin as nation, color, clan, creed, and culture. We must recognize that they are, all of them including our own, a realm in which evil is actively at work in the world today even as we recognize that God’s prevenient grace is present also.
And this calls for a missionary analysis of the religions that goes much further that Grace Upon Grace.
A beginning would be to recognize that none of the so-called “world religions” has actually realized its claims to transcend human divisions based on ethnicity, culture, tribe, and clan. They are not what Grace Upon Grace imagines them to be. On the contrary they are, practically speaking, partners in divisiveness with these other forms of exclusive identity. All, including our own, are in thrall to the principalities and powers.
Put less abstractly, within none of them has there emerged a popular consensus regarding the actual social and political mechanisms necessary for fruitful living in a peaceful, multi-religious, nation and world. Christians are largely stuck in Enlightenment concepts of nationhood and civil religion. The great majority of Muslims continue to harken back to essentially medieval concepts of religiously plural states. Hindus have come no further, or at best are divided between pre-modern and modern views. Israel, supposedly a secular state for Jews, continues in an internal crisis of identity related to religion that is partially to blame for its failures with its neighbors. And where Buddhists control government (Thailand, Burma) they likewise cannot imagine a truly religiously plural society and are thus beset by sectarian conflict.
This is not to deny the existence of vigorous “public theologians” in the midst of these religions. It is simply to note that they are a tiny, largely unheard and unaccepted voice.
Seeing this requires that perhaps we view religions, including our own, differently. Religious traditions never interact. Only religious people and religious communities interact. Faiths never interact, only faithful people and communities. Religion never appears to us except in the guise of its gathered followers, just as Christ never appears to others except in the guise of churches.
And this means we need, now more than ever, a dialogue grounded in the political and social realities of a religiously plural world and not in airy conversations about theological abstractions. We need dialogue that leads directly to reconciliation and common action to build communities, not intellectual assent (or dissent) regarding irreconcilable dogmas. And we need a dialogue not among scholars and theologians, but among the real leaders of our religious communities and their real followers.
Above all we need a dialogue focused on the nature of a modern multi-religious state. Anything else is whistling in the rising hurricane of religious bigotry and violence that increasingly makes use of state powers.
Without this, dialogue itself becomes a tool of the very principalities and powers that we must resist.
At the center of paragraph 63 are two statements about what faith requires. Both should earn easy affirmation. “Our faith requires that we present our commitment with integrity; our faith requires that we respect the integrity of others.” Too easy.
In today’s world what Christian faith requires is a vigorous apologetic in the face of vicious intellectual attacks from both non-Christians and anti-Christian ideologues. What faith requires is that we respect others enough to hold them accountable for their words and actions, and to hold ourselves accountable for our own undertaken in the name of Christ. What faith requires is that the innocent, the widow, the orphan, the weak, the poor, be protected regardless of their religion and often in spite of it.
What faith requires is an open eyed recognition that religion is at least as much a problem as a solution to the violent divisiveness in our world, and that unless all religious people find a way together to imagine otherwise, it will rightly be rejected by coming generations. There was a time before Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Unless religious people begin to engage in real dialogue there will come a time when they are no more.
Grace upon Grace draws upon a central concept, “Grace received is motive of mission.” (Para 61) to address two issues that remain as relevant today as when it was written: the ways in which humans are divided by "nation, color, clan, creed, or culture,” (para 62) and the reality of plurality of religions and ideologies. (para 63)
What is interesting at a distance of decades is that nation, color, clan, creed, and culture are seen as almost intrinsically divisive so that mission is “resisting principalities and powers to love across boundaries,” while religions and ideologies are characterized as part of the “broader community” in which God’s grace is preveniently present. Thus grace received motivates resistance on one hand and "listening sensitively" on the other.
Reading these paragraphs in 2014 I am struck by the naiveté with regard to religious differences, as if they could be dealt with in the framework of a universal prevenient grace in tension with the universal claims of the gospel rather than the divisiveness of the principalities and powers.
The fact is that we find across the Muslim world Islamist zealots engaged in the systematic killing of all non-Muslims and even Muslim sectarians as well as the complete destruction of non-Muslim culture. In Europe we have rising anti-Jewish acts and vitriol from across Europe’s religious and political spectrum. And in Jewish Israel there is the specter of rising violence toward Arab Muslims. In India a Hindu nationalist party has taken power, shaking further the tenuous ground on which non-Hindus, and particularly Christians already stand in a nation where thousands have died in recent years in Hindu attacks on Muslims and Christians. In Burma the UN has confirmed Buddhist attacks on Muslim minorities, leading to both death and widespread destruction. Nor are American Christians free of guilt in this regard. If not yet expressed so violently, Pew Foundation surveys show that Christian attitudes toward many non-Christian religions range from negative to virulently hateful.
But let us assume, for a moment, that those reading this document are, or want to be, free from that kind of bigotry. Is it enough to listen sensitively and with equal sensitivity present the claims of Christ?
I fear not. Religions and ideologies are every bit as much a creation of and tool of human sin as nation, color, clan, creed, and culture. We must recognize that they are, all of them including our own, a realm in which evil is actively at work in the world today even as we recognize that God’s prevenient grace is present also.
And this calls for a missionary analysis of the religions that goes much further that Grace Upon Grace.
A beginning would be to recognize that none of the so-called “world religions” has actually realized its claims to transcend human divisions based on ethnicity, culture, tribe, and clan. They are not what Grace Upon Grace imagines them to be. On the contrary they are, practically speaking, partners in divisiveness with these other forms of exclusive identity. All, including our own, are in thrall to the principalities and powers.
Put less abstractly, within none of them has there emerged a popular consensus regarding the actual social and political mechanisms necessary for fruitful living in a peaceful, multi-religious, nation and world. Christians are largely stuck in Enlightenment concepts of nationhood and civil religion. The great majority of Muslims continue to harken back to essentially medieval concepts of religiously plural states. Hindus have come no further, or at best are divided between pre-modern and modern views. Israel, supposedly a secular state for Jews, continues in an internal crisis of identity related to religion that is partially to blame for its failures with its neighbors. And where Buddhists control government (Thailand, Burma) they likewise cannot imagine a truly religiously plural society and are thus beset by sectarian conflict.
This is not to deny the existence of vigorous “public theologians” in the midst of these religions. It is simply to note that they are a tiny, largely unheard and unaccepted voice.
Seeing this requires that perhaps we view religions, including our own, differently. Religious traditions never interact. Only religious people and religious communities interact. Faiths never interact, only faithful people and communities. Religion never appears to us except in the guise of its gathered followers, just as Christ never appears to others except in the guise of churches.
And this means we need, now more than ever, a dialogue grounded in the political and social realities of a religiously plural world and not in airy conversations about theological abstractions. We need dialogue that leads directly to reconciliation and common action to build communities, not intellectual assent (or dissent) regarding irreconcilable dogmas. And we need a dialogue not among scholars and theologians, but among the real leaders of our religious communities and their real followers.
Above all we need a dialogue focused on the nature of a modern multi-religious state. Anything else is whistling in the rising hurricane of religious bigotry and violence that increasingly makes use of state powers.
Without this, dialogue itself becomes a tool of the very principalities and powers that we must resist.
At the center of paragraph 63 are two statements about what faith requires. Both should earn easy affirmation. “Our faith requires that we present our commitment with integrity; our faith requires that we respect the integrity of others.” Too easy.
In today’s world what Christian faith requires is a vigorous apologetic in the face of vicious intellectual attacks from both non-Christians and anti-Christian ideologues. What faith requires is that we respect others enough to hold them accountable for their words and actions, and to hold ourselves accountable for our own undertaken in the name of Christ. What faith requires is that the innocent, the widow, the orphan, the weak, the poor, be protected regardless of their religion and often in spite of it.
What faith requires is an open eyed recognition that religion is at least as much a problem as a solution to the violent divisiveness in our world, and that unless all religious people find a way together to imagine otherwise, it will rightly be rejected by coming generations. There was a time before Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Unless religious people begin to engage in real dialogue there will come a time when they are no more.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Servants among the Nations: John Nuessle on Grace Upon Grace: A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church today. This piece is written by Rev. Dr. John Nuessle, retired from the leadership staff at the General Board of Global Ministries. Dr. Nuessle is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Servants defined as agents of God’s liberating and reconciling grace among the nations. What a fantastic statement of Christian calling! I could say quite a bit about what it means to be agents of liberation and reconciliation. I think, however, that the real essential genius of this passage, if not of the whole of Grace Upon Grace, is the recognition that transformed people in a transformed world are not simply a collection of nicely converted individuals, but rather our goal is to transform whole “people groups,” or in the Biblical term, “the nations.” We are called to serve as agents of God’s liberating and reconciling grace among the nations, meaning that our call is to whole ethnic communities and affinity groups of God’s people. All our efforts and focus as Christians should be toward offering grace to both whole people and whole nations – to all the persons in a self-identified cultural context, who thus see themselves as a unique whole.
So often our well intentioned efforts and strategies in mission and evangelism are focused on the old…and very theologically incorrect…idea of “winning them one by one.” This style of Christian mission results either in total failure (very often), or in the creation of a strange type of Christian church in which everyone is out to get to heaven on their own good behavior, a perverse style of faith expression that is all too common in the United States. Heaven help us if we continue to promote individualistic believers who only worship a God who is like themselves.
The call of this section of Grace Upon Grace is the same call to our mission and evangelism work that is found throughout the Scriptures. That is, to call groups of humans into Christian community this is interconnected with all other Christian communities. This is the New Creation Paul preaches. This is how we relate people to their contexts and with interconnected contexts globally, a real witness to the whole Body of Christ, not a collection of body parts.
The work of the General Board of Global Ministries, in cooperation and collaboration with mission-supporting annual conferences and congregations globally, is toward development of new faith communities – church growth if you will – and is always an effort to establish the church in a whole nation or among an entire ethnic-based contextual setting. We have not gone forth seeking “individual converts” that would make “individualistic Christians,” a clearly un-Biblical notion. We sought to call groups – families, villages, affinity groups, etc – into gathered Christian worshipping and serving communities of faith. These localized communities would always be quickly interconnected with other similar bodies in nearly areas, as much as possible. As the call of Christ in Acts 1:8, witnessing to the whole Word of God for the whole people of God, in Jerusalem (local), Judea and Samaria (nation), and to the ends of the Earth.
In all this we are servants of the community of God, known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whose grace is unreservedly shared with all who would be open to receive this new life. Transformed; reconciled; leaving behind the old ways and old life of personal gain, individual seeking, and privatized faith. We move into a bright new world of servants seeking to serve God and one another with justice, mercy, and forgiveness.
Is this an easy process? Not on your life, new or otherwise! It is likely the most difficult series of tasks and responsibilities we can encounter. And this is partly because the cultural ground – the contexts of living – for all of us keeps moving and changing. Just when we think we are on solid footing with our church plans and programs, with our strategies and methodologies, we discover that none of these any longer work. We live in a dynamic world which requires our constant reassessment and evaluation of our life of faith and engagement in God’s Mission.
That’s why we have grace. God loves us unconditionally, and then calls us to keep at it. What a Mighty God We Serve! What powerful Grace is ours, heaped Upon Grace.
Servants defined as agents of God’s liberating and reconciling grace among the nations. What a fantastic statement of Christian calling! I could say quite a bit about what it means to be agents of liberation and reconciliation. I think, however, that the real essential genius of this passage, if not of the whole of Grace Upon Grace, is the recognition that transformed people in a transformed world are not simply a collection of nicely converted individuals, but rather our goal is to transform whole “people groups,” or in the Biblical term, “the nations.” We are called to serve as agents of God’s liberating and reconciling grace among the nations, meaning that our call is to whole ethnic communities and affinity groups of God’s people. All our efforts and focus as Christians should be toward offering grace to both whole people and whole nations – to all the persons in a self-identified cultural context, who thus see themselves as a unique whole.
So often our well intentioned efforts and strategies in mission and evangelism are focused on the old…and very theologically incorrect…idea of “winning them one by one.” This style of Christian mission results either in total failure (very often), or in the creation of a strange type of Christian church in which everyone is out to get to heaven on their own good behavior, a perverse style of faith expression that is all too common in the United States. Heaven help us if we continue to promote individualistic believers who only worship a God who is like themselves.
The call of this section of Grace Upon Grace is the same call to our mission and evangelism work that is found throughout the Scriptures. That is, to call groups of humans into Christian community this is interconnected with all other Christian communities. This is the New Creation Paul preaches. This is how we relate people to their contexts and with interconnected contexts globally, a real witness to the whole Body of Christ, not a collection of body parts.
The work of the General Board of Global Ministries, in cooperation and collaboration with mission-supporting annual conferences and congregations globally, is toward development of new faith communities – church growth if you will – and is always an effort to establish the church in a whole nation or among an entire ethnic-based contextual setting. We have not gone forth seeking “individual converts” that would make “individualistic Christians,” a clearly un-Biblical notion. We sought to call groups – families, villages, affinity groups, etc – into gathered Christian worshipping and serving communities of faith. These localized communities would always be quickly interconnected with other similar bodies in nearly areas, as much as possible. As the call of Christ in Acts 1:8, witnessing to the whole Word of God for the whole people of God, in Jerusalem (local), Judea and Samaria (nation), and to the ends of the Earth.
In all this we are servants of the community of God, known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whose grace is unreservedly shared with all who would be open to receive this new life. Transformed; reconciled; leaving behind the old ways and old life of personal gain, individual seeking, and privatized faith. We move into a bright new world of servants seeking to serve God and one another with justice, mercy, and forgiveness.
Is this an easy process? Not on your life, new or otherwise! It is likely the most difficult series of tasks and responsibilities we can encounter. And this is partly because the cultural ground – the contexts of living – for all of us keeps moving and changing. Just when we think we are on solid footing with our church plans and programs, with our strategies and methodologies, we discover that none of these any longer work. We live in a dynamic world which requires our constant reassessment and evaluation of our life of faith and engagement in God’s Mission.
That’s why we have grace. God loves us unconditionally, and then calls us to keep at it. What a Mighty God We Serve! What powerful Grace is ours, heaped Upon Grace.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
The church as witnessing community: Joon-Sik Park on Grace Upon Grace: A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission
professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement
and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church
today. This piece is written by Dr. Joon-Sik Park, E. Stanley Jones Chair of World Evangelism at Methodist Theological School in Ohio. Dr. Park is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Paragraph 59 “Incorporation” is a part of the section titled “A World Transformed by Grace.” Central to Christian mission is our witness to the transforming grace of Jesus. We proclaim the gospel and invite persons to decision for and commitment to Jesus and his reign. This paragraph calls attention, first, to the fact that the invitation is also to the fellowship, which is not only with God but also with one another. Second, those who are incorporated into the Body of Christ have different functions and diverse gifts, yet they above all share in the mission of Christ.
When the gospel is shared, the lives of the witness and the one invited to Christian faith are also to be shared. Important questions in Christian witness then are whether we are willing to share our lives with others and to share in the lives of others, and whether our community of faith is willing to be a home for all even with a place for strangers. Churches unwilling to extend community to people of differences would end up practicing what Charles Van Engen calls “a separation between church and mission.” Do United Methodist congregations, engaging in mission, seek to build relationships across racial, cultural, and socioeconomic differences? Or do they pursue exclusive forms of Christian witness and church formation?
When persons are incorporated into the Body of Christ, the demands, as well as the promise, of the gospel are to be made clear. The church in every generation has to grapple with a question about the ethical content of conversion. Authentic conversion involves a fundamental reorientation of life based on a radical commitment to the teachings of Jesus; there cannot be a separation between faith and obedience or between belief and practice. The gospel-sharing in the New Testament is always a call to repentance, belief in Jesus as God’s Son, and commitment to follow Jesus and his way. Do United Methodist congregations seek to be concrete in their communication about the meaning of Jesus’ teachings for the life-context of those hearing and responding to the gospel? Or are they content to live with abstract and vague Christian discipleship?
Paragraph 59 rightly says that “all who are ‘in Christ’ share in the mission of Christ.” As the International Missionary Council at Willingen well put it, “There is no participation in Christ without participation in his mission to the world.” When persons are incorporated into Christian fellowship, they are also called to participate in Jesus’ mission, embracing God’s purposes and priorities for which Jesus was sent. Yet, we often fall into the error of separating “personal salvation (one’s receiving the benefits of salvation) from the missional purpose for which we are called and saved” (Darrell Guder, The Incarnation and the Church’s Witness, 16-7). Our experience of the transforming grace of Jesus should, however, lead to our becoming witnesses to that grace.
For the genuine recovery of the church’s mission, there has to be a radical transformation in ecclesiology. Mission should no longer be understood as a program of the church, but as integral to its identity and calling. The church is a missionary community by its very nature and vocation; mission is intrinsic to the very life and calling of the church. The church is called to participate in mission not for institutional survival, but for the kind of community it has been created to be. Only when members of a Christian community understand mission in relation to their basic identity, can the biblical sense of mission be recovered. Do United Methodist congregations view mission as central to who they are? Or are they occupied only with the benefits of salvation?
When the church understands itself as a witnessing community, mission cannot be disconnected from the corporate life of the church. This is so because the concrete life of a believing community is an essential expression of the credibility of the gospel to which it bears witness. Mission is thus practicable and feasible only when there is a community whose life reflects authentic differences from the rest of the world. A future United Methodist mission statement should help the church be aware of and overcome reductionisms: separation between church and mission, separation between faith and obedience, and separation between personal salvation and the missional call.
Paragraph 59 “Incorporation” is a part of the section titled “A World Transformed by Grace.” Central to Christian mission is our witness to the transforming grace of Jesus. We proclaim the gospel and invite persons to decision for and commitment to Jesus and his reign. This paragraph calls attention, first, to the fact that the invitation is also to the fellowship, which is not only with God but also with one another. Second, those who are incorporated into the Body of Christ have different functions and diverse gifts, yet they above all share in the mission of Christ.
When the gospel is shared, the lives of the witness and the one invited to Christian faith are also to be shared. Important questions in Christian witness then are whether we are willing to share our lives with others and to share in the lives of others, and whether our community of faith is willing to be a home for all even with a place for strangers. Churches unwilling to extend community to people of differences would end up practicing what Charles Van Engen calls “a separation between church and mission.” Do United Methodist congregations, engaging in mission, seek to build relationships across racial, cultural, and socioeconomic differences? Or do they pursue exclusive forms of Christian witness and church formation?
When persons are incorporated into the Body of Christ, the demands, as well as the promise, of the gospel are to be made clear. The church in every generation has to grapple with a question about the ethical content of conversion. Authentic conversion involves a fundamental reorientation of life based on a radical commitment to the teachings of Jesus; there cannot be a separation between faith and obedience or between belief and practice. The gospel-sharing in the New Testament is always a call to repentance, belief in Jesus as God’s Son, and commitment to follow Jesus and his way. Do United Methodist congregations seek to be concrete in their communication about the meaning of Jesus’ teachings for the life-context of those hearing and responding to the gospel? Or are they content to live with abstract and vague Christian discipleship?
Paragraph 59 rightly says that “all who are ‘in Christ’ share in the mission of Christ.” As the International Missionary Council at Willingen well put it, “There is no participation in Christ without participation in his mission to the world.” When persons are incorporated into Christian fellowship, they are also called to participate in Jesus’ mission, embracing God’s purposes and priorities for which Jesus was sent. Yet, we often fall into the error of separating “personal salvation (one’s receiving the benefits of salvation) from the missional purpose for which we are called and saved” (Darrell Guder, The Incarnation and the Church’s Witness, 16-7). Our experience of the transforming grace of Jesus should, however, lead to our becoming witnesses to that grace.
For the genuine recovery of the church’s mission, there has to be a radical transformation in ecclesiology. Mission should no longer be understood as a program of the church, but as integral to its identity and calling. The church is a missionary community by its very nature and vocation; mission is intrinsic to the very life and calling of the church. The church is called to participate in mission not for institutional survival, but for the kind of community it has been created to be. Only when members of a Christian community understand mission in relation to their basic identity, can the biblical sense of mission be recovered. Do United Methodist congregations view mission as central to who they are? Or are they occupied only with the benefits of salvation?
When the church understands itself as a witnessing community, mission cannot be disconnected from the corporate life of the church. This is so because the concrete life of a believing community is an essential expression of the credibility of the gospel to which it bears witness. Mission is thus practicable and feasible only when there is a community whose life reflects authentic differences from the rest of the world. A future United Methodist mission statement should help the church be aware of and overcome reductionisms: separation between church and mission, separation between faith and obedience, and separation between personal salvation and the missional call.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Humble, receptive evangelism - Jack Jackson on Grace Upon Grace: A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission
professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement
and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church
today. This piece is written by Dr. Jack Jackson, E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism, Mission, and Global Methodism at Claremont School of Theology. Dr. Jackson is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Does the world need to be transformed? If so how, and to what end? This is a central question for Christian churches in the 21st Century. I find Grace Upon Grace both a compelling and frustrating document. It is compelling in that its aim is to provide an overarching vision for mission from a United Methodist perspective. In some ways it succeeds as it touches on many important elements of mission. But it is a frustrating document in that it is at times repetitive, vague, and historically incomplete. Many of my colleagues provided overviews of the document in previous posts so I will refrain. I will only say that I share both Robert Hunt’s and Carlos-Cordoza-Orlandi’s observation that the document, in its effort to be inclusive, ends up ignoring significant individuals and communities that inform United Methodist understandings of mission. Of course it is impossible to include everyone in a document of this length, but Grace Upon Grace would be stronger if it were more succinct.
But back to the question in the beginning, does the world need to be transformed? Grace Upon Grace’s answer is an emphatic “Yes!” This world is marred by “egoism, nationalism, racism, classism, militarism, and sexism” (par. 56) that will not prevail when the reign of God comes in its fullness. Central to the church’s mission, according to Grace Upon Grace, is to witness to this reality.
For the remainder of this section Grace Upon Grace discusses the concept of “witness” in United Methodism, namely proclamation (par. 57 and 63), evangelism (par. 58), incorporation (par. 59), and servanthood (par. 60 and 64). I found this section a bit cumbersome as it confuses the concept of evangelism (defining it only as inviting people to faith in Christ as opposed to the Biblical idea of proclamation) and because it addresses the idea of servanthood in a repetitive manner throughout the entire document. But the main points do come through and can be affirmed.
United Methodists believe the gospel must be announced. The world does not intuit either God’s love or the particular story of Jesus that we believe most clearly demonstrates God’s love. God’s grace must be articulated if it is to be understood, believed, and claimed. The reality of the beautifully diverse religious landscape in our world today demonstrates the need for the gospel to be announced. While Christians share with many other religious and non-religious communities similar ethical and moral values, the motivations behind our ethical systems are quite different. Grace Upon Grace affirms the need for United Methodists to articulate the motivations for what drives us in our plural world.
Grace Upon Grace rightly affirms the need to articulate our understanding of the story of Christ both humbly and receptively. We do so humbly because even as Christians we are still a broken people who understand this story of Christ dimly, as through a cloudy vessel. For example we United Methodists admit we made mistakes in the past in our understanding of what a transformed world looks like. Perhaps this is no clearer than in the issues of slavery and women in Christian leadership, specifically the ordained ministry. We repented. We acknowledge we need to keep hearing the gospel story so that it continues to transform us. And yet even as we repent, yearn to hear the gospel story again, and acknowledge that we see and understand Christ dimly, we also humbly offer Christ to the world for we know no greater good news.
We articulate Jesus both humbly and receptively, for usually only if we truly listen to others articulate their own vision of transformation will others listen to our vision. Par. 63 describes this need to listen to others even as we articulate, or present, Christ to the world. Perhaps E. Stanley Jones’ model of the round table is an appropriate model for interfaith conversations in the 21st century. Jones’ round table provided a venue where people of different faiths, or no faith at all, could sit as equals in voicing their deepest beliefs, motivations, and dreams for the world. But Jones knew the round table was only effective if all people were both willing to evangelize and be evangelized. He was ultimately a seeker of truth and he wanted to hear others’ understanding of truth and offer the most beautiful truth he had found in Jesus. He believed the vision of life offered in Jesus was greater than any other vision and he was willing to test it. If the world is to be transformed it will only be through a community that humbly admits its weaknesses, listens to other visions for the human community, and offers its own vision of a world in the image of our crucified and risen lord.
Does the world need to be transformed? If so how, and to what end? This is a central question for Christian churches in the 21st Century. I find Grace Upon Grace both a compelling and frustrating document. It is compelling in that its aim is to provide an overarching vision for mission from a United Methodist perspective. In some ways it succeeds as it touches on many important elements of mission. But it is a frustrating document in that it is at times repetitive, vague, and historically incomplete. Many of my colleagues provided overviews of the document in previous posts so I will refrain. I will only say that I share both Robert Hunt’s and Carlos-Cordoza-Orlandi’s observation that the document, in its effort to be inclusive, ends up ignoring significant individuals and communities that inform United Methodist understandings of mission. Of course it is impossible to include everyone in a document of this length, but Grace Upon Grace would be stronger if it were more succinct.
But back to the question in the beginning, does the world need to be transformed? Grace Upon Grace’s answer is an emphatic “Yes!” This world is marred by “egoism, nationalism, racism, classism, militarism, and sexism” (par. 56) that will not prevail when the reign of God comes in its fullness. Central to the church’s mission, according to Grace Upon Grace, is to witness to this reality.
For the remainder of this section Grace Upon Grace discusses the concept of “witness” in United Methodism, namely proclamation (par. 57 and 63), evangelism (par. 58), incorporation (par. 59), and servanthood (par. 60 and 64). I found this section a bit cumbersome as it confuses the concept of evangelism (defining it only as inviting people to faith in Christ as opposed to the Biblical idea of proclamation) and because it addresses the idea of servanthood in a repetitive manner throughout the entire document. But the main points do come through and can be affirmed.
United Methodists believe the gospel must be announced. The world does not intuit either God’s love or the particular story of Jesus that we believe most clearly demonstrates God’s love. God’s grace must be articulated if it is to be understood, believed, and claimed. The reality of the beautifully diverse religious landscape in our world today demonstrates the need for the gospel to be announced. While Christians share with many other religious and non-religious communities similar ethical and moral values, the motivations behind our ethical systems are quite different. Grace Upon Grace affirms the need for United Methodists to articulate the motivations for what drives us in our plural world.
Grace Upon Grace rightly affirms the need to articulate our understanding of the story of Christ both humbly and receptively. We do so humbly because even as Christians we are still a broken people who understand this story of Christ dimly, as through a cloudy vessel. For example we United Methodists admit we made mistakes in the past in our understanding of what a transformed world looks like. Perhaps this is no clearer than in the issues of slavery and women in Christian leadership, specifically the ordained ministry. We repented. We acknowledge we need to keep hearing the gospel story so that it continues to transform us. And yet even as we repent, yearn to hear the gospel story again, and acknowledge that we see and understand Christ dimly, we also humbly offer Christ to the world for we know no greater good news.
We articulate Jesus both humbly and receptively, for usually only if we truly listen to others articulate their own vision of transformation will others listen to our vision. Par. 63 describes this need to listen to others even as we articulate, or present, Christ to the world. Perhaps E. Stanley Jones’ model of the round table is an appropriate model for interfaith conversations in the 21st century. Jones’ round table provided a venue where people of different faiths, or no faith at all, could sit as equals in voicing their deepest beliefs, motivations, and dreams for the world. But Jones knew the round table was only effective if all people were both willing to evangelize and be evangelized. He was ultimately a seeker of truth and he wanted to hear others’ understanding of truth and offer the most beautiful truth he had found in Jesus. He believed the vision of life offered in Jesus was greater than any other vision and he was willing to test it. If the world is to be transformed it will only be through a community that humbly admits its weaknesses, listens to other visions for the human community, and offers its own vision of a world in the image of our crucified and risen lord.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Proclamation: Laceye Warner on Grace Upon Grace - A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission
professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement
and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church
today. This piece is written by Dr. Laceye Warner, Executive Vice Dean and Associate Professor of the Practice of Evangelism and Methodist Studies at Duke Divinity School. Dr. Warner is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Paragraph 57 begins by describing Christians’ calling to proclaim the gospel: “We proclaim the gospel. We tell the story of God’s gracious initiative to redeem the world.” This language is inspiring and authentic to Christian Scripture as well as reflected in baptismal liturgies. By our baptisms each Christian is commissioned to proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ.[i] However, the term proclamation can at times cause confusion if understood as merely verbal proclamation. While this paragraph in Grace Upon Grace goes on to clarify proclamation as an embodiment of the good news of Jesus Christ,[ii] such confusion often persists.
We proclaim the gospel.” When the biblical texts were initially translated into English (with the Tyndale and Wycliffe versions of the Bible) the Greek root for evangelism was translated simply as “preaching.” This was an attempt to employ language that could be widely understood.[iii] While preaching is an important means of our sharing the good news of the message of salvation, this more narrow translation, while well intended, has contributed to truncated understandings. This truncation may also have contributed to the exclusion of various voices from Christian ministries simply because these voices were not allowed to preach. For example, women and people outside dominant cultures have experienced exclusion by denominations or credentialing bodies to the office of preaching and ordination at times in relatively recent Christian history. In The Methodist Church women were not included in all provisions related to the formal ministries described by the Discipline until 1956. Despite this historic decision, male pronouns related to those provisions remained in the Discipline until 1968.
Individuals and communities are differently gifted and called in distinctive ways to proclaim the gospel. This results in a variety of ways through which the gospel may be embodied as Christians in communities of faith allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us often in surprising and sometimes uncomfortable ways.
“We tell the story of God’s gracious initiative to redeem the world.” Proclamation of the message of salvation begins with God’s gracious initiative to redeem the world. At times proclamation can be reduced to human opinion or desires to control the gifts of the Holy Spirit. However, our proclamation of the message of salvation is rooted in God’s activity that invites our response and participation.
Mission has its root in the Latin phrase missio dei or the mission of God. According to the commission text in the gospel of John, the mission of God is to send Jesus Christ to the world, and with the Holy Spirit to send the Church to the world. A relatively recent (mid twentieth-century), but important shift has occurred within the Church’s self-understanding from the Church sending missions to the world, to God’s initiative of sending the Church in mission to the world.[iv]
A defining theme of the gospel of John is God’s sending and with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit our being sent. After the example of God sending Jesus, the Church’s identity relates to being sent. Jesus sends the disciples and the Holy Spirit. But for what are the disciples sent in John? Although Jesus’ commission in the gospel of John could seem to be ambiguous, “as the Father sends me, so I send you,” (John 20:21b) the message is actually the messenger.[v] The Church is sent to the world to proclaim Jesus Christ in words and actions, by attempting to live in a manner resembling the self-giving love that characterized Jesus Christ’s ministry in life, death and resurrection.
The commission in John (20:19-23) shares parallels with its prologue: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, similar to Jesus came and stood among them. This divine presence was and is the source and motivation for Christian ministry, including proclamation. The message of John’s Jesus to the disciples in the midst of the tense and anxious atmosphere is peace be with you. More than a greeting, the message is an affirmation of Jesus’ promise of the Resurrection. Upon seeing the risen Christ the disciples are filled with joy, a joy that is contagious and meant to be shared.
If we take seriously God’s gracious initiative, our proclamation of God’s story will expand beyond our imaginations—and words—into embodiments of Christian witness both individual and communal that reveal God’s reign in our midst. From preaching and teaching, to political advocacy for social justice or the quiet care for physical and emotional brokenness, our proclamation of God’s story not only shares God’s love with others, but continues to form us by deepening our relationship with and knowledge of God.
Paragraph 57 begins by describing Christians’ calling to proclaim the gospel: “We proclaim the gospel. We tell the story of God’s gracious initiative to redeem the world.” This language is inspiring and authentic to Christian Scripture as well as reflected in baptismal liturgies. By our baptisms each Christian is commissioned to proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ.[i] However, the term proclamation can at times cause confusion if understood as merely verbal proclamation. While this paragraph in Grace Upon Grace goes on to clarify proclamation as an embodiment of the good news of Jesus Christ,[ii] such confusion often persists.
We proclaim the gospel.” When the biblical texts were initially translated into English (with the Tyndale and Wycliffe versions of the Bible) the Greek root for evangelism was translated simply as “preaching.” This was an attempt to employ language that could be widely understood.[iii] While preaching is an important means of our sharing the good news of the message of salvation, this more narrow translation, while well intended, has contributed to truncated understandings. This truncation may also have contributed to the exclusion of various voices from Christian ministries simply because these voices were not allowed to preach. For example, women and people outside dominant cultures have experienced exclusion by denominations or credentialing bodies to the office of preaching and ordination at times in relatively recent Christian history. In The Methodist Church women were not included in all provisions related to the formal ministries described by the Discipline until 1956. Despite this historic decision, male pronouns related to those provisions remained in the Discipline until 1968.
Individuals and communities are differently gifted and called in distinctive ways to proclaim the gospel. This results in a variety of ways through which the gospel may be embodied as Christians in communities of faith allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us often in surprising and sometimes uncomfortable ways.
“We tell the story of God’s gracious initiative to redeem the world.” Proclamation of the message of salvation begins with God’s gracious initiative to redeem the world. At times proclamation can be reduced to human opinion or desires to control the gifts of the Holy Spirit. However, our proclamation of the message of salvation is rooted in God’s activity that invites our response and participation.
Mission has its root in the Latin phrase missio dei or the mission of God. According to the commission text in the gospel of John, the mission of God is to send Jesus Christ to the world, and with the Holy Spirit to send the Church to the world. A relatively recent (mid twentieth-century), but important shift has occurred within the Church’s self-understanding from the Church sending missions to the world, to God’s initiative of sending the Church in mission to the world.[iv]
A defining theme of the gospel of John is God’s sending and with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit our being sent. After the example of God sending Jesus, the Church’s identity relates to being sent. Jesus sends the disciples and the Holy Spirit. But for what are the disciples sent in John? Although Jesus’ commission in the gospel of John could seem to be ambiguous, “as the Father sends me, so I send you,” (John 20:21b) the message is actually the messenger.[v] The Church is sent to the world to proclaim Jesus Christ in words and actions, by attempting to live in a manner resembling the self-giving love that characterized Jesus Christ’s ministry in life, death and resurrection.
The commission in John (20:19-23) shares parallels with its prologue: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, similar to Jesus came and stood among them. This divine presence was and is the source and motivation for Christian ministry, including proclamation. The message of John’s Jesus to the disciples in the midst of the tense and anxious atmosphere is peace be with you. More than a greeting, the message is an affirmation of Jesus’ promise of the Resurrection. Upon seeing the risen Christ the disciples are filled with joy, a joy that is contagious and meant to be shared.
If we take seriously God’s gracious initiative, our proclamation of God’s story will expand beyond our imaginations—and words—into embodiments of Christian witness both individual and communal that reveal God’s reign in our midst. From preaching and teaching, to political advocacy for social justice or the quiet care for physical and emotional brokenness, our proclamation of God’s story not only shares God’s love with others, but continues to form us by deepening our relationship with and knowledge of God.
[i] The United Methodist Hymnal, see pp 35, 40.
[ii] “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Christ.” (II Corinthians 4:5-6)
[iii] See David Barrett, Evangelize! An Historical Survey of the Concept (Birmingham: New Hope, 1987), 22. Barrett offers an example of a study too narrowly focused on verbal proclamation. Based on his research Barrett argues that the six closest English synonyms to the term “evangelize” are: preach, bring, tell, proclaim, announce, and declare, thus perpetuating the emphasis upon verbal
proclamation.
[iv] Ibid., 377-78.
[v] Walter Klaiber, Call and Response: Biblical Foundations of a Theology of Evangelism, trans. Howard Perry-Trauthig and James A. Dwyer (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), 63.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Grace, hope and mission - Lisa Beth White on Grace Upon Grace: A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission
professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement
and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church
today. This piece is written by Lisa Beth White, doctoral student at Boston University School of Theology. Rev. White is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Don Messer issues a strong challenge to the United Methodist Church in his blog post on “A World Transformed by Grace”. He asks whether Grace Upon Grace is “simply a lovely treatise on theology or does United Methodism actually seek to practice what it preaches when it declares ‘inclusiveness of all people’ is to be characteristic of the missional church?’”
As this response to Dr. Messer’s post is written, headlines in the United States are full of the chaos in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18 year old, shot several times by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. Hope of a world transformed by grace seems dim indeed in light of Michael Brown’s death and other news of international conflict and innocent lives taken because of ideological and religious differences. How are we, United Methodists, able to proclaim hope in the Gospel and live out the audacious form of mission – obeying Christ and loving our neighbors – in such chaotic times?
One way forward is found in the title of the original document – grace upon grace. Paragraph 61 states that “grace received is motive of mission”. The United Methodist Church is called by this document to participate in God’s ongoing mission in the world – God’s continual offering of grace to all persons through the mercy and love of Jesus Christ. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:16, NRSV). Because we have received the grace of Jesus Christ, we are called to live as his disciples, offering grace to all. It requires both humility and confidence to participate in the mission of obeying Christ and loving our neighbors.
Grace received as our motive of mission is evidenced in the United Methodist liturgy for communion. With both humility and confidence we recognize that we are recipients of God’s grace and pray for our participation in God’s mission to the world. First we confess our sins, and we receive God’s pardon. Then we remember God’s gracious activity in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Finally, we pray that through the elements God would make us “for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.” We invoke the Holy Spirit, that as a church we would be “one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.” This prayer makes clear our sinfulness and states our humble need for God. It is only through God’s grace that we are able to have the confidence to participate in mission. As our nation still struggles to overcome the sin of separating ourselves from those who are other – those whose skin is a different color, those whose native language is different than ours, those whose sexuality or gender are different than ours, those who vote differently than we do, those who have different access to education or economic opportunities – the sacrament of communion calls us to remember that grace transforms our divisions into unity in Christ. Although we retain our diversity, as the body of Christ our walls of division are overcome.
Our witness as a denomination is challenged by the divisions and disagreements present in our polity. Dr. Messer asserts that our current disagreement over LGBT inclusion “imperils our missional outreach to the world.” In fact, I have witnessed denominational discussions that have begun with a focus on mission – proclaimed as what the United Methodist Church does well – that quickly erode into arguments about whether and/or how the denomination should split. Our motive for mission should empower us to be able to resist principalities and powers, to love one another across limits of country, color, clan, creed, class or culture (paragraph 62). And yet we so quickly forget our motive for mission – grace received in humility that gives us the confidence of the children of God – and vie instead to be right or to retain power and privilege.
Far from being simply a lovely treatise on theology of mission, Grace Upon Grace challenges the United Methodist Church to live out its identity in Christ, being one with Christ, one with each other and one in ministry to all the world, regardless of race, nationality, language, sexual orientation, gender, creed or class. We are to be “the daughters and sons of God, holding up in prayer the well-being of all” (Paragraph 62). Through participation in the sacrament of communion, United Methodists can find renewal in the grace of Jesus Christ. Through the sacrament we can confess our pride and sinfulness, and be made whole with the church to be the body of Christ for the world.
United Methodist mission is clearly grounded in the grace of Jesus Christ and is not our own mission. Left to ourselves, we remain sinful human beings. Transformed through the grace of Christ, we are made able to participate in the ongoing mission of God to usher in a new kingdom, a world transformed by grace. The world so desperately cries out for justice and reconciliation. Our news headlines daily proclaim war, inequality, pollution, climate change, disease, and a thousand other ills. Only through the grace of Christ are we able to boldly proclaim hope in this context.
Dr. Messer concludes with a prayer that United Methodists will “continue to experience the grace of God’s inclusive love in Jesus Christ and seek in every way to witness by word and deed to that marvelous gift.” One answer to this prayer is found in the sacrament of communion. May the United Methodist Church find the humility and confidence found in the prayer of Great Thanksgiving and the courage to be made truly one in Christ and audaciously proclaim and live out God’s inclusive grace.
Don Messer issues a strong challenge to the United Methodist Church in his blog post on “A World Transformed by Grace”. He asks whether Grace Upon Grace is “simply a lovely treatise on theology or does United Methodism actually seek to practice what it preaches when it declares ‘inclusiveness of all people’ is to be characteristic of the missional church?’”
As this response to Dr. Messer’s post is written, headlines in the United States are full of the chaos in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18 year old, shot several times by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. Hope of a world transformed by grace seems dim indeed in light of Michael Brown’s death and other news of international conflict and innocent lives taken because of ideological and religious differences. How are we, United Methodists, able to proclaim hope in the Gospel and live out the audacious form of mission – obeying Christ and loving our neighbors – in such chaotic times?
One way forward is found in the title of the original document – grace upon grace. Paragraph 61 states that “grace received is motive of mission”. The United Methodist Church is called by this document to participate in God’s ongoing mission in the world – God’s continual offering of grace to all persons through the mercy and love of Jesus Christ. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:16, NRSV). Because we have received the grace of Jesus Christ, we are called to live as his disciples, offering grace to all. It requires both humility and confidence to participate in the mission of obeying Christ and loving our neighbors.
Grace received as our motive of mission is evidenced in the United Methodist liturgy for communion. With both humility and confidence we recognize that we are recipients of God’s grace and pray for our participation in God’s mission to the world. First we confess our sins, and we receive God’s pardon. Then we remember God’s gracious activity in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Finally, we pray that through the elements God would make us “for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.” We invoke the Holy Spirit, that as a church we would be “one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.” This prayer makes clear our sinfulness and states our humble need for God. It is only through God’s grace that we are able to have the confidence to participate in mission. As our nation still struggles to overcome the sin of separating ourselves from those who are other – those whose skin is a different color, those whose native language is different than ours, those whose sexuality or gender are different than ours, those who vote differently than we do, those who have different access to education or economic opportunities – the sacrament of communion calls us to remember that grace transforms our divisions into unity in Christ. Although we retain our diversity, as the body of Christ our walls of division are overcome.
Our witness as a denomination is challenged by the divisions and disagreements present in our polity. Dr. Messer asserts that our current disagreement over LGBT inclusion “imperils our missional outreach to the world.” In fact, I have witnessed denominational discussions that have begun with a focus on mission – proclaimed as what the United Methodist Church does well – that quickly erode into arguments about whether and/or how the denomination should split. Our motive for mission should empower us to be able to resist principalities and powers, to love one another across limits of country, color, clan, creed, class or culture (paragraph 62). And yet we so quickly forget our motive for mission – grace received in humility that gives us the confidence of the children of God – and vie instead to be right or to retain power and privilege.
Far from being simply a lovely treatise on theology of mission, Grace Upon Grace challenges the United Methodist Church to live out its identity in Christ, being one with Christ, one with each other and one in ministry to all the world, regardless of race, nationality, language, sexual orientation, gender, creed or class. We are to be “the daughters and sons of God, holding up in prayer the well-being of all” (Paragraph 62). Through participation in the sacrament of communion, United Methodists can find renewal in the grace of Jesus Christ. Through the sacrament we can confess our pride and sinfulness, and be made whole with the church to be the body of Christ for the world.
United Methodist mission is clearly grounded in the grace of Jesus Christ and is not our own mission. Left to ourselves, we remain sinful human beings. Transformed through the grace of Christ, we are made able to participate in the ongoing mission of God to usher in a new kingdom, a world transformed by grace. The world so desperately cries out for justice and reconciliation. Our news headlines daily proclaim war, inequality, pollution, climate change, disease, and a thousand other ills. Only through the grace of Christ are we able to boldly proclaim hope in this context.
Dr. Messer concludes with a prayer that United Methodists will “continue to experience the grace of God’s inclusive love in Jesus Christ and seek in every way to witness by word and deed to that marvelous gift.” One answer to this prayer is found in the sacrament of communion. May the United Methodist Church find the humility and confidence found in the prayer of Great Thanksgiving and the courage to be made truly one in Christ and audaciously proclaim and live out God’s inclusive grace.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Donald Messer on Grace Upon Grace: A World Transformed by Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace
(Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission
professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement
and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church
today. This piece is written by Dr. Donald E. Messer.
Dr. Messer is president emeritus and professor emeritus of The Iliff School of Theology. Currently he is Executive Director of the Center for the Church and Global AIDS, co-chair of the United Methodist Global AIDS Fund Committee, and a consultant to the United Methodist Office of Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns.
Dr. Messer is commenting on the tenth section of the document, "A World Transformed By Grace." Use the
"Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
“A World Transformed by Grace” (Paragraphs 56-65) sounds utopian and idealistic, far from realistic, but this dream has long been the vision that motivated Christians to move out of their comfort zones, seeing to create change in cultures and society. Idealism and realism are not polarities but a continuum; dreams can become one’s destiny.
I have always marveled at Christians who, despite their lack of wealth or other resources, have repeatedly set out to bring hope, health, and help to persons around the world. Though the apostles numbered but twelve, they aimed to transform the world. Despite all odds and obstacles, missionaries established hospitals, schools, universities, and churches around the world. They battled slavery, infant genocide, witchcraft, hunger, and disease. Dreams were transformed into destiny.
Years ago Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in the darkest days of apartheid, was asked if he were an optimistic about the future of South Africa. He responded, “Oh, yes. As a Christian I’m a prisoner of hope.” Hope differs from optimism in that it soberly recognizes realities like sinful persons and social structures, yet never despairs about the possibility for grace to break through seemingly impossible impediments.
If persons become cynics about the possibilities for human or social change, they limit the potentiality for conversion or transformation. The United Methodist missional statement “Grace Upon Grace” (Par. 56-65) affirms that Christians should envision through “eyes of faith . . . a world transformed by grace.” In my own lifetime, I have seen both church and society change for the better; even when but a few years previously it seemed impossible for such transformation.
Globally United Methodists agree that “God’s good creation has been bent, distorted, and broken: gods of egoism, nationalism, racism, classism, militarism, and sexism work their havoc.” What United Methodists fail to see is that heterosexual privilege and prejudice has also stigmatized and discriminated against our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered neighbors. In fact, the depth of our disagreement today threatens schism in United Methodism and imperils our missional outreach to the world. The unity of the church is threatened.
Reading the document “Grace Upon Grace” in light of United Methodist’s division on LGBT issues prompts one to ask what it means to affirm the proclamation of the Gospel. Are we really affirming the inclusive love of God in Jesus Christ or do our biblical and theological interpretations inevitably exclude some persons? Is the evangelism we affirm really for everyone or is it intentionally making heterosexuality normative for all of humanity? Many a person in the LGBT community has found Christianity lacking in grace, unjust, unwilling to offer equality, and unwelcoming. As long as United Methodist polity and leaders insist on saying “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” language about grace will have a hollow, if not a hypocritical, ring to many both in the church and world. Is this document simply a lovely treatise on theology or does United Methodism actually seek to practice what it preaches when it declares “Inclusiveness of all people is to be characteristic of the missional church.” (Paragraph 51)
This document suggests that “one audacious form of mission today is for Christians to obey Christ and diligently love one another.” Is it too much hope that a future revision would add “sexual orientation” at the end of the sentence that declares “Resisting principalities and powers, we love one another across limits of country, color, clan, creed, class, or culture”? Or are we more inclined to follow Leviticus or Paul than to obey Jesus’ clear command to love our neighbor?
Besides the global struggle for human rights, the document needs an updating to reflect the challenges of the 21st century—issues like terrorism, torture, drones, privacy, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, cyber-threats, etc. The challenge of grace transforming the world has become more improbable rather than easier.
What is timely is that the essay challenges us to recognize God’s prevenient grace in all people. Respecting the religious faith of others remains a challenge to many United Methodists. Yet increasingly in dialogue and action together we discover meaningful spiritual dimensions. Even today as Ebola threatens Africa, we are reminded of the urgent necessity of Christians and Muslims working together, and in Sierra Leone we have witnessed such cooperation between a United Methodist bishop and Islamic leaders. In places where HIV and AIDS are being addressed most effectively in Asia and Africa, one witnesses persons of differing faiths recognizing the sacred worth of every human being, promoting prevention and care together. But in other places and on other issues too often we witness discord and division. War still plagues humanity; peace will never come to nations divided by religious strife.
Let us pray United Methodists continue to experience the grace of God’s inclusive love in Jesus Christ and seek in every way to witness by word and deed to that marvelous gift. If we do so, we shall be harbingers of hope helping to usher in at least a foretaste of what we envision when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
“A World Transformed by Grace” (Paragraphs 56-65) sounds utopian and idealistic, far from realistic, but this dream has long been the vision that motivated Christians to move out of their comfort zones, seeing to create change in cultures and society. Idealism and realism are not polarities but a continuum; dreams can become one’s destiny.
I have always marveled at Christians who, despite their lack of wealth or other resources, have repeatedly set out to bring hope, health, and help to persons around the world. Though the apostles numbered but twelve, they aimed to transform the world. Despite all odds and obstacles, missionaries established hospitals, schools, universities, and churches around the world. They battled slavery, infant genocide, witchcraft, hunger, and disease. Dreams were transformed into destiny.
Years ago Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in the darkest days of apartheid, was asked if he were an optimistic about the future of South Africa. He responded, “Oh, yes. As a Christian I’m a prisoner of hope.” Hope differs from optimism in that it soberly recognizes realities like sinful persons and social structures, yet never despairs about the possibility for grace to break through seemingly impossible impediments.
If persons become cynics about the possibilities for human or social change, they limit the potentiality for conversion or transformation. The United Methodist missional statement “Grace Upon Grace” (Par. 56-65) affirms that Christians should envision through “eyes of faith . . . a world transformed by grace.” In my own lifetime, I have seen both church and society change for the better; even when but a few years previously it seemed impossible for such transformation.
Globally United Methodists agree that “God’s good creation has been bent, distorted, and broken: gods of egoism, nationalism, racism, classism, militarism, and sexism work their havoc.” What United Methodists fail to see is that heterosexual privilege and prejudice has also stigmatized and discriminated against our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered neighbors. In fact, the depth of our disagreement today threatens schism in United Methodism and imperils our missional outreach to the world. The unity of the church is threatened.
Reading the document “Grace Upon Grace” in light of United Methodist’s division on LGBT issues prompts one to ask what it means to affirm the proclamation of the Gospel. Are we really affirming the inclusive love of God in Jesus Christ or do our biblical and theological interpretations inevitably exclude some persons? Is the evangelism we affirm really for everyone or is it intentionally making heterosexuality normative for all of humanity? Many a person in the LGBT community has found Christianity lacking in grace, unjust, unwilling to offer equality, and unwelcoming. As long as United Methodist polity and leaders insist on saying “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” language about grace will have a hollow, if not a hypocritical, ring to many both in the church and world. Is this document simply a lovely treatise on theology or does United Methodism actually seek to practice what it preaches when it declares “Inclusiveness of all people is to be characteristic of the missional church.” (Paragraph 51)
This document suggests that “one audacious form of mission today is for Christians to obey Christ and diligently love one another.” Is it too much hope that a future revision would add “sexual orientation” at the end of the sentence that declares “Resisting principalities and powers, we love one another across limits of country, color, clan, creed, class, or culture”? Or are we more inclined to follow Leviticus or Paul than to obey Jesus’ clear command to love our neighbor?
Besides the global struggle for human rights, the document needs an updating to reflect the challenges of the 21st century—issues like terrorism, torture, drones, privacy, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, cyber-threats, etc. The challenge of grace transforming the world has become more improbable rather than easier.
What is timely is that the essay challenges us to recognize God’s prevenient grace in all people. Respecting the religious faith of others remains a challenge to many United Methodists. Yet increasingly in dialogue and action together we discover meaningful spiritual dimensions. Even today as Ebola threatens Africa, we are reminded of the urgent necessity of Christians and Muslims working together, and in Sierra Leone we have witnessed such cooperation between a United Methodist bishop and Islamic leaders. In places where HIV and AIDS are being addressed most effectively in Asia and Africa, one witnesses persons of differing faiths recognizing the sacred worth of every human being, promoting prevention and care together. But in other places and on other issues too often we witness discord and division. War still plagues humanity; peace will never come to nations divided by religious strife.
Let us pray United Methodists continue to experience the grace of God’s inclusive love in Jesus Christ and seek in every way to witness by word and deed to that marvelous gift. If we do so, we shall be harbingers of hope helping to usher in at least a foretaste of what we envision when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Thursday, July 24, 2014
God's gifts for mission - William Payne on Grace Upon Grace: A Church Formed By Grace
Today's post is the latest in a series of posts that are re-examining the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1990). Various United Methodist mission professors and practitioners are re-examining this theological statement and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church today. This piece is written by Dr. William Payne. Dr. Payne is the Harlan & Wilma Hollewell Professor of Evangelism and World Missions and Director of Chaplaincy Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary. Dr. Payne is commenting on paragraph 54 on "global awareness," from the ninth section of the document, "A Church Formed By Grace." Use the "Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.
Paragraph 54 of Grace upon Grace rightly emphasizes that God has equipped the UMC to engage God’s mission. It begins with a quote from I Cor 12:4-6. “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but the same God who inspires them all in every one.” Ministry to the whole world requires that the whole church utilizes all the gifts of all the people.
Paul’s organic analogy related to the Body of Christ requires unity within diversity. Accordingly, we are one Body; yet, each member in the Body occupies a special ministry position. When the spiritually animated Body works in unison, it is fully equipped to do the work of God in the world. As such, the locus of mission is the spiritually gifted church; not a mission board, a mission team, or a missionary. The mission of the church comes from God and belongs to the whole people of God.
I am reminded of my recent Pentecost sermon. It examined the “pouring out” of the Spirit and investigated how the phenomenon was tied to calling and mission. In Numbers 11:24-29 Yahweh pours out the Spirit on 70 elders so they can share the burden with Moses. Without it, they are not equipped to participate in his labors. As a sign of their anointing for service, the elders prophesied after receiving the Holy Spirit. The sign was given for the benefit of the people and the elders. Likewise, God anoints Saul with the Holy Spirit in order to prepare him for his new calling as king over God’s people (cf. I Sam 10:6[1]). In like manner, God pours out the Holy Spirit on all the gathered disciples in Acts 2. In the New Testament, the Spirit is given to all believers because everyone is called and gifted to participate in God’s work.
The outpouring with the gift of languages should be seen in light of the church’s global commission in Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (NRSV). Before the outpouring of the Spirit, Jesus sternly warned the disciples to remain in Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father (Acts 1:4). Even though the eager disciples had been personally trained by Jesus, they were not prepared for the global mission of the church until they were spiritually equipped.
Obviously, global Methodism has not arrived at this ideal. For example, many in the West value formal education more than spiritual vitality. I have overheard American colleagues sneer at the African connection’s lack of academic training. At the same time, friends from the Cuban connection have sneered at the spiritually dead conditions in American Methodism. Some years back I worked with a Methodist missionary from South Korea who was dispatched from his connection to teach American Methodists how to pray. In fact, formal training and Spirit anointing (vital piety) belong together.
After the outpouring in Acts 2, Jewish pilgrims heard the disciples proclaiming the gospel message in their native languages. As a result, about 3,000 Jews from all regions of the known world believed, received baptism, and were discipled. In Acts 4:4 another 5,000 people were added to the church as a consequence of the healing of the crippled beggar and Peter’s anointed preaching. Later, due to the persecution described in Acts 8, God scattered the new disciples in all directions. As they fled, they planted the seed of the gospel by preaching the word from place to place (cf. Acts 11:19). Some of the foreign pilgrims who had been assimilated into the Jerusalem Church on the Day of Pentecost returned to their home communities and started house churches. In this sense, disciples who were scattered became inadvertent church planters.
In the book of Acts, one may discern the “evangelize, disciple, and scatter” strategy. First, people are converted, baptized, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Afterward, they are discipled. Next, the new disciples engage in the mission of the church as they are deployed in gifted ministry inside and outside the local church.
From this perspective, one can argue that God has gifted the church, both locally and globally, so that it can work God’s mission. As such, a critical linkage exists between the local church and God’s mission. Individuals are gifted, called, and trained within the context of a local community of faith that is sent into the world. The entire community of faith is called into mission. By means of one’s gifting and calling, one participates in and enables the local church to do God’s mission. Gifting must be seen in light of mission. Gifting is never an individual thing or a cause for personal pride.
Additionally, within the UM connectional system local congregations are also called and gifted for specialized ministries within their communities and the larger connection. Still, the mission of the church is never subsumed by the local context. For this reason, local congregations should not emphasize the local mission to the neglect of the global mission. All churches must jointly discern the mission and work of the UMC so that they work together to achieve it on the local and global scene. No local church exists solely for itself. The same can be said of conferences. The entire UMC is one body called and equipped to do God’s multiverse mission together.
When the entire Methodist connection works together to discern the need and give voice to the global mission, it will find a basis from which it can fulfill that to which Paragraph 54 aspires.
Paragraph 54 of Grace upon Grace rightly emphasizes that God has equipped the UMC to engage God’s mission. It begins with a quote from I Cor 12:4-6. “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but the same God who inspires them all in every one.” Ministry to the whole world requires that the whole church utilizes all the gifts of all the people.
Paul’s organic analogy related to the Body of Christ requires unity within diversity. Accordingly, we are one Body; yet, each member in the Body occupies a special ministry position. When the spiritually animated Body works in unison, it is fully equipped to do the work of God in the world. As such, the locus of mission is the spiritually gifted church; not a mission board, a mission team, or a missionary. The mission of the church comes from God and belongs to the whole people of God.
I am reminded of my recent Pentecost sermon. It examined the “pouring out” of the Spirit and investigated how the phenomenon was tied to calling and mission. In Numbers 11:24-29 Yahweh pours out the Spirit on 70 elders so they can share the burden with Moses. Without it, they are not equipped to participate in his labors. As a sign of their anointing for service, the elders prophesied after receiving the Holy Spirit. The sign was given for the benefit of the people and the elders. Likewise, God anoints Saul with the Holy Spirit in order to prepare him for his new calling as king over God’s people (cf. I Sam 10:6[1]). In like manner, God pours out the Holy Spirit on all the gathered disciples in Acts 2. In the New Testament, the Spirit is given to all believers because everyone is called and gifted to participate in God’s work.
The outpouring with the gift of languages should be seen in light of the church’s global commission in Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (NRSV). Before the outpouring of the Spirit, Jesus sternly warned the disciples to remain in Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father (Acts 1:4). Even though the eager disciples had been personally trained by Jesus, they were not prepared for the global mission of the church until they were spiritually equipped.
Obviously, global Methodism has not arrived at this ideal. For example, many in the West value formal education more than spiritual vitality. I have overheard American colleagues sneer at the African connection’s lack of academic training. At the same time, friends from the Cuban connection have sneered at the spiritually dead conditions in American Methodism. Some years back I worked with a Methodist missionary from South Korea who was dispatched from his connection to teach American Methodists how to pray. In fact, formal training and Spirit anointing (vital piety) belong together.
After the outpouring in Acts 2, Jewish pilgrims heard the disciples proclaiming the gospel message in their native languages. As a result, about 3,000 Jews from all regions of the known world believed, received baptism, and were discipled. In Acts 4:4 another 5,000 people were added to the church as a consequence of the healing of the crippled beggar and Peter’s anointed preaching. Later, due to the persecution described in Acts 8, God scattered the new disciples in all directions. As they fled, they planted the seed of the gospel by preaching the word from place to place (cf. Acts 11:19). Some of the foreign pilgrims who had been assimilated into the Jerusalem Church on the Day of Pentecost returned to their home communities and started house churches. In this sense, disciples who were scattered became inadvertent church planters.
In the book of Acts, one may discern the “evangelize, disciple, and scatter” strategy. First, people are converted, baptized, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Afterward, they are discipled. Next, the new disciples engage in the mission of the church as they are deployed in gifted ministry inside and outside the local church.
From this perspective, one can argue that God has gifted the church, both locally and globally, so that it can work God’s mission. As such, a critical linkage exists between the local church and God’s mission. Individuals are gifted, called, and trained within the context of a local community of faith that is sent into the world. The entire community of faith is called into mission. By means of one’s gifting and calling, one participates in and enables the local church to do God’s mission. Gifting must be seen in light of mission. Gifting is never an individual thing or a cause for personal pride.
Additionally, within the UM connectional system local congregations are also called and gifted for specialized ministries within their communities and the larger connection. Still, the mission of the church is never subsumed by the local context. For this reason, local congregations should not emphasize the local mission to the neglect of the global mission. All churches must jointly discern the mission and work of the UMC so that they work together to achieve it on the local and global scene. No local church exists solely for itself. The same can be said of conferences. The entire UMC is one body called and equipped to do God’s multiverse mission together.
When the entire Methodist connection works together to discern the need and give voice to the global mission, it will find a basis from which it can fulfill that to which Paragraph 54 aspires.
[1] “Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you mightily, and you shall prophesy with [the group of prophets] and be changed into another man.”
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