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.

John Nuessle: The Body of Christ IS Connectional

Today's guest post is by John Edward Nuessle, retired missiologist/mission executive and author of Faithful Witnesses: United Methodist Theology of Mission.

Does the global nature of the UMC connection reflect a biblical expression of the body of Christ?

I suppose I would rather state this as “should” the global nature of the UMC connection reflect a biblical expression of the body of Christ? Or perhaps…. “how can…”? Either way, let me suggest the more basic question of “is the biblical expression of the body of Christ necessarily connectional?” To which I would state an overwhelming YES!! Let me be more clear…the only ecclesial expression of the biblical theology of the body of Christ is inherently connectional. All independent and separatist expressions of the Church are not biblical but rather are misguided cultural phenomena, particularly in our US cultural situation. That is, congregationalism is not biblical Christianity.

Connectionalism is not merely a form of ecclesial polity that is optional for the church. It IS the Biblically appropriate way for the Church of Jesus Christ to be organized for the task of witnessing in all the world (Acts 1:8). The Church is, of necessity, connectional - that is, we are people structurally connected to one another by faith and grace. When Jesus, in John 15, stated the nature of his mission and presence in the world in relation to God the Creator, he used the image of a vine and branches. Branches are of necessity connected to the vine, and therefore also to each other. To be disconnected is literally to be useless. The nourishment of the whole plant moves through each branch from the roots and trunk of the vine. All of this is how we are connected. Our church structures and relationships can be no less than this, globally not just locally.

Paul speaks of the various gifts for service and the unity of the body of Christ (I Corinthians 12). This describes the essential connections of the whole Church which celebrate our individual vocations. Mission and ministry are only possible for each of us and all of us as we are structured in such a way that we are ALL connected. In historic United Methodist polity, it is through our system of conferences (i.e. local, district, annual, jurisdictional and central, and General) that we are connected, and connectional, each conference having basic responsibilities yet intricately connected with the other conference levels as well as laterally with collegial conferences.
Paul also states this connectional understanding of the work that is before us in Ephesians 4, calling the church to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The Church is essentially one unit, one whole, with persons having a variety of functions or gifts lived out in various localities. The purpose of these are not self-aggrandizement or self-reward, but “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” The Connection is this unity, with a unified purpose of growing the Church into a mature visible witness to the reality of Christ in the world.

These Biblical principles are the essential nature of The Connection for the people called United Methodist, and in fact for all Christians of any historic tradition. They enable all of us to engage in our vital and life-giving work on behalf of the missio Dei. Thus…to answer the question…the global nature of our UM Connection is of necessity an expression of the biblical body of Christ theology, for this theological concept is necessarily connectional. How to insure this connectionalism is a larger question that I hope this blog and related conversations will attempt to answer!