An Open Connectionalism and Change as Perfection

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

A pastor I know used to refer to The United Methodist Church as "perfecting the church of the 1950s." While I think he intended this comment to critique backward-looking tendencies in the church, I think it also highlights a danger in how United Methodists think about perfection.

Perfection is an important concept for Methodists historically. For John and Charles Wesley, "Christian perfection" was a synonym for "entire sanctification." Both terms denoted a state in which believers were completely filled with God's love such that all their actions expressed that love and not sinful impulses. Thus, early Methodists were asked whether they were "going to to perfection."

Perfection was a concern for theologians long before Wesley, mostly for those theologians drawing on Platonic philosophy. But this Platonic heritage in Christian theology is the source of a danger in how United Methodists think about perfection.

Platonic theology states that what is perfect is eternal and unchanging. Change, in Platonic philosophy, is seen as problematic and imperfect. This notion that change is imperfect raises various problems in theological philosophy ("How can an unchanging God really interact with a constantly changing world?"), but it also potentially creates problems in how we understand Christian perfection in humans and in the church.

If we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48), and part of God's perfection is God's unchanging nature, then we may assume that Christian perfection should imply that Christians, or at least the church, should be unchanging as well.

However, Wesley's notion of perfection wasn't about being unchanging; it was about love. Christian perfection is perfection in love. And love is never static. Recent insights into Trinitarian theology have highlighted how even within Godself, the three members of the Trinity are always engaged in active (not static) love with one another. Many metaphors are used to describe the relationship within the Trinity, but a helpful one here is a dance. Dancing involves movement. It is anything but static and unchanging.

If the Trinity is involved in an active and ever-changing dance of love and we are called to be perfect in love just as our heavenly Father is perfect in love, then we may expect that perfection in love is not static but active, not immutable but modulating, ever responding in new and delighted ways to how others are moving in the communal dance of our collective Christian life.

This insight, I believe, can be extended from individuals to our understandings of the church as well. If God is perfect in an active, loving sense, and if individual Christians can be made perfect in an active, loving sense, then does it not make sense to hope that the church will be perfected in an active, loving sense as well? And if the church is being perfected in an active, loving sense, then we must expect that the church will be ever changing, ever responding to the movement of the Holy Spirit and God's call to engage the changing world around the church.

This claim is more than saying that church structures need to be reformed every now and then. It is saying that our fundamental understanding of what the church is must be open. It must expect and even eagerly anticipate that the church will continue to shift and change as it continues to strive for perfection by reaching out in love to God and the world as it presently is (and not as it was decades ago!). As the church experiences new insights into God's love and as it responds in new ways to the ever evolving needs and nature of the world, the church itself will change.

For United Methodists, an important concept that describes our understanding of our church is "connectionalism." Connectionalism refers to the relationships, structures, and theologies that connect the various components of the church (congregations, conferences, agencies, etc.) to one another as together they join in God's mission to the world. 

An open and dynamic understanding of Christian perfection calls us to an open and dynamic understanding of connectionalism.

Of course, changes in what constitutes the United Methodist connection are a historical fact. The number of annual conferences and the number of levels of conferences have been in constant flux over the 239 years of history of the UMC and its predecessors. Practices of conferencing and who attends conferences have altered. Geographic areas have been added to and departed from the UMC. Agencies have been created, merged, and reconfigured. Relationships among United Methodists have shifted.

But beyond these historic facts, which we may accept or bemoan, a theology of an open connectionalism reassures us that such change is a necessary and important part of the church adapting to its ever new missional call to spread scriptural holiness and reform the world. Therefore, we may expect, even demand, that the church continue to change and adapt for the sake of better loving God and neighbor. Moreover, such changes are not a betrayal of our faith but an expression of it -- an expression of our deepest convictions about the nature of the Christian life.

The end of one year and beginning of another is always a time of taking stock of the changes of the past year and anticipating the changes of the year to come. As United Methodists engage in this spiritual work, may we keep in mind that our connectionalism must be open, and may we eagerly look forward to how Christ will lead our church in new steps in the dance of love in the year to come.

Robert Hunt – Response to Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Implications of Online Education for the Future of the Church, Part II

Today’s post is by Dr. Robert A. Hunt. Rev. Dr. Hunt is Director of Global Theological Education and Professor of Christian Missions and interreligious Relations This post responds to an earlier series of posts by Rev. Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo, which can be found here: [1], [2], and [3].

In my last post, I suggested that the move to online-only M.Div. degrees is another sign that theological education across-the-board must be completely rethought in a radical way. Only by so doing can we respond to the fundamental changes in the self-understanding of contemporary people and thereby hope to present a comprehensible gospel to the contemporary world.

There are ways that theological education can address some of these challenges, and they go hand in hand with the new possibilities for online learning.

First, we must recognize that while a set-apart community life is an important phase in preparation for ministry, it is not necessarily its heart. Instead of assuming that putting students in proximity with one another will manufacture community life, we need to build intentionally constructed retreat-like experiences combining learning, worship, and spiritual formation as part of the theological education experience. There are multiple possible models for this, and any and all will need to be operative depending on specific needs and circumstances.

Moreover, we must take seriously the possibilities for real, virtual communities, many of which already exist. This isn’t simply a matter of capturing the imaginations of Millennials and Gen Z. One of my differently abled students pointed out to me that the best-intentioned disability access programs are still burdensome compared to entering a virtual world in which he and his friends can meet without navigating any physical restraints. For many “virtual” worlds are at least in part better and more fulfilling than “real” worlds, assuming that this distinction is even valid.

Second, given the unsettled state of our churches and church institutions, it is unfair to ask students to commit to a degree program as their initial engagement with a theology school. We’ll need to accept and move toward what are commonly called “stackable” credentials based on focused training in particular skills or realms of inquiry that persons already in ministry need to master. These could then be built up to credit for a full semester course and so-on to a degree. And we need to accept that many competent pastors will not need to complete a degree to begin and carry on good ministry.

Third, we’ll need to recognize that online pedagogy is completely different from classroom pedagogy, but it does match much of what has been accepted in higher education for the last 15 years or more. The “sage on the stage” isn’t dead, but for the most part needs to be replaced by the “guide on the side,” a model suited to online and hybrid education. And after all, I had incredible sages in seminary at Perkins who were no more available to me emotionally and spiritually than if I’d been watching a video of the lecture. People of my generation reveled in the sage on a stage. That simply isn’t true of millennials and Gen Z.

Fourth, this means that credentialing for teaching needs to be seriously reconsidered. American PhD programs are designed to reproduce 20th century scholars, researchers, and authors of monographs, not necessarily teachers and leaders. The church needs professional theologians, but seminaries also need teachers and guides.

Fifth, we must master the emerging digital media as means of communication and interaction.

One of the things most difficult to accept, but absolutely necessary to understand in a rapidly changing multi-cultural context, is that there is no universal standard for either ordering information so that it constitutes understanding and knowledge or conveying that understanding in a comprehensible way. We must become open to the fact that a standard academic essay is only one of many possible models of thinking rationally from question to answer, and thus only one of many possible models of conveying understanding achieved to others. We are training pastors to engage the world with the gospel, not to become members of the academic guild. They must speak the languages of the people to whom they minister.

Sixth, and following from the above, theological educators must create curricula and course content relevant to a rapidly changing social and cultural situation. Precisely because the socio-cultural situation is rapidly changing, there is no fixed model for theological education that won’t soon be out of date. Instead, theology schools will need to create models for learning that have clear goals but are internally flexible -- with the capability of changing on a semester by semester, or at most year by year, basis. There will be no comfortable place where we have mastered our field of study and the ways in which to communicate our knowledge to students.

Similarly, pastors and church leaders cannot be trained just to become competent spiritual guides and denominational functionaries. United Methodist theological education in the 20th century assumed a stable organization within which changing theological expressions would address a changing society. That stability is gone. Now, pastors and church leaders will need to be prepared to foster creativity and manage change within congregations. Critical theological reflection will need to be supplemented by teaching more practical forms of leadership.

Finally, balancing this focus on teaching with the need for faculty to pursue longer term research projects will require new ways of thinking about how research requiring commitment over years fits with the need for constantly changing subject matter in courses. A tenure system that rewards only monographs that take years to write will exclude the necessary faculty who are willing and even desire to engage the edges of change in a field or many fields. Dilettantes and non-credentialed experts have an important role in theological education and shouldn’t be pushed into second tier positions.

There is a church in County Durham in England called the old Saxon church. It has stood for 1250 years. It was built from stones taken from Hadrian’s Wall, which was no longer relevant to the defense of England. Stones intended for one purpose were used for another.

Modern theological educators must look at the stones we have, look at the challenges we face, and begin to both tear down and rebuild. It will not be easy. The old barbarians remain a danger. And yet our defenses against them convey no gospel, no good news to rising generations.

Suggested Readings: Raymond Martin, John Barrisi, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self; Charles Taylor, A Secular Age; Calvin Schrag, The Self in Post-Modernity; Jeffry Bishop, Anticipatory Corpse; Meghan O’Gieblyn, God, Human, Animal, Machine; Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head.

Recommended Reading: Robert Hunt on a Chaotic Future

Frequent UM & Global contributor Robert A. Hunt has written an insightful piece on United Methodist Insight entitled "The Future is Chaos." In it, he notes the increasingly unpredictable nature of the social, cultural, and political future of the United States and the ways in which current Christian clergy have been ill-prepared to respond to that future. The solution, in Hunt's analysis, is to promote more entrepreneurial and creative approaches to pastoral ministry, a process that will require participation not only by individual pastors but also by church leaders and theological seminaries. Hunt offers hope that if the church is able to shift its approach to pastoral ministry in this way, the result will be not only greater faithfulness, but greater resilience amidst the chaos.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: A Call for Denominational Renovation

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

In a series of previous posts, I have depicted United Methodist denominational institutions as declining, crumbling even, beset by a host of long-term pressures from both within and beyond the denomination, all of which have been compounded in recent years by crises of denominational division and the COVID-19 pandemic. I have argued that these pressures towards decline are far beyond the ability of these institutions to manage through an approach of incremental and inward-focused maintenance.

Instead, the time has come for major denominational renovation. Renovation is a process in which an organization undertakes extensive rethinking of its institutions, their purposes, and how they go about achieving their purposes by trying to produce certain types of regular behavior. The last time the UMC substantially renovated its institutions was in 1972, in the wake of the merger of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. Nearly 50 years later, it is far past time to do so again.

The need for institutional renovation stems from the nature of the forces producing institutional decline in the UMC. I have argued that the decline of institutions in the UMC is a result of decreased institutional relevance, the delegitimization of institutions by special interests in the denomination, a decreased ability of members to pay the time and effort costs associated with denominational institutions, and the failure of denominational institutions to respond adequately to moments of crisis.

Maintenance, however, has led to institutional complexification, amplifying opportunities for elite capture of institutions and a decreased ability by average constituents to participate in those institutions. Maintenance cannot address questions of institutional relevance. Since maintenance is internally focused, it is a poor strategy to address external challenges, such as the time squeeze limiting members’ ability to give of their time and money. Finally, the failures of denominational institutions in recent crises are further evidence that a more significant response to institutional decline is required than further maintenance.

We are past the point of maintenance. We need substantial renovation.

Yet in this regard, the UMC is fortunate. A division with the Global Methodist Church represents an opportunity for the remaining UMC to enter a process of institutional renovation. Mergers have consistently been an occasion for Methodism to periodically revamp its institutions. Having missed the chance to do that with the merger with Cote d’Ivoire in 2008, the UMC will have to content itself with a division as an opportunity to reassess its institutions.

And an opportunity it is. Traditionalists recognize the opportunity they have to revamp denominational institutions by establishing a new denomination; those remaining in the UMC should not miss the opportunity they have to make overdue changes while there is fluidity in the denomination.

Yet to recognize this division as an opportunity, those remaining in the UMC must avoid scapegoating their anxieties about and frustrations with denominational institutions in either of two ways.

First, they must avoid scapegoating Traditionalists for the dysfunctions of denominational institutions. As previously described, Traditionalists have de-legitimized denominational institutions, but they are far from the only force pushing those institutions towards decline.

In this regard, it is important to avoid thinking of the division itself as the thing that will relieve pressures on denominational institutions. While division will alleviate one current crisis and will reduce some of the pressures from special interests, it will by no means solve most of the challenges of the denomination’s institutions, which result either from external societal forces or from having a system of denominational institutions that has not been substantially updated in a half century. Division creates a window of opportunity for changes to strengthen the denomination; it is not itself the solution to all the problems in the denomination.

Second, those staying in the UMC must avoid scapegoating leaders for the dysfunctions of denominational institutions. It is easy to attribute the current situation of institutional decline to a failure of leadership. While not without truth, such a view can be dismissive of the magnitude of challenges facing denominational institutions and the extent to which denominational institutions are geared towards maintenance as a primary strategy.

The biggest failure of institutional leaders in the UMC has perhaps been too great a fidelity to the institutions of the church as they currently exist. In this regard, they are caught in a paradox: They are selected to care for and maintain institutions as they are, which by design are supposed to be consistent and not change much. Yet, by resisting changes for the sake of institutional preservation, leaders subject those institutions to on-going pressures that, over time, have substantially weakened them, making them more vulnerable to collapse.

Moreover, focusing on the culpability of leaders misses a significant point. Whoever may deserve blame for the current situation (and I have suggested that it is a broad group), determining blame is not the same as determining a strategy for how to address institutional decline. Regardless of the errors up to this point, right now it is time to rethink our institutions.

If those remaining in the UMC are convinced that denominational renovation is necessary, there are a variety of ways to go about it. Work on the Global Book of Discipline could become a platform for rethinking the church’s structures.

General Conference could create a series of commissions to work on denominational revamping, as the 1968 Uniting General Conference did. There could be an extra session of General Conference to support the work of those commissions, as there was in 1970.

General Conference could even pass an amendment at its next meeting (to be approved in annual conference voting) to allow for a future General Conference to function as a constitutional convention, which could allow major changes to be passed more efficiently than the normal one-resolution-per-paragraph method and perhaps with less possibility of judicial review blocking any major denominational revisions.

My point here is not to advocate for one strategy for implementing the work of systemic and extensive renovation of The United Methodist Church’s denominational institutions. My point here is simply to insist that that renovation must happen, by whatever means possible. The alternative is further institutional decline. Those who love the church must be willing to let it change or risk condemning it to a slow death.

UMVIM: We Are Still in Mission!

Today’s post is by Rev. Dr. Tammy Kuntz. Rev. Dr. Kuntz is Coordinator of United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (UMVIM), North Central Jurisdiction. It is a response to David W. Scott's post, "COVID-19, Travel, Zoom, and the Future of United Methodist Mission."

Yes, World, We are still in mission!

While the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us into stay-at-home and self-quarantine, we know that United Methodists continue to serve their neighbors. Masks and gloves have replaced hammers and saws as people shift their skills to provide food and necessary daily-living supplies to their communities. Those with sewing machines are moving beyond school bags and Days for Girls kits to making masks. Volunteers in Mission (VIM) work with the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) to respond quickly to the needs of their neighbors following tornadoes in alternative ways as directed by each annual conference. We are still in mission. It just looks different.

Yes, the number of short-term teams has dropped off. Project sites have suspended operations, international borders are closed, and airlines have cancelled flights. However, there are still stories to tell. Previous mission engagements are shared through web sites and social media connections with team members. We are still telling the story. It just looks different.

Some project site directors are offering a virtual mission journey. We can still share in the good work happening at Give Ye Them to Eat and Bahamas Methodist Habitat. More of these missions will be available in the coming weeks. We are still serving. It just looks different.

Teams, districts, and conferences partnering with mission sites in the US and around the world are connecting and gaining an understanding of the concerns for the future. The cancellation of teams means a reduction of income as well as an inability to meet the needs of the community. This is evidenced in the Michigan-Haiti Partnership previously referenced. We are still partnering. It just looks different.

Yes, our international partners may realize that they have been relying too heavily on US short-term mission teams. People are coming together for their own communities, meeting the need of neighbors, and offering skills they may not have realized they had. After all, when we share in God’s mission, we know that we are there to meet the needs of the community, not serve our own expectations of what need to be done. (I John 3:16-18) remembering that the most important task is the one we have just been given. We are still serving God in the world. It just looks different.

There is no doubt that the mission field will look different when the world emerges from this pandemic. We will still be in mission. It will just look different.

Rev. Dr. Tammy Kuntz, Volunteers in Mission North Central Jurisdiction
Rev. Tom Lank, Volunteers in Mission Northeastern Jurisdiction
Karen Distefano, Volunteers in Mission South Central Jurisdiction
Ronda Cordill, Volunteers in Mission Western Jurisdiction
Rev. Matt Lacey, Volunteers in Mission Southeastern Jurisdiction
Gray Gambrell, Volunteers in Mission Southeastern Jurisdiction

Missional Ecclesiology: Affirmations about Church: What Is the Methodist Way of Doing Church?

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

As indicated previously, I had the honor of preparing a document for the Commission on a Way Forward for use in developing their Missional Framework. This is the fourth post in a series explaining what I sent to the Commission and why. In these posts, I speak about my own writing and am not commenting on how the Commission used that writing or the final Missional Framework they developed.

The document I prepared is structured into three sections: a set of affirmations about mission, a set of affirmations about the church, and a set of values flowing from these two sets of affirmations. In this post, I want to reflect on the affirmations about the church.

Since the request from the Commission to me had been presented as a request for a “missional ecclesiology” (emphasis added), I felt compelled to reflect not only on the nature of mission but on the nature of the church. As I noted in the introduction to this series, given the recent release of Wonder, Love and Praise, I did not feel it necessary to reflect on the theological nature of the church (e.g., as rooted in grace) in my document. Instead, I decided to reflect on the nature of the church from the perspective of distinctive Methodist attitudes toward and practices of being the church.

I thought this section needed to begin with the observation, also emphasized in the “Preface” of the long version of my document, that Methodism is both a missional movement and a church (or several churches). Beginning with this observation serves to put the identified practices into missional perspective. Methodists practice church in these ways not for their own sakes, but for the sake of mission. This is historically true – John Wesley used missional effectiveness as his metric for evaluating most practices of the church – and it has been true at many other points throughout our history. The evolution of our polity is often driven by the evolution of our mission.

With this context in mind, I then presented what I thought were four practices of being the church that I thought characterized Methodism broadly across time, space, and specific denomination – connectionalism, conferencing, appointive ministry, and general superintendency.

These four are probably not the only such characteristics shared by Methodists broadly, but they seemed particularly important and/or relevant to mission. Each gets at what I see as core functions of a denomination – decision-making, clergy deployment, oversight, and shared ministry.

Thus, the choice of these four is also geared toward a view of the church as a denomination rather than the church as the local congregation. This focus on the denominational level is not meant to devalue the work of local congregations. There can be no denomination without local congregations. Nevertheless, I understood the Commission’s work as entailing making decisions regarding the denomination as a whole, including its local congregations. Moreover, the key Methodist concept of connectionalism works against focusing primarily on separate local congregations.

I called these four Methodist hallmarks “practices,” both as an acknowledgement of Methodism’s generally practical orientation to ecclesiology, and as a recognition that each of the four implied not only beliefs but more importantly a set of regular actions. Methodists don’t just believe in connectionalism; we also engage in actions and create structures to help us connect.

As noted in the “Preamble” of the original, long version of my work, the actions we have used to practice these four hallmarks have changed over the centuries of Methodism. Conferencing, for instance, is still essential, but quarterly conferences are not what they used to be. Thus, the ways in which we currently live out these four practices are not the only ways to do so, and it would be possible to do so in the future in different ways without abandoning our commitment to these practices. I believe recognizing that possibility of faithfulness amid change frees us for the future.

A final affirmation about the ecumenical nature of the church is also intended to free us in our thinking. Methodists have always been ecumenists. The United Methodist Church is not the One True Church outside of which is no salvation, and no one pretends it is. Indeed, The United Methodist Church is just one denomination within the larger stream of Methodism.

Denominations are useful as organizational structures, but they are not prescribed in the Bible, and we would do well to remember that our attachment to denominations or particular denominational structures, while it may reflect sincere belief and devotion, is separate from our attachment to Christ’s church and the kingdom of God. When we consider how to change our denomination, we are making changes to human structures, not divine ones. That is not to say that our decisions are not important, but that our human actions cannot alter divine truths. That knowledge, I hope, gives us a little more courage in how we proceed.

Missional Ecclesiology: Preamble: Change and Continuity

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

As I indicated last week, I had the honor of preparing a document for the Commission on a Way Forward for use in developing their Missional Framework. This is the second of several posts explaining what I sent to the Commission and why. In these posts, I speak about my own writing and am not commenting on how the Commission used that writing or the final Missional Framework they developed.

In the original missional ecclesiology document I drafted, I included a long, historical “Preamble.” I had to remove this Preamble from the short version I sent to the Commission because of space constraints. Thus, this portion of my writing had little bearing on the work of the Commission, but I still wanted to share what was in this portion and why I included it.

The heart of this section is its third and fourth sentences: “Much has changed about how Methodists have understood mission and church over the last two plus centuries. Nevertheless, certain constants have persisted.” As a historian, I thought some historical perspective on this tension between continuity and change was useful background to the commission’s work.

Although I wrote the document to be neutral with regard to the three specific plans under discussion by the Commission, I did presume that it was the Commission’s job to recommend some sort of changes in the UMC. Therefore, I thought it would be useful to reflect theologically and historically on the nature of change within the life of denominations and its relationship to continuity.

As humans, we have a strong tendency toward presentism. We assume that the way things are is the way things have been and will continue to be. Yet historians know that is not true. Things used to be different, in some cases quite different. As British novelist L. P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Knowing that the past was different frees us a little from our presentism.

And if we are able to recognize that the past was different, perhaps that will also free us to recognize that the future will be different as well, and in ways that are neither all good nor all bad. Just as the past contains a mix of good and bad relative to the present, so the future is likely to contain a mix of good and bad relative to the present. Knowing this allows us to face the future with less anxiety and a less totalizing and catastrophizing approach to the decisions we face as a denomination. Certainly, The United Methodist Church faces some potentially significant changes at this juncture of history, but change per se is nothing new for Methodism.

At the same time that there is value in recognizing the ways in which the past is different from the present, there is also value in trying to identify the continuities between the past and the present. We do not recreate Methodism completely anew every new day; instead, we reshape and refashion traditions we have inherited. What, then, are the hallmarks of these traditions? Amidst the change, what has remained the same about Methodism?

This question – What has remained the same about Methodism throughout its history? – and two related questions – What is true about Methodism in different geographic areas? And what is true about Methodism among different Methodist denominations? – were questions I grappled with as I sought to develop the “ecclesiology” part of this missional ecclesiology.

The answers I arrived at – Methodism is missional, ecumenical, connectional, conferencing, appointive, and episcopal – are in the “Affirmations about the Church” section of the document, and thus I will address them more fully in a future post. The “Preamble” gives a quick historical sketch of Methodism drawn around these foci, from its early days as a frontier revival movement to its current existence as a complex, multinational, corporately-structured church, showing the ways these hallmarks changed but also had continuity throughout the centuries of Methodism’s development.

Seeing how Methodism has been faithful to its understanding of how to be the church and has also continued to incorporate these hallmarks despite significant changes is again, I hope, freeing for future change. We have been able to remain faithful to our Methodist DNA despite changes, and therefore we can remain faithful to our Methodist DNA despite whatever future changes the Commission on a Way Forward or General Conference 2019 or other actors might decide upon. Change does not preclude faithfulness to our heritage.

Hence the conclusion to my “Preface”: “Amid this [present] change, faithful United Methodists continue to develop new understandings of mission, connectionalism, conferencing, appointive ministry, and general superintendency. We continue to be faithful to these Methodist principles, even as we seek to understand anew how they may best serve the church and the world.”

One of the themes that runs throughout the document and is introduced at the beginning of the “Preamble” is that Methodism is both a missional movement and a church. This dual identity introduces a variety of tensions and dynamics into Methodism, but one result of this duality is that change and continuity must both be part of who we are. If we do not change, we cease to be a missional movement; if we have no continuity with our past, we lose our sense of church. Both are necessary, and the tensions between the two are at their best a productive driving force in the development of Methodism. I hope they will be so in our current time.

Glory Dharmaraj: From Salinization of Mission to Uberization of Mission

Today's piece is written by Dr. Glory E. Dharmaraj, retired Director of Mission Theology for United Methodist Women.

In the timeless twin Greek epics Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, the hero of the sequel, Odysseus, undertakes two major journeys in his lifetime. The first one is an outward journey full of overseas expeditions and escapades, wars and conflicts, dominance and triumph. The second one is a sober one without much outer paraphernalia but with a deeply ingrained truth of an inner journey. Both the journeys throw light on a key functional tool of his mission: a sailing oar.

Beyond Salinization: A Journey
After twenty years of ceaseless outbound seafaring adventures, Odysseus comes home, and undertakes a second journey. This second journey away from home is a spatial reversal of his former sea-bound journey.

In this journey, the hero carries his sailing oar balanced on his shoulders, as a visual symbol of what he has achieved so far, until he arrives at a place whose people know nothing of sails, sea, or salt. As he is carrying the oar, well-balanced on his shoulders, a traveler from the inland region puts forth a stunning yet innocuous query: “What is the winnowing fan” you are carrying? A functional tool of a life time of work is being misrecognized! A sailing oar for a winnowing fan!

It is the end of an era. It is time for Odysseus to go home. That is what he does. He plants his sailing oar in that unknown soil, offers a ritual ceremony, and goes home! Erstwhile tools are inadequate to navigate a new landscape.

Changing tools of mission
In his book The Death of White Christian America, Robert Jones frames an edificial approach to American Protestant Christianity, and laments the decline and loss of denominational and ecumenical influence over the past decades on the cultural and political landscape of the nation. The three major buildings mentioned in his book are The Methodist Building on the Capitol Hill, The Interchurch Center on the upper west side of New York City, and the Crystal Cathedral in California. What Jones bemoans is the loss of institutionalized Protestant Christianity that has wielded an enormous cultural and political leverage in yester years. His findings do not spell the end of Christianity in America but a yearning to re-imagine and reform it!

There is an unspoken yearning in many of us, white or non-white, for a Christianity that can reform, reimagine and-reinvent, and take an engaging and appealing responsibility with the diverse social, cultural, and religious cultural milieu of our time. As the Protestant Christian world is getting ready to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of Reformation, it is a good opportunity for our own denomination to reinvent and reform the structure and polity, and find new ways to proceed into a renewed missional future, and take transmuted ecclesial action. It is not an easy task. But we need to start somewhere, as we stand on the threshold of another axial age when the functional tools erstwhile mission era are unusable in a newly emerging context.

“Uberization of mission”
During an informal conversation with Harriett Olson, General Secretary of the United Methodist Women, about the emerging Uber entity in rideshare and business, and the healthy imagination we should have for our mission today, she exclaimed with enthusiasm, and uttered, “Uberization of mission”! Indeed, healthy imagination helps us form deeper connections through integrated content strategies, right time, right channel of communication, and creative story-telling that inspires action. What happened to consumer services like taxis with Uber will happen to other areas of business services as well. It is not a question of how, but when.

In the past, businesses and companies relied primarily on their brand name to lock in customers by building trust around their product and offering services. Modern day customers expect convenience, experience and flexibility. They also expect a communal engagement and mutual transaction experience as self-serve as possible. In other words, customer experience is the key point around which all systems, people and processes function. Taxis treated consumers as commodities, and Uber grouped these discontented customers to fashion the largest consumer transportation corporation in which cars are now the commodity. An aggregate disruption! Uber business models are being emulated in other fields, from daily chores like grocery shopping to legal service whose workforce is not full-time employees.

Our historic mission imagination has always been fired by biblical theology and tempered by pragmatism. As we are well aware, theology is an activity of the imagination as much as of reason, in which we seek to transcend boundaries and move forward

We now get a kaleidoscopic view of happenings as they unfold, often in real time, on our computer screens and handheld devices. History is not impartial or identical with truth, but the internet doles out to us a newfound vantage on the totality of passing time. Today we should become more aware of our missional responsibility with our ever morphing culture. The Church needs to develop and forge new ways to enter into a dialogical relationship with the surrounding culture and its people as they are closely linked to questions concerning the value of an individual, core human need, the meaning of human existence, and action, and especially their relationship with one another and creation. At this level, mission engagements should give priority to promoting a renewed and vital synthesis between faith and culture.

In the larger context, mission scholars as well as mission practitioners have a responsibility and burden to offer a more expansive landscape, and create spaces for the students and constituents, laity and clergy, so that they can imagine and dream of their ecclesial future, ritually bury the “old oars,” come up with workable winnowing tools, recognizable gears and apparatuses for negotiating the discontinuous changes in our missional journey. Let us not lament the losses of our cherished past, rather let us clang the bell of warning to the evils of unjust society and dehumanizing values, and create and facilitate spaces for innovating new functional tools!