"A grace-formed church" - David Scott on Grace Upon Grace: Introduction

Today's post is the second in a series of weekly posts that will re-examine the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1990).  Various United Methodist professors of mission will contribute to a re-examination of this theological statement and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church today.  This piece is written by Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.  Dr. Scott is responding to Dr. Hendrik Pieterse's piece from last week commenting on the Introduction to Grace Upon Grace.  Use the "Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.

I want to thank Dr. Hendrik Pieterse for beginning our conversation about Grace Upon Grace in his post last week.  Like Dr. Pieterse, I too hope for productive conversations to come out of the re-examination of this document, conversations that will continue The United Methodist Church's openness to the work that God would do through it.

I want to affirm the three themes that Dr. Pieterse identified last week in the Introduction to Grace Upon Grace.  Dr. Pieterse highlighted three affirmations about mission: 1) Mission is missio Dei, the work of God. 2) Mission enacts God's triune life of grace. 3) Mission is a response to and stewardship of God's gift of the world.  By looking at these themes and other statements that the Introduction makes about the document itself, we can see another important aspect about the document: it is a statement of mission theology, not a plan for a mission program.

The Introduction tells us this in no unclear terms.  It states, with original emphasis, "The purpose of this mission statement is, therefore, not to offer a specific program but to set forth as clearly as possible the gospel of grace as it impels us to evangelize and serve the world which God in Christ 'so loved.'" (Introduction, 3rd paragraph)   I think it is important for United Methodists, especially those in the United States, to heed these words.  Grace Upon Grace is not another organizational plan or turn-around strategy or business scheme to reverse the numerical decline of our church.  The point of the document is not denominational "success," as defined in worldly terms.  The point of the document is that we may better know and love God, that we may therefore share God with the world.

Grace Upon Grace does not just present a mission theology, it presents a devotional or formational theology.  That should not be too surprising.  Wesleyans have never been about theologies of the head only; they are about theologies of the head and heart together.  What is perhaps surprising is that the process of formation is not individual but corporate.  Once again, the document itself explicitly indicates the formational nature of its theology: "Mission is the action of the God of grace who creates out of love, who calls a covenant community, who graciously redeems and reconciles a broken people in Jesus Christ, and who through the Holy Spirit calls the church into being as the instrument of the good news of grace to all people." (Introduction, 1st paragraph)  God forms us not just as individuals, but as a covenant community, a people.  Grace Upon Grace seeks to produce what it calls "a grace-formed church." (Introduction, 1st paragraph)

This attention to corporate spiritual formation and not some 10-point plan can be see in each of the three themes identified by Dr. Pieterse.  If mission is the work of God, then ultimately, the planning must be God's as well, and to be effective in our planning, we must be conformed to God's will.  If mission is about enacting God's triune life of grace, then it as much about who we are as what we do.  If mission is a response to God's gift of grace to the world, then we must be transformed by that gift.  As we (re-)read Grace Upon Grace together, let us pay attention not only to what God would have us do, but who God would have us be as a corporate body, that is, "a grace-formed church."

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!

Starting a conversation - Hendrik Pieterse on Grace Upon Grace: Introduction

Today's post begins a series of weekly posts that will re-examine the mission document of The United Methodist Church, Grace Upon Grace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1990).  Various United Methodist professors of mission will contribute to a re-examination of this theological statement and how it can inform our corporate life in The United Methodist Church today.  The first piece in this series is written by Dr. Hendrik Pieterse, Associate Professor of Global Christianity and World Religions at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.  Use the "Grace Upon Grace" tag to identify other posts in this series.

From the start, in 1968, it seems United Methodists have been preoccupied with getting the denomination’s mission right. In recent years, as the church outside the U.S. has taken a larger share of total membership, the debate has morphed into studies of our “global” or “worldwide” mission. Ostensibly providing the theological lodestar for these conversations has been the mission “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” (Book of Discipline, ¶120). Yet, research conducted last quadrennium in preparation for the Council of Bishops-sponsored Call to Action report records widespread confusion and lack of clarity among the United Methodist faithful about what “mission” and “making disciples” should mean and look like today. So it should probably not surprise that our mission statement functioned less as a lodestar and more as a mantra pressed into divergent, often contradictory, purposes in the debacle over denominational restructuring at the 2012 General Conference. Ought such missional confusion and institutional dysfunction not at the very least prompt a fresh look at the theological convictions that we think should guide our discipleship and decision making? After all, some kind of theological perspective—overt or tacit, explicit or implicit—is always already in play in our thinking and doing of mission, both as individual believers and as a corporate body. So the question is not whether we will do this necessary theological work, only whether we will do it well or badly. The vexing challenges of mission and ministry so apparent in our corporate life today should leave no doubt about the urgency of engaging this task well.

We United Methodist professors of mission believe that, in taking up this theological task of thinking through a coherent theological framework for the church’s mission in the years ahead, United Methodists would do well to revisit Grace Upon Grace, the theological statement of the mission of The United Methodist Church approved by the 1988 General Conference. Much neglected and rarely if ever referenced in denominational debates, this document, we believe, offers theological wisdom well worth attending to in our discernment of the church’s future. And so to that end we invite you to join us over the next few months in a critical conversation with this important text. I begin this conversation with a brief comment on three crucial theological themes found in the opening paragraphs of the document—themes that will guide its argument throughout.

The first theological theme is also, appropriately, the first line of the document: “Mission is the action of the God of grace.” This statement affirms a revolutionary shift in theology of mission over the past half century: Mission begins and ends with God, not with the church. God is the first missionary—always. God’s mission (missio Dei) forever and always precedes the church’s mission; it is never at our disposal or under our control. United Methodists would do well to recall this (also deeply Wesleyan) affirmation about the absolute priority of God’s grace. Indeed, several scholars in recent years have noted the relative absence of just this theme of grace in the paragraphs on the church’s mission in the Book of Discipline. What is at stake here is not doctrinal orthodoxy as such. Rather, what is at stake is the way this foundational conviction can “rightsize” our debates about the church’s mission. For it is precisely in times of anxiety, uncertainty, and turmoil that we are tempted to neglect God’s gracious priority and take matters into our own hands. And we do so not deliberately or brazenly but inadvertently—through the necessary labor of analyzing, forecasting, planning, and legislating the church’s mission and ministry. Subtlely, in the very doing of them, the familiarity, stability, and predictability of these churchly processes can reinforce a tacit assumption: we have it within ourselves to figure out what the church needs and how to get it there. Lost is just the unfamiliarity and the unpredictability of the missio Dei: the divine Spirit blows its redemptive winds where it wills, forever unsettling our plans and outpacing our predictions. How might a reminder that the church’s mission is finally in God’s hands because mission is finally “the action of God’s grace” instill greater humility in our churchly deliberations, more openness to listen for God’s word, especially in those with whom we most disagree, and increased forbearance as we struggle together to discern our place in the mystery of God’s way with the world?

Lest talk of missio Dei evaporate into pious generalities with little real impact, Grace Upon Grace clarifies, secondly, the content of God’s mission. As anchored in God’s own being, God’s mission in the world enacts God’s triune life: “The triune God is grace who in Christ and through the Holy Spirit prepares, saves, and makes a new people.” Significantly, in the next section on our church’s “unifying vision” (and then throughout the document), the text spells out the radical implications of this triune mission for the church’s identity and mission. In imitating the divine love made manifest in Christ, we are told, the church’s mission too will take the form of self-giving, sacrificial love, emptying itself in uncalculating service to the world. How might sustained and prayerful reflection on this content of the divine mission help address our self-professed perplexity about mission and discipleship today? Might it not enable United Methodists to rediscover the radical nature of “making disciples” in the Wesleyan way—a Christ-shaped form of missional living peculiarly fit for challenges of our times?

The third theological theme flows directly from the first two: If, in the words of Grace Upon Grace, the church’s mission “is given to the church by God’s saving activity in and on behalf of the world,” then the church’s mission always proceeds as “grateful response to what God has done, is doing, and will do” (emphasis added). In other words, mission is forever stewardship of a gift. As the document makes clear, acknowledging the “giftedness” of the church’s identity is no counsel for passivity. On the contrary, and perhaps counterintuitively, freed of the anxiety of having to devise its reason for being, the church can explore the “form” of its mission—its “relevance”—with fresh eyes, now attuned to the ever-surprising creativity of God’s redemptive ways among us. How might such grace-bestowed freedom embolden United Methodists to stray beyond the taken-for-granted and the customary in our corporate discernment of mission and ministry, beyond our near-instinctive predilection for innovation through legislation, beyond our predictable resort to polity and precept?

I trust these brief reflections are sufficient to persuade you that Grace Upon Grace still has much to offer United Methodists now twenty-five years later. If so, we United Methodist professors of mission invite you to join our exploration of this provocative document over the next several months.

United Methodist unity and the WCC assembly

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

In case you've missed it, the World Council of Churches (WCC) is meeting last week and this week in Busan, Korea.  The meeting, billed as the most diverse assemblage of Christians ever, involves 1,000 delegates from 345 member denominations all around the world.  There are ten United Methodist delegates including six from the US, two from Africa, one from the Philippines, and one from Europe.  UMC Communications has been writing a series of articles about the assembly, including the following: "WCC assembly hopes to break barriers in divided Korea," "WCC 10th Assembly opens in Busan, Korea," and "WCC assembly includes 21 ecumenical conversations."

The WCC assembly is an important event in world Christianity, but it also highlights one of the difficulties in the conversation about global Methodism.  United Methodism's internal conversation about global UMC connections does not happen in a vacuum.  Rather, it is occurring simultaneously with United Methodist participation in an external conversation about global Christian connections.  It can prove a difficult balancing act to attempt internal self-definition and strategy setting within a larger system that's in flux at the same time.

Yet such juggling of internal and external debates about communal identities are an extremely common feature of human group life.  In particular, minority groups must often handle internal debates about identity while simultaneously navigating the challenges of existing as a minority within a larger society. Such balancing of internal and external concerns about group identity and activity can impose some serious burdens on a minority group, especially if that group is oppressed in some way.  Yet, that's not really the case with United Methodism - we are certainly not oppressed within the global Christian community, nor are we within most national communities where United Methodism exists.

Indeed, it may be possible that the two discussions (the internal and the external) about global identity and connection in which United Methodists are participating may be able to inform one another in helpful ways.  It may be difficult for United Methodism to finesse the intricacies of global interdenominational cooperation when there are a diversity of understandings of what it means to be United Methodists or how that cooperation should proceed.  Yet, conversations about the nature of global Christian unity may be a fertile source of ideas about the nature of global United Methodist unity.

I'm sure there will be a variety of views within United Methodism about the takeaway moments of the WCC gathering and what they mean for the UMC.  Hopefully, though, some of what United Methodists will take away from the WCC will be what it means to seek for Christian unity, even in the midst of our disagreements, differences, and diversity, and thus what it can mean to seek for Methodist unity as well.

Methodist Theological Education in Africa

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

Last month, leaders of African Methodist colleges and universities met in Kenya for a first-ever summit specifically for Methodist higher education in Africa, as reported by UMC Connections.  The meeting, termed the First International Conference for Educational Leadership of Methodist Universities and Institutions of Higher Education in Africa, included participants from 15 schools in 10 countries from both United Methodist and autonomous Methodist traditions.  Participants shared information and best practices, especially around the issue of fundraising.

This meeting proved to be well timed, coming as it did on the heels of the release of the Global Survey on Theological Education.  This survey of Christian theological education across traditions and around the world revealed some interesting facts about the state of theological education, including results specific to Africa.  While only a portion of the Methodist higher education provided in Africa is theological education, and while the survey included many more traditions than Methodism, it is nonetheless interesting to compare the survey's results with the conversations of the conference.

The survey found that, while there has been substantial growth in the availability of theological education in Africa, there is still an insufficient supply.  58% of African respondents to the survey indicated that there were either "not enough" or "far too few" schools for theological education.  The report projects a nearly 50% growth in the number of theological schools in Africa between 2010 and 2025.  Many African institutes of theological education are on shaky financial ground.  Just over 50% of African respondents indicated that theological education in Africa was "financially unstable," while an additional nearly 30% said it was in a state of "financial crisis."  Despite the financial woes, nearly two thirds of African respondents indicated that theological education in Africa was at least somewhat stable, showing a state of promise.

These findings for theological education across all denominations in Africa mirror well the discussions from the conference about higher education for Methodist denominations in Africa.  One of the highlights of the conference was a celebration of the growth of Methodist higher education in Africa since the founding of Africa University 21 years ago.  One may expect that growth trend to continue as the demand for higher education of all types continues to grow in Africa.  Despite the flourishing of the number of schools, these Methodist colleges and universities are conscious of the funding challenges and therefore are taking steps to ensure that they will be financially stable, as evidenced by the focus on fundraising at the conference.  The attention to fundraising can also be seen in such recent stories as the Upper New York Conference campaign to create eight endowed scholarships at Africa University, an initiative that reflect the promise of Methodist higher education in Africa.

Both the report on theological education and the recent conference for Methodist schools of higher education seem to reflect a similar moment for higher education in Africa: one with great potential and great opportunities for growth, constrained somewhat by the need to ensure adequate funding.  Despite the financial constraints, though, the next decade or two should be an exciting time for higher education in Africa, and it is exciting to know that United Methodists will be among those involved.

Card games, the Congo, and connectionalism

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

I get together occasionally with a group to play sheepshead, a traditional Wisconsin card game that is little known outside the state.  Last week, though, my sheepshead game proved that, through Methodism's connectional system, even such a piece of Wisconsin provincialism can become a gateway into experiencing the global nature of the UMC.

One of my fellow sheepshead players is Rev. Tony Fuller, pastor of congregational care at First UMC Neenah-Menasha.  Tony is also Conference Mission Secretary for the Wisconsin Conference and In Mission Together coordinator for the UMC's Senegal mission.  In that capacity, he was hosting David Makobo N'Shikala last week.  David is one of the recently commissioned missionaries of the GBGM, who were referenced in a recent post on this blog.  David, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, will be serving in Senegal.  David has been in Wisconsin raising support for the Senegal mission.  Because Tony was hosting David, David stopped by our card game, and I fell to talking with him.

David will be doing agricultural work in Senegal and holds degrees in agriculture from Africa University.  I mentioned to him that Horicon UMC where my wife is a local pastor supports missionaries working in the agricultural program at Africa University, though I initially forgot their names.  Another Methodist member of the card group asked if they were Larry and Jane Kies, whom his former church in Iowa supported.  They were, and David had taken agricultural instruction from Larry and English instruction from Jane.

Then I was asking David about the Senegal Mission.  David made reference to Bill Gibson, the current mission director of the Senegal mission.  Bill and his wife Gwen were among my favorite fellow congregants when I attended Emmanuel UMC in Appleton, WI (the former appointment for another member of the sheepshead group), and I told David he would be in good hands with them.

It's probably not often that a Congolese man on his way to Senegal ends up at a sheepshead game in Wisconsin.  Even were that to happen elsewhere, chances are he and the sheepshead players would have little in common.  Yet the beauty of the connectional system of Methodism is that David and I not only had mutual interests but overlapping personal connections.  There are many things that make the UMC a global church, some more effectively than others.  I think that ultimately this is one of the most important: that a Congolese missionary and a Wisconsin sheepshead player can meet for the first time and already be bound together by multiple personal connections.  The connectional system means that sort of remarkable experience of global church fellowship may not be so remarkable in the UMC after all.

General Conference delegates and the Global UMC

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

The Commission on the 2016 UMC General Conference just voted to set the number of delegates for 2016 General Conference at approximately 850, a reduction from the nearly 1,000 delegates at GC2012.  I'm sure that decision will generate a lot of discussion within the American branch of the UMC about what it means for the relative strength of varying American factions within the church and favored legislation of each of them.  What is really significant about this decision, though, is not about the United States.  The important aspects of this decision have to do instead with the global nature of The United Methodist Church.  There are two ways in which this decision is wrapped up in the discussion of the global UMC.

The first and most significant connection is that part of the explicit reason for this reduction in the number of delegates is to prepare the way for General Conference to be held outside of the United States, something that has never happened before.  Heather Hahn reports in the article linked above:
"More significantly, the reduction in delegates begins to smooth the way for The United Methodist Church to hold its first General Conference outside the United States, said the Rev. L. Fitzgerald Reist II, the General Conference secretary. That move could happen as early as 2024.
"“At the present time, there is no one willing to host us because of what is involved in moving General Conference outside the United States,” he told the commission. “One of the changes that will probably need to be made is in the size of the delegation. I think it would be a mistake to move outside the United States and reduce the size of the delegation at the same time.”"
Holding General Conference outside the United States would send a clear signal that the UMC is serious about regarding all branches of the church as equal members of the body, rather than viewing everything other than the United States as a less-important hinterland.  Obviously, there would be financial and logistical challenges involved in holding the conference elsewhere and transporting US delegates to the conference, but as a sign of commitment to the global nature of the church, nothing else could be clearer.

The other way in which this decision is significant for the global nature of the UMC is that it tends to increase the relative significance of delegates from the central conferences.  Hahn writes, "Reist did note that a reduction in delegation size would increase the proportionate representation of smaller annual conferences as well as the central conferences — church areas in Africa, Asia and Europe."  All annual conferences are allocated at least one clergy and one lay delegate to General Conference.  All additional delegates beyond that total are divided up between the annual conferences proportionately according to membership size.  Since many annual conferences outside the US are small, especially in Europe, they do not receive any additional delegate through this process.  Therefore, their guaranteed two delegates become a larger percentage of a smaller total.  Wherever General Conference is, fewer delegates mean a greater proportional voice for those who are from outside the United States.  While American delegates will still be a majority, more voices from those around the world mean the church is more likely to tackle issues of global relevance rather than focusing only on the issues of the church in the United States.

This one change doesn't suddenly make the UMC a "global church," but in terms of further including non-US branches of the church in the decision-making and focus of the denomination, it's a step in the right direction.