Ben Hartley: “They Never Resolved the Chord!”: On Using Art to Teach Mission

This post is written by Dr. Benjamin L. Hartley, Associate Professor of Christian Mission and Director of United Methodist Studies at Palmer Theological Seminary. You can read more of his writings at his personal blog, "Mission and Methodism."

A recent experience at the movies with my musician son, Luke, provides a good – albeit humbling – example of a challenge all professors of mission face. At the end of the film Interstellar, as we watched the credits roll on the screen, my seventeen-year-old son exclaimed – rather loudly – “they never resolved the chord!” “What chord?” I asked. “The one that has been playing for the last ten minutes,” my son remarked somewhat incredulously. I was dumbfounded. I had not heard it. As I walked out of the theatre into the light I had the sneaking suspicion that I was still “in the dark” on at least some dimensions of that film. Luke’s musical awareness and training had given him a different framework or set of interpretive lenses from which to evaluate this movie. They are lenses I don’t share. My musical awareness has never been what his is, and what little I possessed in the past has atrophied from lack of musical muscle-building.

I think all professors of mission struggle to get students to think differently and more deeply about God’s mission. We try to help students to see things which are clearly there, but which are obscured from our students’ view just as the unresolved chord was “hidden” from me in that movie theatre. We use cross-cultural simulation exercises – my favorite is Heelotia – to help reveal the cultural differences in our world and the power of ethnocentrism to unconsciously shape our feelings and behaviors toward others. We tell stories about amazing missionaries in the colonial period to displace attitudes about “missionary villains” which have been formed by less than helpful fictional caricatures of missionaries in a Barbara Kingsolver or James Michener novel. (Graham Greene, Shusako Endo, or Robert Stone provide good alternatives in fiction.)

For a number of years I have been using artwork by Christian artists from outside the West to help me displace some “images of mission” which remain too firmly ensconced in my students’ minds. I do this also to give them new images from which to draw as they craft a theology of mission that works.

My favorite image that my students and I reflect upon at the start of every semester is entitled simply “The Great Commission” by Nalini Jayasuriya, an artist from Sri Lanka who was an artist in residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center some years ago. She passed away one year ago on September 5, 2014.

We not only begin our Christian World Mission course together reflecting on this painting but my students see it every week on my “course banner” in the learning management software my university uses. I ask my students two simple questions about this image (which has been cropped below).


What is the artist trying to say here about the so-called “Great Commission” Scripture text in Matthew? What do you think the artist is trying to say about mission in general? We have never failed to have at least a fifteen minute conversation about this work of art, and almost every year a student will see something in the painting which I have not seen. (Because I’m ready for it this usually results in less embarrassment than my experience in the theatre with my son.) Sometimes I disagree with an interpretation, but that, in itself, is generative for further conversation in class.

Little fireworks of insight emerge in the class like this: “The disciples seem to respond to the “Great Commission” differently. What does this suggest about the church’s different responses to God’s mission?” “People are praying in this painting. How are mission and prayer related to one another? Is there something distinctive about a mission spirituality?” “The Jesus figure – who looks like a woman by the way– is not really looking at the crowd of disciples. Who is Jesus looking at?” Here, in a burst of Trinitarian enthusiasm, I sometimes suggest that Jesus is looking to God the Father and then switch excitedly to Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity for a moment.


Most of my students are Baptists, nondenominational Pentecostals, and Methodists so teaching with icons like this requires some work, but when the icon is viewed and discussed in light of Jayasuriya’s painting it is a bit easier to understand. Questions about the role of the Holy Spirit in mission and the Eucharist also come up as students ponder the dove and chalice in the painting. The vivid red, orange, and yellow colors in this painting provides the opportune moment for us to also interrogate Emil Brunner’s famous quotation: “The church exists by mission just as fire exists by burning.”

Discussing Nalini Jayasuriya’s painting is a beautiful introductory exercise in my class. By the time my class takes a break during our first class session together most students have a sense that mission is far more than strategic decision-making for their local congregation. They also recognize that mission is not so neatly defined as the line-item on their church’s budget spreadsheet labeled “mission” might otherwise suggest. I have Nalini Jayasuriya’s artwork to thank for that, and on this first anniversary of her death I celebrate her life for the life she has helped me to infuse in my teaching.

Recommended reading: Re-learning about class meetings from the global UMC

This recent article about Wesleyan small groups by Joe Iovino of UM Communications had two interesting bits about the role the UMC outside of the US is playing in helping revive interest in Wesleyan small groups in the US. The article mentions the Wesleyan small groups that are coming to be employed as part of In Mission Together partnerships. It also notes that the use of small groups in church-planting, a practice that is beginning to be used again in the US is still common practice in other areas of the world, where that long-standing Methodist tradition never fell into disuse.

A global church, jurisdictions, and racial skeletons in our closet

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.

Several different plans, proposals, and processes are wending their way through the UMC aimed at making denominational structures more equitable in how power is distributed between the United States and other countries with a UMC presence. One significant question facing all of these possibilities is what to do with the Jurisdictional Conferences in the United States. Should they be merged into one US Central Conference? Should they become Central Conferences themselves? Should they just be abolished?

These questions become particularly vexing because the current jurisdictional structure easily becomes a proxy for liberal and conservative theological views within the American wing of the denomination. The Western Jurisdiction often represents theological liberals, wherever they are located, while the Southeast Jurisdiction stands in for theological conservatives. Decades of ecclesiastical separation, secular regional cultural differences, and the Big Sort going on in American society have produced jurisdictions who too often see each other as enemies instead of fellow Christians.

Add to this theological separation differences in numbers (the Western Jurisdiction is the smallest; the Southeast is the largest), and you have the makings of some significant fights over money, resources, representation, power, and belonging in the church. These fights are significant enough that they could potentially derail efforts to move to a more internationally-equitable arrangement.

It is important to remember, therefore, that the jurisdictions were not originally crafted for theological segregation but for racial segregation. Jurisdictions entered American Methodism in the 1939 merger between the MEC, MECS, and MPC as a way to create a separate structure into which put African-American churches and church leaders. That segregated jurisdiction was removed in the 1968 merger with the EUB, but that doesn't efface the racist roots of the system.

Why are those racist roots important now? (White, American) United Methodists need to be honest and repentant about the ways in which racism has structured our common life in the past. If we are, then we will be less likely to let racism by the predominantly white American UMC against the predominantly non-white non-American UMC continue to perpetuate systematic inequalities between the US and the rest of the connection.

If American United Methodists can confront the racist roots of the jurisdictions, then perhaps we will not elevate our largely US-centric worries about the future of the jurisdictions over the need to fairly share power with our sisters and brothers in Christ from other countries.

Recommended readings on young adults in the UMC

Below are three different perspectives on ways in which youth and young adults are involved in the mission of the UMC. Each story is well worth reading as a sign of how God's spirit is moving among a new generation.

Rev. Michael Ratliff, associate general secretary, Young People's Ministries, Discipleship Ministries, wrote this summary/liturgy about young United Methodists' experiences of church across the connection, especially in the United States.

Five GBGM-sponsored international Global Mission Fellows (Brad Kenn, Danny Kalangwa, Hye-In Lee, Nazar Yatsyshyn, and Paola Ferro) contributed short reflections on their mission work in such diverse locations as Brazil, the US, the Philippines, Tanzania, Japan, Korea, Ukraine, and Argentina.

Balkan United Methodist youth and young adults participated in a retreat that brought together young adults across sometimes divisive national boundaries to discuss shared experiences and a shared mission as United Methodists to love God and the world around them.

David N. Field: Encountering the Migratory God

Today's post is by regular contributor Dr. David N. Field.  Dr. Field is the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.

In what experts are now claiming is the largest movement of people since World War 2 over 188 000 refugees have arrived in Europe so far this year. The influx of migrants has placed a significant challenge on the resources of countries through which they are passing as well as their destination countries. At an event discussing migration at the UMC’s Switzerland, France and North Africa Annual Conference, Ivan Abrahams, the General Secretary of the World Methodist Council, argued that mass migration is a Kairos for Churches in the Twenty First Century – a moment of challenge and opportunity to discover again what it means to be the people of God. This is particularly acute for European churches.

Abrahams challenged Methodist churches to become “churches of the stranger”. This has begun to happen in many Methodist Churches across Europe. The Italian Methodist Church supports refugees as part of Italian Federation of Protestant Churches’ project Mediterranean Hope. The conference of the British Methodist Church passed a motion calling on churches to offer sanctuary to refugees and calling on the British government to continue providing financial assistance for refugees, to adopt a more generous and compassionate approach to them, and to accept an increased number of refugees. The arrival of migrants in Germany is inspiring a new sense of mission and social engagement in many Methodist congregations. The small Methodist Churches in Serbia and Macedonia are providing for the needs of migrants passing through their countries.

This engagement with migrants is particularly significant when seen in the perspective of John Wesley’s understanding of “entertaining strangers” as a “work of mercy”. Works of mercy were for Wesley a means of grace – a means through which we grow in the transforming knowledge of God. Hence this Kairos offers the opportunity to discover again what it means to be the people of God as we come to know God in a new way.

Migration is a significant component of the great revelatory narratives of the Bible. God calls Abraham and Sarah to leave their homeland and migrate across the Near East and later appears to them as a nomadic stranger to reaffirm the promise of a son. After dining with Abraham and Sarah the divine company then leaves to go to Sodom where it is threatened with gang rape. Later God hears the cries of an oppressed and exploited migrant community in Egypt and accompanies them on their journey to a new land. During their wanderings the Israelites construct the archetypal sanctuary – a tent that can be packed up and moved when God movers on. The era of David and Solomon was associated with the building of a fixed sanctuary and the identification of God with one place – Jerusalem. Yet David is portrayed as the decedent of the Moabite migrant Ruth and he becomes a refugee amongst the Philistines. The forced migration of the Exile shattered the identification of God with Israel’s national interest and gave rise to new understandings of God. Ezekiel dramatically portrays its significance in his vision of God enthroned on surreal chariot who later leaves the temple to going into exile with the people. Much of the Old Testament reached its final shape or was written in the shadow of the Exile.

In the New Testament Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus mentions four women, two Canaanites, one Moabite and one who was the wife of a Hittite. Matthew describes Jesus as recapitulating Israel’s experience of being migrants in Egypt. Jesus grows up to become a wondering homeless preacher whose life culminates in his being rejected by the religio-political leadership, handed over to the foreign rulers, and crucified outside the city, thus symbolically excluded from his people. For the Romans, crucifixion was the ultimate act of rejection and degradation, and for the Jews, it was a sign of God’s rejection. The resurrection is the declaration that this excluded and degraded one is the ultimate revelation of God in history. In the language of John’s gospel the life of Jesus is the journey of the Son/Word of God from the presence of the Father into the distant country where he sets up his tent amongst us. The incarnation is thus the redemptive migration of God into the world.

The biblical portraits of the migratory God are not to be interpreted in an exclusivist or totalizing manner restricting God’s migration to past narratives and confining God within traditional interpretations of these narratives. Israel’s experience as migrants became the motivation for laws providing for the wellbeing of migrants. Deuteronomy 10:18 (CEB) declared that the Lord “loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing.” Amos declared that the Exodus was not a unique event for God had been present in the migrations of the Philistines and the Arameans. In the parable of the sheep and the goats the nations’ rejection of strangers is a rejection of the divine judge. Hence the biblical narratives are paradigms through which we can interpret where God is present and what God is doing in our contemporary contexts. God is still on the move in the midst of suffering migrants, accompanying them on their journey, entering into their suffering, rejection and exclusion, identifying Godself with them. To be the people of the migratory God is to accompany God into the midst of migrating people to allow our ideas of God and God’s purposes to be challenged, deepened and enriched through the encounter with these suffering, rejected and excluded “strangers”.

Benjamin L. Hartley: Mass Incarceration and the UMC

This post is written by Dr. Benjamin L. Hartley, Associate Professor of Christian Mission and Director of United Methodist Studies at Palmer Theological Seminary. You can read more of his writings at his personal blog, "Mission and Methodism."

Twenty years ago I was in a Michigan prison. By the grace of God, I was working in that prison as a substance abuse counselor rather than as an incarcerated person. My work in Michigan followed on the heels of living and working on the west side of Chicago. There too I saw the impact of a rapidly escalating prison population on neighborhoods and families which were losing their fathers, brothers, mothers, and sisters.

That was the mid-1990s which was close to the end of a devastating period – beginning around 1980 – of the sharpest increase in incarceration rates in state prisons across the United States. (The incarceration rate still increased after 2000 but not quite as dramatically.) In 1970 there were 200,000 incarcerated persons in the U.S. Now there are over 2 million. At the one year anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown the racist nature of the U.S. criminal justice system is especially sobering. Black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men.

The prison population forecaster, a creative, interactive graphic published this week (August 11, 2015) by the Urban Institute, shows what policy changes could make criminal justice more just. Dozens of other statistics could be shared here to tell a similar story of lives devastated by a criminal justice system focused on retributive justice instead of restorative justice – about which the UM Social Principles speak eloquently.

Why do I raise this issue in the UM & Global blog? I have two reasons. First, it is important to acknowledge that the United Methodist Church is far from silent in the face of mass incarceration. I think we UMC folk frequently berate ourselves for not doing enough, and in so many ways that is true. But it is also important to express gratitude to God and to one another for the good work we are already doing.

The United Methodist Church is engaged in ministry with incarcerated persons in a wide panoply of ways. Individuals and congregations befriend prisoners, lead services of worship in prisons, and help “returned citizens” after they are released. The UMC’s General Board of Church and Society has a National Coordinator for Criminal Justice Reform named Douglas Walker who organizes UM congregations to become part of an ecumenical network of congregations who strive to be Healing Communities for families and communities affected by mass incarceration. The General Board of Church and Society is also engaged in advocacy to reform the criminal justice “system.” The term “system” is difficult here. It gives an impression of coherence and integrity that is sorely lacking in the way we treat persons who have committed crimes.

I also wanted to write about this for UM & Global because I serve as one of the representatives of the United Methodist Church in the National Council of Churches of Christ which has chosen the theme of mass incarceration as its priority for the next several years. The National Council of Churches of Christ has been the most important ecumenical body in the United States since its founding in 1950, and the United Methodist Church has played an integral role in that organization – and its predecessor – from the beginning. As one of the few (only?) professors of mission at our NCCC gatherings, I see part of my role there as reminding us all of how the missionary movement gave birth to the modern ecumenical movement. To address the injustice of mass incarceration will require ecumenical effort and a revitalized missionary imagination in our churches.

Hebrews 13:3 calls us to “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them;” John Wesley noted in his commentary on this passage, “Seeing ye are members one of another.” Wesley spent a lot of time with prisoners throughout his life. I have been wondering of late how his conversations with prisoners– especially early in his ministry – influenced his own deep appreciation of God’s grace and the centrality of Christian fellowship for our growth in holiness. I don’t think these conversations were merely incidental.

As followers of Jesus we must be vigilant to never scapegoat the prisoners and “returned citizens” who are or will be our neighbors. We do this in all sorts of subtle ways through, for example, dehumanizing terms like “sexual predator.” No one is beyond the reach of God’s grace and redemption.

It is worth meditating on Holy Scripture’s and Wesley’s admonition to remember that we “are members one of another.” With this Wesleyan advice in mind, let’s begin by praying for those who are imprisoned but who are nonetheless integral to the body of Christ. It has been twenty years since I worked with prisoners on a daily basis. I pray they are all doing better today, and I pray that the Spirit would lead us all to be more faithful in remembering them. We are members one of another.