Recommended listening: How to do short-term missions without long-term harm

Ministry Matters has posted a podcast from Youth Ministry Partners that interviews Jen Bradbury, youthworker and author of A Mission That Matters: How To Do Short-Term Missions Without Long-Term Harm. In it, she discusses youth-oriented short-term mission, including the evolution of short-term missions to a youth-focused endeavor, the associated shift of motives in short-term mission trips, the possibility of doing harm in short-term mission, and the importance of partnership. While most of the material in the podcast will be familiar to those already participating in the conversation around short-term mission, the podcast can be a useful introduction to those not previously familiar, especially those for whom a podcast would be a more accessible format than a book. The podcast is about 36 minutes long.

What are United Methodist views on homosexuality in the Philippines?

 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.

Recently, United Methodist Insight published a story about students at a United Methodist seminary in the Philippines participating in the Manila Pride March. The story includes pro-LGBT quotes from several United Methodist youth leaders.

For those who have a dichotomous view of regional opinions on homosexuality in The United Methodist Church, this story might be surprising or confusing. Often, the narrative in the UMC goes that northern and western Americans (and Europeans) are pro-gay marriage and gay ordination in the UMC, whereas southern Americans, Africans, and Asians (i.e., Filipinos) are anti-gay marriage and gay ordination. Yet there are reasons to be wary of overly simplistic narratives, including this one.

First, we should not assume that the conversations happening about homosexuality are the same in all places in the world. There are significant differences between countries where gay marriage is legal vs. countries where gay marriage is not legal vs. countries where homosexuality itself is a crime. There are differences between theology, marriage, ordination, membership, and acceptance in other aspects of the life of the church. These are all different conversations, and different countries are having (or not having) different conversations about homosexuality. Americans, however, tend to conflate this wide range of conversations into a binary pro/con conversation that mirrors our own experiences of the theological/culture wars in this country.

Second, as most Americans experience in their own areas, there are a range of opinions, even in supposed liberal or conservative areas of the US. There are conservative United Methodists in Oregon, and there are liberal United Methodists in Mississippi. Geography correlates with but does not determine one's views on homosexuality (or any other topic). We should not be surprised if the same is true elsewhere, including the Philippines.

Given these considerations, where then does The United Methodists Church in the Philippines stand on questions related to homosexuality?

A word about the context of the Philippines is in order. The Philippines as a whole actually has relatively accepting views on homosexuality, more so on average than the United States, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center study. Gay sex is not criminalized. Gay marriage, however, is not legal in the Philippines, though there is a case under consideration by the Filipino Supreme Court that could change that. The Philippines is facing a variety of justice-related challenges under the rule of current strongman president Rodrigo Duterte. While LGBTQIA+ Filipinos seek for greater rights, gay rights issues are only one of a variety of active rights struggles in the Philippines currently.

Filipino United Methodists exist as a small minority church within that context. The country is overwhelmingly Catholic, and United Methodists are a minority within the country's Protestant minority. Nevertheless, Filipino United Methodists have some good connections to the center of society in realms such as education, health, and social services. Thus, Filipino United Methodists also have a different sense of their relationship to the rest of society than American United Methodists, who, while recognizing America's religious diversity, retain some sense of when they were the country's largest denomination.

These two pieces of background set up a better understanding of Filipino United Methodist views on homosexuality. In short, Filipino United Methodists are, on the whole, opposed to gay ordination and gay marriage in the church, but a variety of opinions exist, and Filipinos do not see this issue as central to the church's identity.

As the article about the seminarian students clearly shows, there are Filipino United Methodists who are pro-LGBT inclusion in the church. Some might see the students in this article as a minority fringe in the church, but there are other indications that a variety of opinions exist. A United Methodist forum on LGBTQ issues held in 2016 gives some sense of the variety of opinions held by Filipino United Methodists. Retired Filipino Bishop Daniel Arichea has been public in his support for gay rights in the church, after his son came out as gay. As in the US, younger and more urban United Methodists tend to be more supportive of LGBTQ inclusion.

The majority of Filipino United Methodists do remain opposed to gay ordination and gay marriage in the church (though the latter is currently less pressing, since as noted, Filipino law does not allow for gay marriage). Nevertheless, Filipino colleagues have suggested that the division of opinion is perhaps somewhere in the 70/30 to 60/40 range of opposed/affirming.

What is just as important to note is that, whatever the exact percentage of opinions in various camps, this issue is not as salient in the Philippines as it is in the United States. In the United States, views on homosexuality are a litmus test in the culture wars and theological wars in the UMC. In the Philippines, this issue is one among many issues facing the church and the culture. It is not the most pressing, and it does not serve as a proxy for people's views on other political, social, and theological issues in the same way that it does in the US.

Moreover, given the denomination's role in Filipino society and overall Filipino views on sexuality, there are good reasons for even those opposed to homosexuality in the UMC in the Philippines to not make this opposition a central issue for the church. Minority religious groups in general pick and choose carefully what issues they want to challenge society on. Currently, the UMC is trying to challenge the Filipino government on a variety of other issues - extra-judicial killings and indigenous rights among them. Challenging prevailing social norms could reduce the support they need from people outside the UMC to make traction with the government on these other issues.

None of this is predicative of what Filipino delegates will do when they are in the global United Methodist context of General Conference 2019. As two recent UMNS stories ([1] and [2]) make clear, there are Filipino United Methodists supportive of the One Church Plan, and there are those supportive of the Traditional Plan. This is, however, a reminder to see all people and regions in the connection as complex, with a variety of objectives and views that cannot be quickly reduced to the objectives and views that people in our own contexts hold.

Missional Ecclesiology: Engaging the Commission on a Way Forward on mission

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 mentioned in a post last week, I had the honor of being asked by the Commission on a Way Forward to assist them in developing a document on mission to guide their thinking and discernment in their work. To help readers engage in conversation about the Commission’s work around the issue of mission, I want to provide some reflections on my role in the development of their “Missional Framework.” In so doing, I will not speak about how the Commission members used and refined my contribution (most of which I do not know) but rather about the work I shared with them and what my intentions were in crafting it in the way I did. This post will be the first of several on this topic.

Late last year, I received an invitation to submit a document on “missional ecclesiology” to the Commission. I believe I was chosen for this assignment because of my role as Director of Mission Theology for Global Ministries. By the term “missional ecclesiology,” I assumed that the Commission was looking for a document that would comment theologically on mission but would also connect those comments in some way to reflections on the church (hence “ecclesiology”). Thus, in writing the document, I attempted to do three things:

My first objective was to share key highlights of ecumenical thinking about mission from the past half century. The document I prepared for the Commission contained a set of “affirmations” about mission that I sought to craft to reflect not my own personal thoughts about mission but rather important pieces of consensus on mission among United Methodists and others reached over the last half century. That is why I chose the term “affirmations.” These points are not doctrine, but they are widely affirmed by people other than just me. I am sure every missiologist would have her or his own list of most important insights, but I choose particular ones I felt most significant and most relevant to the task at hand.

My second objective was to give a description of the key ecclesiastical practices that have defined Methodism broadly over its history. 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. That was perhaps a lacuna, but I preferred to let Wonder, Love and Praise speak to these issues and instead focus on key attitudes and practices that have given Methodism its distinctive flavor as a Christian tradition, as I felt less attention had been paid to such practices. Again, I called these points “affirmations” to indicate that these are not dogma but are widely adhered to within Methodism. It is worth noting that these attitudes and practices characterize Methodism broadly and not just United Methodism.

My third objective was to describe a set of values or spiritual dispositions that I hope flow from the first two objectives. In this regard, this set of values or attitudes are the pay-off of the document. Presenting the conclusions of my document as a set of values reflects my conviction that the issues facing The United Methodist Church are primarily matters of the heart, not of polity. Hence, I wanted to present attitudes of the heart that would help us live out our calling to mission. In crafting this section of the document, I was trying to be a bit more creative and not merely reflect consensus positions. I did try to draw connections from the first two lists to the list of values to show how I saw these values as logically related to the widely-held affirmations from the first two lists.

It is important to note that at the point at which I wrote the document, the Commission had released its midpoint update with thumbnail sketches of what became the three proposals now being sent to General Conference 2019. I did not consider it my job to comment on the merits of these three proposals, but rather to offer theological reflections on mission, which the Commission could use in their on-going discernment. Therefore, the documents were intended to be neutral regarding the main questions regarding sexuality and polity with which the Commission was grappling.

I completed an initial version of the document, which was about 2900 words. I was then asked to revise it down to 700 words. That was difficult for me, and I had to cut out a good deal, some of which I regret not leaving in. I delivered the 700-word version to the Commission (with a link to the longer version that I wasn’t able to let go of!), and they further revised this version to produce their own Missional Framework.

This project was undertaken in a lot of prayer, more than the amount of prayer I have used in any other professional undertaking. Nevertheless, I do not pretend to have accomplished any of my objectives perfectly, and I’m sure others would have taken a different approach than I did and set up different objectives for themselves. Moreover, as an individual, I could offer my gift to the Church, but it required the work of the Commission as a whole to discern how to transform my gift into something that reflected the Church more broadly. Having shared that gift with the Commission, I share it now with you readers, hoping it will spark more conversations about mission in The United Methodist Church.

Recommended Readings: Global Young People's Convocation 2018

The Global Young People's Convocation took place July 18-22 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Here are a variety of stories and videos related to that church-wide gathering of United Methodist youth and young adults.

Press release about GYPC before its start
UMNS summary of the event after its conclusion
UMNS article about translators at the event
Video summaries of Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 of the event
Blogs posts from Johnston Taylor of Susquehanna AC about the event
Articles about young adults from South Carolina and Michigan who participated

Since this event was a gathering of young people, more information, images, and videos about the event can be found by searching #GYPC2018 on social media.

The Connectional Conference Plan and the Scope of the Commission on a Way Forward

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 United Methodists look to the called General Conference in February of next year, supporters are lining up behind both the One Church Plan and the Traditionalist Plan. A third plan put forward by the Commission on a Way Forward, the Connectional Conference Plan, does not seem to have a constituency advocating for it.

The conventional wisdom is that the Connectional Conference Plan is a non-starter because it would require constitutional amendments to pass. Prognosticators are not optimistic about GC2019's ability to pass constitutional amendments, which require a 2/3rds supermajority to approve. Moreover, even if approved by GC2019, such amendments would then require 2/3rds of all aggregate votes at annual conferences to become church law. The plan thus faces two high hurdles.

Whether or not that analysis is true, it is unfortunate that the Connectional Conference Plan will largely be dismissed out of hand. There are elements of the plan that raise important questions that can foster conversations from which it might be possible to learn as a denomination.

The Connectional Conference Plan, more than the other two plans, rather than trying to solve the debate about gay ordination and marriage in one direction or another, uses that debate to ask fundamental questions about central aspects of Methodism such as connectionalism, conferencing, episcopacy, itineracy, and mission. Whether or not you agree with the answers provided by the Connectional Conference Plan, these are important questions worth raising. The Connectional Conference Plan raises these questions because it proposes to make substantial changes that touch upon all of these aspects of Methodism. That's why it would require constitutional changes.

By contrast, the other two plans seek to make less significant changes to United Methodist polity. The One Church Plan probably makes the fewest changes, removing existing prohibitions against gay marriage and ordination and inserting safeguards for those who do not want to be part of either. The Traditionalist Plan make somewhat more changes, by adding new systems of accountability to United Methodism, but otherwise does not change existing structures.

The Connectional Conference Plan, however, separates at least the U.S. portion of The United Methodist Church into three theologically defined Connectional Conferences with differing positions on sexuality. It also converts all Central Conferences into Connectional Conferences and allows Connectional Conferences to "opt-in" to some current boards and agencies. It thus changes the meaning of connectionalism, how conferencing works, and what sorts of decisions are made at which levels of conference. It limits episcopal itineracy within the Connectional Conferences and establishes rules about clergy itineracy between Connectional Conferences. It offers a missional rationale for this separation and contain explicit references to the church's work in overcoming sexism and racism. Thus, while it may or may not provide the right answers, the Connectional Conference does raise questions about how United Methodists should understand connectionalism, conferencing, episcopacy, itineracy, and mission in the future.

In so doing, the Connectional Conference Plan may go a bit beyond the Mission of the Commission on a Way Forward, depending on how narrowly one construes that mission. The mission mentions "exploring the potential future(s) of our denomination in light of General Conference and subsequent annual, jurisdictional and central conference actions." One could see this mission as only about resolving the debate about gay ordination and marriage. If so, then the Connectional Conference Plan starts with that debate, but certainly is not the simplest way to resolve that debate. Yet if one sees the "light of General Conference and subsequent annual, jurisdictional and central conference actions" as illuminating issues other than the debate about sexuality, then perhaps the Connectional Conference Plan seems more in keeping with the mission. The conversation with the Commission about this plan (in the Commission Report) makes it clear that while the plan attempts to manage the sexuality debate, it also seeks to accomplish additional objectives related to what its designers see as important changes for the future of the denomination.

The Connectional Conference Plan does seem to be the plan that most fully lives out the Commission's scope, however. That scope states, in part, "Therefore, we should consider new ways of being in relationship across cultures and jurisdictions, in understandings of episcopacy, in contextual definitions of autonomy for annual conferences, and in the design and purpose of the apportionment. In reflection on the two matters of unity and human sexuality, we will fulfill our directive by considering “new forms and structures” of relationship and through the “complete examination and possible revision” of relevant paragraphs in the Book of Discipline." The Connectional Conference Plan does all these - it suggests new forms of relationship (connectionalism and conferencing), understandings of episcopacy, etc.

Again, the Connectional Conference Plan may or may not contain the best answers to these various questions. But, given the (admittedly large) assumption that General Conference 2019 is able to provide some sort of resolution to the current debates on sexuality in the denomination, the Connectional Conference does point us in the direction of the next set of questions we need to be asking ourselves as we discern together how to be a people called Methodist in the present age.

Robert Hunt: The Connection Between Text and Context, Part 3

Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director of the Center for Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology. It is the third of a three-part series on contextualization. Here are the first and the second parts of that series.

As the Church carries on its mission in a multi-cultural world, it is critical to understand what it has learned from its engagement with the Word about that world.

In the Bible human history begins with a generic human, Adam. This human is first separated into male and female, and then over endless generations into families, clans, tribes, and ethnic nations. Thousands of new peoples and cultures come into being, and notably God is with each, guiding its history. (Amos 9:7)

Part of the story of the generic human is the introduction of sin into human life. As a result, the story isn’t just about a happily growing diversity of cultures spreading away from Eden. It is also about how humans move further and further from what God intends for them.

What the story doesn’t tell us is how the sin which entered Adam’s life (Genesis 3) is perpetuated in the lives of Adam’s descendants. All we know is that is it ubiquitous, reappearing in every people and culture and manifesting itself in behavior characterized as “unrighteous.” So one thing we know about the world we inhabit is that it is a realm in which sin is present.

The Bible also tells a story about differentiation and diversity. God’s fundamental command to Adam, reiterated to Noah, is “be fruitful and multiply and cover the face of the earth.” As humans are fruitful they quickly diversify, stopping only once (at Babel) to try consolidate themselves before God blows that plan apart and essentially forces them to spread and thus diversify.

After the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 the Old Testament increasingly focuses on the life of Israel as a community knowing God, beginning with Abraham and moving forward in narrowing circles to the original tribes from which the ethnic nation of Israel traced its descent. This focus on Israel is hardly surprising since the Israelites wrote the Old Testament. Naturally it is all about them and their special covenant with God.

But the story offers plenty of evidence that it isn’t the only story about God accompanying humanity, with Amos 9 being notable as well as Isaiah 19:19-23. Psalm 87:5 and many passages in Isaiah create a fascinating narrative arch, in which Zion becomes not only the final destination of all human nations but also somehow retrospectively their birthplace as well, the urquelle of their peoplehood. There are many human communities that know God, because despite sin (which in any case is found in both Israel and the Church) God is involved in every human society.

This story of finding God’s self-revelation among the nations, and indeed righteousness among the nations is continued in the story of Jesus, whom the gospels depict as continually coming into contact with God’s work outside of Israel. And this is ratified by Peter’s vision in Acts and the subsequent conversion of the gentiles to Christ. Those visions in Isaiah and the Psalms suddenly become much less eschatological dreams and far more a historical movement of discovery of God among the nations embodied in the Church.

Unfortunately, and I’ve documented much of this in my The Gospel Among the Nations: A Documentary History of Inculturation, the Church, imbued with the Roman exceptionalism that was part of its earliest cultural context, struggled to see God at work among the “barbarians” and “heathen” encountered on the edges of the empire. It was a struggle that continues to this day, now articulated in terms of the newly invented word “culture.” The concept of culture gives us the ability to talk about “inculturation” as a way of doing mission (a term which I and other missiologists have tended to use anachronistically.) It also gives us the ability to dismiss non-Christian cultures as lazy, ignorant, sinful, totalitarian, and so on. And unfortunately it can mislead us into believing that there is some divine “text” that can be separated from its cultural context, and that this cultural context can somehow be differentiated from its human community; a true distinction without a difference.

The concept of culture can become particularly problematic when we speak of “the gospel and culture." We mistakenly assume, as I suggest in Part 1, that these are two distinct things; the first needing to be expressed in terms comprehensible to the second. It is far more accurate to understand that the Church in its ongoing life in mission with God’s Word continually enters into dialogue with other bodies of human beings who have likewise been engaged in a life with God. The Church engaged with the Word enters into dialogue with others whose societies are also engaged with God in different ways. And this means that each has the possibility of learning things about God that it did not know. And of course each has the responsibility of questioning and rejecting so-called knowledge of God contradictory to its own ongoing encounter with the Divine.

Put in other words, “inculturation” isn’t planting the gospel in another culture, nor is it clothing the gospel in another culture. Inculturation is the emergence of new expressions of the Church's engagement with the Word arising out of the ongoing life of the church in mission.

One should not imagine that these new expressions are limited to matters of music, dress, language, and so on found in worship. They may be, as we find in Anselm’s doctrine of the atonement, a new way of speaking about Christ’s work on the Cross that couldn’t be conceptualized within the limitations of Greek and Roman culture.

Or they may be, as found in modern political theologies and the understanding of the equality of men and women, new ways of knowing what it means to be a human in society that couldn’t be conceptualized in the pre-modern culture of European Christendom. The United Methodist Social Principles Creed, for example, arises of the Methodist church engaged with God’s word in ongoing dialogue within modern societies, and it reaches conclusions impossible in European and American Christianity only a few hundred years earlier.

What makes this process of dialogue between the Church and the societies (and thus cultures) it encounters in mission both challenging and troubling is that our inner life of encounter with God’s Word can never give us complete confidence in our grasp of who God is and what God wants of us. At the same time God’s life with societies outside the church means we can never dismiss out of hand their insights into God’s righteousness. We may not always be right, and they may know things we don’t know. Thus, our only confidence, given the limits of our humanity and the ubiquity of sin, is confidence in God’s grace and forgiveness in Christ.

That is why we begin our worship with confession, placing ourselves in the context of our limited grasp of God’s righteousness and our ability to enact it. It is only after confession and absolution that we can meaningfully speak the words, “And now with the confidence of children of God. . .”

For many Christians, faced with the assaults of a contemporary society that denies God and worships its own self-sufficiency, engaging in dialogue within this sometimes-hostile culture is psychologically impossible. Being the Church engaged with the knowing of God outside the church is too difficult, too threatening, too complex. They are not prepared to open themselves to the possibilities that even an apparently hostile culture is a realm in which God’s Word is at work.

And that is okay. CS Lewis in his letters to Malcom on prayer noted that we are not all called to the front lines. There is a place for the keepers of the flame just as there is a place for those who bear it into the tempest to seek out the lost. There is a place for those who keep a warm hearth and welcome the refugees from modernity, as there is a place for those looking for new outcroppings of solid rock on which to build new houses of God. And for all there is the Word of God, abiding outside our doors even when we cannot recognize it.

Which means, and this is good news, that it is also abides within the Church even when we cannot see it within ourselves.

Recommended Reading: Commission on a Way Forward Theological and Missional Frameworks

The inadvertent release last week of the report and associated proposed legislation for General Conference 2019 from the Commission on a Way Forward has gotten a lot of attention. Most of this attention has been focused on the details of the three legislative proposals - the One Church, Connectional Conference, and Traditional Plans.

Yet also included in the Commission's report are two short documents worth reading on their own right: the Theological Framework and the Missional Framework developed by the Commission. These two pieces can be found on p. 7-10 of the Commission's report, which is p. 138-141 of the released PDF.

Gil Rendle, the consultant who facilitated the Commission's work, referred to these two pieces as "the two most important parts of the work [the Commission has] done," just not "the pressing issue." (You can see his remarks starting at 2:50 of this video of his overview of the Commission's work.) While none of the various legislative plans were endorsed by the Commission as a whole, these two theological pieces were affirmed by the entire Commission, further indicating their significance.

I have a personal interest in the reception of these pieces, as I had the honor of assisting the Commission in developing the Missional Framework. (Members of the Committee on Faith and Order consulted on the Theological Framework.) Yet beyond my personal involvement, I hope these two pieces can spark conversations about The United Methodist Church's theology and mission that go beyond the work of the Commission and the issue it was formed to address.

We in the UMC have a habit of taking all conversations and turning them into conversations about sex. It is my prayer that we will be able to do the reverse as well - take a conversation about sex and turn it into a conversation about something else - theology and mission.