A few years ago a member of the church I serve taught me about the importance of choosing the correct conjunction. One example: If my child gets upset after I correct her misbehavior I could say, "I love you but I want you to do the right thing." All she will hear is "I want you to do the right thing." The word "but" negates the first half of the sentence even if that is not what the speaker intends. If, instead, I say "I love you and I want you to do the right thing" then she will hear two equal statements. I love her. I want her to do the right thing. The word choice is subtle. The difference is huge.
I think some people are not able to support the One Church Plan because of a missing And. They hear "I may disagree with you but we can stay in the same church."
What I hope everyone can hear is "I may disagree with you and we can stay in the same church."
"I may disagree with you but..." sounds like a negation of your opinion. I'm right, you're wrong, but you can still stay in the church with me. It reminds me of my first seminary class. After a sentence that used "God" 6 times instead of any pronouns was lifted up as an example of good inclusive language I revolted - it may have been good inclusive language but it was poor writing. That evening a well-meaning student said to me, "That's OK, you just aren't there yet. But you'll get there." I didn't want to "get there!" I wanted to stay right where I was! Who was he to tell me that I needed to change?
The alternative, and as a "progressive compatibilist" what I would argue for, is "I may disagree with you AND..." I believe in full LGBTQ inclusion. And I can live in a church with people who disagree with me. And I can live in a church where those who disagree with me may never change their minds.
The question before us as United Methodists is not whether or not we agree or disagree on "the practice of homosexuality." We already know the answer to that. Using General Conference votes as a guide, about 40% of us believe homosexuality is compatible with Christian teaching and about 60% of us don't. In the United States the percentages are probably flipped - 60% approve and 40% disapprove. That's not what we will be voting on in February. We'll be voting on which conjunction we choose to use.
Choosing to live with an AND means choosing to live with some tension. We need to be OK with that. We live in a world of tension. AND tension is part of our faith tradition. At the much discussed Council of Jerusalem we were given an AND. James' word to Paul was "You do your thing AND we will do ours." We don't see the Jerusalem Church suddenly stopping the practice of circumcision. They continued their practice AND they allowed Paul to continue his. I'm quite confident some tension remained.
Here in Kansas most of our churches are AND churches. We disagree about all kinds of stuff. Politically we are labeled a red state but we're really more of a deep purple. There is a clear Republican majority but I would guess 95% of United Methodist churches have at least a few Democrats. Kansas has had one President - Republican Dwight Eisenhower - under whom the highest tax bracket was 90%. That's purple. Spiritually, most of the churches I have served have been, on the whole, conservative. But I can name conversations in each of those places with people who have said "I know what our official teaching is on human sexuality but I don't know if I agree with it."
What I most appreciate about the One Church Plan is that it sounds like it came from Kansas. In fact it is similar to legislation the Great Plains Conference sent to General Conference in 2016. We disagree with each other AND we know how to live with each other in the midst of disagreements. We do it every day. Maybe that's why a reported 100 people attended a WCA organizational meeting advertised throughout Kansas and Nebraska not to long ago while at a church in the same town just a few weeks later about 80 people gathered, mostly from that church alone, to hear about the One Church Plan. Do we all agree? Absolutely not. AND that's OK. We're still going to do church together. We're still going to do life together. We're still going to do faith together. That's what we do. We're the Body of Christ. We don't let disagreements stop us.
You may agree with me, you may disagree with me, either way I hope you AND I can stay united.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Monday, October 1, 2018
A Plea from a Pastor
Dear friends in the pews,
Yesterday, in a church that is widely considered one of the most "liberal" United Methodist churches in the state, we did an exercise intended to point out the discrepancy between what men and women think about regarding sexual assault. By a show of hands, we saw that this is something the majority of women think about regularly while very few men do. It was just a one question survey - "Have you ever felt the need to prepare for the possibility of being sexually assaulted?" After one worship service a person, it happened to be a woman, said something like "Your bias showed through. You should have also asked if anyone has ever been scared that they would be falsely accused of sexual assault."
One state south of me, another United Methodist preacher used a story in worship that (full disclosure) I would never have used and probably wasn't fully thought out. Another person, also happened to be a woman, walked out five minutes into the sermon and missed that the message was not intended to be about politics, but about reconciliation.
I don't blame the pastors; I don't blame the people. Words that a distant two years ago would have been seen as docile now cause people to leave churches - I know, because two years ago that happened to me as well. Pastors are told to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." We are in a time when everybody feels afflicted. The pastor now must choose between afflicting some of the afflicted more or just ignoring what lies outside the stained glass.
I share with new pastors that there are three sermons every Sunday. One is the sermon that you write. The second is the words you say (hopefully you aren't reading word for word from the manuscript!). The third is the sermon that people hear. The listener brings all their stuff to the sermon process. If the congregation I serve is a typical gathering of people, yesterday my message was heard by someone who is recovering from abuse, someone who is currently being abused, someone who has been an abuser, someone who is an abuser, someone who has been and/or is being abused and is in denial, someone who has a relative living in danger...the list goes on. Every one of these people heard what I said in a different way. It is not possible for the same sermon that I wrote or that I spoke to be heard in the same way by that variety of people. It's not that one person hear it "right" and another heard it "wrong." They simply heard it "different," and at least in some cases differently than I intended. It's nobody's fault - not mine, not the woman who spoke to me yesterday, not the pastor in Oklahoma or the person who spoke to him.
I've been preaching pretty much every Sunday for 19 years. Never in that time have I chosen my words more carefully and never in that time have I regularly felt like I ended up choosing the wrong words.
So, as a pastor, on behalf of your pastor, please understand the bind that we are in right now. When we say something that hurts please let us know. Say something afterwards like "I don't think this is what you intended, but when you said X I heard Y". Please don't ignore what hurt you - we need to know when our words aren't helpful - and at the same time please know we really truly are doing our best.
1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that love is patient and kind and rejoices in the truth. May we be patient and kind with one another while also speaking the truth to and with one another in love.
Peace,
David
Yesterday, in a church that is widely considered one of the most "liberal" United Methodist churches in the state, we did an exercise intended to point out the discrepancy between what men and women think about regarding sexual assault. By a show of hands, we saw that this is something the majority of women think about regularly while very few men do. It was just a one question survey - "Have you ever felt the need to prepare for the possibility of being sexually assaulted?" After one worship service a person, it happened to be a woman, said something like "Your bias showed through. You should have also asked if anyone has ever been scared that they would be falsely accused of sexual assault."
One state south of me, another United Methodist preacher used a story in worship that (full disclosure) I would never have used and probably wasn't fully thought out. Another person, also happened to be a woman, walked out five minutes into the sermon and missed that the message was not intended to be about politics, but about reconciliation.
I don't blame the pastors; I don't blame the people. Words that a distant two years ago would have been seen as docile now cause people to leave churches - I know, because two years ago that happened to me as well. Pastors are told to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." We are in a time when everybody feels afflicted. The pastor now must choose between afflicting some of the afflicted more or just ignoring what lies outside the stained glass.
I share with new pastors that there are three sermons every Sunday. One is the sermon that you write. The second is the words you say (hopefully you aren't reading word for word from the manuscript!). The third is the sermon that people hear. The listener brings all their stuff to the sermon process. If the congregation I serve is a typical gathering of people, yesterday my message was heard by someone who is recovering from abuse, someone who is currently being abused, someone who has been an abuser, someone who is an abuser, someone who has been and/or is being abused and is in denial, someone who has a relative living in danger...the list goes on. Every one of these people heard what I said in a different way. It is not possible for the same sermon that I wrote or that I spoke to be heard in the same way by that variety of people. It's not that one person hear it "right" and another heard it "wrong." They simply heard it "different," and at least in some cases differently than I intended. It's nobody's fault - not mine, not the woman who spoke to me yesterday, not the pastor in Oklahoma or the person who spoke to him.
I've been preaching pretty much every Sunday for 19 years. Never in that time have I chosen my words more carefully and never in that time have I regularly felt like I ended up choosing the wrong words.
So, as a pastor, on behalf of your pastor, please understand the bind that we are in right now. When we say something that hurts please let us know. Say something afterwards like "I don't think this is what you intended, but when you said X I heard Y". Please don't ignore what hurt you - we need to know when our words aren't helpful - and at the same time please know we really truly are doing our best.
1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that love is patient and kind and rejoices in the truth. May we be patient and kind with one another while also speaking the truth to and with one another in love.
Peace,
David
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