Part 2
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The basics:
• Everyone desires relationship and community (Family)
• Everyone has the potential to live a transformed life.
• Everyone can be sensitive to God’s leading and desire for his creation (including other humans)
• People have started appreciating discussion, over lecture. (most don’t wrestle with lecture anymore, we must allow opportunities to wrestle with the bible and God.
* Everyone desires Hope for THIS life, as well as, in the future (Read N.T. Wright’s Book , Surprised by Hope)
Must stop being Pastor centric, and community centric. (priesthood of all believers, and maybe a few that might not beleive
How to add to or transform the UMC?
*Food
*food
*Food
&
* Love
*Love
*Love
Food=discussion
discussion = relationship
relationship = community
community = kingdom living
now in the polity, we need to make room for Clergy to:
*not be itinerate (sp?) (Not to buck the system or hate the current polity, but to actually fall in love and be effective at ministering to those in their community.)
*not be forced into health plans (We care about the large church and the older pastor, of course, but to just keep the young clergy a part of the UMC health care plan to keep the costs down is ridiculous! We can go find out own jobs and this would be much better stewards for the kingdom when it comes to $)
*allowed to get another job in the communities that they live (Not because we think we would be more effective in ministry as a lay person, but because God is calling us to be a part of the community for the sole purpose of developing relationships that will not allow you to be family unless your in it for the long haul… To truly be a part of the community, allow us to move into the “wrong side of the tracks” for the purpose of bringing the Kingdom into being” and they will see through anything else)
*Maybe a few options for younger clergy in the current UMC polity: lay minister (no one knows what this is, so lets just define it to fit the Emerging passions of clergy) Deacons, are perfect for this opportunity!!!! But we need to allow for these things to occur for Elders as well, because God calls us to the sacraments and for D. mins., so the Polity must make room (not to be thrown away or ignored, but to make room for this expression of Emerging Living, or young clergy will continue to leave the ministry, denomination, etc..)
* count differently
1. Not conversions BUT yes to conversations (a focus not on professions of faith (ultimately no know knows when someone has a relationship with Christ, they can have the right words, and actions, but it is relationship (I know several people who are married they say they are married, they live like they are, they even have rings to show that they are, but they are ultimately not ins relationship)…. Relationships… must be the key, and
2. we need to start counting how they are passionately living to transform their communities to bring hope, and life to those that are poor and poor in Spirit! Count those that Praxis new Kingdom living in the very communities that they are living in, and have a passionate love for!
3. Kingdom and people centered not pastor centered!!!
*Encourage young clergy and emerging clergy to be sacrificial and actually live like they serve a crucified God, put up with those that force them to look and act like the older expressions of the UMC.
*We need to stop looking at demographics and start looking for people…. Stop putting God in a box, and start looking for God in others… and that goes beyond district and conference lines BTW. If our focus is not on numbers that represent people, but relationships that represent people!!!!
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OK, that ends my rant and thoughts.. they are not complete and they are not thought out… so this desperately needs discussion! Please know that this is not necessarily a reaction to the frustrations I and others have felt currently, but said and offered for the purpose of bring transformation, reformation, and hope into the future and present of the Kingdom of Christ.
Well, I am @ The Emerging Church for the Existing Church Conference here in Denver right now. Gary (the “Sr. Pastor” @ Florence the support church for Th3 Waters) and we are speaking about how we are living out an example of an Emerging Church can be found within the UMC…. We have found a few loop holes to make it happen, but we must be living this out in this community, because God has called to to this time for such a time as this!!! So anyway, right before Gary and I led the discussion yesterday, I realized that I would need to speak about the UMc as a whole and the place of Emerging in it. And I actually was going to just say the same thing I said @ a previous discussion we did on Young Adults… so I immediatly sat down and just started writting….. I realized I was getting passionate and just had to write down a few othe the things that need to be molded in the UMC to allow this ancient/future way of living to happen in the UMC and especially with the polity of the UMC.. so here is my stream of conscience writting on the topic, and I pray that this will just start a discussion!
(if yallo would like the thoughts I have on Young Adults and ministry to them just let me know.. I can put that up as well. but here are the thoughts I jotted down:
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I wanted to see if family (in its healthiest sense) could actually occur like it seemed to occur like it looked like it did with Christ, when he told those that his Mother and brothers were right there and not outside!!
Only place I saw it happening in our world today that included true life transformation was AA!!!
And so, I am passionate for community. And I mean authentic community, and I define authentic community as Family. (Real Family, I am talkling that you get support because people really love you, if there is a death we are ther for each other, if there is financial problems we attempt to help out anyway we can…. offer a room in your house until people get back on their feet, babysit babies so that parents can have a date night to save marriages, help people study for classes, What ever it is, this is what family looks like and we live like!
We decided that “church”; the term, was so stale and filled with so much baggage that it was actually becoming a hindrance to forming relationships with those outside the UMC/church walls. How can the world be our parish if we are not even in it, have no idea how to talk to it to relate to it, all for the purpose of loving it and building relationshipw ith it???!!!!!
We must stop thinking demographics, and start thinking relationships.
(most annual conference church planting entities are all demographics in thier minset…and I was born for relationships, not numbers!
And I come here to say to the UMC, “you are blind” and you have no voice to anyone in the world, because you have no idea how to think and speak in a way that the world would even consider talking to you, much less desire a relationship with you! And we must learn to take the words of Doug and Tony and Lilly, and Karen, but we must be VERY good at translating it for the UMC. And, I must say I am passionate about loving normal people just as much as I am passionate about loving United Methodists. Are you younger Generation clergy and laity? Are you willing to die for your enemies and those that frustrate you? Ar eyou willing to put your fmaily in danger for the gospel? You are willing to move and live on the wrong side of the tracks, but not to eat with the DS’s and bishops, and those that have a voice in your conference all to help build relationships to invite to live into an existence of experimentation and failure?
And I am sick literally sick of hearing the stories like Bob’s daughter, who says (to those who push the polity of the UMC on her instead of encouraging her to find out how she can being Christ in her envisioned way in the current polity of the UMC, but also come alongside her to pave the way for the future of the UMC to actually stay alive and help bring the kingdom here now…not just waiting around for Christ to come back!!!),
“you have got to be joking, but you just laughed at my soul!” And they leave the UMC. But how do we love and build up young clergy that will realize that God is calling for reformation. And I must say that that is a word that I say with fear and trembling. God is changing the face of his people so they look, and smell like Christ.. and Christ smells like prostitutes, and smokers, and hospitals, and crack houses, and Methodists, and Baptists, and young adults, and death and Bishops, and DS’s.
When you choose Christ, you choose a life of pain, hurt, and sacrifice…. And that sacrifice pisses off those that are in leadership, and governments, and polity. It challenges them to be something they have never been, it forces change..and that is VERY hard!!! But, it is through that sacrifice that we find worship, and hope, and joy… not happiness, but joy in the midst of being in relationship with others that smell like those things that I mentioned above.
So, I am tired of young clergy, and young adults leaving the UMC, or the ministry in general), and (there are older adults that are doing this too, but they just leave quietly, the young adults will leave, but will tell you what is up if you ask them.
I have spoke to young adults who’s families and lives and passion for Christ are hurt so much And FRUSTRATIED sooo much, that they stop it. And they think they have had patience enough (1-3 years) so that change should have occurred, but they are dealing with the older generation (who “got to” where they are in the polity, because they have “put their time in” and lived out the patience for 30 years!!!!) (So, we need for the Older generation to accept the apprecition for experimenting in the kingdom and see the younger generation as a peer and not a young whipper snapper. That they and we learn for each other and live in the Kingdom alongside! And for both generations to stop forcing each to look and act like the other, but to loo, act, and smell like Christ… the one we find in the bible not the one that the church has created over the years.)
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Ok part 2: Hope and Change! is coming up… please join the discussion!
