Reports from Haiti indicated that three staff members of the General Board of Global Ministries have been found and are alive after 55 hours in the rubble of the Hotel Montana in Haiti. Sam Dixon, head of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), Clint Rabb, leader of the mission volunteer office, and James Gulley, an UMCOR consultant were among a group of persons found on the evening of January 14. They were in Haiti to extend health ministries when the earthquake struck on January 12.
—United Methodist News Service

There isn’t a lot of good news out of Haiti, but it is good to know that the leaders of UMCOR have made it out alive and we pray for their quick recovery.

Click here to make donations to UMCOR to help with relief efforts in Haiti

Our friend John Meunier has written an excellent post thinking about the Social Principles as doctrinal statements:

Maybe you disagree with these positions. Maybe you think the church should not engage in such advocacy of social engineering. Well, I’m sorry to say, the Book of Discipline has an answer for that, too.

We proclaim no personal gospel that fails to express itself in relevant social concerns; we proclaim no social gospel that does not include the personal transformation of sinners.

It is our conviction that the good news of the Kingdom must judge, redeem, and reform the sinful social structures of our tme. (Paragraph 101)

In other words, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church has made it a matter of church law that we engage with big social issues. That obviously does not require that every individual Christian and pastor do so – some are gifted for different ministries – but the UMC rejects categorically the idea that it leave government stuff to governments.

What do you think? Should the Social Principles be seen as doctrine? How do you approach these in your congregation — boldly as prophetic proclamations of God’s passion for justice, or with fear and trepidation, knowing that they can quickly get you in trouble with folks in your congregation? What difference does it make to see these statements as doctrine as opposed to a loose guide to ethics?

I recently conducted a workshop entitled “Technology in the Pulpit”.  It was designed to explore many of the ways that computers and its attending technology can be used not only in the pulpit but in other ways to facilitate evangelism and the work of the church.  This include exploring how to become a blogger.

For me, it was an interesting time because it allowed me to do what I am supposed to be doing, teaching, and in an area that I have explored since it became part of the educational and religious landscapes some twenty years ago.

More importantly, the two “graduates” of the workshop are now bloggers in their own right and a part of the Methodist Blogging community.  They are

1. The Odd Thought, and
2. Living Water

Please visit their sites and help welcome them to the neighborhood.

Due to repeated comment spam attacks, we will no longer be accepting comments from non-registered users. Please create an account on this site in order to leave your comments. 

Every year around this time United Methodist pastor's find themselves locked in the horns of a dilemma. It's Charge Conference season and those of us who sit in the congregational oversight seat are faced "auditing" the membership rolls, which includes the possibility of removing inactive persons from church membership, known lovingly at "purging the rolls." It's a tough decision, for on the one hand one wants to help a congregation be honest about those who are truly committed to life together in that place, but on the other hand we don't want to suggest that all hope is lost, and admit that these folks who haven't been in worship for ten years are likely never coming back. In addition to those questions there is always the institutional reality that membership decline doesn't look good on the year end reports, and there is really no particular gain in removing folks from the rolls in most Annual Conferences that don't base apportionments on membership statistics. 

This is one of those ethical dilemmas that call into question pastoral, congregational, and institutional honesty. The fact is, as we all know, there are folks who have simply moved on, and have no intention of moving their membership anywhere else, especially since concepts like "membership" seem to mean less and less. There are also folks who want their names to remain on the roll for all sorts of strange reasons, such as access to the cemetery plots or out of nostalgia, even though they and we know that they will never again be likely to be part of the gathered community, especially when they live many states away. At what point should we acknowledge in a formal way that these folks aren't a part of the community, especially in a system that rewards the dishonesty of padding the rolls, making our churches often seem much better off than they actually are?

The congregation that I serve has had to wrestle with that. At the height of their success in the late eighties and early nineties, they had reached well over 500 members on the rolls (and approaching 300 in worship). However after an unsuccessful pastoral appointment and a great deal of infighting well over half of that membership had moved on to other places, and worship attendance had declined by 120 persons each week. My predecessor, recognizing that he was nearing retirement, decided that honesty was the best policy, and decided to help make the rolls accurate. He started the process the year before his retirement, so when my first charge conference rolled around we removed 180 names from our rolls. What this meant was that rather than having 30% participation of members in worship, we went to having some 70% of members present on any given Sunday. 

I share all this for a rather strange reason. Over the years we have had many folks submit their blogs to the MethoBlog for inclusion. But as I look over our "rolls," I find many blogs that have had no posts in at least the last four weeks, and most likely even longer than that. On the one hand these blogs don't cost us anything in terms of bandwidth or disk space, but continuing to list them does make wading through menus and blog roll much longer. So I am trying to decided whether it is time to have our own MethoBlog "purge" here and remove some of those who aren't regularly (at least once every 8 weeks) posting. 

What do you think? It is time for a MethoPurge, or do you like seeing those names on the right even if they don't lead anywhere?

Without saying “We could use someone like him,” how would you convince an innovative creative and entrepreneurial person that United Methodism was a good match their personality type? Or is it more accurate to say that the UMC is a great denomination for those of a certain mindset, just not someone with those traits? Do hierarchies inevitably squelch creativity? Is the kind of innovation and creativity that works and is needed in our churches compatible with the UMC structure? For those of you in other denominations, is it compatible with your structure?

Creatio Ex Nihilo: Can You Convince This Guy to Become Methodist?.

What do you think MethoBloggers? How would you answer Don’s question?

Help out the UMPH by giving them a sense of the mobile apps you use. Please complete the poll below:

http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2009522/

Dan Dick’s post today, “Caught on the Horns of an Ethical Dilemma,” shares a troubling conversation that Dan had with several pastors at the recent School for Congregational Development. The article talks about the ease with which these pastors believed that lying was an acceptable ministerial practice in the right circumstances. This was not only about maintaining confidentialities, but also such things as soft peddling difficult questions of theology and faith.

He writes:

These are just some of the topics we discussed and the reasons given to defend pastoral lying.  Yet, to me the whole discussion is a bit surreal.  What happened to let your “yes” be “yes,” and your “no” be “no?”  What happened to speaking the truth in love?  What happened to just about everything Jesus and Paul ever said?  When did lying become a spiritual gift?  Like Jesus before Pilate, the question is raised once more, “What is truth?”  Certainly there are times for discretion.  Truly, there are sensitive issues.  Indeed, we need confidentiality.  But none of these demands that we lie.

Take a minute to read Dan’s full post and then let us know what you think about Dan’s points. Are there times when not telling the truth is acceptable in ministerial practice? What do we gain or lose if this is the norm for Christian life? Is the unwillingness to tell the truth part of what is driving persons away from the church in general?

“Wesley believed in a form of social networking before there was new media,” said Rev. Larry Hollon, the general secretary of communications for the United Methodist Church. “He’d have small groups meeting face to face, studying the Bible, interacting with each other and studying with each other. His understanding of networking, applying his concern for individual support and sustainability, makes him very relevant.”

The Wesleyan world of social networking | Shift.

What do you think? Was Wesley ahead of his time in networking, or is this simply an chance to spin Wesley in a new way?

With the $20 million the UMC invested in this effort, I'm kind of surprised that it didn't include some kind of copyright protection for the slogan. But, then again, it's more than just the United Methodist type of Church that needs to be rethought, isn't it? And if it reaches new people (or, in this case, people who have been involved previously and drifted away), it's definitely worth considering, regardless of which organization is behind the effort.

United Methodist Reporter Blog: Rethink trademarking?.