I didn’t think I would do this, but I succumbed and joined twitter. I couldn’t let Dave Warnock and Richard Hall have all the fun. It will help keep up with what’s going on at Conference, as well.

Anyway, if you are the sort that follows people on twitter, and you want to add me, then please go ahead!

twitter.com/RedRoseRevDevl

Today Methodist representatives are gathering from around the United Kingdom in Wolverhampton for the annual Methodist Conference. This is the top legislative body in the Methodist Church. It’s something akin to the UMC’s General Conference except it’s not quite the scale (hence it can meet every year rather than every four as in the UMC).

In addition to the discussion of rules and regulations, there are some of the most moving moments in the life of the church. In particular, reception into full connexion and ordination of presbyters. Also, the induction/installation (there is some question over the right word!) of the new president and vice president of Conference. Yes, Stephen Poxon ends his year as the President in just a couple of days.

With ever increasing use of technology, those unable to make it to Wolverhampton (or like me, not even clear as to where that is) need not feel left out!

• The whole world is going twitter mad, and the Methodist Conference is no different. You can follow them at twitter.com/MethConference
• My blogging friend Dave Warnock at 42 is down there in his caravan and will be blogging and twittering (twitter.com/dave42w) as well. He has already posted one blog that gives a preview of what is to come.
• If reading in 140 characters or Dave’s blogs won’t be enough, you can listen to the debates online here.

Plenty of stuff to keep one occupied for some time!

I have been mulling over a post John Meunier wrote on a talk Adam Hamilton (pastor of the huge Resurection UMC in Kansas) gave at the Indiana Annual Conference (for any British Methodist readers, an Annual Conference is kind of like a District). John gives a short summary of Hamilton’s talk which appears to be a rallying call against the fatalism that runs through the church, even to go so far as to say if God is calling the UMC (or any of its churches) to close, we need to fight God all the way.

I read John’s post within a day or so of standing in front of the Blackburn Circuit meeting requesting permission for one of my churches to close (I posted what I said at the meeting here), so I will apologise to John right off at the start in case I am reading him in a light he didn’t intend. I don’t think I am in a situation where I can fully appreciate what Hamilton said. Regardless, his post has highlighted the struggle I have had to make sense of exactly what I am doing (and will do for the next three months). Whilst I admit that there have been times of doubt over whether or not I should have botherd, I have not doubted that it was the right thing to do.

So here are some questions/thoughts I have toward what a theology of closure of churches would mean:

1. Death and Resurrection: God is indeed a God of new life, but each Holy Week many churches will stress that the only way to Easter is to pass through Good Friday. Yet in the sense I hear it most often, ‘new life’ seems to mean one thing and one thing only – churches shouldn’t close. Can a Good Friday death always be avoided (or should it be)?
2. What does resurrection look like? Buildings are the albatross around the neck of many churches. I had one person in our circuit say about his church, ‘I would love it if the council would come along to buy this church as a community centre and then we could just rent a part when we needed it!’ How would it free up our resources and people to make this kind of break so new life could happen?
3. Following on from that, how did buildings become so entwined with what we mean by church? Maybe this isn’t an American problem, but I find many for whom removal of the building is a removal of the church full stop.
4. Where is the line between ’saving’ the church and ’survival’? Do churches have a full grasp on the difference? Discipleship and evangelism haven’t been categories discussed because we seem to assume a) people will come because the church is there and b) they know what Christianity is about when they walk through the door.
5. What is at stake for the church to ‘fight against God’? What if God is sitting up in his throne room with churches marked with a big X and it is his will that a church close (I doubt this, but I hear a similar scenario  described as going on in Methodist Church House). What does it mean for us to stay open?  What is at stake for us? (position, power, etc.).  What if rather than desperately wanting the Methodist church to stay open, what if God would rather us look more ecumenically?  (Craig Adams reflects a good bit on whether or not God truly wants the UMC to continue.)
6. Role of the Spirit: If my wife or child lay dying in hospital and someone told me that if I had enough faith, God will heal her I would likely hit that person. Other than wackjob fundamentalists, I doubt I would hear that from anyone. Yet, it seems to be OK to say that to the minister of a dying church. I have been told that if I have enough faith in the Spirit, God will bring revival to the church.  Does God’s Spirit work that way?
7. The Parable of the Vine: Is Jesus’ parable about pruning a vine relavent? A friend in another circuit will use this parable a lot when he talks about churches that simply want to exist for themselves on a Sunday morning.

I imagine that Revd. Hamilton and I are in very different situations. A 15,000 member church is a far cry from an 8-church circuit of only 500 (total) that are all in a precarious financial position. Closing a church is difficult, but it doesn’t have to represent failure. When we are determined to think it is a failure when a church that has lived faithfully for years, but can’t find a way to do so with all the situtations around it (or, pershaps, forgotten/never truly knew what faithfulness means), then that seems to be a theology of a ‘God of death’ rather than a ‘God of life’. God will bring us through death, even if he doesn’t save us from it. How this works in the midst of closure and trying to understand where to fit this all in theologically is where I am struggling at the moment.

Yesterday just after lunch, I fell asleep in the chair watching Wimbledon. Savannah shouted out, ‘Daddy’ which almost woke me, but she started talking quietly when she saw I was asleep. I was half aware of Savannah opening the door and going upstairs. In my half-asleep state, I knew I should go and get her.

Then I heard her come down the steps and open the door. She had her blanket and she placed it over my legs.  I heard her whisper something about ‘Baa-Baa’, which is one of her favourite songs.  Instead of singing, I heard her open the door and go upstairs again.

Not long after, I heard her make her way down the steps and open the door. Looking through barely open eyes, I saw that she had ‘Baa-Baa’, her stuffed black sheep that she sometimes sleeps with. She placed Baa-Baa in my lap! She went back to watching CBeebies and sang the songs very quietly.

The whole thing was so cute, I eventually got up and thanked her for taking care of me!

I have hinted (or perhaps explicitly stated – I don’t remember) that one of my churches will be looking at closure. The week after I got back from Israel, we met as a church council at Langho Methodist Church and there voted to close (or ‘cease to worship’) at the building on Whalley Road. The small fellowship wants to continue to meet in some form, so the technical term of ‘cease to worship’ is a very bad one.

The process of closure only takes its first step with the local church council. It must then go on to the circuit meeting and then get final permission from the district synod. Step Two came last night. Here is the proposal as I brought last night. Please pray for the people of Langho Methodist Church

Proposal for Permission for Langho Methodist Church to Cease to Meet on 27 Sept 2009

Blackburn Circuit Meeting, 23 June 2009

2 Timothy 4:6-8; 1 Corinthians 15:58

In the two passages, we encounter Paul toward the end of his life and toward the beginning of his ministry.  In his letter to Timothy, Paul reflects that his time of service for the church on earth nears the end.  He has done what he has been called to do and he passes the baton on to his spiritual son, Timothy.  Today, we at Langho find ourselves in a similar position. Our church dates back 96 years to 1913 and for nearly one hundred years we have served the church and community of Langho.  Through youth work, Sunday School, pre-school, tiddlers-and-tots, coffee mornings, and worship, Langho Methodist Church has served as the light of Christ in the village.  Countless names and faces have passed through the doors – people who may never have been well-known to those outside of the Church or even outside of their own time, but people who have served God and like Paul have ‘finished the race’.

Now, the Methodist Church at Langho have finished their race. Churches are born, they grow, and even die.  Yet, we have a God who can surprises us in raising the dead.  We do not know what this looks like or what form it will take, but we trust in God for whom everyone and all churches matter.

I come to you tonight not to witness to failure of 96 years, but I am a witness to the promise of what Paul tells the Corinthians earlier in his ministry – Langho’s ‘labour is not in vain’.  Because of the resurrection, we have hope that what we do in the name of Christ will not be like a garden planted one day only to be torn out for a shopping centre the next.  The work and the lives of those who laboured will be somehow taken into the work that God has been doing for 2,000 years and will continue.  The work of 96 years continues on, even if not within the building that has served it for those 96 years.

So tonight, I sadly, but yet still in celebration of Langho Methodist Church, bring to you the proposal for permission for Langho Methodist Church to cease to meet as of 27 September 2009.

Ben Simpson is at a Renovaré Conference and is writing up his experiences on Day 1. One of the tasks the speaker asked them to do was write down 10 blessings. Ben challenged his readers to do the same. This seems like a morning I need to do this, so here goes:

1. April
2. Savannah
3. My family (mom, dad, Kelly, and Serenity)
4. The Moores
5. Yvonne, my superintendent
6. The Supportive folk within my churches (present and former)
7. Pendle View Nursery (they LOVE Savannah and take care of her so well)
8. Others who care for Savannah and my family (in particular, Sybil and Helen)
9. My home
10. My ‘blogging friends’

It’s great to know that I could go on and on! Sometimes, I forget how God has shown his love toward me until I write it down.

I encourage you to write down your 10 blessings!

Nick Norelli responded to a meme naming five important books. One of his is the Gospel of Luke because of the influence of the Emmaus story and Jesus’ opening up the scriptures. That got me thinking about the places in the Bible where we are told of conversations, but aren’t given the text of what was said (as opposed to the stories of Jesus and Nicodemus and Jesus and the woman at the well).

So, here is my list of conversations where I wish I had been a ‘fly on the wall’:

1. The Walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35): Would there be anything better than a Bible Study with Jesus in which he goes through the Old Testament and shows where they point to him?
2. Peter and Paul (Galatians 1:18): All it says is that Paul stayed with Peter for 15 days! Two of the New Testament Church’s greatest leaders bunking with each other and we get nothing. Come on, Paul, give us a hint of what you talked about!
3. Jesus and his Disciples (Mark 4:33-34): We are told that Jesus would explain the parables he told to his disciples, and all we get in the gospels is the explanation of one of them (the Sower).
4. Jesus’ Signs After His Resurrection (John 21:25): Not really a conversation. I realise the ‘other things’ would fill up volumes, but I wish he would have given us a few.

Those are the four off the top of my head. Are there any others that you wish you could have overheard?

Yesterday, I lost my wallet. We have searched everywhere to no avail. This morning a steward (who is very supportive of me) picked up Savannah to take her to some kind of child event called ‘Wiggle and Giggle’. I had got an email from another steward that I didn’t understand and this steward who called cleared things up.

Well, it wasn’t exactly information I wanted to hear, but not entirely unexpected. It follows along from the post from earlier this morning (regarding my own bitterness). Churches and ministers tell their own story to make ourselves look good. I have done this certainly, and the church has as well. I am sure the church has cause to be angry with me and I could probably tell them why they should be (the couple of things I picked up on actually have nothing to do with me and are only directed at me because I am the minister).

In these moments, I try to minimise the hurt I will receive and maximise those areas where I have been hurt. So, rather than trying to ‘do something’, I decided stop and pray. I have been using the ‘Jesus Prayer’ lately (well, a little too hit and miss, though) and set the clock for 10 minutes. When finished, I looked up and in a back corner of my desk – not in plain sight at all unless you get down on your knees – was my wallet.

I just began to laugh. I don’t normally see these types of things as being ’sent from God’, and I am not in any suggesting that either God is a) rewarding me for ‘doing good’ or b) telling me that I am ‘in the right’. I took it as a sign of God’s presence with me. And it felt so good to laugh at the whole thing! Even my bitterness and feelings of trying to manage the situation!

For various reasons I have not been blogging for a while. I won’t put my finger on any particular reason at the moment. I have been reflecting ‘off-line’, if you will. But, something that Sally wrote connected with me, and in a sense, with what I have been thinking.  In her beautiful post the need for a vision…, she wrote this:

I am reminded of the story of the river Jordan which flows to first the sea of Galilee which is fertile and filled with fish, and then on to the Dead Sea where it stops because it has no outlet. The Dead Sea is well known for living up to its name! Churches have the capacity to be filled with life, bringing life to the communities around them. They also have the capacity to become places where the flow of Gods blessing is allowed to stop and stagnate, especially when the main concern is for the preservation of the status quo.

She uses this to describe a church council meeting in which she thought of this story that reflected on the church. Reading her post, I doubt many ministers would disagree with this assessment. Churches are looking to find out how to survive rather than how to do ministry. In what would be a caricature of the situation if it wasn’t true, one church who wants  to continue only to have a place on Sunday mornings has demanded to know why they can’t get money from the church (circuit, district, or connexion levels) to keep them open. The church will draw in all in can and, as with Sally’s image of the Dead Sea, there is no outlet and brings death.

I have turned to bitterness in all of this – at my churches, at the circuit, district, and connexion. It hit me over the last week just how bad it had got. There are a number of reasons for this, and I am still working through looking at myself honestly to separate out where I have gone wrong and where I need to challenge/encourage the churches.

So, maybe this is why I am listening to Sally’s parable differently over the weekend. Now, Sally’s parable (and I think it is just that), like all parables, don’t have to take into account every simile and metaphor. Her analogy works great as a description for many churches (in particular, the one I spoke about).

But, I would like to press the parable further. As I read her parable, I remembered my own experience at the Dead Sea only a month ago. The Dead Sea has no life, and if one were to take a big gulp of it, the water would act as poison to the lungs. Yet, the water and the mud have healing properties. I won’t take up the claims of ‘making people look 40 years younger’, but the minerals deposited and pooled are great for the skin. For thousands of years people have to come looking for healing.

While no miraculous cures happened on my trip, I did have some healing on a very dry patch of skin on my hand. I have noticed this for over a year and from time-to-time, put lotion on it. I forgot about doing anything with it at the Dead Sea. I remembered this the next day and kicked myself for forgetting. But keeping it in the water and using my hands to plaster mud all over, something must have happened. Over the next day or two, I noticed that it was looking significantly better, and did so for three weeks (it is back to pre-Israel trip because I haven’t used the lotion any more. I really need to see my GP about this.).

So, even at the Dead Sea, healing is possible. I don’t really know where to take this ‘parable’ from here. I think it may have more to do with me and my bitterness than the churches. Maybe the connection is that the Dead Sea water is not used for what we normally think water is used for, and we have to find alternative means for its use. I don’t know.

Nothing much, at least in the churches that are arguing about it, according to Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge at Generous Orthodoxy. The problem covers a multitude of other problems. Among her list is the uniqueness of Christ, the power of sin, and the nature of the Trinity.

Unless I am mistaken, she generally views herself sympathetic to homosexuals and wants to see them fully included in the life of the church, but very orthodox on the issues she lists on her website. She would appear to be a foil to the problem she presents in many ways.

Maybe I don’t see the sides as opposed to each other on other issues, or maybe my context has become too narrow (my recent trip to Israel with the heavily evangelical Americans reminded me just how conservative evangelicals are!).

Is there still a big gap on other issues as there is on homosexuality?