Huge new monastery

Have you read about the New Mount Carmel project? A group of Roman Catholics are working to build a huge Carmelite monastery in the mountains of Wyoming. The relatively strict and conservative Carmelite order has seen a great influx of young people making monastic professions, and seeks to create a new place of prayer and retreat that will house many of them, in addition to welcoming visitors. The new monastery will be modeled on the great gothic monasteries of Medieval Europe.

This project is one more embodiment of the movement among many young people back towards more traditional forms of Christianity (see, for example, Colleen Carroll's book The New Faithful). While one or two of my (not so young) seminary professors believed that the way for the church to reach the young was to accomodate the culture and water-down our theology and disciplines (because these were supposedly seen as non-credible to today's young people), as a young pastor I believe that the way forward is to recover the ancient heritage of the whole Church catholic.

For United Methodists walking this way will mean recovering our own Anglican heritage and liturgical tradition, passed along to us by John Wesley from the Anglican Prayerbook; and a recovery of Wesley's own love of the Bible and the Early Church Fathers.

Some progress is aleady being made: there is already a growing renewed emphasis on the great Wesleyan practice of Rule of Life and personal accountability to the rule (as we see in the popularity of Bishop Job's book, Three Simple Rules), and this is surely a move in the right direction. There are even a couple of Wesleyan neo-monastic houses springing up (such as the New Day Community).

There is currently a great deal of talk about re-structuring the United Methodist Church and about finding new ways to measure effectiveness ("metrics" is the buzz-word). I think we have a moment of great opportunity here, when leaders at every level of the church's life recognize that something new needs to happen and are (perhaps) even willing to give it a try. It seems quite obvious to me, however, that while tweaking the structures, streamlining the bureacracy, finding better metrics of effectivenss and making better use of money are all important, the real renewal needs to be one of prayer, worship, and spiritual discipline.

If individuals are truly and transformatively encountering the presence and power of God's Spirit in our worship services and sacraments; if preachers are truly opening people's hearts and minds to the depths of the mysteries of the living Word of God - then it won't really matter how the General Boards and Agencies of the Church are structured or what metrics are being used to evaluate the local churches: the church will thrive because it is truly being the Church - truly being the covenant community sharing in the life of the Trinity by the present power of the Spirit whom Christ sends from the Father (Jn. 15:26).

Observers are surely right when they say that clergy leadership will be key in affecting the renewal of the church. But it is Christ-centerted Spiritual leadership that we most deeply need at this moment in the Church's life. "Offer them Christ" was the instruction that John Wesley gave to all of his travelling preachers, and it is still illustrates our deepest need. If the whole lifestyle of our clergy and lay leaders is oriented around this one passion, "Offer them Christ," then of course we will be motivated to learn about the best management practices and vision casting techniques to share with our communities. In other words, we need to learn again the teaching of our Lord, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" (Matt. 6:33).

Perhaps a greater emphasis on seeking to teach and embody the Kingdom of Shalom, and live unto the holy righteousness of God (not diluting its demands to accomadate the passing values of our current culture) is the sort of Call to Action that needs to resound like a great tower-bell through every conference and corner of the United Methodist Church.

Christ the Lord is Risen Today!

A collect (short prayer) for Resurrection Sunday:

Almighty God, who, through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life, we humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing* us thou dost put into our minds good desires; so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

This is the Easter collect from John Wesley's Prayer Book: The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. This is a facsimile (available from The Order of St. Luke) of the original Sunday Service Book, John Wesley's own revision of Anglicanism's Book of Common Prayer, which is the "grandaddy of Methodist liturgy" and the great link between our liturgy and that of the Medieval English church.

*"Preventing" here means "going before;" from the Latin "pre" ('before') and "veneo" ('to come').

Feast of St. Anselm of Canterbury

Today is the feast of Saint Anselm (1033-1109), the archbishop of Canterbury, philosopher, and theologian. St. Anselm is an important figure in the English Christian tradition that eventually grew into contemporary Anglicanism, and which also shaped the faith of the Wesley family and gave rise to the early Methodist movement. Anselm's writings address various philosophical issues such as the existence of God, the nature of the atonement, and the compatibility of free-will and divine foreknowledge.

St. Anselm was required reading in my philosophy classes at LSU and my theology classes in seminary where he was sometimes blamed for inventing the "bad" penal substitution theory of atonement, which the excellent Methodist blog Incarnatio points out is a still more ancient doctrine than Anselm, though Anselm did try to flesh it out in novel ways with perhaps mixed results.

Here follows a prayer of St. Anslem:

Lord Jesus Christ; Let me seek you by desiring you,and let me desire you by seeking you;let me find you by loving you,and love you in finding you.

I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving,that you have made me in your image,so that I can remember you, think of you, and love you.

But that image is so worn and blotted out by faults,and darkened by the smoke of sin,that it cannot do that for which it was made,unless you renew and refashion it.

Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height,for my understanding is in no way equal to that,but I do desire to understand a little of your truthwhich my heart already believes and loves.

I do not seek to understand so that I can believe,but I believe so that I may understand;and what is more,I believe that unless I do believe, I shall not understand. Amen.

-from The Oxford Book of Prayer, ed. by George Appleton

Check the Etherial Christian Classics Library for more from Anselm of Canterbury.

Church changes seminary funding

Those of you who follow the corporate life of the United Methodist Church may have already heard about a recent decision to change the way that the seminaries are funded.

Currently, the official seminaries (there are 13 of them at present in the US) raise most of their funds through tuition and donations, while 12-20% of their budget is appropriated directly from The United Methodist Church. That money comes from The Ministerial Education Fund, most of which divides equally among the 13 schools at present. However, beginning in 2012, that money will be distributed in a way so as to give more funding to those schools that prepare more candidates for ministry and produce more actual pastors for the church. See the full story here.

This move is a reminder that the seminaries do not exist simply as centers of academic theological inquiry or speculation, but rather they exist to provide pastoral leaders for the Church. From the point of view of the Church, that is their core mission. Some seminary professors and administrators have in recent decades pursued recognition and prestige in the eyes of the secular academy to the neglect of this core mission, with disastrous results for the church.

I think this move to change the way that the church funds theological education is a good first step in reforming our seminary education system.

There is another (more difficult) step that I believe clearly needs to be taken. We currently have 13 seminaries in the United States including 2 in the state Ohio, 2 in the city of Atlanta, and 2 in the Western Jurisdiction that currently has a relatively small number of Methodist churches. These six schools (and perhaps others) should be merged and bringing the total number down to 10 or less.

There are several good reasons to make this move. First of all, we simply don't need 13 seminaries: the Southern Baptists make due with 6, even though their church is nearly twice our size. This would also reduce costs by eliminating redundant positions and it would allow the United Methodist Church to increase its level of giving to the remaining 10 schools. Increasing our total giving to the seminaries is certainly a good idea because it would potentially decrease the ridiculous and inordinate debt load of our clergy and would also give the Church greater connection to the seminaries, that could be used to hold them accountable to their core mission.

On a final note, I also believe that the United Methodist seminaries (at least the one I attended, and I suspect most of the others as well) need to become more intentional communities of prayer and service - perhaps more akin to a monastic community - in addition to communities academic learning. My seminary offered daily prayer services and frequent services of Holy Communion, but (if attendance is any indication) these were seen by many students (and faculty) as 'optional add-ons' to the curriculum and not a core part of the seminary experience. There was also little in the way of organized service to the community to serve as a part of our 'total education.' I believe there are already moves being made in this more holistic direction in some places, and am hopeful we may see more.

Streamlining the Church's ecumenical work

Restructuring. Cutting the bureaucracy. Streamlining for mission. There has been a lot discussion in recent years about how to restructure and re-organize the United Methodist Church. While I am not one of those who sees re-structuring United Methodism as "the silver bullet" that will usher in an era of great revival of the Christian faith across the globe, it does seem clear that there has been a growing need for some years to simplify the structure of our Church.

As our denomination grew and became more and more part of "the establishment" in the United States in the first half of the 20th Century, we created a large bureaucracy of General Commissions, Boards, and Agencies - often modeling them on the various departments in the federal government. They are now widely criticized as too big and unweildy and unfocused (not to mention expensive to maintain).

Indeed, if one goes to that part of Nashville where several of our General Boards are based (as close as one gets to a "United Methodist Vatican"), one is struck by the architecture. While the General Board of Discipleship has lovely Georgian architecture and the Scarritt-Bennett retreat center is built in the evocative gothic style (each with their own beautiful chapels), the General Board of Higher Education building across the street looks a great deal like something built for the FBI or the IRS that seems to scream "bureaucrats work here". The style of this building, I suggest, reflects the church's growing affinity for "structuralism" (that we received, perhaps uncricially, from the surrounding culture and society).

For those of us interested in ecumenical unity, of particular concern will be the fate of the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Inter-religious Concerns and the future shape of ecumenical dialogues and cooperation.

According to a recent article from The United Methodist News Service (UMNS) there are a couple of proposals on the table. One is to maintain the Commission of Christian Unity and Inter-religious Concerns in basically its current form while simply shrinking the size of the board and the staff. Another option (and to me, a more interesting one) is to discontinue the Chrisitan Unity Commission and fold all ecumenical responsibility into the Council of Bishops:

The Council of Bishops already has an ecumenical officer who acts as an official representative at many church-unity events. This new proposal would increase the term of the president of the council from 2 to 4 years and make the president of the council of bishops the chief ecumenical officer of the church, with support staff (presumably taken from the old Christian-Unity Commission). This bishop would also be a "non-residential" bishop, meaning that he would not have responsibilities over an episcopal area with an annual conference (the Methodist equivalent to a diocese or synod in other churches), I presume he would be based in New York (though a move to some of the empty offices in less-expensive Nashville and a renting out of any New York properties might make good fiscal sense).

The president of the council of bishops would become the primary representative of the church to other churches and to the world. I also favor changing the title from the cumbersome "President of the Council of Bishops" to a much more streamlined "Presiding Bishop" or perhaps an older usage, "Metropolitan bishop" or simply "archbishop." This would be a bit closer to the model used by some Anglican churches, for example, the (US) Episcopal Church's presiding bishop (while technically seated at the great National Cathedral in Washington DC) has no actual diocesan responsibilities and serves as a (frequently travelling) representative of the whole church.

Since the times of the Early Church Fathers, the bishop was understood to be the symbol and the guardian of the Church's unity. So St. Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 105) taught "as the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united to him,...so neither should you do anything without the bishop and presbyters" (ANF 1.62) and St. Cyprian (A.D. 250) could affirm "the bishop is in the church, and the church is in the bishop. If anyone is not with the bishop, he is not in the church" (ANF 5.374-5). The bishop serves the unity of the church by himself being the rallying point of the faithful. He is the rallying point of the faithful in part because he ordains and appoints the presbyters who are able administer the sacraments that form and unify the community of faith in grace and power.

Giving the bishops more coordinating authority for ecumenical dialogues is in keeping with the ancient traditions and with our own Book of Discipline, which states "The role of the bishop is to be the shepherd of the whole flock and thereby provide leadership toward the goal of understanding, reconciliation and unity within the Church..." (para. 403.e). I believe that such a move could also improve the theological and pastoral leadership of the council of bishops, as they are engaged on a deeper level with the theological traditions and sensitivities of the wider ecumenical church.

The council of bishops will hear a report on this proposal during the first week of May.