Thoughts
Conference 27 June 2024
You can share the Conference 2024 Agenda Item 18. Methodist Membership in the 21st Century: Further Issues by clicking on this link. Incidentally, the Agenda is here, but here we consider this one article and its’ impact on our perception of our church – in other words, why be a Member?
Should you read the whole paper you will recognise the academic approach to the issues, and I suppose this suits a Conference. Try and relate it to our experience locally. The gulf between the two is significant, and perhaps your first thought was how glad you were not to have to sit through its presentation! Maybe your second is how on earth do we bring the two together?
The “Faith & Order Committee” have presented a 14 page article on this subject over a year. Whilst accepting the complexities of the issue, here is the rub. There is no forum locally for having an opinion. Many of our Committees are populated by the same committed people, and they are there because they are so committed. Unfortunately, that does not create a liberal and open environment for a wide discussion. Perhaps we could unshackle the 2,000 year old theology from the major issues of our planet and mankind’s place within it? Perhaps concentrate upon the things that unite us, not those that divide us? Perhaps invoke, accept and allow ALL the whole range of belief and being a Methodist outlined in “A Lamp to my Feet, and a Light to my Path” in the excellent summary on “Models of Biblical Authority” between paragraphs 7.9.1 and 7.9.7. (Click here to read all this publication). In summary, if you don’t want to go there it clearly suggests we accept the whole range of Biblical interpretation from unquestioning acceptance to modern interpretation.
If we are unable to address all the topics raised by this Conference Agenda Item, why not try just one? Is it true that people of different ages leave church for these reasons: “…failure to understand church process and teaching…”, or “…it was unchallenging and simplified…”? Challenge that.
Here is another of real local significance – once we have paid off our debt we could reduce the number of bookings because we don’t need the income, and the church can be a church again, with sanctified space available to the membership 7 days a week. Is that the future? How many members will benefit from this by the time that happens, within a framework of declining Methodist membership? What of our beautiful buildings then?
We may not attend Conference but we can and should consider our future.
“Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (John 3:17)
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." Leo Buscaglia
“The true definition of mental illness is when the majority of your time is spent in the past or future, but rarely living in the realism of NOW.”
Shannon L. Alder, n.d.
“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
At war you don't get accidentally killed. You accidentally survive."
As the saying goes, the Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones; we transitioned to better solutions. The same opportunity lies before us with energy efficiency and clean energy.
Steven Chu
“Be brave and take risks: You need to have faith in yourself. Be brave and take risks. You don't have to have it all figured out to move forward.”
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.
Alan Watts (1915-1973)
Christianity did not begin with a confession. It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community, into forming relationships based on love and service.
Diana Butler Bass
The task of religion is not to turn us into proper believers; it is to deepen the personal within us, to embrace the power of life, to expand our consciousness, in order that we might see things that eyes do not normally see.
John Shelby Spong
Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
Christopher Hitchens
To live and to work in one world and believe and pray in another makes our lives seem fragmented and disconnected, even alienated from what is truly lifegiving. (pg. 21)
From "Radical Amazement" by Judy Cannato
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
John Dominic Crossan
