It's late on Thursday evening, and we're bracing for another winter onslaught in Southeast Missouri. I don't guess I'll rush to get my fishing gear ready for the season just yet.
There's a lot of talk in my circles about the survival of the denomination known as United Methodism. A recent article in Rev magazine presented statistics that are sobering and dismal for most North American Christian expressions, including Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, and evangelical. While spiritual hunger may be high as we get the 21st century underway, confidence in organized religion to address that hunger is declining, clearly.
Frankly it really doesn't matter whether my denomination or any denomination survives. Christ-following isn't about organizations. It's a flow; a movement. In a way, it's like the path of a stream. Water will move downhill, one way or another. It moves with a relentless determination toward the ocean. Sometimes it may be a trickle, and other times a torrent. On occasion something may block the flow, and the water might stagnate for a time. Yet eventually it will break out, and the persistent flow downhill will happen again. Where it has a channel, the water follows it freely. Where it meets a barrier, it flows around it to find receptive topography.
Throughout the last two millenia this movement which is the presence of a crucified and risen Jesus has always found a way to flow. Just when we may think it has stagnated or dried up, a spring bursts forth somewhere. God's determination to seek and save the lost, to embrace the alienated, to grow vibrant disciples of Jesus, and to bring healing to a broken world will not be denied. To ask whether or not United Methodism or any denomination will survive is to ask the wrong question. The real question is this...Will our denomination be a channel through which the flow will have its way, or will we be a barrier, rigid and lifeless, watching the flow of God's vital movement in Christ flow around us?
Those are my thoughts on this bend of the river, on this snowy night. Your thoughts...?
Raking Leaves
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Fall is here. The sun is moving towards the edge of the frame where, in
just a few weeks it will hit the bumper rail and start back towards the
other side...
2 years ago
1 comment:
So I'm reading Brian Mclaren books, he is the new heretic according to many and wondering if you are reading them too. The idea of the church as maintaining something rather than promoting something speaks to many things I live in. My work is being streamlined and the products I sell are being put in new packages to attract a new consumer. The work is focued differently. If Jesus had any agenda it was not to make a church to maintain his ideas it was to make a community to display, distribute and promote those ideas until everybody knew that just like the new "Air Jordans" they had to have what it was the believers had.
Keep on paddling, the most fun is usually in the rapids!
Danbo
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