Following is a summary report of a conference that was held in Dallas, TX toward the end of February, 2012.  In this post I offer it as beacon of light and hope and will comment further during my coming posts.

NEXT leaders map out next steps

March 8, 2012

At a recent meeting I was privileged to re-acquaint myself with a wonderful DVD that I had not seen for some twenty years – a presentation by Dr. Jack Rogers – Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith and Presbyterian Creeds: a Historical Tour.  As part of his presentation Dr. Rogers speaks of a book that he wrote – Presbyterian Creeds: A Guide to the Book of Confessions* – as Cliffs Notes to The Book of Confessions which, in turn, is Cliffs Notes to the Bible.

Painfully, it reminded me of an earlier time in my life when I could see no reason why reading Cliffs Notes (and yes I am old enough to remember it as Cliff’s Notes) would not be as useful as reading the entire book that had been assigned for a particular class and later being absolutely amazed that one or more of the questions that my professor asked on the exam concerned something that was not included in the summary version of the story that I had read – or at least skimmed.  Happily, over time I began to appreciate that reading the entire book is not really all that different from learning a complete musical composition rather than just the main themes.

In my sixty plus years of living I have often experienced people making reference to a limited portion of the Bible as if as little as a single verse told the complete story of God’s Word.  Recently I have started speaking about that practice as “cherry picking the apple tree” – a practice of taking a verse or a section and using it completely or partially out of context to prove a particular point or practice.

I do not make any claims about my thorough knowledge of the Bible, but I do appreciate the need to always give my best effort to read in context – always reading a larger section than just the selection of verses that I am considering for a particular presentation, sermon, or article.  I also try to always remember to follow the advice offered during a class at seminary to read as if I am reading for the first time – avoiding the likely pitfalls that will follow a statement like “I already know what that says!”

Again I am grateful for the teaching that I received at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary as summarized in President Wardlaw’s recent lead article in the current edition of Insights**.

“The approach to scripture at the heart of Austin Seminary’s curriculum and mission stands humbly under the authority of scripture.  It (1) recognizes that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, the center of scripture; (2) depends on the guidance of the Holy Spirit in interpreting and applying scriptrue; (3) is guided by the doctrinal consensus of the church; (4) places all interpretations of scripture under the rule of love – to love God and neighbor; (5) assumes earnest study of the historical and cultural context influencing the text; and (6) seeks to interpret a particular passage in light of the whole Bible.” (9)

Just my thought for the day – grace and peace – and let us all try to live under the rule of love!!

*http://www.amazon.com/Presbyterian-Creeds-Guide-Book-Confessions/dp/0664254969/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332777979&sr=8-1

**http://www.austinseminary.edu/page.cfm?p=1439

Yesterday I completed my reading of The Underground Church by Robin Meyers* – a wonderfully exquisite and compelling book that EVERYONE should have the privilege of reading in the coming days and weeks.

Toward the end of the book Robin offers the following descriptive language that describes his vision for the Underground Church:

“When the Underground Church gathers, it may be in a traditional church building or in a retreat center.  It may be in people’s homes or in coffee chops.  It may march under the banner of classical Christian liturgy and music, or it may march to the beat of a compoletely differend drummer.  It may employ ordained ministers or be led by devoted laypersons with a vision of what it means to love God and neighbor.  But it will stand out in a world of hyperpolemics and partisan rancor by quietly demonstrating that what is born of love and acts in love can always unite what is divided by human conceptions of purity.  Conservatives and liberals alike will find their religious and political identitites taking a backseat to their desire to love this world, to heal this world, to live as gracious members of one human family.

The Underground Church is not a building but meets as a joyful collection of grateful souls, knowing how much we do not know – but knowing enough about the redemptive power of love to invite everyone into the conversation.  We may not pray the same way, sing the same songs, or agree on what constitutes a ‘great’ sermon.  But this much we know:  God requires justice for all creation, and hospitality is an open table, with enough for everyone and no reserved seating.” (243)

E’en so Lord Jesus quickly come.  Amen – so let it be!

*http://www.amazon.com/The-Underground-Church-Reclaiming-Subversive/dp/1118061594/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332678893&sr=1-1

Yesterday I received the current issue of Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary in the mail.  Today I was blessed to have some quality time to begin reading this marvelous publication.  The focus of this issue is The Church Faces Schism and the lead article was written by President of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary The Reverend Dr. Theodore J. Wardlaw and carries the title “A Bad Spirit Has Risen Among Us.”

Once again I pause to offer gratitude for the opportunity that was afforded to me to attend Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and for the loving, academic excellence, and relationships – with faculty, staff, and other students – that became part of my life during my three years as a student and during the months and years since my graduation in 2008.

This issue of Insights represents the standard of excellence which has almost always been part of my experience at the seminary, and I would recommend without hesitation that EVERYONE should take the time to read Dr. Wardlaw’s thoughtful and compelling article.  It is available for reading by going to http://www.austinseminary.edu/page.cfm?p=1439.

The Editor of Insight, Cynthia Rigby, the W. C. Brown Professor of Theology, clearly states the purpose of this volume in her introductory remarks: “This issue of Insights is not devoted to debating ordination standards.  It is, instead, committed to our thinking together about what it would mean to stay united, as a church, even with our different views.”

I strongly urge each of you to find your way to this important publication, and especially this outstanding opening article.  Rather than summarizing Ted’s message as part of this post I prefer to let you see and hear his words for yourselves.  Also I am anxious to finish the article by Thomas White Currie III and continue with the other inclusions in this publication.  I am quite certain that I will be writing additional future posts that are stimulated by this publication.

With great respect and humility I conclude this post with two final quotations from the opening article. 

The first from Tom Are, Jr. as offered by Wardlaw: “It is far better when our friendships with one another shapes how we deal with issues, rather than issues determining who our friends. are.” (11)

And finally these words by Dr. Wardlaw: I end this essay by inviting all of us to practice something which, if we are left to our own devices, is not possible.  But because of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, I invite us all to resolve once more to practice the unnatural thing that he showed us – an incarnational love, a love that sees the face, a church that is not, finally, an institution, but a set of relationships.  ‘Will you be a friend in ministry?’ goes the vow.  And over and over again, we have answerd, ‘I will.'” (12)

Will we?

Grace and peace

Statistics provide a valuable tool for analysis.  They offer an objective snapshot of a particular time and place and, over a period of time, a means of comparison to reveal trends and patterns.  However, just like isolated verses from the Bible,they can also be utilized to prove a particular point that may be limited in perspective – and, I believe, that statistics can be dangerous without interpretation by human dialogue and interaction looking at a matter from the vantage point of multiple interpretations and points of view.  More about that in future posts.

Recently, I attended a presentation made by a respected colleague and friend about the state of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  He outlined a series of statistics that indeed are very disturbing – decline in membership – decline in number of baptisms – decline in number of congregations – trends that are not unique to our denomination – trends that are shared by many.  He observes that our denomination is “deathly ill.”  I agree with his assessment of the current state of the church.  The statistics paint a very bleak picture and the patient – our denomination and others – is in need of intensive care.

However – his prescription for the path to follow into the future and mine are very very different!

His solution – one shared by many of our colleagues and friends – calls for a need to tighten our boundaries and limit our diversity, and, once again, to move away from “unity” in the direction of “uniformity.”

Many of us – including me – believe that the only solution for this illness is for us to practice what we preach and to follow Jesus as disciples with actions more than restrictive rules – or laws.

My experience and ministry have taught me that people – over years and years of time – have moved away from organized religion because they hear a message of radical love yet are often treated with practices of exclusion, judgment, and limitation – are told that “all” are welcome but that a person will be refused consideration for leadership until they affirm a set of standards that are defended with evidence that is narrowed by fear and anxiety.

For many years I have quoted a set of hymn lyrics by Fred Kaan.  I encourage you to follow this link to learn more about the life and work of this remarkable man – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/fred-kaan-minister-and-celebrated-hymn-writer-1809481.html.  In my opinion – his text “Help Us Accept Each Other” – http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/PH/358 – is worthy of consideration as a confessional standard for the church.  Without any doubt or reservation the second stanza beautifully and powerfully summarizes my thoughts on loving inclusion and offers what I believe is the only way that the church will ever be able to reverse its sad decline:

Teach us, O Lord, Your lessons,
As in our daily life
We struggle to be human
And search for hope and faith
Teach us to care for people,
For all, not just for some,
To love them as we find them
Or as they may become.

This discussion will continue.  I hope you will join the conversation.

Grace and peace

Several times since I started blogging I had something that I knew needed to be said at that particular time but had a difficult time finding words that would appropriately express my thoughts.  On several of those occasions within the same day I was blessed to find the right words in a Daily Meditation from Father Richard Rohr from the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque.  Today that has happened yet again – so – with deep humility and gratitude I borrow some of Father Richard’s words about love.  If you do nothing else – I strongly suggest that you find your way to http://cacradicalgrace.org/ the website for the Center today and become a subscriber of Father Richard’s Daily Meditations.  Your life will be enriched if you do.

“Jesus commanded us to love, so we know it is not just a felling, since you cannot command feelings.  Love is a decision.

Jesus did not say: When you get healed, love; When you grow up, love; When you feel loving, love; When you get it together and have dealt with all your mother/father/husband/children wounds, then you are able to love.

No, the commandment for all of us is to LOVE now.

I think we know the love of God is within us when we ourselves can ‘do love’ much more than when people tell us we are loveable (that just feels good!).  We can always disbelieve the second, but the first is an unexplainable power from Beyond ourselves.  We know we are being used, and the ‘Living Water is flowing’ through us (John 7:38).  Daily Meditation from March 18, 2012

In this time of great fear and anxiety love – God’s love – most surely is the only remedy that is sure – so – with Father Richard let our prayer be: “I am falling into Love.”

Grace and peace

Early in The Underground Church* Robin Meyers writes the following:

Forgive me for “talking this talk,” but if one intends to communicate, one must begin where the listeners live and then create a new hearing.  For our purposes, a religious “conservative” is someone who believes that faith is primarily a belief system mediated by an infallible Bible.  The reward for believing the right things is forgiveness of sins and certain knowledge of eternal life.

A religious liberal, in contrast, is someone who believes that faith is primarily about the transformation of self and society through the wisdom of spiritual truth.  Liberals emphasize inclusion, social justice, and resist all exclusive religious claims.

These differences are real, but also vastly oversimplified in an age where the media holds our attention by arranging for people on “both sides” of any issue to sit down across the table from one another and get into a fight as soon as possible.  In the church it is no different.  We have so long defined ourselves by who and what we are not that we have almost forgotten entirely who and what we are — a strange, peculiar, and dangerous people. (14-15)

I have often heard that “Christians are known by their love” – and everytime I hear that said, or sung, I say to myself – “Really?”  That may well be the words that we say, but, sadly, my observations teach me that love is not very high on the list of things we regularly do or practice.  Maybe it is time to step back and ask the question “Who are we?” which also requires answering “Whose are we?”  Rather than answering liberal or conservative or orthodox or progressive we might better answer “Disciples of Jesus Christ” and then build the patterns of our life actions around the teaching words of Jesus as reported in The Gospel According to Mark, chapter 12, verses 29 – 31:

Jesus answered, “The first [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.’  The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these.”

It seems to me that if we spend our time loving God and loving others that many of the words and actions that lead us to fear, anxiety, and confrontation will no longer place us on different sides of a deep and dark chasm of mistrust.

Then maybe the words that Tertullian used to describe the early Christians – “Look,” they say, “how they love one another” (for they themselves hate one another); “and how they are ready to die for each other” (for they themselves are readier to kill each other) – “Apology”, Chapter 39.7 (circa 200AD)** will also be appropriate to describe the church of the twenty-first century.

Amen – So let it be!

*http://www.amazon.com/The-Underground-Church-Reclaiming-Subversive/dp/1118061594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331830341&sr=8-1

**http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_do_you_find_the_words_’See_how_these_Christians_love_one_another‘

With this post I begin a series of writings that I mentioned in my last post.  It is my anticipation and intention that this series will continue for several weeks as I continue my struggle with issues of fear and uncertainity within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as well as other denominations.

First, however, I feel a need to establish some background that communicates portions of the journey that have brought me to this point.  An important part of that journey includes the situation that surrounded my birth and early years – in my beginning.

I was born in a home in the midst of the Cookson Hills in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma in the tiny town of Bunch surrounded by Native Americans who significantly impacted my earliest years.  The home was next door to the little mission church where my mother’s parents served as missionairies on behalf of the Methodist Church (before it was the United Methodist Church).

It seems important to describe four people at this point in time who set a foundation of life that still is largely responsible for who I am and what I believe.

First – my grandfather – George Warren Wattenbarger – still known in that part of the world as “Doc” Wattenbarger – a practitioner of both medical healing and spiritual healing.  More will be told about that in future posts.

Second – my grandmother – Edna LaVaughn Sargent Wattenbarger – without a doubt the most influential person in my life during my early years.  We believe that she was the first woman ever licensed to preach by the Oklahoma Conference of the Methodist Church.

My mother – Doris Eujean Wattenbarger Mitchell – a true paradox for me.  She always did whatever might be necessary – often at the expense of her health – to provide for me and – starting when I was in the fourth grade – my grandmother – but – often I realized that much of her love for me was a result of the musical things that I could do more than for who I really was.

My father – John Thomas Mitchell – a father that I never knew and that I remember seeing only two or three times in my life – all of them when I was too young to ever have any connection with him.

Yes that is how I was named – my father’s middle name, Thomas, followed by my mother’s middle name, Eujean which was changed to Eugene.

Other significant influences included Sister Ellis, two gentlemen named Walking Stick and Roasting Ear, the local postmaster, my cousins in Tulsa, and the Kansas City Southern Railroad where I watched for the northbound and southbound Southern Belle passenger trains to speed through every day on the tracks that were directly between the church and house and the general store and post office which were on the only two streets through Bunch – neither of which were paved in those days.

I close this post but I look forward to coming posts with great anticipatioin, and I very much hope that you will join in the conversation with me.

Grace and peace

My last post listed a series of “good reads” that have enriched my life in recent weeks and months.  Shortly after I published that blog I had an email exchange with a friend and mentor who strongly recommended that I read Saving Jesus from the Church by Robin R. Meyers.  When I replied that it was indeed among the best that I had been privileged to read, my friend quickly responded that I really needed to read his newer book.

I am now about half way through my first reading of The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus.  My advice to you is this – if you have not yet read Saving Jesus from the Church you should order it AND The Underground Church, read them (not to worry you won’t be able to put them down), and prepare yourself for an intense season of spiritual growth.

The posts that will be written during the coming days and weeks are from my current writing as I strive to put together my thoughts on the current upheavel that sadly characterizes life as a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

A number of things have significantly influenced my recent thinking and prayers – responses of fear from friends who wonder where all of this might lead – yet another meeting of presbytery which was dominated – at least for me – by animated and extended discussion that made me wonder what we really mean when we speak of “gracious dismissal,” and the opportunity to begin to read Robin’s new book.

So I close this post with with an Albert Schweitzer quote that Meyers offers to his readers just prior to his dedication of the book to his father, Robert Rex Meyers, a genuine scholar saint who taught me much about theology – and – much more about English than he could ever imagine possible during the first semester of my undergraduate experience when I truly believed that I knew most of what I needed to know.  Now, with deep deep gratitude, I know better!

“This is how the conservative and liberal forms of religion will meet, when desire and hope for the kingdom of God and fellowship with the spirit of Jesus again govern them as an elementary and mighty force, and bring their world-views and their religion so close that the difference in fundamental presuppositions, though still existing, sink, just as boulders of the river bed are covered by the rising flood and at last are barely visible, gleaming through the depths of water.” — Albert Schweitzer