The Other Six Days

Scripture clearly predicted in Matthew 12:40 "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (cf. Jonah 1:17). But if our Lord was crucified on "Good Friday," that would not leave 72 hours (24 hrs. x 3 days and nights =72), but instead probably something more like 38 hours for our Lord to be in the tomb (Friday afternoon til midnight, 7-9 hours + Saturday 24 hrs. + four or five hours on Easter Sunday morning =  36-38 hours total.  That certainly does not equal three full days and three full nights of 72 hours. 

via www.koinoniablog.net

Have you ever wondered how it works out to three days, when the chronology of Jesus' death and resurrection–Friday afternoon to the early hours of Sunday morning–only takes 36 hours or so?

After thousands of birds mysteriously fell out of the sky in Arkansas on New Year's Eve, it was only natural that Anderson Cooper turned to an expert for an explanation. Enter Kirk Cameron.

via marquee.blogs.cnn.com

All worthy intellectual paths lead to Kirk Cameron. Whose authority carries more weight in the American Church — professional theologians or former sitcom stars?

If you're the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:

Your child is following a "mutant" form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.

via articles.cnn.com

Dean worked as a researcher with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina in the summer of 2005. After interviewing over 3,000 teenagers, they summarized their beliefs as a combination of works righteousness, religion as psychological well-being, and a distant non-interfering god. Or, to use a technical term, "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

John Howard Yoder says that communal practices like baptism, the eucharist, the opening meeting, and binding and loosing are the Gospel, in that the good news “is by definition always public; it is proclaimed in the open…it cannot be esoteric or private and be news.”  Yoder warns of the influence of market mentality:  The way for these communal practices to be good news is “not to try to please some marketplace or live up to someone else’s prior picture of what is credible.”  These practices “do not make the individual the pivot of change.  No trust is placed in the individual’s changed ‘insights’ or ‘insides’ to change the world.  The fulcrum for change and the forum for discernment is the moral independence of the believing community.”

Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World

John Howard Yoder

These practices are not introspective or otherworldly.  They are not only for the individual, and in fact, they do not exist merely for the sake of the church.  Such practices ultimately exist for the world.  They can be “spoken of in social process terms, which can easily be transposed into non-religious equivalent that a sociologist could watch.  People who do not share the faith or join the community can learn from them.”

It imperative to collapse the difference between “means” and “ends,” to eliminate the differentiation between the Church and the message it proclaims.  The Gospel cannot be communicated on its own apart from the community that is the church.

Rethink Church is the new outreach plan released on May 6 by United Methodist Communications.  A website dedicated to seekers ages 18-34, www.10thousanddoors.org uses images of doors, demonstrating numerous ways one can enter into a relationship with a congregation.  The campaign raises several important questions, such as “What if our budget served the people outside more than those inside?” and “How does our church go out there rather than waiting for them to come to us?”  These are great questions, considering the growing number of people who no longer consider church a part of their lives — no matter how we improve or programs. 

However, this campaign is also susceptible to the market’s influence, where churches ultimately focus on (according to an article in Interpreter magazine)  “what people are trying to find.”

As churches consider their own involvement in the denomination’s Rethink Church campaign, we must also consider the market’s influence in our decision-making.  Are we seeking a more flexible movement in the Church in order to more quickly and adequately respond to the particular needs presented by various emerging groups of potential young members, so identified by demographic studies highlighting “lifestyle segments” (themselves created by the marketing industry)?  This is all to ask:  Are media campaigns like Rethink Church possibly another effort to determine a church’s function and relevance in changing circumstances within the boundaries and definitions given to the church by the secular market?

     The United Methodist Church should seriously consider the place of the General Rules in forming its identity as the people of God in the world.  More specifically, we should explore how these rules functioned in the Methodist movement not only as a form of discipline for individual piety, but as a warrant for broader ecclesiological claims.  L. Gregory Jones and Michael Cartwright write, “One of the primary factors enabling the ‘people called Methodists’ to become the ‘people called Methodist’ in early Methodism was the practice of the ‘General Rules’ through the class meetings and gatherings of the societies.” 
     Formed by the rules, Methodists constituted a people “called out by God to embody an evangelical mission on behalf of the wider church.”  Rather than pursue innovate ways to attract specific segments of the market, perhaps the United Methodist Church should draw upon Wesley’s account of formation and ecclesiology, as they do represent a tradition that gives shape to a holy people.  In the face of the all-encompassing market, we must consider the church as a holy people before we consider the church as constituted by holy people. In other words, rather than capitulating to the individualizing forces of the market and rather than allowing this to shape our conversations about what the church should be in order to serve this “market,” we should continually ask, “What does it mean to be the people of God?”  What difference would it make if we began our conversations about the church and its ministry in just this way?  

     One element within the Wesleyan/Methodist tradition that might clarify what it means to be the people of God is the practice or principle of connectionalism.  In the early Methodist movement, connectionalism referred to a basic set of practices and structures that would insure the presence of unity.  While this was true primarily among the preachers, Wesley intended for this unity to extend as well to all members of the Methodist societies in England.  In his last letter to the American Methodists, Wesley urges them to declare clearly that "the Methodists are one people in all the world [and] that it is their full determination so to continue.” It is from this desire that Methodism developed structures and practices to insure this connectedness and unity: the structure of the Conference and the practices of Holy Conferencing.
     Sadly, Methodism has since evolved from being a vibrant missionary “movement” to being an “institution.” The term connectionalism is now used primarily to describe the institutional structures of the United Methodist Church, rather than the interconnected nature of a missionary movement.  This is tragic, if participation in the unity of the church means participation in the unity of the triune God.  The “connection” should not merely be a description of our denominational structures.  Rather, it is the means by which Methodists are a “People” in the world, connected to one another and to God who calls us together in worship and sends us out in mission.  

In an address to the Council of Bishops in 2007, Council
President, Bishop Janice Riggle Huie suggested, “United Methodists need to get
past their perception of themselves as an institution and once again become a
movement that responds nimbly to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.”  This means, the Bishops hope, that there will
be a “renewed desire for United Methodist churches to become more effective and
fruitful” and that there will develop throughout all levels of the church “a
unity in the Spirit that can help transform both the church and the
world.” 

            Remembering
Barry Harvey and Michael Budde, my interest here is not to interpret what the
Bishops meant or did not mean.  Nor do I
propose that their vision for the United Methodist Church is not a desirable
one.  We should be aware how such
conversations may be subject to distortion and limitations – either by the
bishops themselves or by church leaders who follow their lead—as we continue
unaware of our potential service of the contemporary market.  Such distortion and limitation is possible at
all levels of the church.   

            Giving
weight to Budde’s warning about the market’s formation of our assumptions, is
it possible that the move to becoming “nimble as a “movement” rather than an
“institution," is a move we have borrowed from the story of the twentieth
century North American corporation as United Methodists congregations are facing
shrinking bottom lines and increasingly disinterested consumers?  Is it possible that the bishops’ desire for a
nimble movement reflects what Budde describes in post-Fordist consumer culture
as the development of flexible production?