Make-No-Wave United Methodist Church

I received an interesting email from a pastor today who “followed my advice” and raised questions about expectations and accountability in the church. He asked the “what is the church?” and “what is the church for?” questions, and zeroed in on what our membership vows really mean. He was shocked when the chair of the church council responded by saying, “well, we don’t have time to talk about this now. We have church business we need to deal with.” Later that evening, the chair of SPRC (Staff-Parish Relations Committee) called to schedule an appointment — “We need to talk. As soon as possible.” The pastor was surprised early the next morning when the SPRC chair, the Lay Leader, the church Council chair, and the head of Trustees all showed up together. The conversation went something like this (church leadership in bold; pastor normal type):

We need to know what’s gotten into you?

What do you mean?

This kick you’re on to push; to make us feel bad about not doing enough?

I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad. I’m just trying to offer people something better. I want to help people grow in their faith.

Well, that’s fine, but a lot of people are perfectly happy where they are.

I know they are, but that doesn’t mean they should be.

See? That’s exactly the kind of pressure we’re talking about. Who are you to judge what kind of Christians people should be?

It’s not a matter of “judging” anyone. It’s a matter of helping people grow in their faith.

You made a lot of people uncomfortable last night. You made it sound like we should be doing more.

We SHOULD be doing more! I brought up the issues for a reason.

But that’s not why people come to this church. People come here because they know they will be loved and cared for, not judged and made to feel guilty.

Being loved and cared for and becoming faithful disciples are not mutually exclusive. People should want both.

In your opinion. None of our previous pastors said any of this stuff.

But it isn’t just my opinion. It’s in the Bible. It’s in our Book of Discipline. I didn’t make this stuff up.

No, you said you pulled it off the web and we all know how reliable things are you can find online.

You’re kidding, right? You’re saying because I got the articles off the web that we shouldn’t pay attention to it? All I raised were three questions: what is the church? what is the church for? and how do we hold people accountable to the promises they made to God and one another. That’s all. These are good questions to ask.

But they’re unnecessary. We’re not trying to be super-Christians. We’re just normal people who love God and need to know that God loves us. That’s all. We don’t need you telling us how we ought to live our faith. It’s none of your business if we pray or not or read the Bible or even how often we attend church. You are here to be our pastor, not our conscience.

But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t preach and teach from the Bible and challenge people to be the best Christians we can be.

Look, you’re young and we want to support you, but you need to be reasonable. People are busy — we have full lives. We don’t have time to be saints. We need you to do your job — lead worship, visit church members, teach confirmation, pray for us, and try to grow the church. We just don’t need you making things harder than they ought to be.

I don’t know what to say. You tell me you want me to do my job, but when I do my job you don’t want me to. This is impossible. I didn’t do anything wrong last night. In fact, I did exactly the right thing.

The pastor received a call later in the day from his district superintendent. Hoping for support, he was irritated to discover that his DS sided with the congregation’s leadership, asking that he “back off.” The DS told him that he needed to make this appointment work, and that he couldn’t afford to alienate key leadership. Again, he heard that he needed to be “reasonable.”

What am I missing here? I was called to ministry. I am part of a church whose mission is to make disciples, but when I bring up acting like disciples I am told to back off. If we can’t even have discussions about what it means to be the church in the church, we’re in big trouble. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that your “basic” questions are not “simple” questions at all.

This is one of the more dramatic responses I have received, but in no way is it rare or unusual. Some of our United Methodist churches are held hostage by low expectations, complacency, lack of vision, and a distinct aversion to anything remotely disciple-like. What are we going to do about it? When mediocrity becomes the standard, it is only a matter of time until we cease to exist. No relevancy, no urgency, no commitment = no church. Unless it is safe and even encouraged to rock the boat, makes some waves, and shake things up, we may be looking for a new church real soon.

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124 responses to “Make-No-Wave United Methodist Church”

Taylor Burton-Edwards

September 30, 2010

Dan,

This is where many congregations in many denominations are today.

Asking these questions straight out is suicidal.

Alan Roxburgh in Missional Mapmaking notes it takes years… like maybe 12 years of diligent work to nurture a parallel discipleship culture within a congregation before there is critical mass in place to ask such questions and expect much of a different answer.

This requires patient, persistent, and long term pastoral leadership.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

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1. DrTony
  
  September 30, 2010
  
  Taylor,
  I hope that 12 years is wrong. It does require patience, persistence, and a long-term pastoral leadership. But we are not in a position where that is even remotely possible.
  
  Think about it, you are talking about the time from Kindergarten to high school. Each year, we finish a confirmation class and watch them go off to college or perhaps work and they never come back.
  
  Right now, there are too many churches who are quite comfortable with what they have and that comfort zone has to be disrupted. You cannot build a critical mass if the current population is willing to move and there are no new individuals coming into the church. And there will not be many coming into a church seeking answers when they are told that such questions are not welcome in the church.
  
  Reply
  1. David Springstead, Sr.
    
    September 30, 2010
    
    12 years huh? So in a system that moves pastors every 4-6 years how does this happen? In the UM congregation where I serve (all of 58 yrs. old) the longest serving pastor in our history made it 9 years, and almost blew his brains out after the way he was treated by the laity because he didn’t move “when it was time.” He didn’t let the door hit him on his way out.
    
    No wonder we’re such a dysfunctional family. The membership vows say that we’ll support the UMC by our “prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.” My understanding of these commitments means we need to ask, and answer, questions like those posed by this pastor.
    
    We grew too fat and happy, and now that it’s time to pay the piper for our success we whine and cry either about how hard it’s going to be, or that we just want to be left alone. This is church consumerism run amok, and we’d better figure out how to teach our lay folks what it really means to be a Christ follower before we no longer have a church to serve.
    
    What would Father John say about us now?
Brad S

September 30, 2010

And we wonder why we are in decline?

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Scott

September 30, 2010

How long will we keep beating this dead horse?????????

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1. DrTony
  
  September 30, 2010
  
  Scott,
  Why is this a “dead horse?” Right now, there are too many churches/congregations who have the attitudes expressed in the conversation that took place in this pastor’s church. As others have noted, the church in general is dying and it is probably because the people don’t want to do what they are supposed to be doing.
  
  I would say also that, in view, of the recent survey that showed atheists and agnostics know more about Christianity than Christians do, we need to push this issue. If we do not know what the mission of the church is, we are not going to be in a position to even do the mission of the church (and the mission of the church is not to make the congregation feel happy and not to worry about the world).
  
  Reply
Meltone

September 30, 2010

Sadly I have had experiences nearly this bad through the years in my ministry. Many church-going Christians have drifted far from the purpose of the Church of Jesus Christ. I have noted a great deal of resistance to receiving new folks, esp. young people, into active membership. Their presence threatens the status quo. At one SPRC meeting years ago was discussing the need to reach out to new generations to offer them Christ. The church had received a number of young and middle adult couples who were now active in the life of the church. The SPRC Chair and lay leader said at one point: “Preacher, your tell the young adults that we know they want to do their thing here but we are doing our thing now and when we die they can do their thing.” What this new group of young Christians wanted was nothing radical or out of line. The simple wanted to find a church that was a place of grace that appreciated their presence and love them. The negatives prevailed and many of those folks found a church home elsewhere. A Baptist pastor had a much worse experience. When he was invited to become the senior pastor of this small town congregation the mandate he was given was to bring in more “young families.” To make a long story short, he and some strongly motivated members organized the ministry of the church to reach those families and their efforts were very successful. Attendance at worship and bible studies was up nearly 50% in a couple of years. The number of children and youth more than doubled. In his 4th year as I recall he went on vacation and returned to find that the deacon board had voted him out. That board was dominated by the ?old guard.” Apparently he had been too successful.

Financially things worked out very well for this talented man who took a job with a computer firm and more than doubled his salary. I guess the church was happy too for the attendance dropped back to the status quo. The last I heard this gifted Baptist fellow was starting a church in another state while continuing to work in the computer company.

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Jeff Uhler

September 30, 2010

This is recent, right? Although the specific questions differ, this same scene 27 years ago. I held up the membership vows and expected people to actually be present, to serve, to pray and the leadership didn’t even start with me. They went straight to the D.S. who called me and told me I had to tone it down and make the givers happy or we wouldn’t be able to pay apportionments and that wouldn’t look good for me in the appointment process.
Wish we had grown and learned since then. As long as our job, as pastors, is seen as “make the people happy so they pay”, our churches will continue to decline.

Reply
1. michael l mckee
  
  September 30, 2010
  
  Concerning the blog post Shannon says, “I don’t think I’ve read anything this depressing in quite a while.”
  
  To me, Jeff, your comment is what’s really discouraging, i.e., we’ve had this same problem for 30 years or better and yet here we are still. Perhaps we’re not the ‘hospice’ church, rather the ‘ostrich’ church.
  
  …just trying to follow Jesus,
  michael
  
  Reply
DrTony

September 30, 2010

Dan,
Was this my pastor? Of course, I know that it wasn’t but it could have been. Why am I not surprised by the conversation – how many times has it been a part of our live?

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Shannon

September 30, 2010

I don’t think I’ve read anything this depressing in quite a while.

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