By James V. Heidinger II,
President and Publisher
GOOD NEWS PERSPECTIVE – No. 15, March 19, 2008
Welcome to this issue of Perspective, Good News’ e-mail newsletter sent out every two weeks to United Methodists across the nation. We hope you are finding it helpful and informative. If so, feel free to forward it to family, friends, or persons in your local church who might be interested in receiving it. The e-mail is free. To subscribe, send your e-mail address to: perspective@goodnewsmag.org. E-mail addresses will not be sold or shared.
HE IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED! – Happy Easter in the name of our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. One of the main points of our evangelical faith is that Jesus was not defeated by the powers of sin and death. He literally rose from the tomb. The good news has always been that we too can find new life and transformation through the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A few years ago, Good News published a cover story titled “Why Easter Matters” written by N.T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop of Durham. During this special season, I want to reemphasize this important message.
“The message of the Resurrection is that this present world matters; that the problems and pains of this present world matter; that the living God has made a decisive bridgehead into this present world with his healing and all-conquering love and that, in the name of this strong love, all the evils, all the injustices, and all the pains of the present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice, and love have won the day,” states Wright. “That’s why we pray: ‘Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.’ Make no bones about it: Easter Day was the first great answer to that prayer.
“If Easter faith is simply about believing that God has a nice comfortable afterlife for some or all of us, then Christianity becomes a mere pie-in-the-sky religion instead of a ‘kingdom on earth as it is in heaven’ religion. If Easter faith is simply about believing that Jesus is risen in some “spiritual” sense, leaving his body in the tomb, then Christianity turns into a ‘let the world stew in its own juice’ religion, instead of a kingdom on earth as it is in heaven religion. If Easter faith is only about me, and perhaps you, finding a new dimension to our own personal spiritual lives in the here and now, then Christianity becomes simply a warmth-in-the-heart religion instead of a kingdom on earth as it is in heaven religion. It becomes focused on me and my survival, my sense of God, my spirituality, rather than outwards on God and on God’s world that still needs the kingdom message so badly.
“But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes what the New Testament insists that it is: good news for the whole world, news that warms our hearts precisely because it isn’t just about warming hearts. The living God has in principle dealt with evil once and for all, and is now at work, by his own Spirit, to do for us and the whole world what he did for Jesus on that first Easter Day.”
To read the rest of Wright’s thoughts on Easter, go here http://goodnewsmag.org/magazine/MarchApril/ma03wright.htm
If you want to read more on the topic, check out N.T. Wright’s new book Surprised
by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church,
(you can purchase it at http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Hope- Rethinking-Resurrection-Mission/dp/0061551821
). It is a more manageable read than his 800 page tome The Resurrection of
the Son of God (http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Son-Christian-Origins-Question/dp/0800626796).
CHECK OUT UMDECISION2008.ORG – The Renewal and Reform Coalition – made up of the Confessing Movement, Lifewatch, the Renew Women’s Network, Transforming Congregations, UMAction, and Good News – was formed to speak with a united voice on vital issues at the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church. The international gathering will be held April 23 through May 2 in Fort Worth, Texas.
Good News would urge our readers of Perspective to visit the
Coalition’s new web site in order to keep you informed about General Conference
and about the issues that delegates will be dealing with in Fort Worth.
Since you subscribe to Perspective, you will be receiving a General
Conference update each day from Fort Worth, helping you stay closely informed
about what is happening at this crucial event. Please be sure to mention this
email update to friends in your Sunday school class and leaders in your
congregation. We need to have their names and email address in order to add
them to our list.
To get to the web site, go to: http://www.umdecision2008.org/
RESTORING A PASSION FOR SOULS -- Dr. Donald W. Haynes, regular columnist for the United Methodist Reporter, has another on-target column, this time saying we need to recover our passion for “saving souls.” (How much have you seen that kind of language in our United Methodist publications in recent years?)
Haynes states that “If United Methodism is to survive in a changing religious landscape described in a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, we need to reclaim our Wesleyan heritage. ‘Saving souls’ is not the domain of only Pentecostals and fundamentalists, after all—this is our heritage and language, too!” And he’s right!
Dr. Haynes confesses candidly that this was not the emphasis of his own pastoral ministry. “Simply put, I did not enable the saving of enough souls. My priorities, like most of my generation, were pastoral care and church leadership.”
And as we read that 42 percent of United Methodist Churches did not receive one person on profession of faith in 2006, it is obvious winning persons to Christ has not been the emphasis of many others of our pastors and local churches. Sadly, we have been emphasizing a lot of other things—not saving souls. One might appropriately ask whether our pastors are convinced that souls need to “be saved.”
“John Wesley was clear on the mission of the Methodists. He wrote on April 26, 1772, to his brother Charles: ‘Your business as well as mine is to save souls. When we took priest’s orders, we undertook to make it our business. I think every day lost which is not (mainly at least) employed in this thing.’” This is good stuff from Dr. Haynes.
He also points out that the 1972 Book of Discipline included in its Historical Statement, “The Methodist Church believes today as Methodism has from the first, that the only infallible proof of a true church of Christ is its ability to seek and save the lost.”
“We ignore our lack of evangelism at our own peril as we try to reshape United Methodism back into a renewal movement,” writes Haynes.
This entire essay is worth reading, copying, and sharing. Go to: http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=3253
BISHOP EDWARD PAUP WILL LEAD BOARD OF GLOBAL MINISTRIES – United Methodist Bishop Edward Paup has been elected to lead the church’s Board of Global Ministires, which oversees global missions and is the denomination’s largest agency.
The election came March 11 during the board’s spring meeting. He will assume the post of general secretary on September 1. Until that time, Bishop Felton May (retired) will continue as the interim top executive.
Paup, 62, is bishop of the Seattle area, which includes the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference and Alaska Missionary Conference, and is president of the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops. He said he will tender his resignation from the episcopacy, effective August 31, when the United Methodist Council of Bishops meets in April. The denomination will elect new bishops during jurisdictional meetings in July. (See related article below.)
The election of an active bishop to oversee a church agency is unprecedented in the 40-year history of the United Methodist Church.
U.S. bishops are elected for life and, while some have resigned for various reasons, none has left for full-time leadership of a church agency. Paup said he wants to “model the possibility” of moving beyond the Episcopal role. “There are times when some of us are called to lead a particular ministry in our church,” he said.
The mission agency’s previous chief executive, the Rev. R. Randy Day, was dismissed during the board’s annual meeting last October. Its personnel committee did not re-nominate Day and instead called for a vote on May as interim leader. The official reason cited was that the board “was looking for a different style of administrative leadership.”
For the full UMNS story by Linda Bloom, go to: http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx? c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=2433457&ct=5096037
ELEVEN U.S. BISHOPS TO BE ELECTED THIS SUMMER – The 2008 annual conferences will be the last for 11 retiring U.S. bishops. Their successors will be chosen by jurisdictional conferences in July and the new bishops will begin serving effective September 1.
In addition, five bishops from the central conferences—regions in Africa, Asia and Europe—will retire this year or next.
The North Central Jurisdiction Conference convenes July 15-19 in Grand Rapids , Michigan. Delegates will elect one bishop to succeed retiring Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher.
The Northeastern Jurisdiction meting the same week in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, will fill three openings left by the retirements of Bishops Violet Fisher, Jane Middleton and Susan Hassinger, the latter having served as an interim bishop to fulfill the unexpired term of Bishop Susan Morrison.
The South Central Jurisdiction meets the same week in Dallas, and will have four retiring bishops—Bishops Benjamin Chamness, William Hutchinson, Joel Martinez and Alfred Norris. Norris has been serving as interim bishop since 2006 following the death of Bishop Rhymes Moncure.
The Southeastern Jurisdiction Conference convenes the same week in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, where delegates will elect just one bishop to succeed retiring Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey.
The Western Jurisdiction Conference meets the same week in Portland, Oregon, and will fill two openings being left by the retirement of Bishop Beverly Shamana and the voluntary resignation of Bishop Edward Paup (who was elected as General Secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries).
For the full UMNS story by Linda Green, which includes the dates of all the U.S. annual conferences, go to: http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx? c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=2433457&ct=5116251
God bless you and we hope you have a wonderful Easter celebration!
Click here to send your response plus the title of this article to us at Good News.