By James V. Heidinger II,
President and Publisher
GOOD NEWS PERSPECTIVE – No.16, March 31, 2008
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MAXIE DUNNAM’S RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GENERAL CONFERENCE – Recent issues of the Newscope newsletter have carried articles from UM church leaders about their hopes, expectations and priorities for the upcoming General Conference. In the March 21, 2008 issue, the Rev. Dr. Maxie Dunnam, former president of Asbury Theological Seminary, shared ten recommendations for General Conference. Among these, Dunnam hopes and prays that General Conference will:
Make a decision the first day to table all discussion related to changing the position of the church on the issue of homosexuality. For at least four General Conferences, the mind of the church has been clearly stated. The time and energy needs to be spent on mission and ministry.
Give the bishops a greater share in shaping the church’s action related to the missional priority of planting new faith communities.
Provide disciplinary ways to more easily deal with ineffective clergy.
Establish a more responsible way to hold UM seminaries, and seminaries approved by the University Senate, accountable to the UMC in preparing leadership thoroughly grounded in orthodox, Wesleyan theology. Be more specific in holding our UM seminaries responsible for teaching evangelism and mission.
Effect legislation that recognizes that ministry belongs to the whole people of God, and a church dependent upon “professional” ministry will never reach the masses, particularly the poor and disenfranchised.
Revise the Ministerial Education Fund (MEF) disbursement formula, with most of the money going to students, recognizing that a part of the unfolding crisis of future clergy leadership need has to do with financial indebtedness for seminary education.
Elect a Judicial Council that will not change the “law” of the church, but interpret and apply it in keeping with the “sense of the faith” and our self-understanding as defined by the General Conference.
FLORIDA DELEGATION PROPOSES TAPPING AGENCY RESERVES – Also, in the March 21, 2008 Newscope, there is a timely article about our UM boards and agencies “spending down” their net assets to lighten the apportionment load for local churches.
Concern about stewardship of general church funds has led the Florida Annual Conference delegation to General Conference to propose that UM general agencies operate partially out of their reserves for the upcoming quadrennium, allowing local congregations to pay lower apportionments. The proposal advocates that agencies be required to “spend down” their net assets in light of what the delegation calculates as reserves totaling almost $1 billion. A report from the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) to be distributed to General Conference delegates says that amount greatly overstates actual agency reserves.
Mickey Wilson, Treasurer for the Florida Annual Conference and a member of General Conference’s Finance and Administration Legislative Committee, told Newscope that the proposal is intended to serve as a “starting point for discussion” about general church funds, with the goal of “implementing and developing a policy around reserves.” This policy should designate specific amounts to which agency reserves would be limited, Wilson said, and require easier access to annual reserve analyses. If a new policy is adopted, implementation would be left to the discretion of GCFA, Wilson said.
GENERAL CONFERENCE DELEGATES TO HANDLE OVER 1,500 PETITIONS – Nearly 1,000 delegates to the United Methodist 2008 General Conference are now wading through 1,564 pieces of proposed legislation to be considered during the April 23-May 2 meeting in Fort Worth, Texas.
On February 15, the United Methodist Publishing House mailed 1,540 copies of the advance edition of the Daily Christian Advocate (DCA) to delegates, first alternates, bishops and others. Portuguese and French editions later were sent to delegates in Africa. The page count of the 2008 DCA is 1,560, which is up from 1,411 from 2004.
While there are nearly 1,600 different pieces of proposed
legislation, many submissions were identical, said the Rev. Gary Graves, a
pastor in Beaver Dam, Kentucky, who serves as petitions secretary.
REORGANIZATION - The most far-reaching petition comes from a six-member task force that proposes to make the church’s five U.S. jurisdictions into a regional body, similar to the church’s central conferences that exist outside of the U.S. That action requires a change in the Constitution and must be approved by two-thirds of the General Conference delegates and two-thirds of the aggregate total of annual conference delegates.
If the Pre-General Conference Briefing was any indicator, this proposal will not experience smooth sailing. Delegates were cautioned about amending the church’s Constitution before understanding exactly where the action would take us. Others have wondered if a massive organizational re-structure should be undertaken when the denomination’s membership, finances, and morale are in decline.
HOMOSEXUALITY – The issue that seems to grab most of the headlines also received the highest number of petitions—nearly a thousand in fact. Petitions from 616 groups or individuals ask General Conference to make no change in the existing statements on homosexuality within the church’s Social Principles. That statement declares homosexuals to be “individuals of sacred worth,” but declares the practice of homosexuality to be “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
The General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), the church’s social action agency, continues to be out of step with the mainstream of United Methodism and of the expressed will of the General Conference. Once again, GBCS is asking the assembly to delete the incompatibility clause and replace it with: “While Christians of good faith differ on what Christian teaching reveals regarding gender and homosexuality, we affirm God’s grace is available to all.” That, essentially, would leave the United Methodist Church without a clear sexual ethic to give guidance to the church.
Another 326 petitioners are asking delegates to make no change in the present statement supporting laws that define marriage as the “union of one man and one woman.” As you may have guessed, the out-of-step Board of Church and Society has a petition to delete that clause from the Discipline.
ABORTION – The United Methodist Church now recognizes the “sanctity of unborn human life” but also respects the “life and well-being of the mother, for whom devastating damage may result from an unacceptable pregnancy.” Seventy-six petitions want to replace the words “an unacceptable” with “a life threatening.”
Some 370 petitions, including the North Carolina and Northwest Texas conferences, call for church-wide agencies to withdraw their membership from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. They argue that the church opposes partial birth abortion while the coalition supports the practice. Eighty petitions, including one from the Mississippi Conference, ask for a resolution supporting the coalition to be deleted from the Book of Resolutions.
For the full UMNS article about these and other issues coming before the 2008 General Conference, go to: http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=3257#
SEEING INTO THE FUTURE. With his recent work, “How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity,” Tom Oden uncovers, page by page, the forgotten or hidden influences of Africa on the faith of the West.
With church growth in African nations exploding, Oden’s work is a timely word on the centrality of African thinkers in shaping the early expressions of the Gospel. He works avidly to represent natural African ownership of the rich heritage of early creedal Christianity to the brothers and sisters of tribal Africa today. Oden succeeds in drawing clear, scholarly conclusions that support his arguments but encourages further scholarship in what he hopes to be a blossoming field.
Inherently, “How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind” challenges latent chronological and geographical arrogance that skewed scholarship into a perspective not fitting the facts. This is not “Chicken Soup for the Soul”; there are facts, graphs, and maps. But it is terribly important for well-informed pastors, inquisitive laity, and responsible leaders that they absorb this book as a vital corrective to the slanted pictures of history from the past. Here are a few of Oden’s thoughts:
“Cut Africa out of the Bible and Christian memory, and you have misplaced many pivotal scenes of salvation history. It is the story of the children of Abraham in Africa; Joseph in Africa; Moses in Africa; Mary, Joseph and Jesus in Africa; and shortly thereafter Mark and Perpetua and Athanasius and Augustine in Africa.” (p.14)
“Inattention to this south-to-north movement has been unhelpful (even hurtful) to the African sense of intellectual self-worth. It has seemed to leave Africa as if without a sense of distinguished literary and intellectual history. But this is a history that Africa already owns but which has remained buried and ignored.” (p. 30)
“Africa was the region that first set the pattern and method for seeking wider ecumenical consent on contested points of scriptural interpretation.” (p.48)
“The argument for the recovery of early African Christianity cannot easily proceed unless it can be shown that these great intellects were truly Africans, not just in a geographical sense but in spirit and temperament, not just temporary day-trippers but born and bred in Africa, indigenized in families living through generations of African life. I believe that there is nothing phony in their African Christian identity.” (p.62)
“African Christianity is not primarily a racial story but a confessional story of martyrs and lives lived by faith active in love.” (p. 69)
You can order Oden’s book here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0830828753.
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