By James V. Heidinger II,
President and Publisher
GOOD NEWS PERSPECTIVE – No. 17, April 16, 2008
Welcome to this issue of Perspective, Good News’ e-mail newsletter sent out every two weeks to United Methodists around the globe. 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.
THE RENEWAL AND REFORM COALITION AT GENERAL CONFERENCE—After months of planning and preparation, Good News and others in the Renewal and Reform Coalition are ready to head to Fort Worth. General Conference begins Wednesday, April 23 and continues through May 2.
Good News board chair, Rev. Tom Lambrecht, serves as chair of the Renewal and Reform Coalition, which includes the Confessing Movement, UMAction, the RENEW Network, Transforming Congregations, and Lifewatch.
Beginning Thursday morning, April 24th at 7 a.m., Good News’ first of nine Briefing Breakfasts will be held in the Crystal Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel—and every morning thereafter during the conference. We expect some 300-400 at our breakfasts each morning. The Hilton is home base for our Good News team and the Coalition. At our Good News hospitality room (Citizens A on the 3rd floor), we will have the opportunity to meet and greet friends, share literature, and stay in touch with interested delegates and visitors. Our team of some 50 persons will be monitoring the 13 legislative committees that will try to deal with more than 1,500 petitions and resolutions that have been received and printed in the Advance Daily Christian Advocate. Each day, Good News will print and distribute our Focus newsletter, which will include a devotional, information about conference happenings, and opinion. The material in the newsletter will be sent each day to you and others who receive our Perspective newsletter. You will also receive our prayer requests daily from General Conference.
In a word, these will be ten incredibly busy days for our staff and team. We earnestly covet your prayers on our behalf.
PRAYING FOR GENERAL CONFERENCE – As the 2008 General Conference draws closer, I want to invite you to be a prayer partner with us on behalf of this enormously significant legislative gathering.
We had originally thought about asking some of you from our Perspective list to respond if you were willing to be a prayer partner with us. But the more we thought about that, we decided that we would simply come to all of you who receive Perspective and ask for your commitment to be a prayer partner with us, especially from now until May 2, the end of the 2008 General Conference. Of course, we hope that you would continue praying for the daily ministry of Good News. We depend on your prayer support.
When General Conference begins on April 23, we will begin sharing daily reports and prayer concerns with you from Fort Worth. Delegates and all of us who are involved need your intercession on our behalf. Pray for all the delegates and especially the Central Conference delegates who may be depending on interpreters for their understanding of the intricacies of the conference. Pray, too, for the various bishops who will be chosen to preside over plenary sessions of the conference. Pray for those who will be officers of the 13 legislative committees. They have a daunting task.
We would urge you to share our daily email prayer requests with others in your church, Sunday school classes, and study groups—as well as others with whom you network via email. We want to enlist many folks to be praying on a regular basis, and you can help with that.
We have learned, also, that Len Delony, chair of the local committee on prayer for the General Conference, has extended an invitation to Margie Burger, Director of Prayer Ministries for Aldersgate Renewal Ministries (ARM) to lead concerts of prayer on Monday through Wednesday, April 28-30, from 5:30 to 6:15 p.m. ARM has regularly been a part of the prayer ministry at General Conference and we are pleased at their involvement once again. We thank God for these brothers and sisters in Christ who are prayer warriors and will be involved in this way on behalf of General Conference.
INTEGRITY OF MEMBERSHIP – Make sure to visit the www.UMDecision2008 website. You will find much information about the upcoming General Conference in Fort Worth. The following is from Riley Case’s summary of several key issues facing the delegates. Concerning the integrity of membership, he writes:
“There are a number of petitions that want to insert the provision that no person can be denied membership if that person is willing to take the vows. Some petitions more specifically say that ‘No person shall be excluded from the United Methodist Church for reasons related to his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.’
“This is unnecessary legislation because, at least in recent times, it is not known that any person has been excluded from membership because of sexual orientation or gender identity. The sexual ethic, celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage, has nothing to do with orientation. It is practice, not orientation, that is the issue.
“Para. 2702.3 has a whole list of charges that may be made against a professing member. These charges assume a certain high standard of belief and practice for membership. It is illogical to insist that no kind of belief or behavior disqualifies one for membership, and then make provisions for chargeable offenses for the beliefs and actions after the person becomes a member.”
Riley’s summary is helpful and to the point. The person seeking membership in the Virginia Annual Conference case was delayed not because of “orientation,” but because he was in an active relationship with another man, a relationship about which he felt no need for repentance.
For more issues facing delegates, go to: http://www.umdecision2008.org/commentary/ GeneralConferenceIssueBriefs.htm
Nathan Bangs, a New England Methodist, was flabbergasted when William McKendree from Kentucky was asked to speak before the Methodist General Conference in 1808. After all, McKendree was sunburned and horrendously attired. The Kentuckian stumbled through his prayer and began his sermon in a disconnected manner. Then suddenly things began to change.
According to Bangs, McKendree “was absorbed in the interest of his subject; his voice rose gradually until it sounded like a trumpet. The effect was overwhelming.…The house rang with irrepressible responses; many hearers fell prostrate to the floor. An athletic man sitting by my side fell as if shot by a cannon ball…Such astonishing effect, so sudden and overwhelming, I seldom or never saw before…There was a halo of glory around the preacher’s head.”
After 200 years, General Conference — and United Methodism — has come to look quite different. Nevertheless, it is no wonder British observer Isaac Holmes reported in 1823, “The Methodists in America…appear determined to take heaven by storm.”
While not expecting delegates to fall prostrate to the floor or halos of glory to rest upon the heads of preachers, this historical snapshot should prompt us to pray that God would move miraculously upon the 2008 General Conference in Fort Worth. What we need more than anything else is prayer—powerful and potent prayer.
E.M. Bounds (1835-1913) wrote, “I believe that what the church needs today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations or more novel methods. She needs Christians whom the Holy Spirit can use—Christians of prayer, Christians mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through people. He does not come on machinery, but on people. He does not anoint plans, but people—people of prayer!”
He goes on to say: “Spiritual work is always taxing work, and Christians are loath to do it. True praying involves serious attention and time, which flesh and blood do not relish.…To be little with God is to be little for God. It takes much time for the fullness of God to flow in the spirit. We live shabbily because we pray meagerly.”
We need United Methodists all over the globe to pray that delegates would be sensitive to the will of God as our denomination deliberates.
“The church is helpless without the power and presence of the Spirit,” wrote Samuel Chadwick, a British Methodist leader from another era. “The lust for talk about work increases as the power for work declines. Conferences multiply when work fails. We see that the church has lost the note of authority, the secret of wisdom and the gift of power through persistent and willful neglect of the Holy Spirit of God. Confusion and impotence are inevitable when the wisdom and resources of the world are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit.”
Confusion and impotence. Would any of us deny those words could describe the church in North America?
“The church that is man-managed instead of God-governed is doomed to failure,” wrote Chadwick. “A ministry that is college-trained but not Spirit-filled works no miracles. The church that multiples committees and neglects prayer may be fussy, noisy, enterprising, but it labors in vain and spends its strength for nothing. It is possible to excel in mechanics and fail in dynamic. There is a superabundance of machinery; what is lacking is power.”
United Methodism has the machinery, but would any of us claim that United Methodism is moving in sync with the power of the Holy Spirit.
“To run an organization needs no God,” believed Samuel Chadwick. “Man can supply the energy, enterprise and enthusiasm for things human. The real work of a church depends upon the power of the Spirit. Certainly the energy of the flesh can run bazaars, organize amusements and raise millions of dollars; but it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes a temple of the Living God. Things will get no better until we get back to the realized presence and power of the Holy Spirit.”
As we approach the ten days of General Conference, we must remember that our time together will be squandered if we do not collectively acknowledge our need for renewal, reform, and revival. We must understand once again what it means to hunger and thirst after God. “Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people,” wrote A.W. Tozer. “He waits to be wanted.”
As General Conference delegates assemble in Cleveland, they will discuss many seemingly important issues. No issues, however, will be more crucial than how intently we pray for a renewed, reformed, and refreshed United Methodist Church.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News magazine.
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