What are our Assumptions?

Assumptions matter.  They matter a great deal.

 

There was a story I heard years ago about a physicist, a chemist, and an economist who were stranded on a desert island with no tools and a can of food. The physicist and the chemist each devised an ingenious mechanism for getting the can open; the economist merely said, "Assume a can opener"!

David Watson in a recent blog comes to this idea by a different route.  He notes when he was obtaining his PhD part of what he learned in intellectual argumentation included the art of deconstruction:  “The most common and effective route [to deconstruct an argument] is to attack the assumptions upon which an argument rests. Once you destabilize its foundational assumptions, the argument itself tends to fall apart.”

For years, I was taught the way to examine any critical issue was to be sure you knew what the issue was (a clear definition of the problem), what do we know with certainty (the facts) and what do we have to factor into the calculus for which we are less certain (the assumptions).  Almost every broken mathematical model I was exposed to broke down because of the assumptions.  They were generally flawed.

 

Here is an assumption – my first - I make about #nextmethodism:  it will have elements of the past joined in the present in anticipation of what God is going to do in the future.

 

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  We call it “the mystery of faith” for a reason.  But it is our faithful assumption.  And as we faithfully operate, those assumptions bear up under a rigorous deconstruction, as they have for two thousand years. 

The late Robert Webber addresses this in terms of worship – worship is bringing together into the now, a remembrance of what God has already done in the past, with an anticipation of what God will do in the future.  Scholarly articles may talk about this in terms of anamnesis (remembrance) and prolepsis (anticipation).  We ritually reenact this through Holy Communion – God has acted in the past, remember it, and God isn’t finished, be in a state of anticipation.  We then take the “mystery” and we use past tense, present tense, and future tense verbs to help us see the past and the future in terms of our now.  And Christ IS risen, is the central thematic statement upon which all of the variations in the symphony that is the church are developed.

 

Doing so faithfully, then calls us to a place where we examine ourselves against the plumb line that is God’s ancient word and are we then being faithful to God’s call, rather than culture’s call.

 

Allow me to offer a second assumption that I think need to be clearly stated:  we are supposed to be surrounded, and we are surrounded not by an enemy but rather by opportunity.

 

C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:  “Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”  Major Dick Winters in the HBO Mini-Series Band of Brothers understood this clearly when told that he and his unit are about to be surrounded at Bastogne in December, 1944.  “We’re paratroopers lieutenant, we’re supposed to be surrounded.”

 

My proposed assumption is that we recognize that we are supposed to be surrounded and we are supposed to be offering a counter cultural message.  Yes, both the Lewis and Winters illustration might lead one to believe I see those as outside of the church as “the enemy”.  I do not.  I frankly see them as an opportunity.

 

But here is the key:  Kent Ingram of Colorado Springs First writes of us often waxing nostalgically for the time church was culturally normative.  What if that maybe that time of heightened numbers and cultural acceptance was really and truthfully Egypt or Babylon.  How is this for a news flash:  Nostalgia is a Golden Calf.  So much of what we have attempted to do over the last decade (at least) has been driven by a flawed assumption that what once was, can be again.  I hear it as we need to get back to Egypt as fast as we can, life is hard out here in this wilderness.  Making bricks without straw wasn’t really that bad, was it?  I say yes, it really was, and if we decide to worship that Golden Calf, we will continue to decline.

 

If we can agree on that 'surrounded by opportunity' assumption, and it was an operative assumption for 18^th Century English Wesleyans, then we can effectively cast aside what the world, however that is defined, thinks of us as a cultural value.

 

Watson offers another very valid assumption:  “People are spiritually hungry, too. The problem is that they just don’t know it ….What they’re hungry for is Jesus.”  At some point, stuff doesn’t fill that ‘hole in our souls.’  It has been my experience in my seventeen years in ministry that Watson is right – people are spiritually hungry.  Wesley understood that.  Jesus understood that.  I pray we understand it in our communitarian futures.

 

Our past has given us keys for our future – scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.  And let us be crystal clear, scripture is framed in part by tradition or we would be reading The Gospel of Thomas in our lectionary readings. 

I love serving this United Methodist Church.  I do so in tension over the fact what is United may become Untied.  That tension is driven by an assumed can opener.  There seems to be an unstated assumed can opener that many operate from as it relates to looking at #nextmethodism and that is that we can continue to do the things in the world that we are doing.  I hope that assumption is accurate.

 

Several years ago, I got used to watching news broadcasts from Liberia where the Ebola crisis was in full ravage mode.  Rarely, if ever, did the announcer make the point that the interview was being conducted outside of a hospital with a large cross and flame on it.  I watched with pride:  I knew.  We didn’t put those hospitals there to brag about it, we rather put those hospitals there because that was where the greatest need and our Grace filled hearts had a collision.  We answered that call.  Some assume a #nextmethodism can still do that.  I hope they are right.  Just as I am not sure the economist can opener can open any cans, I am not so sure that once untied, we can continue to provide hospitals in Africa beyond where the road runs out.  Among other things, that isn't my only assumed can opener.  

 

I heard a quote in the last few years that keeps resonating with me:  “Too often we listen in order to respond rather than to truly understand.”  I want to assume that in #nextmethodism, we will endeavor to truly understand.

 

Peace ..

Selah, Dennis  

A Scarlet Letter

Jesus says in Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life” (ESV).

Paul writes in Philippians 4: 6 “do not be anxious about anything” (ESV). 

Our theme at Hilltop, where I serve the people of Sandy, Utah, in October, 2015 was “Let your faith be bigger than your fear.” Great idea and I promise not to advocate exiting a perfectly good aircraft without a parachute: with a parachute is an act of faith, without a parachute is an act of lunacy. Safety is important. I always fasten my car seat belts for even the shortest trip, well, almost always. But are we sometimes overly safety conscious? The late Rabbi Edwin Friedman offers we live “in a ‘seatbelt society’ more oriented toward safety than adventure.” I think he is on to something here. Let's hold that thought briefly and come back to it later. 

Many of the clergy I interact with have reached a place where one of the harshest direct criticisms we can level on another clergy is, “you are an anxious presence.” It has a mystical, red letter, scriptural authority. Immediate penance and repentance is expected when this is uttered, immediate. Hester Prynne, Hawthorne’s heroine in The Scarlet Letter, was required to wear a Scarlet A, for adulteress, on her dress. In my world the Scarlet A is for anxious, and we within the clergy world avoid that A as if it were a virus. A leader endowed with non-anxious presence boundaries repels anxiety as a virus. 

Here is the issue: who gets to define what anxiety is? 

Anxiety might actually be a reaction to another’s desire for urgency. Urgency is often required to bring about change. Some of that change could be altering the status quo. Anxiety might be our preference to hang on to that comforter that is the status quo.

Is it a good idea to let anyone and everyone be the true definer of what is anxiety? Friedman urges us not to give excess power to the most anxious presence in the room. I posit conversely should the one in the room with the largest stake in the status quo decide what anxiety is. If we don’t want to allow the most anxious presence to have the power, I don’t wish to empower one person to define what anxiety is. Dialogue is called for, and honest disagreement may emerge. But a dismissal with the remark, ‘you are just an anxious presence’ needs to be expunged from our leadership tool belt. 

Your anxiety may be my urgency. Your anxiety may be my raising the temperature in the room to bring about change. 

John Kotter is an expert in leading change. To paraphrase Kotter: ‘The first step in leading change is creating a sense of urgency.’ Urgency might mean we need to move from a too comfortable world. The poet Brian Andreas writes: “Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable; fall asleep ; miss your life.” Overcoming comfortable and missing our life’s call might require urgency. 

I believe the church may have reached a place where we need to listen to angels that endeavor to be sure we are not too comfortable and wake us up.

Jesus and Paul and Friedman urge us not to be anxious. What element of our leadership life have angels looked at and said “wake up, you are letting comfort dictate what is going on, following the call of Jesus may not be comfortable or safe.” 

There is an irony in my use of Hester Prynne: she is arguably the person of most character in The Scarlet Letter. Her Adulteress A is gradually transformed to an item of beauty, embroidered as a reflection of her inner character. What if allowing others to brand us with an Anxious A is actually a mark of our own transformation, an item of beauty?

Returning to Friedman: What might it take for us to leave the 'seatbelt society' and instead seek a holy adventure in some presumed unsafe wilderness? (Exodus meets contemporary safety standards.)  

To be clear, Jesus says to not be anxious. Paul says to not be anxious. It is scriptural to not be anxious. As we jointly tackle an uncertain future, let’s understand that the issue here is urgency and moving from the status quo, and not allow anxiety to define us.

But we need clarity within community as to why and what defines us as anxious. For Hester, her Adulteress A became a scarlet letter of distinction and honor. Maybe if others label you with a Scarlet Anxious A, but you are, in holy humility, confident that you are a Jesus-like and Paul-like non-anxious presence, let it be a scarlet letter of honor. Urgency and raising the temperature in the room so that the status quo is chased does not immediately equal anxiety. 

If the issue is urgency and changing the status quo, I believe we can wear that scarlet letter with honor. 

Selah, Dennis

Today at CoFA

I know.  If you are looking at the title to this post you are wondering "what the heck is 'CoFA' "?

The Council of Finance and Administration.

In other words, time in Denver talking about money.  Talking about United Methodist Money. 

The good news.  We had hoped (prayed?) for a revenue for 2009 of about $5.2M for the operation of the HQ for all the United Methodist Churches in Utah and Colorado, and most of them in Wyoming.  The better news.  We got in over $5.6M and close to being able to round up to $5.7M.  AND maybe even better news, we only spent $5.0M instead of $5.2M. 

So what can the bad news be?  I am actually not sure. 

We had dug ourselves a $1M (that is M for MILLION) hole over the last five to six years with spending more than we took in.  Nod if you think that sounds like the Federal Government since say, 1933 or so?  We had lost our line of credit (long story) and we had no where else to go but a more responsible fiscal policy:  cut spending and raise revenue. 

We did both in 2009. 

We targeted spending to be cut from $6.05M to $5.25M and we spent even less than that.  Wow.

We attempted to raise revenue from a previous year of $4.5M to $5.2 and we got even more than that.  Dare I say wow again? 

Wow, wow. 

And we did this in an economic downturn. 

Wow, wow, wow! 

I think part of what happened is that people listened to us in June when we talked, and they said "that makes sense, we can abide by what they are doing" e.g, lowering spending, raising revenue. 

I think another part of it is they, the 270 local United Methodist Churches in Utah, Colorado and most of Wyoming, have trust and faith in our Bishop ... Bishop Elaine.  If optimism is infectious, we catch it from her.  I know I do ...

Is there a third part? 

I don't know .....

What has happened to Methodism in the Rockies?

I just completed a short look at Methodism in the Rocky Mountains.

We are not doing very well.

There was a time in the early 1950s, where the ratio of Methodists to the local population had just about, but not quite, gotten to the same ratio as the nation at large. Not bad given the nearly 100 year head-start the East Coast had on that and the fairly late settling of most of the area. But soon thereafter, we began to slide. Since 1970, Methodism in the US of A has declined by about 20%. In the Rocky Mountain West, it is closer to 40% ...

Why?

Good question ....

If churches are our deployment platform for the distribution of our "product" (scriptural holiness based on Grace), then we slowed our growth in the 1930s and that may have begun our long slow slide to where we are ...

If what is preached is important, and understand I am just spitballing it here, but somewhere, I think I learned that it is, then are we out of touch with our surroundings? Some would say we are and we need to move ... the question is ... which direction?

Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us, spoke to our Annual Conference (a gathering of Methodists in an area, long standing tradition, hard to explain to an outsider, and an insider understands immediately). She mesmerized the room ... her theme was that mainlines (and Methodism is part of the mainlines) are starting to experience a subtle turn-around by little points of light who are being clearly intentional in their approach. A move away from establishment and modernity towards intentionality and post-modernity. Dr. Bass did suggest that she didn't know what our "product" was ... I thought I knew before she said it ... but no body in the Qs & As at the end mentioned that to her ... maybe we were just tired ...

The churches in the Rocky Mountains -- that are also Methodist -- that do seem to be growing are the ones who are indeed trying to be intentional about who they are ... how post-modern they are ... I guess we'll see ...

What has happened to Methodism in the Rockies ... I think somewhere, sometime, in a long distant place, we made a wrong turn, and it has taken us a long time to figure it out ... I wonder if we have time to re-join our sisters and brothers in the rest of Wesleyan Pietism or are we doomed to wander as we slowly spin into oblivion ... I am ever the optimist ... Hope says Yes, History says No ...

Send me a note and I will send you a .pdf of my "report" (email address is part of profile).

More later ...