Still Thinking About Young People

As sort of a follow up to my pastor's column below, here is a piece from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership on the issue of young clergy in the United Methodist Church. It is worth reading.

Research: United Methodist Clergy Age Trends

peace,

will

Pastor's Column Sneak Peek

Here is a sneak peek at my column for this week's newsletter:

I had the privilege last week of traveling to Mount Sequoyah, our United Methodist retreat center in Fayetteville, Arkansas for a conference on reaching younger generations. I had the opportunity to attend programs and workshops with Bishop William Willimon, author and Bishop of North Alabama Conference; Gregory Jones, Dean of Duke Divinity School and other United Methodist clergy leaders. Most of the conversation revolved around reaching and ministering to young adults. By young adults, we are referring to college-aged people and individuals under 35.

We may not think about it, but this is a critical topic. Think for a moment, according to the latest census, 21% of the population in our area is between the ages of 18 and 35. This past Sunday, of 312 people who worshipped with us, approximately 13 were in that age group. That is around 4%. While Grace has an amazing youth program which attracts and nurtures our teenagers, we do not seem to be reaching young adults. For those of you who serve on committees and ministry teams in the church, how many people under thirty-five do you serve with?

This is not just in our church and it is not just about members. Of all the Ordained Elders in the Southwest Texas Conference 2.8% are under 35. This represents a dramatic drop from previous generations. If young adults are not present in our churches, they are not in a place to hear a call to ministry and to have it affirmed and nurtured.

Is this important? Yes, for at least two reasons. The first is the future of our church. We have to reach another generation if we have any hope of continuing the ministry of the church and continuing to build on the foundation of faith that has been constructed. Second, our mission as a church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. That means reaching out to all and it is clear that there is a group we are missing. Young adults need to hear the Gospel, perhaps more than anyone. Bishop Willimon reminded us that most major decisions in life are made between the ages of 21 and 35. When did you decide on a career, choose a spouse, make plans to start a family? The young people surrounding us are facing these decisions without the guidance, hope and claim of the Gospel. They are left to make their decisions solely on the values of the world.

Of course most of us would say, “We should try to reach out to more young adults.” However, making something truly a priority means allowing something else to be less of a priority. Are we willing to make reaching young adults a priority even if that means we have to give up something? What if it meant worship had to be different or if the pastors and staff were less available because their focus were turned outward? What if it meant that we had to begin completely rethinking everything about how we worship, minister, learn, share and grow to create a church that could truly reach younger generations.

This is certainly something to think and pray about. If you feel God calling you to be in ministry in this area or you have thoughts, questions or ideas, make an appointment to come talk with me about it.

peace,

will

p.s. Our retreat center in Arkansas is beautiful. It was certainly refreshing to have a couple of days under the tall trees and in the fellowship of my colleagues.

This week's sermon

Here is this Sunday's sermon for your enjoyment, critique, entertainment, etc.

Sermon #42 - Unleasing the Unnerving Power of God

peace,

will

Back at My Desk

I am finally back at a full-size keyboard in the comfort of my office. I am going to try and find some time this week to blog about the conference I attended in Arkansas. It was about the need we have, as a church, to share the gospel with younger adults and how we are not doing very well in that area. I look forward to sharing some of what I learned.

peace,

will

Greetings from Tulsa

Will the wonders of technolgy never cease? I am posting while waiting in line for my Southwest flight from Tulsa back to Corpus, via Houston.

I am not yet sure how useful this all is, but it is pretty cool.

For all my Corpus readers, I hope to see you tomorrow.

peace,

will

greetings from Arkansas

I am posting from my pda from our United Methodist Retreat center in Fayatteville, Arkansas. I am here for Bishop's Weekend where I am learning about how to make our churches more inviting to a younger generation.

I will be back on Sunday preaching 'Unleashing the Unnerving Power of God'

peace,

will

Turtles Will Be Turtles

I really wanted to post a picture with this but the photos may be a little disturbing for some. People sometimes expect pastors to be discreet. Anyway, in case you haven't been reading the blog for long, Alisha and I have two box turtles (they are actually box tortoises, but turtle is just more fun to say) Simon and Simone. You can read more about them in the posts Turtles in our Midst and Simon Squared. They live in walled in area outside our bathroom window so we get to watch them quite a bit. This week I learned that despite my careful reading on the subject, I was wrong. We had named the first one Simon. Then we got the second, and thinking it was male, I decided we had misnamed the first one. So we renamed the first one Simone and the new one Simon. Now after watching them, I realize that the turtle originally named Simon really is Simon and the other one is really Simone. Are you following?

This is all a long way of getting at the fact that our turtles are doing what young turtles do in the springtime. I am kind of pessimistic about their chances of conception, but I will let you know if we should schedule a baby turtle shower. I am not really sure what one would bring to such a thing anyway.

peace,

will

Happy Father's Day!

peace,

will

So What Have You Given Away?

I gave everyone an assignment this past Sunday and was wondering how you were doing. If you missed the service, there is a link to a copy of my sermon in the previous post. The assignment was to give something away: something you need or something you love.

I have decided what I am giving away, but I haven't done it yet. It is something that I really like having and I am procrastinating. I hope to have it off my desk by the weekend.

Let me know how you are doing.

peace,

will

This Week's Sermon

Sermon #41 is available here:

"Empty Jars"

peace,

will

Another Annual Conference in the History Books

I am back from this year's meeting of the Southwest Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Not that I really left town, though I might as well have. I was pretty much a full time resident of the American Bank Center from Wednesday at noon to Saturday at noon. This year involved more than the usual amount of sitting. Every four years we elect delegates for the General Conference, the national meeting of the United Methodist Church. This was that year. The balloting process is long and painful and it took us until around 10 o'clock Friday night to finish. That's a lot of time sitting in a folding chair.

peace,

will

I'm Back

Not that I really ever left, but allergies have kept me functioning on half a brain for the last week. I feel OK during the day, but coughing keeps me up and night and I don't function well on reduced sleep. It has been a busy few days and it is made all the more hectic by the fact that Annual Conference is this week and I will be hung up in town for most of the week.

I can usually find some time to blog from the conference floor since I get bored easily.

peace,

will

Looking forward to some sabbath

Friday usually sneaks up on my but I am actually anxiously awaiting a day of rest this week. Not that the week was overly taxing, it just wore me out. This Sunday is confirmation Sunday when we will welcome 18 youth into full membership in the church. When that many people join, it tends to make for a large crowd so we are moving our 11 service into our gym.

Moving worship from one place to another sounds pretty easy, but it is not. There are about a million details including chairs, a stage, microphones, speakers, video, not to mention putting it all together. We actually rehearsed the service with the confirmands last night to make sure it would all work, which it will. However, the rehearsal helped me figure out what else we hadn't thought of yet.

I hope to see you on Sunday. It will be a wonderful service.

peace,

will

A Laptop, A Lab and A Little Boy

Alisha is out this morning so I am working at home, which is always a relative term based on what kind of mood Josh is in. Currently he is on board. He is reading books (well he is 20 months so reading is a relative term as well) while my lab, Bodhi is sprawled out beside him. He is actually not interested in my laptop this morning. Once it catches his attention, the "work" part of "work at home" is out the window.

peace,

will

A New Kind of Church

I made a brief reference to the book, A New Kind of Church, A Systems Approach by Dan Dick and Evelyn Burry in my sermon on Sunday:

I actually read it as part of the project I am writing for my ordination process. (See more details are in a previous post "Where is Pastor Will's Stole... And Where is Pastor Will?") The book really supports what I am writing about and what I have been talking about in different team meetings in the church, our need to take a more systematic approach to making disciples. As I say over and over, the church as a whole has forgotten about what happens to Christians after they make the initial decision to accept the grace the God offers them. In theological terms we talk of the grace that calls us into relationship with God prevenient grace. We talk of that moment (or moments) of "conversion" where we see who we are, accept our need for God and turn our hearts toward God as justification and speak of God's action in that as justifying grace. Practically, we are all pretty clear on that. However, John Wesley believed that God's work wasn't over. It is God's sanctifying grace that continues to work in us moving us on toward perfection in love, on toward re-creation in the image of Christ. Wesley believed that God did this work, but there was work we should be doing in the process, like praying, receiving communion, studying scripture, and meeting in community.

This is where I contend the church has lost some direction. This is where we need to follow Wesley's desire to have more systematic approach to helping people move on to and through this next stage. This is where the "ocean diagram" I bring up in just about every meeting we have comes in. It is simply a graphical way to see that they journey is not over when someone joins the church.

Anyway, this is some of what is going on in the book. As you can see I am pretty deep into this project, so I can't stop writing about this stuff. The book is really great though. It is a book I wish some other people were reading and asking about. If you are interested in how the church is evolving and changing to make disciples, give it a read and let me know what you think.

peace,

will

Not recommended for all (but some of you will love it)

This is another book I picked up at random at Half Price Books. Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert cartoon which you probably either love or hate. Adams' irreverence takes on religion instead of the corporate world in this little book which is sort of a follow up to God's Debris.

If you are at all sensitive or easily offended about differing ideas about religion you should probably consider reading something else. However, if you don't mind being challenged and want to laugh a bit, check this out. Adams writes a smart and funny and strange story of the religion war to end all wars and the funny little man who saves the world.

peace,

will

This Week's Sermon

For the first time in a while I am not horribly behind and I am posting my sermon on Monday morning! Yeah!

Sermon #40 - "One"

You are invited to use the post to respond with any thoughts and/or comments!

peace,

will

Good to Great

I finished reading Jim Collins' Good to Great a couple of weeks ago and am just getting around to writing about it.

This is a fantastic book and I think it is one secular book that should be required reading for all who consider themselves leaders in the church. Over and over we get people telling the church to acts more like a business in one way or another and most of those models fail. The church is not a business. However, this book does not lay out another "fad" for building a better business, it simply looks at what makes great companies great. The book is the product of a fairly insane amount of research into companies who made a transition from poor or mediocre performance to a place where they consistently outperformed other companies in the same sector with similar situations. The author and his team looked for things that these companies, from a wide variety of different industries and service sectors, had in common. The results were remarkable clear.

The consistently great companies held in common:

• a higher level of management
• focused on building a great team before choosing a new direction
• were willing to confront the brutal facts of their current situation
• were able to determine what they were passionate about, able to do better than anyone else and actually profit at
• were disciplined
• used technology to accelerate performance, not jumping on technology bandwagons but carefully selecting only new technology that helped them with their core competency
• understood the flywheel concept (sometimes success doesn't come over night, but building momentum is the key.

I have oversimplified this all a bit just to give you a little taste. What I love about this book in terms of thinking about the church (and I am talking about churches in general) is that, as I have said before, I think that churches don't think much about being great. I think that is unfortunate. I know some people don't like my way of thinking and believe that it is inappropriate to think of church in these terms. However, I think that the institutional aspect of the church should be the BEST institution. We should do a better job than any other type of organization in sharing our message because our message is vitally important.

I apologize in advance for this comparison if it offends you. Gillette from 1980-1995 outperformed the general market by over 7 times. The study showed this was due to all the characteristics I listed above. They were selling razors. Nice, sharp razors with multiple blades are really nice, but they haven't really changed the world. The mainline church in America, which can share a message of grace and salvation that can change the world is on the decline.

If the church really wanted to reach as many people with the message of grace and salvation as possible, it wouldn't need to follow a business model, but it would need to decide it wanted to be great and think about getting the best people on the team (clergy and lay people) think about facing the brutal facts, consider what aspect of sharing the gospel or building the kingdom each individual church was best at and had a passion for and do that, be disciplined and use technology to accelerate a clear mission.

If you are still interested, read the book. I would love to hear your thoughts.

peace,

will

Save the Darfur Puppy

I read this op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof last week and wanted to post a link but The New York Times won't let me do that with their "premium" content. However, it was such a good piece that is has now been reposted all over the blogosphere. I don't think I am going to comment on it, I just commend it to you.

Save the Darfur Puppy by Nicholas Kristof

peace,

will

Going Retro... Here is Last Week's Sermon

This never got posted last week.

Will Rice - Sermon #39 - “When You’re Tempted to Go Back to Your Old Life: Living as an Easter Person in an Ordinary World”

peace,

will