Second Friday of Lent
Lectionary texts:
OT: Genesis 17:15-22
NT: John 3:1-8
Thanks to Jennifer for her thoughtful and, I fear, all too accurate comment. Let's talk about it now.
I originally entitled this post "Witnessing." A moment's reflection led me to think otherwise. Witness has become a bad word for too many United Methodists. I fear that if I had left "Witnessing" as today's title, too many would immediately leaved their computers and do something else. We associate witnessing with fire-breathing fundamentalists who accost people on the street. We are afraid that if we mention anything about our faith, we will alienate people. Isn't it enough that we go to church (online at the moment), pray, give, and do some work for the poor, and for social justice in our community? The answer to that question has become increasingly clear. No!
Fortunately, as we see twice a week in our Acts Bible study, Paul did not feel the way we do. Christianity survived and thrived because the early Christians felt the power of their faith in Christ so strongly that they couldn't help but share it. United Methodism in the United States has been in sharp decline since 1968. That's half a century. Evangelical extremists give us all a bad name, but what they do can hardly serve as an excuse for what we do not do. The old unspoken notion that the Baptists would convert people, then they would either marry up to Methodism or promote themselves to Methodism, won't work anymore, if indeed it ever did.
In addition to the acceleration of our overall national faith decline, we United Methodists suffer from self-inflicted wounds over our often vicious infighting on human sexuality issues. The General Conference that was to bring us solution--with an opt-out and keep the property clause for U.M. churches who refused to accept LGBT people--that General Conference didn't happen in 2020 because of Covid. Just this week the 2021 General Conference was postponed till 2022 for the same reason.
We're in an increasingly difficult position. Perhaps the easiest way to witness is to invite someone to come to church with us. We can't even do that now. We are spending far less time with people other than immediate family members. Many of us are working from home. As thankful as I am for Zoom small groups and U-Tube church, both of these are pretty much for the faithful. We're have less opportunity to reach the faithless.
What are we going to do? I hope that over the blog in the next few weeks you and I might do some serious thinking on faith sharing and, who knows, maybe even have an opportunity to share our faith with someone who needs it.
So, good readers, hang with me on this. Keep reading the blog. I'll have some new ideas. I'll have plenty of other topics too. But do watch out for my slipping in something on faith sharing in those other topics, as well as some new blogs with new ideas on ways for our faith and our churches to thrive.
On church membership vows, United Methodist Book of Discipline, Paragraph 217:7:
"To faithfully participate in [the church's] ministries by their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service, and their witness."
Faithfully,
Christian
1 comment:
It's very hard when you can't invite people to church, but I wonder if inviting people to do things like watch services online or join Zoom Bible study or other groups might be good. Many people find going to church daunting, especially those who had bad childhood experiences with church. Some other ways of experiencing church might even be helpful! My mother is doing a Lent meditation group for her church that I joined. We are using Protestant prayer beads, various kinds of meditation, and discussion to have a prayerful experience of Lent. I'm getting to know the nice ladies from her church whom I've never met due to COVID. We are able to have more discussion than we would at church or coffee hour, and evening in person meetings are often difficult for me due to distance, day time is out of the question because I work days. So there are positives!
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