Methodist After All
This blog post is an amended version of a post written back in 2012 when I was leaving St. Mark UMC and moving to New Beginnings UMC. I have decided not to migrate the older post to my new site, but you can still read it by clicking here
George Wood used to always say to me, "You will never forget your first church."
How true those words have been. I still think of the wonderful people I served while at St. Mark. Many of whom are no longer with us. I can still see their faces, and I have on more than one occasion in my dreams looked out over that congregation. I even had a dream one night that I was reappointed to St. Mark, and I woke up filled with excitement.
I didn't think that moving would be as tough as it proved to be. I had convinced myself "this" is just what Methodist do. But the reality of moving proved much more difficult than the theory. But alas, it is what we do, and I was extremely excited for New Beginnings, at New Beginnings United Methodist Church (NBUMC).
Before being appointed to New Beginnings, I was told there were three possibilities of places that I might go to. One I had to interview for, One told the conference to send who they felt was best, and the third was an outlier. If I am honest I had hoped to go to the church closest to where my wife works (makes sense doesn't it), but I had already told my wife, that I was unsure of how well I would function at the closest church.
The title of the position was "Missions Pastor" and one of the interview questions I was asked was something like, "Tell us about your passion for visiting hospitals."
I don't think I had ever considered the words passion and hospital in the same sentence before.
Not long after arriving at NBUMC, I could see how God had worked through the appointment system to put me exactly where I needed to be. Once again, I met many wonderful people, and as a bonus, the heart of the leadership was exactly in line with my heart. As a pastor being able to walk into a new appointment, and almost immediately have a shared vision is priceless. But as the saying goes, "All good things must come to an end" even New Beginnings.
Or as it is more beautifully put by E.A. Bucchianeri, in Brushstrokes of a Gadfly:
“The most beautiful moments always seemed to accelerate and slip beyond one’s grasp just when you want to hold onto them for as long as possible.”
When presented with the opportunity to live in the same house as my wife, and have the opportunity to work with college students (something I had already been doing and wanted to do more of), how could I say, "No."
After all, this is what Methodists do.
Perhaps some of my greatest ministry successes and failures would take place over the five years while I served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation. As hard as I have tried, I don't think I have ever convinced other pastors that working in campus ministry isn't "glorified youth ministry" (credit John Williams, one of the brightest and most hardworking students I have ever met). If you know a college pastor, treat them extra nice. They have a rough job.
Campus ministry is similar in many ways to the local church, but also extremely different in other ways. For example there exist one twist in campus minsitry that is impossible to prepare for (emotionally), and I have yet to find the local church comparison for graduating a sizeable portion of your entire ministry every four years (although it can be argued that churches should be sending more people out to serve). The students who were freshmen when I began had all graduated by the beginning of my fifth year at the Wesley Foundation.
Then, on August 25 of that same year, my dad passed away from cancer.
Everywhere I looked all I could see was loss. This was the first time in ministry where I felt as though my time at an appointment had completely run its course, and I was no longer serving in a place that my gifts and graces matched the needed gifts and graces.
Allow me to take a step back here and point out that I knew I was not serving where I was most gifted within my first year, but at the same time, once appointed, my thinking was, "I'll give it all I got."
We are Methodist after all, that is what we do.
The combination of knowing I could serve better somewhere else and someone else could fit better at the Wesley Foundation, combined with the sadness of losing students that had become like my family and the overwhelming grief of losing my father, all led me to aks for a move.
In all of the places, I have had the privilege to serve there is one common thread, in each place I have met the most wonderful people. I have laughed with them, cried with them, argued on occasion, and loved the people that I am sent to serve.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the end of Jesus’ ministry. Before I get too far into the ministry of Jesus, let me offer a brief (tongue-in-cheek), and for those who know me, a greatly unneeded disclaimer: The comparisons which follow between myself and Jesus begin and end with Jesus’ ministry coming to an end, and there being an ending to the ministries where I have served. All other parallels are merely coincidental, anecdotal and, or by God‘s grace.
I believe Jesus knew when He began His public teaching and preaching ministry three years earlier that it would all end three years later. I believe He also knew pretty well how his last days would play out. Yet, we still find Him on the night He was betrayed praying to the Father that there might be another way. In a couple of the churches where I have served this famous scene from the Bible is portrayed in some fashion inside the sanctuary. Each time I see it, I think about how Jesus closed His prayer, “Not my will, but Your will be done.”
This is the prayer of my life and the prayer I pray for all of the people in whom I have served,
“Not your will, but the will of God be done in your lives and in your church."
I wonder what was going through Jesus’ mind, and what was the state of His heart as He experienced the many “lasts” of His ministry. I have in the past speculated that Jesus must have thought to Himself or maybe even prayed to the Father and said something like,
“if only I could stay one more year, think of all that I might accomplish. Two, maybe five more years at the most…Surely, with just a few more years I could straighten out or ‘fix’ these disciples.”
Jesus was never granted those extra years, and the disciples never did get everything exactly right.
We don’t always know why life turns out the way it does; why the things we wished for don't work out, and why the things we wish would never happen, do.
I know from experience that where I am today, the way my life has turned out so far is much better than any of my plans. We cannot change the past, predict the future, nor do we know what might have been “if.”
We only know what is.
The world is not changed because we are holding on to an idea or concept of what “should have been,” nor is the world changed through our perception of what the future “should be like.”
We can learn from our past, those great traditions which got us to where we are, and it is our vision, the path we follow forward into the future which guides us in the direction we are hoping to go (with God's help)
Best of all, God is with us.
As long as we haven't given up, we have not failed.
God is still working in and through all of us who are open, and willing.
Are you open? Are you willing?
I leave you with the words of Jesus as He considered His many lasts, and I share with you a new perspective I have gained as I have written these words: “lasts” are not really “lasts” at all. Jesus knew what He had accomplished was the beginning of The Church. The people He would leave behind on earth would one day join Him in His Father’s Kingdom, and while they waited for His promised return, He poured out upon them the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide those He called His family.
Jesus knew His ministry was not ending because He had given the disciples everything they needed to continue His mission and ministry on earth. You are the physical presence of Jesus Christ on this earth, you have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling inside of you, and working through, empowering you to be Jesus’ hands and feet.
Before I arrived at each, and every one of my appointments, the people there were already the Body of Christ, and each time I leave a church, they remain the Body of Christ.
I have done my best to teach each church what I know, and I have learned far more from them than they from me. I am grateful to have served so many gifted and wise people.
These are the words Jesus left to us His Church, and these are the words I want to leave you with:
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 I will ask the Father, and he will send another Companion, who will be with you forever. 17 This Companion is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can’t receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him, because he lives with you and will be with you.
18 “I won’t leave you as orphans. I will come to you. 19 Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them (John 14).”
12 “I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now. 13 However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you in all truth. He won’t speak on his own, but will say whatever he hears and will proclaim to you what is to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and proclaim it to you. 15 Everything that the Father has is mine. That’s why I said that the Spirit takes what is mine and will proclaim it to you. 16 Soon you won’t be able to see me; soon after that, you will see me” (John 16).
And this journey I am on continues. In 2019, God blessed me with not one church but two. I assumed I had missed the opportunity of serving a multiple point charge, but as the saying goes, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."
We are Methodist after all.