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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: An appeal to delegates Andrew C. Thompson, Feb 21, 2008
Andrew C. Thompson
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
Dear General Conference delegates,
Every four years the whole church gathers in conference. Because of that, we have the opportunity every four years to make real strides toward becoming the kind of fellowship that Jesus Christ calls us to be.
I have no specific course of action to propose. I only ask that you are guided by a certain spirit in your preparations for holy conferencing.
God tells us through the prophet Jeremiah, “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).
Our church stands at that crossroads. American culture is no longer synonymous with Christian culture. Not too long ago, the church could count on continued vitality simply because children could be counted on to walk faithfully in the paths of their parents.
That is no longer the case.
The pluralism of values, creeds and lifestyles in the culture begs us to trade in our faith for something easier. Why hold out for God, it asks, when mammon can look so enticing?
For the church, our present context means some hard choices are in store. We can continue to muddle our way through the next few decades, dwindling like so many other denominations until we are an empty husk of our former selves.
Or we can do what the gospel has called Christians to do since the beginning: respond faithfully to the One who tells us, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).
When Christians throughout the ages have ached for the renewal of the church they have always looked back to a time when their forebears were living more faithfully. That’s the reason for the “re-” in renew, revive and restore.
In that sense, Jeremiah’s prophecy rings true. Our future is to be found in our past, and the ancient ways are the ones we are called to reclaim once again.
It is perhaps most important that the General Conference not see the need for church renewal as an occasion for creating more bureaucracy. The increasing discussions around the ordination process in recent months have driven that home.
We tend to resort to conventional thinking when faced with a problem, so we usually think structures, programs and initiatives are the best way to fixing things. But just as new layers of bureaucracy have not helped the ordination process, neither is bureaucracy the best way to go about fixing most of the church’s other problems.
The best way for us to respond to the Holy Spirit’s call to revival is to humbly repent and recommit ourselves to a Methodist faith. John Wesley wrote in “The Character of a Methodist” that the person who practices such a faith “is a Christian, not in name only, but in heart and in life.
“He is inwardly and outwardly conformed to the will of God, as revealed in the written Word. He thinks, speaks and lives according to the ‘method’ laid down in the revelation of Jesus Christ. His soul is ‘renewed after the image of God,’ ‘in righteousness and in all true holiness.’ And ‘having the mind that was in Christ’ he ‘so walks as Christ also walked.’”
Wesley’s description is an ambitious one, to be sure. Embodying it will require great preaching, disciplined practice and bold evangelism. But it is no less attainable today than it was in Wesley’s own day.
Our culture is increasingly devoted to relativism, a consumerist frenzy and a hunger for warmongering. Part of our repentance must be a deep sorrow over the ways we have allowed ourselves to be a part of that culture.
But the One from whom we seek forgiveness is “the way, the truth and the life,” and we are promised that if we draw near to him, he will draw near to us (James 4:8).
Andrew C. Thompson
