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Archive for March, 2009

Dear Friends:

It has been a little over two weeks since an invitation was issued to young clergy and other young leaders within The United Methodist Church to participate in a 40 day prayer campaign for the denomination.  I can gladly say that over 40 people have committed to write prayers for the campaign, and a handful of others have committed to pray with and for us during this period.

I have set the dates for the campaign.  We will begin on Monday, May 18 and conclude our 40 days on June 26.  At this time our campaign is represented by members from a number of annual conferences.  At last count we have voices from 18 annual conferences, and geographically span the map from the east to the west coast of the U.S.A.

Next Steps

The task is not through.  I’m now looking for persons who are committed to follow the blog and pray during this campaign.  Most of the prayers written will take approximately 5 minutes to read, some will be shorter, some may be longer.  

Will you commit to pray during this campaign?

Once I have a live link for the prayer campaign I will pass along that information to those who leave a comment or contact me via email.  I will also post that information to my blog.  We are planning to have a Blog Action Day to help forward this campaign.  If you leave me a comment or drop me a note, I will pass along the date when it is set.

If you are willing to pray for and alongside those persons leading this campaign please leave a comment.  I will keep your name and email contact information handy, and will pass along links and details for how you might pray during the campaign.  Together we will:

  • Pray for the faithful witness of those persons called “Christian,” Methodist or otherwise, to Jesus the Messiah.
  • Pray for new persons to come to faith in Jesus through our collective witness.
  • Pray for the renewal of The United Methodist Church.
  • Pray for young clergy and leaders within The United Methodist Church, including those persons God might yet call to leadership. 
  • Pray for God’s vision for the Church moving forward, wherein we might do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

In the six weeks we have until this campaign launches, please pray for those who will be giving voice to our prayers, and for the church catholic.  

May we be more faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, our Lord.

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The good news: this guy has read his Aristotle.  TED Talks are a great resource.  If you don’t already know about them, go here, bookmark the site, and take in what is offered there.  In this talk Schwartz talks about virtue and the need for practical wisdom, as well as the need to moralize work.  He exhorts the minds at TED to identify moral exemplars and celebrate those who embody wisdom.  My only question for Schwartz: by what criteria do we identify those persons?

I enjoyed this talk.  Visit the site and check out others.

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Silence

Becoming the kind of person who can be silent before God means realigning one’s notions of efficiency, of productivity, and of time in general.

-Samuel Wells, God’s Companions, 87

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Return From Israel!

Yesterday I came back from a trip to the Land of Jesus.  We started in Galilee and ended in Jerusalem.  I got to see a lot of cool stuff, spent some great time with friends and family, and read 3 1/2 of the 5 books I took along with me.  This morning I’ve returned to work.  If you want to check out some of my pics from the trip please visit the photography page on my website.

I’ll write more about my trip before week’s end, including the places we visited and some of the highlights.

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Sexy United Methodists?

Is it strange that someone arrived at my blog by searching, “Sexy United Methodists?”

My answer: yes.  I don’t feel the need to elaborate.

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Dear Friends:

All of you know that I did not grow up United Methodist (I think). Some of you know better than others the difficulties I currently face as a young adult within United Methodism. I am a committed Christian, however, and thus have hope for a tomorrow which looks much different than today, a hope rooted in the belief that Jesus is indeed the Messiah–born, lived, crucified, died, buried, and coming again. My hope is rooted in a story, and I’m no stranger to old narratives of a people in days of old who experienced frustration, wandering lostness, and distance from God, only to reawaken to a newfound love and depth of passion for a Sovereign who stayed true to the promise to be with us “always, even until the end of the age.”

I’ve been tracking a number of conversations currently taking place within Christianity (not just United Methodism), and truthfully, there is a lot of bad news. Christian people have had their confidence shaken. Despair is rampant. And our institutional memory has suffered. It isn’t just that United Methodist people have forgotten Wesley. It is that Christians have forgotten God, the story told in Scripture, and the reminders we find there to “fear not.”

As I’ve worked among friends I’ve had a common refrain, and that is that the hope of the denomination does not rest in our ability to formulate strategic plans or to rally our collective energies around common political initiatives. It rests in a return to God. I have noted that the most telling sign that renewal is near or soon to take place will be the moment when Jesus, rather than we human beings, becomes the center of our speech and our practice. I will know things have turned when our talk of Jesus seems to reflect that we believe in a living, dynamic, active, Lord who is our Master and Teacher, walking among us, instructing us, leading us, correcting us, and transforming us, rather than referring to a cosmic Christ who may be the object of our worship, but not one in whom we trust to accomplish all that much in our presence.

Some of the things I’ve read and heard in recent months have been encouraging. There are leaders in the denomination who are rallying around good things, there is effort being given to bring about a turn from what has been a long, slow, and steady decline, and there are people who genuinely care about The United Methodist Church–it’s history, doctrine, and witness in the world. Then, there are people like you–my friends both near and far. I wouldn’t be reaching out to you if I didn’t believe in your leadership and your passion to some degree–your commitment to the gospel, to your communities, and to the Church catholic. I have met people, whether it be through the amazing technological innovation that is the web, or through dinners, coffee, runs, and travel, who I believe God can use to accomplish immeasurable good for our Lord and his Kingdom.

This morning as I returned from a workout I had an idea. It is a simple idea. And it is an idea which is not new. I am not a great navigator or purveyor of “politics.” I am not the best at building and leveraging networks. That is not my strength. That is why I have friends. I also have friends to alert me when I have said something utterly ridiculous. Friends keep me in check. What follows is my idea, and it may be worthwhile; it may not. That is for you to decide. And I’m asking for your help, as what I propose initially may be strengthened and sharpened through collaboration, if you’re willing to invest your energy in this project.

There is currently a movement within the denomination among young clergy to come together around a common purpose, diagnose common frustrations, and chart a vision for tomorrow within the UMC. While I appreciate ideas that center around online “connection” or community and planning live events for equipping and training, I believe such efforts will not be all that they could be unless they are undergirded by prayer. While I believe that the prayers of a righteous person availeth much, I believe that the prayers of righteous people availeth more, therefore, I’m inviting you to help me flesh out a commitment to prayer among young clergy and other young leaders within United Methodism.

My idea basically outlines thus:

  • Network together a list of 40 young people within United Methodism who are willing to commit to praying for the denomination and for other young clergy/church leaders over a designated 40 day period.
  • Have each of these 40 persons commit to writing a prayer, to be published online, which will guide those praying alongside and within the young clergy community (in other words, publish one prayer per day from one member of the 40 person team to a blog or some such forum that can be subscribed to via RSS or a Reader)
  • Have the forty day period be divided as nearly as possible into thirds, having the pattern of prayer follow the contemplative threefold path (purgation, illumination, and union). This will first include prayers of repentance, acknowledgement of sin and lostness, then moving forward to the petition that God would give us a common vision for the future, followed by a celebration of God’s gift as we live into a new tomorrow.
  • Plan the execution of this forty day campaign to coincide with a time when we know annual conferences will be held (late spring, early summer).
  • Be unabashed in praying that our collective witness would be strengthened so that new people would come into a relationship with the living God through faith in Jesus Christ.
  • Have participants mention the need for prayer in their ministries and among their ministry peers, specifically asking older clergy mentors to pray for young clergy, as well as pray that God might call people to ministry among us.

Those are my initial thoughts. From here, feel free to chime in. If any of you would like to pass this idea along to others, please do so. I would be happy to set up a blog, collect prayers for forty participant leaders, and manage the postings. For those that write prayers, I would want to include a short, three sentence bio that includes the person’s name, their conference, their current appointment (or their role in church leadership), and maybe other interesting details. It would be up to people like you to invite others to read and participate. It might also be wise to set up an “About” page which describes the project, and lists those persons who wish to participate in this forty day prayer initiative.

This is conversation starter which I will also post to my blog. Feel free to help me expand, and feel free to help me build a movement.

In Christ,

Benjamin A. Simpson

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Last week I received Kevin M. Watson’s A Blueprint for Disciplineship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living by mail.  It is a short, engaging book, and I read it the day it fell into my hands.  I did not actually fall there by as though by a divine accident.  I requested the book, and I’m glad I did.

Watson is currently a Ph.D. student in Church History and Wesley Studies at Southern Methodist University.  He is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, and blogs here.  Prior to his sojourn to the land of academia he had pastored in the local church.  I have never met Kevin in person, but perhaps I will someday, as he seems to be a kindred spirit, a deep thinker, and a lover of God.  

These facts are relevant to Watson’s writing, as they reveal the source of his depth and his clarity.  Watson writes for real people attempting to live the Christian faith within the bounds of everyday life.  Though he is now an academician, Watson remembers that his forebear, John Wesley, sought to equip people in practical Christianity, and writes accordingly.  As his title suggests, this small book chronicles a Wesleyan vision for discipleship and provides helpful wisdom and insight for small groups, pastors crafting a plan for discipleship within the local church, and individual Christians seeking formation in a distinctly Wesleyan way of Jesus Christ.

Watson begins his book by naming the crisis: it appears as though the central task of discipleship has been forgotten by the Christian people of our time.  For United Methodists, Watson pulls no punches, making certain that his audience is well aware that his denomination has been in decline for four decades and that willful ignorance of this fact “is done at our own peril.”  Watson asserts that this state of affairs can change, but to bring about change Methodist people must not “desperately hold on and try not to lose too many members” but must “depend on God’s grace, by breathing deeply of God’s Spirit, and…[allow] our lives to give witness to who Christ is and what he has done for us.”  Said differently, Watson issues a call for repentance–something I deeply appreciate.  At the center of Watson’s message is a strong theology of God’s prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace.  More than he may be aware, his account of grace given in his first twenty pages is a true gift to the church.

After naming the crisis and building a theological foundation for the Christian life, Watson paints a picture of the future for individual Christian believers.  Along with Wesley, Watson stresses personal and social holiness as the goal of the Christian life.  Watson states, “The goal of grace…is not just to save us from ourselves; it is to enable us to enter into a deeper and deeper relationship with God so that we are able to love God and our neighbor increasingly.”  Watson is sure to emphasize that the efficacy of God’s grace will result in varying vocations and expressions of holiness.  There will be those, like Mother Teresa, who are called to serve the outcasts in the streets of Calcutta.  But there will also be businessmen and women, parents, and persons working common trades who have been given no less a responsibility to follow Jesus in the context of “ordinary” life.  We are wise to remember that Jesus was a carpenter living in relative obscurity for the first thirty years of his earthly life, and by his example demonstrated that the with-God life can be fully experienced and expressed in the tasks of everyday living.

Once Watson has established that the calling of discipleship is for all people, he moves on to the historical examination of Wesley and his method for Christian discipleship.   The common difficulty faced by both Wesley and Christian leaders of our time is the need to establish a direction within which people may move from infancy to maturity as followers of Jesus Christ.  According to Watson, Wesley’s goal “was not to get as many people as he could to pray a certain prayer.  Rather, his goal was to get as many people as he could to trust in Christ, not just for one moment, but for the rest of their lives and with all of their lives.”  Watson clearly describes Wesley’s three levels of community which may assist in bringing people to maturity–the society meeting (akin to congregational worship), the class meeting (akin to a small group), and the band meeting (a meeting of a few, same-gender friends for personal accountability, including the confession of sin).  Within Methodist societies, these persons would strive to follow three general rules: 1) Do no harm; 2) Do all the good that you can; and 3) Attend upon the ordinances of God.

The heart of Watson’s work is an exploration of these three rules.  He carefully explains each rule, giving helpful, true to life illustrations alongside practical actions steps for the integration of each rule within daily life.  Watson also attends to the biblical basis for each rule, as he recognizes these practices were not an invention of Wesley, but are rather rooted in a much older, deeper story.  Following his treatment of the general rules, Watson attends to what he calls “balance points.”  These balance points are: 1) faith and works; 2) personal piety and social action; and 3) love of God and love of neighbor.  Each of these points have been treated extensively across Christian literature, but it is no surprise they surface here, as Watson is a Methodist.  Each of these three balance points are evident when Methodist people are at their best.

Watson ends his work with a call to follow Jesus. His vision is cast for Christ’s sake, not only for the sake of The United Methodist Church.  His call to follow is distinctly Wesleyan but broadly encompasses all Christians.  Watson states, “We have something that is good news, something that we are blessed to be the stewards of, and we will want to freely and boldly offer this gospel (which means good news!) to all the world.  We offer this good news, not because we want something from others, but because of a deep conviction that we have something they need to live life as God intends.  Living life to the fullness that God intends is, after all, what the Wesleyan blueprint for discipleship is all about!”

I truly appreciate this book from Kevin Watson.  Watson is on solid footing–logically, biblically, historically, theologically, and spiritually.  This book is written with the precise mind of a careful thinker and the heart of a pastor.  The challenge which remains to be met is that which he issues at the conclusion of his book, which includes a call to make a decision to follow Jesus in community with others, to put the general rules in to practice, to live a life of holiness, and to participate in God’s redemption of the world. 

I can only hope and pray all Christians, Methodist or otherwise, heed Watson’s challenge.

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Every time I travel I bring too many books.  I anticipate having the time, energy, and space to dive into works that have rested far too long upon my shelf, but I return home and place those books squarely back where they once rested, spines uncracked.

During our upcoming trip to Israel I decided I would limit myself to five books other than the Bible.  Here is my list:

We’ll see how I do, but I anticipate my mornings and my time traveling will be my best chances to make progress on these books.  During each day I plan to journal, observe, listen, video, and take pictures of the places we visit.  My Flickr stream, my website, and my blog will likely bring updates from the trip.  I may even post a video or two.  

I can’t wait!

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Dear Friends:

Soon I will be hopping on a plane and taking a week long tour of Israel. Cool stuff. I’m going to be putting down all thesis/research related stuff and only taking along church leadership/leadership/Christian life type reading material. I’m going to be pretty selective–I don’t think I can take along more than 4 or 5 books. Molly won’t allow it. Plus, I need to keep my reading restricted to mornings, evenings, and travel. I plan to do a lot of looking out the window, through a camera lens, and really trying to take in everything I see.

I’ve already ordered a couple of books online that will arrive soon, but I’m looking for some more recommendations. I have stuff at home I haven’t read, so I do have some options within my own library. Nevertheless, I have learned that there is always more good reading material out there, and the best way to discover new stuff is to ask friends what they’ve been reading. I’ve already lined up at least one book I plan to borrow.

If you have a book you think is excellent, please let me know. I may have it, I may not. But, if I don’t have it, I may ask to borrow it from you, especially if you are local. :-)

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I have received my wish. Thanks to Ryan for passing along the photo.

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