“A District Superintendent’s Vision for the Charlotte District”
September 4, 2003
Dilworth United Methodist Church
Scripture ~ Matthew 28:16-20
Preacher ~ George Thompson
Any authentic vision for the church must emerge from the gospel narratives. Otherwise we pursue an illusion or the product of wishful thinking. A viable vision must be rooted in reality, but it must also have the power to transform the present reality of gloom into the fulfillment of God’s powerful gift of hope.
The present reality in the Charlotte District is this: the United Methodist Church is a mainline Protestant denomination that is hardly maintaining its membership at a time when this region is burgeoning with unprecedented growth. We are a stagnant church. In this time of economic uncertainty and decline, our financial resources for doing ministry are dwindling. We depend upon our larger congregations to sustain our composite growth. Our smaller, more fragile congregations continue to shrink. Pastors feel threatened. We are tempted to enter a defensive mode rather than a cooperative and unified posture. We have become a maintenance church, rather than the transforming mission church Christ calls us to be. We have focused upon ministries of preservation rather than ministries of transformation.
The primary goals of many of our congregations are related to ministering only to the needs of the constituent members. Even the smallest congregations strive to offer a full-service agenda to placate complaints and to meet the needs of parishioners who want to be pampered and to monopolize the attention of their over-taxed pastor. We spend our time, therefore, maintaining the status quo with business as usual, as if the church were called to minister unto itself rather than to an unredeemed, unloving world.
But Christ’s vision for the church calls us to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that [he] has commanded….” Jesus’ vision for the United Methodist Church is, therefore, for each congregation to be a missionary outpost for the whole church. Our central calling is not merely to grow larger, but to grow deeper. We are called by the Risen Christ to make disciples, to bring persons into a sacramental style of life modeled in the personhood of Jesus, to live lives of miraculous expectation, and to engage in the glorious activities of grace by which unloving lives are transformed and our culture is confronted with the radical message of God’s redemptive love.
I envision a very different reality emerging in the Charlotte District of the United Methodist Church. I envision our moving from a maintenance model to a mission model. I foresee a body of coordinated and joyous pastors responding faithfully to the great commission of our Lord and thereby reclaiming our central focus as a denomination.
My vision has been enhanced by reading this summer the volume, Reclaiming the Great Commission. The book is authored by Hamilton Beazley and chronicles the creative and faithful work of Episcopal Bishop Claude Payne, who has helped transform his episcopal area in the state of Texas.
Mortimer Arias correctly reminds us that all four gospels contain some version of the so-called Great Commission of our Lord. Each evangelist wrote from the perspective of his own faith community’s memory of Jesus. But no biblical exegete can avoid the conclusion that the Jesus, whom we meet in all four gospels, was quite specific and focused in his commissioning the church. J. B. Phillips preferred to call Matthew 28:16-20 “the final commission”. Others have labeled these directives, “The Last Mandate” or “the Mission Charge.”
A possible parallel passage exists in Mark (16:14-20) “Go into all the world and proclaim the Good News to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned….” This passionate mandate was added onto the original Marcan text because of the abrupt original ending.
Luke’s gospel provides a paradigm for proclaiming the jubilee liberation at the heart of Jesus’ message. (See Luke 24:44-49). “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to these things. And see I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’”
In each of the Scriptures the focus is the same: proclaiming, teaching, converting, baptizing, and doing the deeds of authentic discipleship. In short, our mission is to make disciples.
Johannine theology aligns the great commission with the Fourth Gospel’s theme of redeeming the cosmos from sin. In the Book of Glory (a section that begins with the Passion Narrative), the Risen Lord appears at evening to his disciples and pronounces his shalom. Then he commissions them with these words, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In John’s exalted Christology, the presence of the Risen Christ constitutes the Holy Spirit. Our Lord merely breathes upon his disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (Read John 20:19-23 for a study of the Johannine Pentecost.)
A mission congregation is grounded in Wesley’s doctrine of prevenient, justifying, sanctifying and perfecting grace. The mission church is always a grace-filled congregation. The maintenance church perfects the art of retaining the sins of many and it restricts the proliferation of lay ministries. Members play selfish games with power, control, and denying permission to develop new outreach ministries. We become a district of permission-seeking churches, awaiting instructions from the Conference Office or the District Superintendent’s pen.
How shall we become a more dynamic Charlotte District, which Christ surely wants us to be? How shall we reclaim the great commission as our missional focus?
1. We shall begin by imitating the way of Jesus.
I initiated my ministry among you at the installation service by the act of washing feet because each of us is called to be a servant leader.
Throughout the year we shall have opportunities to engage corporately in servant days. The people of our parishes will know that a cadre of Methodist pastors will be engaged together in some expression of servant ministry. These periodic activities will have the purpose of introducing some of us to vital programs of Christ-centered compassion in the Charlotte Region. These days will also build camaraderie among the clergy and provide a means of intense focus upon enacting the great commission—“obeying everything [he] has commanded [us].”
In the past thirty-five years as a pastor I have observed that congregations that are in mission are the ones that rarely have time for petty squabbles.
The pastor often sets the tone of a mission-driven parish. When the pastor leads from the trenches and engages in personal ministry among the least, the lost, and the lonely, the laity are prone to put aside their petty quarrels and join their servant pastor. Likewise, when the central agenda at each board meeting is the pastor’s laundry list of personal complaints (inadequate salary, updating the parsonage furniture, and fixing leaking faucets), the tone of the whole church gravitates toward negativity. The whole church begins to major on minors and neglects its central calling.
Yet, it is amazing how many parsonages get fixed when laity and pastors unite in joyous mission and life-transforming evangelism. It is amazing how many salaries are raised, without the slightest provocation, because some lay leader felt sweat equity dripping from the smiling face of a mission-motivated pastor.
2. My second assertion is a derivative of the first: We shall become an unselfish network of missionary pastors joined together in the harmonious activity of making disciples in the judicatory area of Charlotte.
Let me unpack this important assertion by proposing a specific pledge. Let us today pledge to one another that we shall refuse to define evangelism as a transfer of one United Methodist member from one congregation to another United Methodist one. Servant Leaders engage in evangelism for the sake of building the Kingdom of Christ—not for the purpose of establishing a personal fiefdom of ecclesiastical territory.
All our churches can grow together. The Charlotte District is the one place this can happen most efficiently. We indeed resemble a complete judicatory district in size and resources.
How can large, dynamic churches help the small, declining congregations? I have several concepts in mind that I shall articulate here; but I need your input for their installation and development.
*I envision the natural formation of clusters of small churches that will relate to a larger church. Resources will be shared to the mutual benefit of each participant. A small congregation that cannot offer all four components of Disciple Bible, for example, will provide that full ministry even though some of their members will attend classes at the nearby large church. The larger church will covenant not to evangelize by treating these participants as potential members.
What then is the advantage of membership in the smaller congregation? Obviously, the experience if intimacy is a treasured dividend.
*Mentoring is another form of effective evangelism in a cooperative spirit. Good Shepherd and Providence UMC are providing encouragement and experience in our launch of Morningstar UMC.
*In the years ahead I want to explore the possibility of establishing a few cooperative parish models in the Charlotte District. In this way a very small membership church may be provided with as many as three pastors, each shared by a cluster of churches that are engaged in the focused ministry of evangelism in a geographical region. These cooperative parishes may become inter-racial and diversified in a broad range of disciple-making ministries. Specialization would then become affordable; small churches will share a specialist in Christian education or youth ministry or pastoral counseling. A cluster of servant leaders within a cluster of cooperative churches can accomplish greater things for the Kingdom.
3. My final proposal for reclaiming the great commission involves a literal rendering of Christ’s imperative to take the Gospel to all nations. Panta ta ethné says the text of Matthew in plain Greek.
John Wesley was the cosmopolitan evangelist that Jesus intended every disciple to be. The world is our parish. And the world has come to Charlotte. This is one of the most exciting things about our evangelical challenge today.
I am, consequently, looking for congregations that will become outposts for an ethnic mission community. These Christ-centered mission communities may not need land or a separate building. If for the next ten years an Hispanic faith community meets at your building at little or no financial cost, a second generation of new Hispanic members will be integral to your English-speaking church family.
I would like for us to plant new Asian faith communities, new Hispanic faith communities, and new Native American faith communities. Will we not need land and buildings for each? No. This should not be our distracting focus. Let us primarily nurture discipleship. The authentic church will grow. We can then partner with the YMCA, a movie theatre, even the downtown Arena if we truly grow the faith community before we spend all our resources on new buildings!
I have been appointed to the second best clergy role in this Conference. I am the District Superintendent of a dynamic, visionary people who will be responsive to the mandate of the Risen Lord. The best job in the Conference is, of course, the pastorate to which each of you is appointed. I had thirty-five years of that privilege. It is now my turn to be a second-class citizen in an appointment beyond the local church.
But I accept this task with eagerness and gratitude. I do not fear failure because I am attuned to Jesus’ Great Mandate that concludes with this incomparable promise, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Even in a city like Charlotte, you can take that statement to the bank.