Jesus Teaching
Jesus taught in ambiguous parables that required his listeners to think more deeply and come to their own decisions. (Illustration Courtesy of God Is for Real.com)
What does it really mean to "make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?"
For those readers who might not recognize it, that's the official mission of The United Methodist Church – to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. It has existed in some form for nearly 20 years now. Its first phrase – "to make disciples of Jesus Christ" – was initiated by an ad hoc group of delegates at the 1996 General Conference in Denver, when some of the first genuine threats emerged to break apart The United Methodist Church over the acceptance of homosexuality.
From the first, progressives and some centrists argued that the mission was incomplete. Its first phrase comes from Jesus' "great commission" in Matthew 28:19-20, when the risen Christ instructs his disciples to initiate others into their new community through baptism and to instruct them in his teachings. Many objected to the mission statement because it failed to include the specifics of Matthew 25:34-45, when Jesus predicted God would judge nations by how well they cared for the most needy in their midst. The rejoinder to this objection was that Matthew 28 inferred Matthew 25 in the instruction to pass on Jesus' teachings to new disciples, thus making the "great commission" preeminent.
Finally, at the 2008 General Conference, the phrase "for the transformation of the world" was officially added to the mission statement after some 10 years of informal use. Even before its easy adoption, the addition was emblazoned on a banner that stretched the length of the spectator stands in the Fort Worth, Texas, convention center where the 2008 session was held.
With that kind of long-term development, one might think that United Methodists are in agreement about their official mission statement. In truth, few people in the pews, and even some in the pulpits, know that such a thing exists, or have taken to heart the idea that "the people called Methodist" (as founder John Wesley named them), are expected to fulfill this stated mission as their first priority in their respective congregations.
Ignorance of and/or ambivalence to the official UMC mission led many to question what the statement actually means in each congregational context. How exactly does one go about "making" a 21st century person into a disciple of the first-century prophet Jesus, the Christ (a Greek word for the Hebrew term "messiah")? The answers – for there are more than one – are far deeper and more complex than the latest technological approaches for "doing evangelism."
The word "making" creates the first stumbling block. Jesus took three years to instruct his original disciples – of whom 12 were his closest companions, but who included many more (thousands in some scriptures) – in ways that would enable people to love God and love their neighbors, thus fulfilling the greatest commandments of Judaism as their central reasons for living. But not one of those first disciples could be considered "made," for the decision to follow Jesus' way resulted only from a voluntary response, not threat or coercion. Indeed, the Christian faith endures because Jesus remains one of the world's prime examples of how God constantly woos people to divine awareness. Jesus' disciples responded to his message because he described frameworks for divine-human and human-to-human relationships that gave people a way to live together, such as his teachings found in Matthew 5, 6 and 7. As people began to live in ways that Jesus described, they gained both inner peace and outer power to cope with life's challenges. When others saw these changes, they asked what had happened. And Jesus' followers responded with their own stories of trusting in his teachings about God and themselves.
Following Jesus demands not simply intellectual assent to concepts, but also a lifelong commitment to an ongoing struggle to live in ways that show love for God and for people.
All of this transformation began in a multifaceted relationship – people responding to Jesus' teachings, responding to God's wooing through those teachings, and ultimately responding to one another and the world around them in different ways. The intellectual formulae to transmit doctrine about Jesus, such as the Apostles' and Nicene creeds that have been the focus of so much blog discourse lately, came after God raised Jesus from death. As a shorthand to what the church came to believe about Jesus, the creeds represented the admission ticket to get into the organized church, which became the guardian of Christian grace in the same way the religious authorities of Jesus' day held the gateway to forgiveness in Judaism. But the creeds do not encompass the teachings that originally drew people to Jesus, nor do they represent the sole mark of discipleship. Following Jesus demands not simply intellectual assent to concepts, but also a lifelong commitment to an ongoing struggle to live in ways that show love for God and for people.
Clearly, then, The United Methodist Church's mission statement – to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world – cannot stand on its own. To plant and grow this mission in each United Methodist congregation around the world requires years of commitment to study, practice and openness to new inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The mission requires both internal development through spiritual practices that foster faith, humility and devotion, and external development that takes care of immediate needs while changing the systems that create such needs. At present, few of even the best congregations can accomplish the mission. That's because United Methodists have not been taught that following Jesus isn't simply about local church membership, but instead involves learning and practicing a counter-cultural way of life.
About a decade ago, popular evangelical authors Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo co-wrote a book, "Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel." Their book critiqued with pinpoint accuracy how the Christian church in all its denominational flavors has wasted its time and resources on culture wars and doctrinal disputes rather than live out Jesus' teachings. In the minds of many, The United Methodist Church has become a worldwide adventure in missing the point – not only of its own mission statement, nor even of the creeds it espouses, but instead of how to live as true followers of Jesus Christ.
General Conference delegates – some of whom will be elected over the next three months – will decide the UMC's future in Portland, Ore., in May 2016. In the meantime, those of us not elected to our global congress might do well to ponder what Jesus' "great commission" means in our respective congregations, and determine how we can live that out together in ways that show God's love to and for the world.
A longtime religion journalist and certified spiritual director, Cynthia B. Astle serves as coordinator of United Methodist Insight. Contact her at one.scribe56@gmail.com.