Not Business as Usual

by

Views from a Ridge

Sometimes, business as usual must give way to the demands of change. So it has been for United Methodist Insight's coordinator, yours truly, over the past few months. The demands of change explain the recent absence of commentary from me. Beyond collecting the best of United Methodist interpretations each week, my time and energies have been consumed by the immediate needs of Insight's sponsoring congregation, St. Stephen United Methodist Church of Mesquite, TX, a suburb abutting Dallas to the east.

I want to tell you about St. Stephen UMC, because in some ways it's a typical United Methodist congregation and in other ways it's quite unusual. St. Stephen was founded in 1959 "to change the world," as one of our still-active charter members says. Fifty-six years later, we're still trying to change the world, which puts us right in line with the denomination's mission statement, "To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world." Our founding pastor, the Rev. William K. McElvaney, is about to challenge the United Methodist Church to change once more by officiating at a religious wedding ceremony for a gay couple.

Dr. McElvaney has experience with confronting unjust systems, and he imbued St. Stephen with that spirit. Back in 1964, thanks to the moral challenges posed by Dr. McElvaney and the church's lay leaders, the Mesquite Independent School District became one of the first Texas school districts to desegregate racially. Since that time, St. Stephen has often stood up for those who are marginalized or oppressed by unjust systems. In 1998, St. Stephen joined the Reconciling Ministries Network, and since then has extended a special invitation to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, their families and friends, to be part of our faith community. Our Reconciling Statement, as well as our vision statement, is printed each week in our worship bulletin. And yes, we believe that the current United Methodist prohibitions regarding LGBT people are morally wrong, and should be removed from our common covenant.

Active Outreach

For a church of around 150 members, St. Stephen has one of the most active outreach programs anywhere. Each month we bring a meal to the residents of a local hospice for people living with HIV/AIDS. We don't just drop off the food; we sit down to eat with the residents. The same is true of our quarterly hosting of breakfast at a Dallas homeless shelter. We have performed both of these missions for more than two decades.

Many of us, myself included, make blankets and clothes for an organization that provides newborn layettes to low-income mothers at the county hospital. We've partnered with other congregations to build Habitat for Humanity houses and joined in community fix-up events around Mesquite. We tutor children at the elementary school next door. We give baskets to children at Easter and we provide gifts at Christmas. We host a free program teaching English as a Second Language (ESL).

We've been on international missions to Guatemala and Bolivia. We've toured Israel. We make cleanup buckets, hygiene kits and layettes for the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). We were one of the top contributors a few years ago to the denomination's campaign to stamp out malaria, giving more than $30,000 thanks to a generous lead donor. For the past several years we've paid 100 percent of our apportionments, the "fair-share" support of United Methodist ministry beyond our local church. At the other end of the spectrum, we keep a small food pantry, and when people in need come to us, we help them without questioning whether they're worthy of our help.

Our music program has been a crowning jewel since the church began. We've been blessed to have local public school music teachers as our music directors, one of whom served more than 30 years before retiring. Among our church members, we have professional musicians and gifted amateurs who delight to sing in the choir. We have a handbell choir and a baroque-style tracker organ made especially for us. In our early days, St. Stephen performed Broadway musicals and concerts. Our youth drama choir, Elation, continues this tradition for 10 days each summer, going on tour with "Godspell!" in different regions of the United States. One of our young adult members, a veteran of "Godspell's" role of Jesus, is on the verge of having a stellar career in professional opera.

So Why Aren't We Growing?

There is a lot more I could say about St. Stephen UMC, but you get the idea. What stuns me about this recitation is this: Across the United States, there are congregations like St. Stephen in nearly every community. These congregations have gifts and graces for ministry and mission as rich and successful as ours, and that are as treasured by those involved in them as those blessed by them.

So with all this goodness going on, why isn't The United Methodist Church as a whole, and congregations like St. Stephen UMC in particular, bursting at the seams with people?

Oh, there are lots of theories to answer this question, and many of them are valid. One of the biggest is that we're living through an era when all institutions have become suspect. Churches have been tainted by events such as child sexual abuse episodes and the cover-ups that have followed them, and by instances in which we have fought one another so violently over some issue that it's clear Jesus' teachings have had no effect upon us. For all the good we do, why would anyone want to commit to an organization that so obviously fails to practice what it preaches?

However, after the past several months of working intensely with my sisters and brothers at St. Stephen UMC, I think one of the most important errors we must correct is this: We laypeople have to learn, again or for the first time, how to share our faith in Jesus Christ with others. We must learn to share faith in Christ kindly, gently, unselfishly, not to increase our membership, but because the world needs to know that God loves us without limits.

This realization has come to me as a participant on behalf of St. Stephen UMC in a North Texas Conference program called the Small Church Initiative. We at St. Stephen were highly skeptical of this program at first; it seemed like the latest "new thing" focused on getting numbers up. However, with only two sessions completed, St. Stephen's team thankfully has discovered that spiritual development lies as much at the core of the Small Church Initiative as does membership increase. Those moments when we examine our faith and what it can mean to the world are keeping me in the program. As one of our team said, the most impressive question thus far is: "In 20 words or less, how would you describe Jesus Christ and your church to someone who knows nothing about them?"

St. Stephen's small-church initiative team has agreed that we're going to be working on this question for months to come. We're going to be working on it as we evaluate all that we do in mission and outreach, in education, worship and ministry.

There's no doubt that we will continue to be a "justice-seeking" congregation, as Dr. McElvaney puts it. However, there's also no doubt that St. Stephen will be more open and vocal about the fact that our justice-seeking stems from our conviction, if I may paraphrase Dr. Cornel West, that justice is what the love of Christ looks like in public. In this way, we hope to invite more people to become followers of Jesus Christ, because we still want to change the world.

A veteran religion journalist, Cynthia B. Astle serves as project coordinator for United Methodist Insight. She is a certified spiritual director and a member of St. Stephen United Methodist Church, Mesquite, TX, where she currently serves as Worship chair and coordinator for the Small Church Initiative.