Why I Am a United Methodist: Encouraging Questions

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When I was younger I had a really hard time trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up.  My parents had always pushed my brother and me to do the best we could academically, but unfortunately my “hard work” was never focused.  Looking back I realize that, while at least in high school, I was working hard at every subject simply because that is what I was supposed to do.  Now while I am sure that this is something that was useful for developing a good work ethic (even though I tend to procrastinate still today), it was not particularly helpful in trying to decide a unified vision for my future.

I took my first college class when I was a junior in high school as part of the Post Secondary Option.  This is a program that allows high school students to take college level courses and, for me, it fulfilled an even better role—it let me get out of school early.  The first class I took was a humanities course simply titled, Great Books.  Now I had really enjoyed reading up to that point in my life (I had recently discovered Stephen King, which for a 16-year-old kid was really pushing the bounds of social acceptability) and I figured it sounded better than elementary algebra.  There were some books on the reading list that I had heard of (by some guy named Homer) and others that I had not (like Gilgamesh), but I was surprised to find that we would be reading from the Bible.  The only Bible that my family had owned was the kind that filled up an entire coffee table, and that didn’t seem too reasonable to carry to class.  So my mother drove me to the local Christian bookstore and as I stood there trying to find what I needed, I was amazed that there could be an entire wall full of Bibles, each and every one different in some way.  I knew the one from the coffee table was the King James Version (apparently grandmother had a special place in her heart for Shakespeare), so I figured that was plenty good enough.

My upbringing as a child was not particularly unusual or different.  I grew up in rural Appalachia in a working class family.  My parents were not religious folks, having both themselves grown up along different spectrums of fundamentalism that they did not want my brother and I to experience.  We didn’t go to church, except maybe on Easter or Christmas, but God was still very much a part of the conversation.  Growing up where I did gave me a common cultural identity and I would have even self-identified as a Christian—but would not have been able to articulate what that meant until much later (I admit it still eludes me at times).

On the first evening of Great Books class I was somewhat surprised by the professor’s insistence that we should take notes and highlight in the Bible.  Though I wasn’t exactly sure, I just thought that was something that you were not supposed to do.  This initial anxiety was quickly dissolved as we began one of the most interesting lectures/discussions I had been a part of—the discussion on creation myths.  I had never read from the book of Genesis and had barely heard the Jewish creation story, but I was absolutely amazed.  The way in which the words seemed to leap off of the page in such a poetic and meaningful fashion was not only fresh but also strangely liberating.

The professor then did something that was apparently offensive to some of the Christians in the class. He began to talk about identity formation through the art of storytelling.  It was clear that, to many, the accounts of Genesis were not simply a “story,” but an historical fact as if written down by God’s own self.  Little did my classmates or I know that this was exactly the response the professor was trying to elicit as we spent the remainder of the class exploring other creation myths and stories.  Right there, in this very classroom (though I would not realize it for some years later), the professor helped me to first see the power of narrative.

Prior to this encounter, most of the folks that I had talked with about religion were very straightforward and insistent that they carried the monopoly on truth—in other words, the way they thought was the only way to think.  I had found this to be rather disconcerting and I was often frustrated with what seemed like a very narrow lens in which to view deep existential questions.  The church—at least my narrow experience of it as a teen and young adult—was one that was rather exclusive and restrictive.  School became a place for me, however, that was increasingly encouraging of my inquisitive nature but I still did not have a satisfying space to ask questions about life, suffering, injustice, and the combination of shared experiences, that is, until I encountered United Methodism.

Now, I would like to say that I became a United Methodist through some sort of awesome burning bush type story, but unfortunately I found myself in a Methodist church by mere proximity.  While I was in graduate school the first time, I taught for the university at one of their branch campuses, which happened to be right down the street from a large United Methodist Church.  So, my wife and I decided to check it out.  And my experience was completely different than my experience when I was younger.  The folks I encountered in this new space not only encouraged me to ask questions and to explore, but they also provided me an avenue to work towards justice in my own community.  This was a connection between faith and experience that I had not encountered before.  I had gained a new lens in which I could begin to see the world in a different way than what I had before.  A lens that was open to a multiplicity of experiences and truths. However, lenses are only finite. They only work until they don’t work anymore.  And, it was time for me to evolve once again.

It was during my time in this particular community that I begin to understand my call.  I had never planned on or even given any time to consider myself as a pastor before so I wanted to make sure that this tug I felt was the real thing.  I dove in, exploring the richness of John Wesley and the history of the Methodist movement, and I found a vast environment that allowed me to explore the things I was passionate about.  The sense of openness that is at the core of United Methodism has kept me a part of this great movement that is constantly evolving.  I still ask questions and I am sometimes still critical of the church, but I also have grown to understand its great potential to provide a space where people can authentically experience God’s grace in a way that speaks truth to their own story in the larger context of God’s eternal narrative.  In order for this to happen, the church needs to be a place that encourages dialogue between folks—even those who may not share the same experiences or viewpoints.  To me, the United Methodist church can and should be a place where this dialogue can take place.  I am encouraged to be a part of this movement that is the church, one that I hope will continue to be at the forefront of justice and connection in our world.  I choose to be a part of the United Methodist Church because I believe that it can help create a space where people can be heard, experience God, and be connected to the world in real and meaningful ways.  I choose to be United Methodist—even when I pick up on pockets of exclusivism and intolerance—to be the prophetic voice that God has called me to be.  Especially to a system and a movement that has so much potential to help the world be more like the Kingdom that Jesus spent so much time talking about.

Joe Barker is a Commissioned Elder in the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church. He lives outside of Columbus with his wife Audrey and their children Cora and Judah.  He is passionate about justice, equality, and seeing the radical non-violent Kingdom come to be.  He believes in questioning, deconstructing, and reimagining. You can check out more of his writing on his blog.

This article is one of a series, "Why I Am a United Methodist," on the collaborative blog, UMC LEAD, and is reprinted here with permission.