Pastor’s Blog – Week of November 22, 2009

Early Service Last Sunday—Let Me Hear From You

Our combined Early Worship and United Methodist Men’s breakfast this past Sunday, November 22, drew a large crowd (150) and quite a few comments, most, but not all, favorable. Although I do not see us doing breakfast/worship as regular thing, it might be worth doing again. I’m specifically thinking of Valentine’s Day, February 14, which is a Sunday in 2010. As most of you know, our United Methodist Men make breakfast every Sunday in February. If we were to do it on St. Valentine’s Day, the theme would be “God’s People Give Love.” (Last Sunday’s theme was “God’s People Give Thanks).

A negative effect of the high attendance was that it seemed to produce a lower attendance in the 10:55 service: 139, compared to 160 last year.

The decision on whether we do this again depends on congregational response. I would like to know what you thought. Send me an email or let me know next time you see me.

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations

Our district superintendent, Rev. Fred Jordan, gave all the pastors in the district a copy of the book Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations by Robert Schnase for Christmas last year. Because my reading list is a little backed up, I did not read it till several months later. The book has some good stuff that will help our church. It also has good teaching materials to go with it, including DVD’s and media teaching helps. I would like for it to be a church wide study during Lent, 2010 for any Adult Sunday School classes, committees, or other church groups who might be interested. I will be preaching a sermon series related to it. There are five lessons is the book, one for each of the five practices. The five practices are Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity. Robert Schnase is Bishop of the Missouri Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He previously served as pastor for many years of First United Methodist Church, McAllen Texas. The book and the other study materials were published in 2007-2008.

If you think your Sunday School class, or any other church group you are involved with, would be interested, let me know.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of November 8, 2009

The Subtle Effects of Bad Economy on a Church

Don’t jump to conclusions on the basis of this blog’s title. Our church is doing well financially. I fully expect us this year to make up for most, perhaps all of last year’s $23,000 deficit, and for us to have adequate funding for all our ministries next year.

I’m concerned about more subtle effects. We have had far fewer first-time visitors in 2009 than in 2008. We have also not had as many members join (28 in ’08—22 so far in ’09). Some things I’ve read contend that people are less inclined to visit or join a church in bad economic times, because they know the church will ask them for money.

Our Finance Committee worked proactively in early ’09 to slash budgets to bare bones. Most of the budget cuts have been well sustained, but I fear that a couple of our church’s programs have been hurt. Sometimes these hurts are not easily quantified. One area that has been hurt is our First Feast. Attendance is definitely down this year. Church Council last night talk about possible reasons and remedies. The abolition of the family cap along with bad economy has made families less willing to come. First Feast has, however, done well on fourth Wednesdays, when church groups prepared the meals. Church Council did not seem at all inclined to restore the family cap. Their feeling seemed clear that the First Feast program needs to be self-sustaining as it has been for the past year and a half. Diminished numbers do tend to have a subtle negative effect.

Our numbers for Disciple Classes are up this year. We have two classes instead of one, as we did last year. We have a total of 22 people in Disciple. Sunday School class attendance has been good this year. Worship attendance is up about 2% from last year; however, the Church of Excellence Award requires a 5% increase.

We have just launched a new tutoring program. In January, we will begin our involvement with the Circles anti-poverty program. Next year we will have a Girl Scout troop. Even with these new ministries, I’m feeling that we as a church have drawn into a more protective mode; whereas, we were in an expansive mode, before the autumn of 2008. Does anyone else feel the same way? If so, I hope that Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, and an eager new Church Council at its January 9 retreat will turns us upward.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of October 18, 2009

CONSECRATION SUNDAY

It’s an important day for us. We need for as many people to be here as possible. It will be a wonderful worship service with handbells and orchestra, and a festive celebration lunch afterward. Our guest preacher, Dr. Tom Sigmon is one of the truly distinguished ministers our annual conference.

During lunch we will see a superb slide show of virtually all the aspects of our church’s life that George Walter has crafted for us.

Last year we took some draconian measures in slashing our budget from $506,000 in 2008 to $450,000 in 2009. Church staff and committee chairs have been very cooperative in working through 2009, but we need to restore our budget levels toward their 2008 levels. Areas particularly hard hit were children and youth budgets. Missions was able to use some reserve funds from the Lou Kinney golf tournament to keep afloat, but only a small amount of these reserves will be available next year. We will need considerable restoration of mission funds. Trustee budget was likewise slashed. We were able to do some of the most desperately needed projects, such as the bathrooms in the old building, the narthex in the chapel, and the rotting roof of the parsonage, but other projects need funding, especially the chapel and exterior painting. So pray for a successful pledge campaign for next year.

A WONDERFUL CHILDREN’S SABBATH

Norma came into my office early Sunday morning saying that she had received phone calls Saturday from parents of four of our children who had parts in Children’s Sabbath saying that their children were suffering from flu and would not be able to come. A lot of last minute re-shuffling had to be done. God always helps in these sorts of situations. He helped in a big way Sunday. Many thanks to Norma and a host of helpers, as well as George put together visuals.

SEE YOU SUNDAY

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of October 11, 2009

Holistic Christianity

My last blog was somewhere between ironic and sarcastic. A rejoinder from Tim Van Noy is printed in the responses to blog section here on the website. It is well worth your reading. Tim’s overall contention is that faith needs to be incorporated in every possible aspect of a young person’s life. It’s more than church alone.

While in the past I have at times been a little dubious about some para-church organizations, such as Young Life, Youth for Christ, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and at the college level Inter-Varsity and Campus Crusade for Christ, I am much less so at the moment: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” The forces of secularism have become so prominent and powerful in the West, that I’m now willing to be supportive of organizations that have far more conservative theologies than my own. I was a member of Inter-Varsity while I was a graduate student at Duke, though my preference is Wesley Foundation and United Methodist Campus Ministry.

Could it be that exposure to more than one kind of theological perspective could be good for kids? That might have been a framework for thinking a few years ago. But now the fact is that most kids, high school and college get no exposure to Christian faith at all. The church related colleges have little more than the state schools. I’m close to saying that anything Christian is good.

Last week at the Duke Convocation and Pastors’ School I heard Professor Kenda Dean from Princeton Theological Seminary. She is one of the country’s two or three top authorities on youth ministry. She referred to the present day young adults as the lost generation of the church. Although a myriad of factors can be deduced for their decline in faith and church, Professor Dean attributes weak church youth programs as the single most significant factor. Too many churches have the attitude that “most of our youth are going to leave our community and live elsewhere when they grow up, so it’s not worth putting a lot of money and staffing into a youth program.” Professor Dean says that this kind of thinking got us the lost generation of young adults. A strong youth program is the single most important factor in forming lifelong Christians. She said that any church big enough to have a staff larger than just the pastor should have a full-time youth minister, a youth minister who is young and who can relate really well to the youth.

What she said made me feel really good about our church. We are doing this one right. Last night we had 27 youth at UMY. Matt and the program he leads are making a huge difference in the lives of our youth.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of September 20, 2009

Top Ten Ways to Prevent the Spread of Christianity to Your Children

1. Tell them that even though they love Sunday School and want to go, you would rather have your Sundays more laid back, sleep in. 11:00 service once in a while is plenty.

2. Tell them that one time a week inside the church building is enough, even if they want to be here for a lot more.

3. Tell them that sports will look better on their extra-curriculars for college applications than church activities will.

4. Start a new non-school sports league with lots of Sunday games.

5. If they do something bad and you need to ground them, ground them from going to UMYF.

6. Tell their coach or dance instructor that Sunday games and dance competitions in faraway places are just great with you.

7. Tell your church leaders not to start any activities that might compete with any other extra-curricular activities.

8. If your child loses his or her Bible, make sure not to get him or her a new one. Tell your child, “there are plenty of Bibles at church, and that’s the only place you will need one.”

9. Don’t say bedtime prayers with your small children. Don’t say grace at family meals. Don’t ever bring up God in a conversation.

10. Tell your children you don’t have to go to church to be a good Christian.

We cannot guarantee the success of any Christian prevention program. Christianity is highly infectious. Some of your children may become and remain Christians despite all your efforts. Nevertheless, following the ten ways listed above will go a long way toward preventing the spread of Christianity among your children and in our community.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of September 13, 2009

ON BEING MISSIONARIES TO POST-CHRISTIAN AMERICA

During my latter years in the academy I occasionally told people that I would like to see a ten year moratorium on the prefix post. After I emerged from the college campus cocoon, I found that the rest of the world was not so prepossessed with post. Even so, I still live in a larger culture that is post-modern, post-colonial, and post-Christian.

The term “post-Christian” has been applied to Europe since the 18^th century enlightenment. I’m still reeling from last year’s Barna group report on religion in America. Given the report’s statistical data, I think it may now be fair to say (as many are already saying) that we are living in a post-Christian America. It’s no longer just the mainline churches in decline, now most evangelical denominations are experiencing membership losses. Even some of the megas are on their way to becoming minis (Crystal Cathedral being most prominent mega in decline).

One of evangelicalism’s greatest gurus, the late Francis Schaeffer, once wrote that Christians needed to understand themselves as missionaries to the culture. Schaeffer, an ex-patriate Presbyterian American living in the cradle of Calvinism—Switzerland, knew well how de-Christianized European culture had become. America has gone in my lifetime from a slow slide into secularism into a headlong fall.

Phyllis Tickle’s latest book, The Great Emergence, contends that Christianity has historically grown in spurts, in world revivals about once every five hundred years, the last being the Protestant Reformation. The time is ripe, historically for another. While I hope her predictions prove true, I live in a culture whose Christianity continues to ebb.

Where is our stance as United Methodists in the current cultural framework? The evangelical intelligentsia has seen itself as a counter-cultural force since the 70’s. Methodists have for the last 200 years seen ourselves as not only mainline Christianity but also as mainstream America. A twentieth century aphorism was that Methodism was the mirror of the American middle class. We are so no longer, yet we seem still to work from that mindset. Although I’ve never been a Schaeffer fan, I think he was right on this one.

We Methodists need to change our mindset from mirrors to missionaries. We need to start understanding ourselves as being different, as being intentionally out of step, moral misfits in an immoral society, Christ carriers, Jesus lovers, and Spirit sparkers.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of September 6, 2009

Ten Thousand Doors

It’s a new website from United Methodist Communications. There is a link on our website, if you want to check it out. Ten Thousand Doors is a part of a campaign called Re-Think Church. You may have seen some of the ads for it on TV. I saw the promo video for the campaign back in March and showed it to the Christian Believer Class. They all liked it. A lot of people love it. I’m not one of them, although I am seeking to have more of an open mind about it. If you want to see it, it’s in the church library right next to the DVD player. Please realize that I tend to be hyper-critical on a lot of Christian advertising.

“What if church were a verb?” the ad asks, although there is not a sentence in the entire promo in which church is used as a verb. The promo shows clips of nearly empty church sanctuaries counter posed with pictures of happy young United Methodists in mission sorts of scenes. While I am very supportive of any kind of United Methodist mission work and grateful for the rising mission spirit among our own church’s children and youth, I am bothered by what seems to be the overall message of the campaign, a message that to my perspective diminishes worship and appears to have little interest in Christian education. Another thing that bother me are that this rather heavily financed campaign was created and sanctioned only by United Methodist Communications, not by the General Conference or the annual conferences, or the Council of Bishops.

The campaign is particularly pitched at young adults, a group that we need to reach and have not been reaching. Yet I wonder how much money was spent on the full-page Re-Think Church ad that appeared in Newsweek magazine, a publication that very few young adults read. We are also being told that young adults don’t like worship in general, traditional worship in particular. Am I just too old for this campaign, or too cerebral? I will admit to being far more comfortable with pen in hand than with hammer in hand. I’ve read through Ten Thousand Doors (don’t worry, there aren’t really ten-thousand). I invite you to read it. Since I seem to be a minority of one in my thinking about it, I think you will find the site much more to your liking than I did to mine.

I still can’t think of a sentence in which I would use church as a verb.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of August 30, 2009

LUTHERANS, UNITED METHODISTS, AND HOMOSEXUALITY

On August 21 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the National Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which is the largest Lutheran body with 5.1 million members, passed legislation that will allow for homosexuals in committed relationships to be ministers in the denomination. The action puts the E.L.C.A in line with Lutheran churches in Europe, Canada, and Australia.

The E.L.C.A. is one of the five major denominations in America that are counted as “mainline.” In joins two other mainline denominations, The Episcopal Church (2.1 million) and the United Church of Christ (1.5 million) in full admission of committed relationship homosexuals into ministry.

A fourth mainline denomination, the United Presbyterian Church of the United States with 2.4 million members, voted narrowly against a similar measure in the meeting of its General Synod earlier this summer.

The United Methodist Church, the largest of the mainline denominations with 7.9 million members does not admit committed relationship homosexuals into its ministry. The 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church did approve a constitutional amendment stating that all persons accepting the vows of church membership were eligible for membership in the United Methodist Church, although the amendment did not address homosexuality and did not deal with the issue of ordination of homosexuals. The amendment had to be approved by 2/3 of the members of the Annual Conferences of the UMC. Less than half of the annual conferences did approve, so the amendment failed. The majority of annual conferences in the Northeastern and Western Jurisdictions did approve the amendment, but the larger Southeastern and South Central Jurisdiction Conferences were opposed. The conservative Evangelical United Methodist group, “Good News,” led a strong and well financed campaign against the amendment.

In the current judicial interpretation of our Book of Discipline, fitness for church membership is the determination of the pastor of the local church. The pastor cannot be ordered by the Bishop or the District Superintendent to admit or deny admission to anyone seeking membership. It is the pastor’s decision. Future pastors of the same local church may effectively “overturn” the previous pastor’s decision not to admit a person to membership.

Where does all this put us in the current denominational matrix. It is certainly fair to say that the United Methodist Church is the most conservative of the mainline denominations. Is the denomination becoming more conservative? It’s not an easy question to answer, but one thing is clear. The African Annual Conferences, which are rapidly growing in membership and thus in General Conference representation, are very conservative and strongly anti-gay. We are in a different situation from the other mainline denominations in that none of the them has any substantial electoral representation from outside the United States.

As pastor of First United Methodist Church, N. Wilkesboro, I do not foresee a circumstance in which I would deny membership to a professing Christian who accepted the vows of church membership, with the possible exception of convicted sex offenders or others who might present a physical danger to our church. I should add that I am willing to offer ministry, including communion and counseling to such people outside the property of our church.

I think of myself as pastor of all of the members of our church. I work for peace and unity within the church. I believe that Christians of good conscience can have opposing views on many issues, including homosexuality. I do not speak publicly in ways that are divisive and tend not to speak on issues that are divisive. I will not publicly oppose any position of the United Methodist Church. This does not mean that I support every position of our denomination. I will tell my own views on any issue to anyone who asks me privately. I did vote in favor of the all amendment.

I believe that we are all sinners and that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is available to all of us.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of August 23, 2009

WHAT DOES ONE DO ON A SERMON PLANNING RETREAT?

I am currently in the last three days of a slightly less than two week sermon planning retreat. The idea for it came from an Adam Hamilton book on preaching, which contains in its last few pages a letter for Staff-Parish committees. One of his recommendations is that SPR’s give their pastors adequate sermon preparation time, including a substantial time period away from church and all its daily demands to map out a sermon planning for a whole year. Adam gets four weeks, but as one of our SPR members pointed out, “He’s been at the Church of the Resurrection a lot longer than you have been here.” (He has been there since 1992, to be exact).

The economy took its nosedive last fall after Staff-Parish had given me a raise for 2009 but before salaries of other staff were reviewed. With the bad economy we all agreed that 2009 was not the year for raises. We had a specially authorized second charge conference in which I asked Church Council to revert my 2009 salary to 2008 levels. I did get some non-monetary compensation in exchange, namely an extra week’s vacation and this sermon planning retreat.

I gave Staff-Parish a fairly ambitious schedule of what I planned to do during these two weeks. I’ve stuck to the schedule closely. There were three things I wanted to accomplish: (1) get four weeks ahead in sermon writing, so that I would have more time to mull, edit, go over, and learn my sermons in the future. I have written three of those four sermons and will complete the fourth by the time my retreat is over.

(2) Map out a sermon plan for the next year. This has been a lot tougher to do. I have decided on all the lectionary texts I will be using through next June and two basic themes that I want to focus the year on. One is Wesleyan theology; the other is Christian community (koinonia). These themes will emerge in greater detail in the next couple of blogs.

(3) Read extensively in the literature of preaching. So far I have read almost all of David Buttrick’s lengthy and too turgid textbook tome Homiletic (Buttrick would not approve of an alliteration as long as the those four last alliterative words). I’m almost finished. It’s not an easy read, but I have learned a lot. I’ve also almost completed the Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas book Preaching to Strangers, which contains several Willimon Duke Chapel sermons, each followed by a Hauerwas critique. Perhaps this will prepare me for the critique I will soon be getting from our Congregational Committee for the Duke Institute of Preaching. I’ve also read a good chunk of Sam Wells’s Speaking the Truth: Preaching in a Pluralistic Culture, a couple of John Wesley sermons, and significant chunks of Feasting on the Word, a multi-volume lectionary commentary edited by David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor.

Of 1, 2, and 3, I would have to say that I have spent more time on 1 than on 2 or 3, when my intention was to spend more time on 2. I still have two more days to work more on 2.

With no nighttime meetings, Marianne and I have had good opportunities for cooking, seeing movies (three of them, including Julia and Julie, which I mentioned in my last sermon), and late afternoon walks on the beach. I went to church at Mt. Olivet UMC in Manteo. Mt. Olivet’s most famous member, Andy Griffith, was there. I said hello to him. He looked very feeble, bent over, walking with a cane and with one person on each arm helping him. His voice, however, was still strong. The sermon was by a guest preacher, a young missionary to Croatia. His theology was Reformed, not Wesleyan. He mentioned having gone to school in Massachusetts, Gordon Conwell Seminary, I suspect.

It has been a productive time. Over the course of the next year we will see how good the product is. I look forward to seeing everybody again Sunday. –Blessings, Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of August 16, 2009 (No. 2)

The blog is commentary on a wide variety of issues related to Christianity and Culture. My perspective is mainline but with a larger dose of Christian spirituality than may be typically mainline. My influences include the full range of New Testament scholarship with special affinities for N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn. The most important spiritual writers for me are Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Kathleen Norris, and a host of ancients and medievals, especially Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Hildegarde, and Teresa of Avila. John Wesley is more deeply ingrained in me than anyone else.

I'm fond of Celtic Spirituality. I spent one afternoon on Iona, and I want to go back. I've made numerous trips to Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Egypt and have a deep love for these lands of the Bible.

The blog will include commentary on what I'm reading, what's happening in Christianity now and how that relates to the culture. The church which I pastor is in some ways the lens through which I view the culture. I'll also include a little of what I'm doing now and what my church, First United Methodist, N. Wilkesboro, is doing now.

Right now I'm on a two week sermon planning retreat which my church's Staff-Parish Committee graciously granted me. Marianne and I are retreating at our home in Manteo, on Roanoke Island in the North Carolina Outer Banks, 350 miles east of N. Wilkesboro. I'm working diligently on sermon planning from now through next summer and doing a lot of reading on homiletics, especially Sam Wells, Will Willimon, and Barbara Brown Taylor. I'm usually reading 10 to 15 non-fiction books at a time and one novel. The most fascinating book for me at the moment is Philip Jenkins "The Lost History of Christianity," which I'll review in more detail soon.

Check out my blog on current persecutions of Christians in Iraq and Fiji on the firstnw.org website, and Danny Reece's response, also on the website.

And please do respond. I would love to hear from you.

I hope you find my perspective refreshing and insightful.

Faithfully,

Christian

Pastor’s Blog – Week of August 16, 2009

PERSECUTIONS OF CHRISTIANS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

A problem that I need to do more to correct is that most Christians know next to nothing about what is going on in world Christianity. Inaccurate assumptions abound. We will doubtless be dealing with some of them in our church Israeli/Palestine mission study that Tom and LaVon Sigmon will be leading on October 3. One of the basic inaccurate assumptions is that things have always been the way they are now—or the way they were 30 years ago. They aren’t.

Here’s just one—that the Holy Land, the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, was always virtually all Muslim until the Israelis came in 1948. Fact is—in 1900, by the Muslim Ottoman Empire’s own census figures, this territory was 44% Christian, 3% Jewish, and 53% Muslim. While the Jewish population is now the majority, the percentage that is Christian has decreased to 3%. Both Muslims and Jews have consistently discriminated against the Palestinian Christian population. Ottoman Turks massacred Palestinian Christians in the early 20^th century. Israeli Jews confiscated Palestinian Christian lands in last half of the 20^th century.

PERSECUTION OF METHODISTS IN FIJI—LAST WEEK!!!

The population of the Fiji Island is about 800,000, predominantly Christian, with over 300,000 Methodists. A military regime took over in a coup two years ago. This year they outlawed the Methodist Annual Conference. Last week the Methodist Bishop and all the district superintendents were arrested and jailed. Methodist gatherings have been banned. The biggest annual Methodist gathering, a Methodist choral festival that normally draws about 10,000 people has been banned. The Methodist population is planning to defy the ban. Estimates are that 20,000 to 50,000 Methodist singers will come in protest to the Fijian capital, Suva, later this year. A terrible persecution of Fijian Methodists is a definite possibility.

THE GENOCIDE OF ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS IN IRAQ—2007-2008

It’s one of the oldest branches of Christianity. Assyrian Christians speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus, as well as Arabic. In 2004 there were 1,100,000 of them in Iraq. In the complexity of Iraqi politics, the Assyrians were mostly Baathists and were largely protected under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, who was nominally Muslim but really secular. After Saddam was overthrown, there was much bloodletting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq, with Assyrian Christians, who lived primarily in north central Iraq, caught in the middle. Few Assyrian Christians lived in Baghdad.

Throughout 2007 both Muslim groups slaughtered Assyrian Christians. After the American troop surge in 2008, along with the better trained and equipped Iraqi army, was able effectively to stop most of the Sunni vs. Shiite violence, both groups turned on the Christians. American and Iraqi troops were not to be found the most violent areas where Christians were being persecuted. Shiites publicly beheaded the Assyrian bishop of Mosul. More than two-thirds of the Assyrian Christians in Iraq were either killed or fled to Syria, where they are now refugees.

News coverage of the persecution of Assyrian Christians has for the most part been buried on the inside pages of large newspapers such as the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, religious periodicals such as The Christian Century and Christianity Today, and some internet sources. I found nothing on U.S. policy toward the persecuted Assyrian Christians during 2007 and 2008.

As with the attempted genocide of the Armenian Christians by the Turks in 1915, when nearly two million Christians were killed, The U.S. government and American Christians seem largely uninterested in persecutions of Christians worldwide.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of August 2, 2009

EDGY

I realize that the audience for this blog is rather small. I’m thinking about making a couple of changes. One is to go national on Blogspot. The other is to have a little edgier commentary than I might do in a sermon or in a class. The commentary will be primarily Religion & Culture issues. You can email me your reactions, and I will post them.

MY SISTER’S KEEPER

This is the most unrelentingly sad movie I have ever seen. Superb but sad. It’s sad from beginning to end. I have not read the Jodi Picoult best-selling novel on which it is based.

A couple, Sara and Brian Fitzgerald, have two children, Jesse and Kate. When Kate is a toddler, they find out she has leukemia and will not live long without bone marrow transplants. Neither parent nor her brother are a good match. A doctor advises them to have another child who can be genetically engineered in vitro to be the perfect match for Kate.

They have the child, whom they name Anna. Sara quits her job as an attorney to devote all her time to preserving Kate’s life. Anna undergoes many painful procedures and surgeries over the course of her childhood years to provide bone marrow, blood platelets, and some other medical needs for Kate. Anna’s own physical activities have to be restricted (can’t play sports, do cheerleading, etc.). She also can’t be further than a few miles from where Kate is, which rules out any out of town activities, such as camp. Kate still suffers terribly but has good, fairly healthy periods of remission.

When Anna is eleven, Kate’s kidneys begin to fail. A kidney transplant from Anna will save her. Anna loves Kate, but resents the fact that her whole purpose in life, from the time of her conception, was to provide fluids and spare parts for her older sister. Her own health has suffered, as well as her having any sense of a future life truly her own. Anna goes to a lawyer and tells him that she wants to sue her parents for the right to her own body, not to have to undergo any more procedures and surgeries for her sister.

Her mother, Sara, who is very much a control-freak, goes apoplectic. The case eventually goes to court. The family is torn apart emotionally. I won’t tell the rest of the movie, in case you haven’t seen it yet and want to.

What Jodi Picoult does so well is to raise ethical questions most of the rest of us have not thought about. How much should we be willing to give up of our bodies for a sibling and for how long? I know at least one of you has given a kidney to a brother. In the last year one of you has given a kidney for a son. In Anna’s case, however, she is not giving up organs, bone marrow, and a few other things, voluntarily. To what age should the parents be able to control their younger daughter’s body? Anna feels her own health being damaged by all that she is having to give to her sister? In the long list of medical procedures Anna has undergone, none have been for her own health; all have been for her sister’s survival.

There are several other sub-plots in the story, including a teen age first love romance between Kate and a boy her age who is dying of cancer. There is also the guilt that Kate feels about taking and taking from Anna. There is the guilt of the older brother, who watches helplessly as his family is torn apart. Over it all is the obsessive, controlling character of Sara.

Church does not appear to figure in the family’s life, although Kate and Anna do have a brief discussion about God and heaven.

Although I am not a good critic for acting and film making, to my view the movie is superbly done and very well acted. I was particularly impressed with Cameron Diaz as Sara, a very different role from the fluffy comedy roles she is most known for. Kudos also to Alec Baldwin in his role as Anna’s attorney.

This is not a movie for everyone. It is at times painful to watch. Even the few happy scenes are tinged with sadness. You walk out of the theater feeling emotionally drained. The movie has an emotional depth seen all too infrequently in Hollywood these days. I’m very glad I saw it. I would not see it again. I’m not going to read the book.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of July 19, 2009

HOW DO WE REVERSE THE DECLINE OF UNITED METHODISM?

Newscope is the weekly United Methodist newsletter put out by the United Methodist Board of Communications. About this time every year it gives expanded coverage to include information from each of the 65 Annual Conferences after their annual conference sessions. At the end of the each conference’s report are the facts and figures about church membership, attendance, and Sunday School attendance for the year. Ever since I have been reading Newscope, which I began reading in 1976, these annual conference issues have been depressing. About half the conference reports are in so far. Only three conferences showed increased membership (North Carolina, South Carolina, Central Texas), and none of those increases was more than 1%. The other 30 or so I’ve read about showed decreases, many of them decreases of 3% or more. Our Western North Carolina Conference experienced a very small decline this past year, less than 3/10 of a percent.

The bleeding continues year after year. United Methodists now comprise less than 5% of the U.S. population. In 1968 we were about 11% of the population. The decline has been most pronounced in the Northeastern jurisdiction, less in the Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions. The explosive growth of the United Methodist Church is Africa is a blessing, but should not decrease our displeasure with what’s happening in our own country.

Everyone seems to offer solutions. Most of the solutions have been tried. None of them seem to work. The latest, the Rethink Church campaign, focuses on mission, especially local mission. It is aimed at the 25-40 demographic, that group that we most need and least have in our churches. It includes a major advertising campaign. I saw a full page ad in Newsweek a few weeks ago. My first reaction to the ad was: 25-40 year olds don’t read Newsweek. There are also going to be national television ads. The ads tend to be understated, rarely mention God, and never mention the Holy Spirit.

Another bit of cold comfort is that the United Methodist Church is not doing as badly as the other mainline denominations. We have not been ripped by doctrinal or sexuality issues, as have the Presbyterians and especially the Episcopalians. No one, no group, is starting other Methodist denominations for the disaffected. Even our most conservative-evangelical faction, the Good News movement, has counseled again and again, including in the most recent issue of their magazine, that people not leave the United Methodist Church.

It is not that we have disaffected members; it’s that we have uninterested members. It is also, and more importantly, that we are not reaching our most important demographic, those 25-40 year olds. The United Methodist Church has featured contemporary worship for more than 20 years, so long that contemporary worship is no longer contemporary. It has not reversed our decline. Virtually all our churches now have websites, and most are on Facebook or Twitter, but I doubt that this will reverse our decline.

We have had some measures of success here at First. We have had significant membership increase over the last four years, a slight worship attendance increase, an increase in program staff, and an increase in budget, all this in a county that is experiencing little population growth and is having tough times economically. Spiritual growth is not quantifiable, but I believe we have definitely had some. In comparison to the denomination as a whole, I would say that we are effectively fighting the downward trend, but we need to be much more effective.

This blog has offered analysis but now prescriptions. I’ll have more analysis in upcoming blogs, and I will have prescriptions. I could use some help. On the church’s new Facebook page, under discussion, I’ve asked for suggestions for attracting 25-40’s to the faith and to the church. If you don’t do Facebook, but do have suggestions, email them to me, chriswilson@charterinternet.com and we’ll post them on the website.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of July 12, 2009

Social Networking and the Church

Wilson’s Rule #475 is “Everything is always changing all the time.” This statement was totally true in the twentieth century, but now it’s the twenty-first. The amended rule is Wilson’s Rule #475a: “Everything is always changing really fast all the time.” Most folks my age and older can’t keep up.

About three months ago a church member asked me the following question, “Do you twitter?” My response was, “I certainly hope not.” Though I had never heard the word before, within the next few weeks I heard it constantly.

I thought I was being really up to date in having a blog. People used to say “blogs are the newspapers of the twenty-first century.” That was complementary to blogs, when people used to say it. Now newspaper reading seems to have gone the way of panty-hose wearing. When someone now says “blogs are the newspapers of the twenty-first century,” it meaning is negative toward blogs. It means that blogs, like newspapers will soon be rapidly becoming extinct.

Social networking sites have been for the last couple of years the hottest things on the net. My Space has been largely upstaged by Facebook (Marianne refers to them as “My Face.”). Instead of emailing a picture or a message to a friend, you send pictures and messages to 400 or 500 friends at once. Twitter makes messages shorter, 140 character limit (Is Twitter to text messaging what Facebook is to email?).

We (especially George Walter) have really worked on our website over the last several months. I got an email yesterday from a friend who is a professor at Princeton Seminary. Among other things he wrote, “I’ve nose around your church’s website, Chris. FUMC in North Wilkesboro looks strong, healthy, and inviting.” As good as our website has become, some of things I’ve been reading lately say that every growing church has to have a Facebook page. I told this to George. He’s working on it. I suspect that very soon FirstNW will be on Facebook. (George is chronologically a little older than I, but technologically about four decades younger).

We have a fair number of under 40 folks in our church. One of the things I have observed is that most of our under 40’s don’t really know each other. The Evangelism Committee is going to honor all our under 40’s at the August Methodist Men’s breakfast. I am told that under 40’s do more communicating through Facebook than just about any other way. Will they network on our new Facebook page?

Pastor’s Blog – Week of July 5, 2009

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (pt. 2)

On Tuesday night, June 23, Marianne and I saw the Tony Award winning musical, Billy Elliot. The play is set in 1985 in the midlands of England during and after the coal miners’ strike. Margaret Thatcher and her government refused to negotiate with the miner’s union. The strike, the union, and the entire British coal industry were broken after a year. Situations of desperate poverty among coal mining families resulted. The coal industry in Britain 1985 employed over 350,000 people. It now employs less than 1000. Ironically, the coal rich nation of England now imports 99% of its coal.

The play involves a coal miner’s son, who wants to be a dancer. He sneaks away from his boxing lessons in the gym to go to the dance studio and learn ballet. He is obviously much more talented as a dancer than a boxer, but for a coal miner’s son to be a dancer goes against the coal mining community’s understanding of masculinity. The men make fun of Billy. His father beats him (his mother had died a couple of years earlier). The boys make fun of him; even the girls at the dance studio make fun of him. But Billy has talent and passion for ballet. His father and his older brother want him to be a coal miner, as generations of their ancestors have. But when the coal industry collapses, they have no jobs. Billy is accepted at the Royal Ballet School. The coal mining community, including his father and, most reluctantly, his brother, see that Billy’s only future lies as a dancer. Their hearts change. They raise from their meager savings enough to send Billy to ballet school.

It’s an inspiring story. The acting and stage production is magnificent. The music, by Elton John, is powerful. Although it’s a very serious story, the play is sprinkled with some wonderfully witty humor. Marianne and I both loved it.

On Wednesday we spent most of the day at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), which had undergone a 100 million dollar renovation since the last time we had been there back in the late ‘80’s. For modern art lovers, MOMA is a must. All the great modern artists are well represented there, with works by Picasso, Braque (the largest collection of Braques in the world), Matisse, Dali, de Chirico, Leger, Seurat, Van Gogh, Giacometti, Brancusi, Kandinsky, Chagall, Rivera, Warhol, Pollock, and the list goes on and on. My favorite painting was Henri Matisse’s La joie de Vivre (The Joy of Life), which I have seen in many art books over the years. My current favorite modern artist is the American Mark Rothko, whose minimalist canvases have wonderful colors. Unlike the boldly striking and often shocking character of most modern art, Rothko’s works are soft, simple, and relaxing. We had a superb lunch in the museum’s restaurant, called “The Modern.”

Wednesday night we went to Carnegie Hall for a concert by jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall. We have been listening to her music for years. I have almost all of her CDs. Carnegie Hall is big and our seats were in the second of three balconies. The acoustics in Carnegie Hall are among the best in the world, but our seats were at such a distance that we could not see her face as clearly as I would have liked. She played piano with almost all of her songs, was accompanied by her long time group Anthony Wilson on guitar, Jeff Hamilton on drums, and her bass player whose name slips me at the moment. She also had a 40 piece orchestra that played on many of her songs.

Carnegie Hall was sold out for all three of her performances (it is rarely sold out), with many people seeking tickets outside the arena, with rumors that they were being scalped for $350 each. In the field of jazz Diana is probably the only living performer who can command such an audience. Yet she is modest and self-effacing in her manner. She had played the previous week in the White House with Stevie Wonder and said she was still star-struck at having met President and Mrs. Obama. She is married to rock singer Elvis Costello, and they have twin two and half year old sons.

On Thursday we went to what is my view is the best art museum in the world, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or “the Met,” as everyone calls it. Two new wings had been opened since last we were there, an American wing and the Modern Art wing. You can’t do the Met in a single day. You need to focus on three or four sections. The entire museum has over 7 square miles of floor space, and over three and a half million art objects (not all of which are on display at the same time). We did the two new wings and the Egyptian wing, which includes one entire ancient Egyptian temple, the Temple of Dender, which was slated to be submerged when the High Aswan Dam was built on the Nile in the 1950’s. The Met rescued the dam and with the help of the Egyptian government brought it in toto to New York.

For me the most stunning exhibit was a special exhibit on the art ancient Aghanistan. A great civilization, Bactria, existed there in the centuries immediately before and after the time of Christ. It was a civilization in which Buddhists, Christians, Greco-Roman religionists, and a few centuries later Muslims, all lived side by side in tolerance. It produced an amazing wealth of art, particularly in gold. The wars in Afghanistan, beginning with the Soviet invasion in 1980 up to the present conflict have decimated the art of this civilization. You may remember in 2002, when the Taliban blew up the four great ancient sculptures of Buddha which were carved in an Afghan mountain.

The Museum of Bactrian Art in Kabul was blown up earlier in the war in 1996. It was thought that all of the art treasures were lost, either destroyed or looted. In 2007 it was revealed that most of the treasures had been secreted away only weeks earlier into secure bank vaults underneath several banks in Kabul. The Afghan government in co-operation with the United States government, agreed to send on loan all of the art to the Met, until the current war concludes and the country is safe again. American military personnel did a beautiful service for the Afghan people in safely transporting all the art to New York. The remnants of an entire civilization are being preserved through the efforts of America.

Thursday night Marianne and I went to a delightful Broadway play, a remake of the old Noel Coward comedy, Blithe Spirit. The star supporting role was played by Angela Lansbury. As veterans of many Murder She Wrote TV episodes in the 1980’s and ‘90’s Marianne and I are definitely Angela Lansbury fans. Even though she is now in her early ‘80’s she is remarkably energetic and utterly stunning actress. It was such a pleasure to see her in live theatre.

We packed a lot into four days. We had a heavy schedule and accomplished all of it. There were many things we didn’t do. You have to make choices. We didn’t go to Ground Zero, or to the Statue of Liberty (lines are now over four hours), or to any sports events. You can’t do it all. We did find New York a great place to visit. We plan not to stay away so long next time.

Although we weren’t there for any church services, we did spend some time in prayer in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, one of the great churches in our country.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of June 28, 2009

New York, New York

Marianne and I did a few days of our vacation in New York City, last week. It was our first time there since 1997, and our first time there for more than one day since 1991. I want to back more often. One of the things that always strikes me about New York is that the quality of just about everything is really high. I read the story a few weeks ago of an all state cello player from southeast Louisiana, who took a train to New York. When he got off at Grand Central Station, he heard some beautiful cello playing, playing far better than anything he, the Louisiana cellist, was capable of. He followed the sound and found it to come from an unemployed street musician, playing for the coins of passers-by at a subway entrance.

There are thousands of street vendors in New York with large but movable stainless steel carts with stoves, oven, and refrigerators in them. The streets are full of inviting smells from the vendors short order cooking. When I first started going to New York in the late 1950’s the vendors had just pretzels and chestnuts. Now you can find about anything. Last Tuesday, looking for a quick lunch, I saw one cart with Mediterranean food. I ordered falafel on pita. Falafel is that wonderful concoction of ground chickpeas with various spices (the spices are each falafel makers secret blend), rolled into balls and deep fried. In a matter of a couple of minutes, the vendor did the whole process from scratch—no pre-packaged falafel balls for him. It was the best falafel I’ve had anywhere west of Jerusalem. The four falafel balls, in the pita with two different dressings in them, cost $2.50.

We did one night of fine dining at Tavern on the Green, which is just inside Central Park. It’s a beautiful restaurant of many rooms and outdoor spaces. Marianne and I love to eat outdoors. The trees that were around and through this part of the restaurant were decorated with beautiful lanterns in intriguing designs. The food was all vibrantly fresh and intensely complex. It was a wonderful dinner, though the prices were considerably higher than street cart falafel.

The next day we took the subway to the Cloisters museum at the far northern tip of Manhattan Island. I had always wanted to go to the Cloisters but had been told that it would take all day, it was too far, a taxi would cost over $100, the subway wasn’t safe, etc. Reality is often different from what we are told. Our $2.00 subway ride got us there in 22 minutes. The museum was beautiful; the art, stunning. Marianne was particularly taken with the huge unicorn tapestries, some of which we had seen in art books over the years. We also got a superb guided tour of the museums gardens, which are recreations of medieval gardens.

With a little more time available to us than we anticipated, we decided to take the bus back and get a good look at Harlem. Harlem was a little seedy and economically depressed, but was not nearly as bad off as some of the places in Egypt we had been to a year ago. We never felt unsafe going through Harlem or anywhere else in New York. New York has the lowest crime rate of any major city in the United States.

Enough for now. I’ll pick up the rest of this narrative next week with our going to two Tony Award winning plays, Billy Elliot and Blithe Spirit, a Diana Krall concert at Carnegie Hall, and whole days spent in the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Blessings,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of June 14, 2009

England in July, 2010

Wesley Heritage Tour

Marianne and I plan to continue our custom of doing a Educational Opportunities trip with members of the church every other year. Last year seven of us traveled with a couple of hundred other United Methodist on the First Missionary Journey of Paul through Greece, Turkey, Israel, Greek Islands, and took an extension trip to Egypt at the end.

In 2010, we’ll be going to England, on a thirteen day trip beginning July 6. The trip begins with five days in London, visiting all the great London historical sites, the Tower of London, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, the British Library, the Tate Art Museum, Kew Gardens, Windsor Castle, Aldersgate Street, and of course, Harrod’s Department Store.

Over the next several days we’ll go to Birmingham, Bristol, Bath, Worcester, Gloucester, Coventry, Epworth, Stratford, Cotswold villages, and Oxford, exploring many local sites as well as sites of importance in the life of John Wesley. There is also a four day Ireland extension trip, that some or all of us might consider doing.

Base price is $4201 per person. This includes round trip airfare from Greensboro, hotels (double occupancy), breakfast every day, four dinners, ground transportation (including subway and bus in London), site entry fees, guides, basic gratuities, taxes. Not included are beverages at all meals, lunches, most dinners, personal items, and shopping. The Ireland extension base price is $1237. For all but London we will have professional guides. I’ll be your guide in London. I’m not an expert, but I’ve been to London six times, trips which total out to about three months specifically in London.

England is a wonderful summer destination. It’s the shortest transatlantic flight (three hours shorter that Rome, four hours shorter than Athens). It’s a small country—nowhere in England is further than 75 miles from the sea. We will be staying in only two hotels, one in London, then six nights at one hotel in the midlands. The native language is English. The natives are very friendly. The weather is much cooler than July in the U.S. The days are longer, with light until well after 10:00 p.m. Our group will be traveling with a number of other groups from other United Methodist churches.

If you might be interested, give me a call, email, or see me in church. An early deposit of $300 before August 1, 2009 will take $80 off the cost.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of June 8, 2009

Adult Bible School

Jesus Uninterrupted

The title of the class is a take-off on Bart Ehrman’s latest best-seller, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them). Ehrman’s title is a little sensationalistic with a hint of conspiracy theory. None of the contradictions he talks about are “hidden.” All you have to do is read the contradictory verses side by side. Anybody can do this with any version of the Bible. We’ll look at 20 or so contradictions during the week. We’ll deal with the reasons for each of these contradictions, how to determine which verse is more likely historically accurate, and how we are to understand the inaccurate verse.

The focus of the class will be on some larger and more important issues, all revolving around the major issue, which is Biblical authority. Some of the larger issues are:

· The Canon: how was it decided which books would be in the Bible? What about those books that didn’t make it into the Bible?

· The Text: We don’t have the original manuscripts of any of the books of the Bible. The manuscripts that we do have all vary from one another. Most of the variations are minor, but a good number are theologically significant. How do we decide which text is closes to the original.

· The Sources: Are the gospels anonymous, as Ehrman contends? Does any of the information in the gospels come from eyewitnesses? Did Moses write the first five books of the Bible? Did David write most of the Psalms?

· Levels of meaning: What the texts meant to the authors, the first readers, Christians throughout history, and meanings for today

· How do we understand the authority of the Bible for our lives and for our churches?

You don’t need to read Ehrman’s book to be in the class. You do need to bring a Bible to the class, preferably an NRSV or NIV.

The class will be at First Baptist. Just go in the front of First Baptist and follow the directions to the classroom. The class begins Sunday and goes through Thursday, from 6:30 to 8:00 each night with a refreshment break.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of June 1, 2009

A Joyous Pentecost

Last weekend was one of the church’s busiest since I’ve been here. The Youth Yard Sale Saturday morning produced more than $2000 for our Youth Mission/Beach trip.

Ian Sidden, accompanied by Phoebe Joy Wong, presented one of our best Arts Spiritoso programs ever. Ian’s voice has moved from baritone to tenor, making him available for heroic roles in opera. Baritones are traditionally villains in opera, and villains are what he has played up to now. Ian opera training includes acting, which he was remarkably good at, with much good humor. His voice was a joy to hear.

I thought the Pentecost worship services were memorable. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, some of which were my fault, the 11:00 Pentecost service will not be on the website. The “Caesarea Series” of historical monologues is now complete. I’ve done about one a year, the first on Herod, the second on Pilate.

A number of people have asked me whether I memorized the monologue, and quite a few asked things like—how can you remember so much. I did not write out or memorize the monologue. What I did was the read Acts 9-28 several times (four I think) in the last two weeks. I wrote an outline of what happens in which chapter. I already knew a good bit of the material, but did not know the sequencing in the book or the geographical sequencing. I did not know very well which story fit with which missionary journey. Working pretty hard on this for two weeks enabled me to get all of Acts in clear perspective. The monologue had 19 vignettes. I got them all in sequence, although in the 11:00 service I inadvertently left out the story of Paul and the Seven Sons of Sceva in chapter 19 of Acts. It’s a good story that got some good laughs in the early service.

The monologue went only to Paul’s departure from Caesarea to go to Rome, chapter 26. The sea journey (chapter 27) and Paul’s time in Rome (chapter 28) I did not do. The monologue was already long. Chapter 27 has a number of vignettes. To finish Acts would have made the monologue about 10 minutes longer.

Another thing that helped me in learning the monologue was that I have been to most of the places in Acts on trips with members of our church. In 2006, we did the third missionary journey trip, which covered all the places Paul went to in Greece. In 2008, we did the first and second missionary journeys, which covered Israel, Cyprus, Greek Islands, and Turkey. It really helped me to be able to visualize the places in the monologue.

The great benefit for me was that I now know every story in Acts, in which chapter each story occurs, the order of the stories, and the map sequence of Paul’s four missionary journeys. I hope the congregation benefited from learning some of the stories in Paul’s life that they had not heard before. I hope people also got some insight into the life of this great apostle.

The series is complete, but I think I will continue to do one historical monologue each year. The most likely candidates are Martin Luther and John Wesley. I’ve also thought about doing one on David.

The Pentecost/New Member lunch was our best attended since I’ve been here. The food was great. All but a few of our 37 new members since Pentecost last year were here.

The co-winners of the reddest woman award, Mary Marlowe and Carol Pardue, were red head to foot. The fact that I, a Duke fan, won the reddest man award should put shame to all the male NC State fans in the church. I will be defending my title next year. I challenge any State man to out-red me.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of May 24, 2009

Some Christian Churches Headed for Extinction

The news is a mixture of good and bad. I have written before of the spectacular growth of Christianity, especially in its United Methodist form, in Africa. We are seeing huge growth of Christianity in South America and a number of Asian countries. Christians in these countries worship differently from us, using forms and music contemporary with their own cultures. They focus more on the immediate and intense experience of God.

The bad news was epitomized by the cover of National Geographic this month, “The exodus of Christians from the Holy Land.” While this may be a shock to many Geographic readers, those of us who read regularly about world Christianity have known it for a long time.

Philip Jenkins, of Penn State University, is the leading expert on world Christianity. His most recent book concerns the demise of Christians in various parts of the world over the centuries. Those of you who have been in the St. Augustine study know that the most advance Christian civilization of antiquity was that of North Africa. Some of the greatest Christian thinkers of the early period, including Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine were from North Africa. North African Christian civilization continued to thrive for almost two centuries after the fall of the Roman empire in the fifth century.

Then in one of the greatest Christian tragedies the Arab Muslims conquered all of North Africa in the mid-seventh century. North Africa Christianity ceased to exist. This is only one example, although perhaps the most significant one. Another tragedy was the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century and the demise of Christianity in Turkey and all the other lands that the Ottoman Turks controlled. There are many others as well.

Another great tragedy was the genocide of Armenian Christians in Turkey in 1915. The Muslim Turks killed 1.8 million Armenians out of the 2.2 million who lived in Turkey. Armenian Christianity has survived. The demise of the Soviet Union in 1989 led to the establishment of the nation of Armenia.

Christianities that are threatened now include Coptic Christianity, the indigenous form of Christianity in Egypt. I worshipped in a Coptic church in Cairo a little over a year ago. We had a Coptic Christian guide. Coptic Christians are being persecuted by the Muslim majority. Thirty years ago Coptic Christians formed 15% of the population of Egypt (some say the figure was much higher—as much as 30%. Now it is less than 10%. Coptic merchants are having their stores burned in Aswan. Other small scale pogroms are kept barely under control by Egyptian police. Coptic Christians are leaving Egypt in huge numbers, many coming to the United States. There are two Coptic churches in North Carolina, one in Charlotte, one in Raleigh.

Sudan’s Arab Muslim government has been in a long terrorist effort to kill or expel Black African Christians living in Sudan. This includes the region of Dafur. Maronite Christians, who used to be the majority in Lebanon, are a decreasing minority. When President Reagan withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon after a suicide bomber killed 244 U.S. Marines in 1982, a large amount of protection for the Maronite Christians was gone.

Anti-Christian, anti-Arab policies of the government of Israel, with much U.S. financial support (both Republicans and Democrats in all administrations over the last 60 years being staunch supporters of Israel), have led to the near demise of Christianity in the Holy Land. The Holy Land was 12% Christian in 1967; 2% Christian now.

Philip Jenkins’s most likely candidate for a Christian group to become extinct soon is the Assyrian Orthodox Church of Iraq. The current Iraq war has been the major cause. 1,400,000 Assyrian Christians lived in Iraq in 2001. Less than 400,000 live there now. Their demise is particularly painful because they are the last Christian group that still speaks the ancient Aramaic language of Jesus. Saddam Hussein, for all his evil, did protect the Assyrians, whom he saw as one of many minorities who served as a buffer against the Shiite Muslim majority. Saddam was a Sunni. When Saddam was deposed, Shiites (and not a few Sunnis) began attacks on Assyrian churches and communities. Nearly a million Assyrians have fled into exile, many dying as refugees in the desert.

At least in this particular moment of history, we have hardly any instances of Christians warring against other Christians, though that was sometimes the case in the ethnic blood-lettings in Rwanda in 1994 and Congo in 2006.

Pray for world Christianity. Pray for new policies by governments that will not inadvertently affect Christians badly.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of May 17, 2009

Sabbath Reflections

About twenty people have indicated to me that they participated or at least intended to participate in the church wide Sabbath last Saturday. I’ve heard from a few of you.

One couple said, “It’s not that different from what we do on Saturday anyway.”

Another woman said that she and her husband started the Sabbath. They took a walk and my husband kept thinking of all the things we hadn’t done and calls we needed to make. They decided it was just too much and gave it about mid-afternoon.

Another couple said that they kept the Sabbath but kept thinking about all the around-the-house kind of work they normally do and how they weren’t getting it done this Saturday. They said that the Sabbath was hard for them.

There are still several of you whom I haven’t heard from yet. Send me an email and I’ll post it on the blog. There will be a survey in the May Grapevine. Please make sure to fill it out and turn it in to the church office.

Summer Book Club

Summer before last we had a once a month reading group. I would love to do it again, if some folks are interested. It would meet once a month at lunch hour (bring your own lunch), to discuss a common reading of Christian interest. Books would be in the 200-300 page range. We’ll have some fiction and some non-fiction. I’ve have no particular books in mind at the moment and am open to suggestions. Let me know if you would be interested.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of May 10, 2009

Praises and Pluses

The Story Tellin’ Man

Kudos to Norma Walter, Nicole Vidrine, and nineteen of our children for the wonderful performance of the musical, “The Story-Tellin’ Man,” about the parables of Jesus. It has been a steady stream of praises from everyone I’ve talked to.

Our kids did a terrific job of both singing and acting. Among the most impressive things about the musical to me was how much our children enjoyed doing the performance, how many had solo singing or speaking parts, how nobody seemed to miss a line, and how none of the children seemed at all nervous in performing before a crowd of 250 people.

The children learned a lot and developed skills that will serve them well for a lifetime, memorizing, singing, speaking, acting, and teamwork the more obvious among those skills. Throughout all the work of preparation they also learned many of the parables of Jesus, spiritual lessons for a lifetime.

“The Story-Tellin” Man was a joy to watch. If you missed it, check out the audio here on our website. I suspect there may be DVD’s available as well.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of May 3, 2009

SABBATH PLANNING WORKSHOP

On Saturday, May 9, at 9:00 am in the library we will have a Sabbath planning workshop, in anticipation of our church wide Sabbath Day on May 16. The workshop will last no more than one hour. About half the workshop will be on the Biblical views of Sabbath and understanding the Sabbath as a day of rest. Nowhere in the Bible is the Sabbath a day of worship. That idea would come along three centuries later in the Christian tradition. The other half of the workshop will be on what we need to do to plan for this day.

The workshop is open to anyone. You do not have to attend the workshop in order to participate in the church wide Sabbath. If you are planning to participate in the church-wide Sabbath, please let me or Helen know.

ADULT BIBLE SCHOOL

We will continue our custom of having an Adult Bible School during the church’s VBS time (June 14-18). The class will be from 7:00 to 8:00 each night of Bible School. One difference this year is that we will be having it in conjunction with First Baptist. We can expect a number of First Baptist adults to be there. I have done adult Bible school with First Baptist before and really appreciated the folks there.

This year’s Adult Bible School is entitled “Jesus Uninterrupted.” The title is a take-off on Bart Ehrman’s new bestselling book, “Jesus Interrputed.” The basic issue we will be dealing with is how to make the Bible your sacred scripture and life guide, even though it has contradictions and inaccuracies. All adults are invited.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of April 26, 2009

CHRISTIANITY AND POVERTY

“They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.” –Galatians 2:10.

The responsibility of God’s people to care for the poor is the single most consistent theme running throughout the Bible. The Bible has more to say about the care of the poor than about love, salvation, or eternal life. Nowhere in the Bible are the poor despised or held in contempt. In our present culture there is an assumption of inequality. In the Bible there is an assumption that the present inequalities will be reversed in the kingdom of God. Look for example at the prayer of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2, or the Virgin Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel in Luke 1:46-55 (the Magnificat), or Jesus’ beatitudes and woes in Luke 6:20-26. No one expects the poor to be poor in heaven.

On earth is a different matter. Too many Christians think of the poor only in terms of the first half of Jesus’ statement in Mark 14:7, “The poor you shall always have with you.” Too many use this half-verse as a justification for doing nothing on behalf of the poor. Read the whole verse, “The poor you will always have with you and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.”

Evangelical Christians have tended over the last several decades to put the poor on the backburner of their concerns, somewhere behind getting evolution out of public schools and prayer into them. For decades Jim Wallis was the one lone voice in the evangelical movement advocating for the poor. Now Rick Warren has added his considerable support to the cause of the poor.

Methodists, beginning with our founder John Wesley, have always had a profound concern for the poor always. We give a much larger share of mission dollars for the poor than most denominations, as well as a considerable amount of labor through mission teams and organizations such as Samaritan Kitchen and Habitat for Humanity. Although we are essentially a middle class denomination, we have many churches whose members are predominantly the poor.

God seems to be bringing together a convergence of circumstances that are leading us as a church toward a more focused effort for the poor. Several of our adult Sunday School classes are or soon will be doing the What Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty study book. Several of us have been to the workshops on poverty associated with the Circles program, a program that works toward helping poor people learn middle class values and ways of doing things as a key step in enabling them to get out of poverty. With the world and national economic situation creating more poor people every day, the need is greater than ever.

Here are some things you can do:

· Pray for the poor every day.

· Read the Bible passages noted above.

· Contribute to our church’s emergency fund and to our special offerings that benefit those in hardship.

· Contribute some volunteer time to Samaritan Kitchen or any of our other local organizations that benefit the poor.

· If you are not in a Sunday School class doing the What Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty study, get a copy of the book and read it.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of April 19, 2009

CHRISTIANITY IS CHANGING SO FAST

The ARIS survey and the Newsweek cover story, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America have made us more aware of the Church’s defensive posture in an increasingly secularized culture. The cover story of last week’s New York Times Magazine told a quite different story. The title was, “THE MOST PROFOUND CHANGE IN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY: CLERGY MEMBERS FROM AFRICA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD ARE TRANSFORMING U.S. CHURCHES: Missionary Blowback.”

The most dramatic and important shift in Christianity since the Protestant Reformation is occurring now and happening rapidly. Christianity is growing spectacularly in the continents and countries of the Southern Hemisphere. Very soon, if not already, the majority of the world’s Christians will be from the Southern Hemisphere. In the twentieth century the center of Christianity shifted from Europe to America. The end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first show the center of Christianity shifting to Southern Asia, South America, and foremost to Africa. The faith may be morbid in Europe, declining in America, but it’s exploding in the Global South.

Here are a couple of startling statistics. The largest Catholic population country in the world is the Philippines with 180 million Catholics. Filipino Catholics are not just nominal church members but are actively committed to their faith. Another Catholic fact is that the majority of cardinals are from the Global South. The next pope will in all likelihood not be a European.

The Anglican (Episcopal in the U.S.) churches are now predominantly Global South. There are more Anglicans in Nigeria than in Europe and America combined.

More than 20% of United Methodists live outside the United States. Most of them live in Africa. The largest annual conference is Nigeria. The second largest annual conference is that of the tiny African country, Togo. The Togo Annual Conference has over 600,000 members, twice the size of the Western North Carolina Conference, although Togo is less than a third the size of North Carolina.

Christian mission has reversed its geographical direction. There are more African Christian missionaries going out to Europe and America than European and American missionaries going to Africa. The largest Christian church in any of the nations of the former USSR is a 30,000 member mega in Kiev, Ukraine. It was founded by African missionaries, and its pastor is an African. Christian missionaries from the indigenous African denomination, The Redeemed Christian Church of God are evangelizing in America. They are going to the least churched states. Vermont, the least Christian state in the union, has been a particular mission target for them.

Global South Christianity is in numerous ways different from the predominant strands of the faith in Europe and America. Global South Christianity is predominantly Pentecostal. Worship is fervent and emotional. The presence of the Holy Spirit is palpable. Miracles and healings are commonplace. A secular newspaper in Lagos, Nigeria prints stories about miracles as matter-of-factly as stories about soccer games.

The effects of this global change on us are not easy to predict. Global South cultures are quite different from our own. Worship is different; theology is different; social practice is different. The uniting factors are that all Christians have the Bible as scripture and Jesus as Lord.

Pastor’s Blog – Week of April 12, 2009

Has the Time Arrived for a Christian Counter-Culture?

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote a piece that appeared in Monday’s Winston-Salem Journal entitled, “Why the Christian Right Failed.” Quoting such right-wing stalwarts as James Dobson and Cal Thomas on their admissions of the failure, Parker opts for a depoliticized conservative Christianity. Throughout the editorial Parker never acknowledges the existence of any other Christianity than the right-wing kind.

United Methodism, which represents a widely ranging but more moderate view than the Christian right, gives every appearance continuing the self-destruction that has eroded 25% of its American membership over the past forty years. The ARIS survey of recent weeks has shown that the big winner in the religious wars of the last two decades is “no religion.” People with “no religion” are increasing their numbers as fast as United Methodists are declining theirs.

It would seem to be time to take action, but what action shall we take. Should we keep holding on to things the way they were with a hope that the idyllic 1950’s will return. Should we make an aggressive turn to the right, as the “Good News” movement would have us do, or should we turn sharply to the left, diminish theology and focus on social action. These would seem to be three separate recipes for continued failure. Bishop Scott Jones has referred to United Methodism as “the extreme center.”

I want to propose a different model, a model that finds its roots in John Wesley but operates critically in our post-modern world. Here are some features of the model:

· It operates from the bottom up. The local church sets the agenda through the annual conferences and the General Conference. Boards and agencies operate on a basis of responsiveness to local church needs, not on the model of creating program to dictate to the local church.

· It recognizes that United Methodists are a small minority in the United States (5%). We need to quit pretending that we represent the majority viewpoint. We need to focus on what is distinctive in our tradition and to adapt that distinctiveness to the 21st century world.

· Half a century of ecumenical efforts have rendered the mainline denominations (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, United Church of Christ, Episcopal) into the sideline denominations. We need water down our distinctiveness no further. Let’s be Methodists.

· Jesus needs to be at the center of everything we do. For example,

o The devotions that start each of our committee meetings should be the beginning focal point of the meeting and have to do with the business of that meeting, and not be just an unrelated piece the reader picked up that week.

o Every action of every committee should have the underlying purpose of advancing the gospel.

o Our mission work should always be something more than just what government agencies can do. Habitat for Humanity has always thought in terms of building not just houses, but building lives. We need in our mission work to witness effectively the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to make that witness clear in our words as well as implicit in our actions.

o Our worship needs to be thoroughly focused on Christ. Every worshipper needs to be revived every Sunday. Worshippers need to know the power and joy of being in community and being for Christ. It’s not attending a performance; it’s participating in a spiritual experience. It’s not about you. It’s about God.

o Although we are already doing a good amount of this, there is much more to be done, much more to be thought. Over the course of the next several blogs, we’ll think on this subject. I really want your thoughts as well. The website has link to my email address. Or simply email your responses to me at chriswilson@charterinternet.com

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog – Week of April 5, 2009

Has the Time Arrived for a Christian Counter-Culture?

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote a piece that appeared in Monday’s Winston-Salem Journal entitled, “Why the Christian Right Failed.” Quoting such right-wing stalwarts as James Dobson and Cal Thomas on their admissions of the failure, Parker opts for a depoliticized conservative Christianity. Throughout the editorial Parker never acknowledges the existence of any other Christianity than the right-wing kind.

United Methodism, which represents a widely ranging but more moderate view than the Christian right, gives every appearance continuing the self-destruction that has eroded 25% of its American membership over the past forty years. The ARIS survey of recent weeks has shown that the big winner in the religious wars of the last two decades is “no religion.” People with “no religion” are increasing their numbers as fast as United Methodists are declining theirs.

It would seem to be time to take action, but what action shall we take. Should we keep holding on to things the way they were with a hope that the idyllic 1950’s will return. Should we make an aggressive turn to the right, as the “Good News” movement would have us do, or should we turn sharply to the left, diminish theology and focus on social action. These would seem to be three separate recipes for continued failure. Bishop Scott Jones has referred to United Methodism as “the extreme center.”

I want to propose a different model, a model that finds its roots in John Wesley but operates critically in our post-modern world. Here are some features of the model:

· It operates from the bottom up. The local church sets the agenda through the annual conferences and the General Conference. Boards and agencies operate on a basis of responsiveness to local church needs, not on the model of creating program to dictate to the local church.

· It recognizes that United Methodists are a small minority in the United States (5%). We need to quit pretending that we represent the majority viewpoint. We need to focus on what is distinctive in our tradition and to adapt that distinctiveness to the 21st century world.

· Half a century of ecumenical efforts have rendered the mainline denominations (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, United Church of Christ, Episcopal) into the sideline denominations. We need water down our distinctiveness no further. Let’s be Methodists.

· Jesus needs to be at the center of everything we do. For example,

o The devotions that start each of our committee meetings should be the beginning focal point of the meeting and have to do with the business of that meeting, and not be just an unrelated piece the reader picked up that week.

o Every action of every committee should have the underlying purpose of advancing the gospel.

o Our mission work should always be something more than just what government agencies can do. Habitat for Humanity has always thought in terms of building not just houses, but building lives. We need in our mission work to witness effectively the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to make that witness clear in our words as well as implicit in our actions.

o Our worship needs to be thoroughly focused on Christ. Every worshipper needs to be revived every Sunday. Worshippers need to know the power and joy of being in community and being for Christ. It’s not attending a performance; it’s participating in a spiritual experience. It’s not about you. It’s about God.

o Although we are already doing a good amount of this, there is much more to be done, much more to be thought. Over the course of the next several blogs, we’ll think on this subject. I really want your thoughts as well. The website has link to my email address. Or simply email your responses to me at chriswilson@charterinternet.com

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog Update – Week of March 23, 2009

Sabbath Is Back

The Stewardship meeting in High Point on May 16 has been canceled. As far as I know, there is nothing on the church calendar for that Saturday. We’ll plan then for May 16 to be our church wide Sabbath. It’s a day of rest for everyone who wants to participate. There will be no church activities and no work at home. There is a list of guidelines a couple of blogs back. You’ll see them again as May 16 approaches. You don’t have to sign up, but if you plan to do it, you might let me know. It’s a one time thing. We’ll see how everyone reacts to Sabbath after we experience it May 16.

Adapting to Rapid Change

Churches are notorious for being behind the times and slow to change. Declining membership in virtually all denominations, and decline particularly in the 25-34 age bracket, has been attributed in good measure to the church’s slowness in adapting. In the case of First United Methodist some of the change seems to have bypassed us altogether. Contemporary worship, which has never made it to our church, is now considered old hat. I remembered my shock ten years ago, when I encountered a college student who was a lifelong active United Methodist but had never attended a traditional worship service and had never heard nor seen an organ.

What’s the future of our church in the midst of so much rapid change? I’m no prophet on this matter, but I do have some information and some thoughts.

We have some contrasting indicators:

· In the last four years our church has seen a net membership increase of 11%, after 14 consecutive years of declining membership. That net increase is from 531 members to 590 (when our nine new confirmands are confirmed on April 19).

· During the same period our average Sunday morning worship attendance has increased only 2%, from 200 in 2005 to 204 in 2008.

In today’s world most would say that we are doing great, simply in that we don’t have declining numbers on either front. While I’m very pleased with our membership growth, and pleased with our growth in many other areas, including children’s and youth programs, stewardship, and evangelism, just to mention a few, we need to do better with worship attendance. The buck stops here on that one.

Our two Sunday worship services are quite different: early is informal, late is traditional. Many church planners would say that our clinging to traditional worship in our late service hurts us, particularly with the 25-34 age range. Do you think so? I do find that in terms of the numbers we have about the same percentage of 25-34’s in the late worship service as we do in the early worship service.

I saw a church sign at a United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem a couple of weeks ago. It listen the times for the two worship services. For the 11:00 service the sign read Classic Worship. My first reaction was a laugh, but the more I have thought about that I sign; the more I have liked that term. What would you think of our starting to use that term in describing our 11:00 service?

One way in which we are adapting is the upgrading of our website. I hope you have bookmarked it or maybe made it the default screen on your web browser.

Is Lifehouse Crypto-Christian?

I need some of you rock experts to find this out for me. The band’s very name sounds more like it’s Christian than do the names of a lot of actual Christian rock groups. The haunting song “Broken” has these words:

In the pain

There is healing

In your name

I find meaning

Pastor’s Blog Update – Week of March 15, 2009

CHURCH-WIDE SABBATH CANCELED BECAUSE OF WORK

My apologies to everyone. I have been made aware that the day I had selected for our church-wide Sabbath observance, Saturday, May 2, is already scheduled for our church’s United Methodist Women’s hosting the District UMW mission study. This mission study will include not only the work of the study but also the work of a number of our women in preparing a meal for the participants. I apologize for not looking at the church calendar more carefully.

· We can’t do the Sabbath the next Saturday, May 9, because that is the date of the church’s Lou Kinney Golf Tournament, the proceeds of which go to missions.

· We can’t do it the Saturday before May 2, because that is Merlefest weekend, and many of our members will be doing volunteer work for civic organizations and our Boy Scout troupe during Merlefest.

· We can’t do it Saturday, May 16, because some members of the Stewardship Committee and I will be at a conference wide Stewardship workshop with Bishop Goodpaster at Wesley Memorial Church in High Point from 9:30-3:30 that day.

· We can’t do it Saturday, May 23, because we are having a youth retreat in the Youth Arena from 12 to 6 that day, with a number of adults involved, as well as our youth.

· We can’t do it Saturday, May 30, because that is the day of the church’s yard sale to support the Youth Mission Trip this summer.

· We can’t do it Saturday, June 6, because that will be during Annual Conference, which I and several others will be attending.

· We can’t do it Saturday, June 13, because Vacation Bible School starts Sunday, June 14, and many of us will be at work Saturday doing all the decorating and fixing up for VBS.

· We also have church wide responsibility for one Samaritan Kitchen Saturday during this time period.

· By June 21, many members will be taking vacation time throughout the rest of the summer.

All of these events are God’s work (except maybe for Merlefest). As a church we are far too busy doing God’s work to take a day of rest. God created the universe and rested on the seventh day, hence the idea of Sabbath rest. God’s schedule, however, was not as busy as ours. We will need more advance scheduling and planning on this. I will refer the matter to the Adult Council for further consideration. Perhaps we can do it next year—if we have time.

I do want to thank the several of you who expressed support for the idea.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog for the Week of March 15, 2009

FAMILY SABBATH

Tentative Date—Saturday, May 2

In last Sunday’s sermon on the fourth commandment, I put forward the idea of our doing a church wide Family Sabbath. We do Children’s Sabbath in October, which emphasizes the worship side of Sabbath, with our children leading the worship service and even serving communion this past year.

Family Sabbath will emphasize the rest aspect of Sabbath. We’re looking toward keeping a Sabbath in roughly the same matter as was done in the Bible. Here are some details:

· Family Sabbath will be sunrise, Saturday, May 2 until Sunrise, Sunday, May 3. Afterward we will all come to church for worship.

· Participation is entirely voluntary. It you want to participate but be anonymous, that is fine.

· The focus of the day will be on rest. We will try to avoid do any work.

· Sabbath in Old Testament is for family and for home. Therefore, we will have no church activities on this Saturday-Sabbath.

· Sabbath is for the whole family, everyone who lives in the house. Nobody works.

· Food preparation can either be done the day before, or you can go to restaurants, or get food to go from a restaurant and bring it home, or order home delivered pizza. Sabbath is not a fasting day. There should be plenty of food for everyone, but no cooking, and no cleanup. Use paper or wash dishes the following day.

· No housework or yard work.

· Turn off computers and cell phones. Leave a message on your answering machine or voice mail that you will return calls (other than emergencies) on Sunday.

· TV watching is fine. Movie watching is fine. Reading is fine. Taking a family hike is fine. It’s good to be out in nature on the Sabbath. But if you hike, it should be a slow, relaxed hike with a lot of looking at nature.

· Driving is ok, but not too far. A family trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway or Stone Mountain park should be about as far as you drive.

· No shopping.

· Just relax.

· If you can’t do Family Sabbath on May 2 but would like to participate, find another day close to that time. If you can’t find any date when you family can have a Sabbath, then perhaps it’s time for you to take a serious look at your family’s lifestyle.

If you have other ideas as for things to do or not to do on this church wide Family Sabbath, or if you have questions, send me an email.

Here are a couple of question on which I would like to have some input from you?

· Should we have a workshop a week beforehand on how we are going to keep this Sabbath?

· Would you be interested in reading one of the current Christian books on keeping Sabbath?

A week or two after the Family Sabbath, we will give out a survey for all who participated. You don’t have to fill out the survey, if you don’t want to. If anyone wants to work with me in creating the survey, let me know. I could use the help.

I envision Family Sabbath as a one-time event for our church. It’s possible that if there is a really positive response in the surveys, we might do it again next year.

THE NEW CROSS AND FLAME

In a sermon a few weeks ago I noted that our faith center has not a single symbol of the Christian faith. Members of the Lamplighters Class decided that wanted to do something about it. After consulting me and Leigh Shepherd, Chair of our Board of Trustees, Mike Cangiolosi of Lamplighters was authorized to do the work. Lamplighters paid for it. The result is beautiful. It’s an eleven foot Cross and Flame on the Faith Center wall nearest the atrium. Many thanks to Mike and to Lamplighters.

In Christ,

Chris

Pastor’s Blog for the Week of March 8, 2009

RELIGION IN AMERICA IN DECLINE

A front page story in the March 9 Winston-Salem Journal as well as segments on all the major news networks reported the just completed results of the very extensive Trinity College poll on American religion. While the news on religion may not be quite as bad as the news on the economy, the poll should give us pause. In 1990, 8.2% of Americans listed themselves as having “no religion.” This year 15% say they have “no religion.” In 1990, 86% of Americans identified themselves as Christians. For the current year it is 76%. Every region of the country and almost every denomination has experienced decline. The Southeast remains the most religious section of the country. The least religious section has changed from the Pacific Northwest to New England.

The largest church membership losses have been in the “mainline” Protestant churches (Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians). In 2001 mainline Christians were 17% of the American population. In the current year they are 12.9%. Even the Southern Baptists have declined by 3.5% since 1990. Our country is in a religious recession.

As with the economy, observers might say it’s going to get worse before it gets better, but most observers of religion in America think that it’s never going to get better, at least not for mainline Protestants and for Catholics. Neither Wilkes County nor First United Methodist is immune from this trend. While our church membership over the last three years has had a net increase of 49 (9%), our average Sunday morning attendance has increased by only 2%, and is far less than what it was in the 1970’s.

So much is changing so fast that church demographers can hardly keep up. While the religious marketplace has far greater variety than it did two decades ago, the market seems to shriveling. Even in the Southeast, the most religious region of the nation, non-church attendance has become the norm, especially among younger people. In the last couple of months I have had three different thirty’s-something people tell me in exactly the same words, “None of my friends goes to church.”

These are the facts and the trends. We could (and many have) analyze them ad infinitum. What we need at this point is not analysis but action. The easy temptation is for us to over-realize that we are God’s church, that God has preserved His church through far worse crises than what we confront, and that God will make everything all right. God may choose to do that, but what keeps coming to me as God’s answer to my own prayers is that He expects us to do His work. He expects us to deal with the challenges we face. He expects us to grow our faith and grow our church. He will help us, but we are the ones who have to do it. He will hold us responsible for our failures and for our lack of effort.

Over the next several blogs I will be offering some prescription for what ails us. Blogs invite reaction and discussion. So please feel free to respond.

In Christ,

Chris