wfn.org | Methodists Told: Get a Life

[George Conklin <gconklin@igc.apc.org>]

"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3121 notes).

Note 3119 by UMNS on Aug. 12, 1996 at 16:22 Eastern (4675 characters).

SEARCH: Sweet, vision, Christian, church, bridges, Jesus Christ,
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CONTACT: Thomas McAnally                       405(10-21-71){3119}
         Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470             Aug. 12, 1996

Methodists told to quit complaining 
and "get a mission, a vision, a life"

by Thomas McAnally*

     RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Methodists were admonished here
Aug. 10 to quit complaining about the difficulties they face in
today's world.
     "Deal with it," challenged the Rev. Leonard Sweet, dean of
United Methodist-related Drew University School of Theology in
Madison, N.J.
     "There's a lot I don't like about doing ministry in the
latter days of the 20th century," he said, (but) "this is the time
God has chosen you and God has chosen me to do ministry and lead
the church."
     The question, he said is whether "we are going to claim this
moment for God, or some other moment we wish we had." Jesus, he
added, "said, 'Your time is now.'"
     While the future may seem unfair, he challenged the church to
"get over it. Get a mission, get a vision. Get a life."
     More than 2,700 Methodists from around the world heard
Sweet's message at the Rio Centro Auditorium here Aug. 10 during
sessions of an eight-day World Methodist Conference that opened
three days earlier.
     Sweet urged Christians to replace "whining, complaining,
wimping out, cry-babying" with the doctrine of incarnation. "If
our Savior joins us where we are -- not where we ought to be --
then what excuse do we have? If Jesus descended into hell, then
why aren't we standing at the gates of hell -- the precise place
where Jesus founded his church -- and there building the church?"
     "I don't like it that we live in a world where people are
sharpening their knives to disembowel people different from them,"
he said, "where meanness is getting worse -- meanness towards
races, religions, women, the poor, homosexuals, children, the
elderly."
     Reminding himself to "get over it," Sweet drew applause when
he asked, "What is the church doing arriving so late to hate? Get
a mission."
     "I think it's awful that the word 'Christian' is now so
greasy from everyone fingering it that it has become slippery and
slimy until one hesitates to pick it up," he said.
     Reminding himself again to "get over it," he suggested the
church find another language. "If 'Christian' is too yucky to pick
up, call people to being a disciple of Jesus."
     To minister in the postmodern, pluralistic world, Sweet said
Christianity must bring together opposites. "It must embrace and
bridge a world that is both fiction and fact, a world that is
obese and anorexic at the same time. The church needs to live in
multiple tracks, to function in stereo. ...
     "If our church keeps looking for the middle, keeps cutting to
the middle, keeps hugging the middle of the road, we will be hit
by both sets of oncoming traffic, or if we miss that we will run
churches right off the postmodern cliff. Straight-down-the-middle
strategies don't work in a serpentine world."
     Sweet ticked off a list of postmodern tensions that he hopes
the Christian church can address. The most critical among them, he
said, is the growing gap between the rich and poor, greater now
than at any time since the 1930s. "Will the church work to bridge
these gaps, or widen them?"
     "Jesus didn't call us to walk on water, change water into
wine, multiply loaves and fishes, or die on the cross," he said.
"He did that."
     "He does call us to trust God, love God, love one another,
build bridges. Jesus can't do that for us ... The world is
literally  coming apart ... Build a bridge and get over it."
     For Methodists, Sweet said in closing, "the wisdom of the
future is found afresh in the past ... the ancient will always be
in the future ... the key to contemporaneity will always be
continuity. The more authentically traditional Methodists become,
the more relevant our ministry."
     "Good news is old news," he continued. "The Methodist
aspiration is not to create a church that is 'good as new,' but
'good as old'."
     Methodist leaders, he added, are "visionaries spellbound by
the past ... a conservatory of the past and a laboratory of the
future.
     "We're old-fashioned, newfangled, orthodox, innovators, wise
as serpents, innocent as doves."
                              #  #  #

     * McAnally is director of United Methodist News Service,
headquartered in Nashville, Tenn. 

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