wfn.org | World Methodists get fired up to share Christ in new millennium

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Nov. 23, 1999 News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville,
Tenn.10-21-30-71BP{630}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this story. For other coverage of the
World Methodist Council's Millennium Event, see UMNS stories #631 and #632.

HOUSTON (UMNS) - World Methodists must go boldly into the new millennium and
proclaim Jesus Christ as the hope for a spirit-starved world, leaders of the
Wesley movement said during a three-day renewal and celebration event.

"Go!" Bishop John R. Bryant, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in
Dallas, told 1,300 people in the keynote message Nov. 18. "Go into all the
world, way over yonder -- and across the track. Go and make the difference
between life and death. It is a commission that is universal and inclusive
in its scope."

Bryant's message helped ignite the World Methodist Council's Millennium
Event, and what followed were two and a half days of intense prayer,
preaching, worship and workshops, all tied into the theme of sharing
Christ's light and proclaiming "Jesus: The Hope of the New Millennium."

Methodists from throughout North America worshipped side by side, their
diversity reflected in the richly varied - and spiritually moving -- music
and preaching styles. For that weekend, the members of the Methodist
denominations celebrated their oneness as a family, a oneness that
transcended their human differences and became sharply focused on a
commitment to making disciples of Christ.

All of the major branches of Wesleyan family in North America were
represented: African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African Methodist Episcopal
Zion (AMEZ), Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME), the Church of the
Nazarene, the Free Methodist Church, the Methodist Church in Mexico, the
United Methodist Church, the United Church of Canada, the Wesleyan Church.
Representatives from the Methodist churches in the Bahamas, Costa Rica and
even India also attended.

Never before had there been such a gathering of the Methodist denominations
in North America, said United Methodist Bishop Neil Irons, co-chairman of
the event and president of the WMC's North American section. "You are making
history because God has sent us to this place."

This is also a historic time because the group is one of only two in history
to "stand at the end of one millennium and look at the face of another
millennium - millenniums dated according to God's gift of Jesus Christ," he
said.

The WMC, with offices in Lake Junaluska, N.C., is a network of Methodist and
related churches in 108 countries. Its denominations represent about 35
million members and serve a wider community of 70 million people.

Christ is the hope for the new millennium, Bryant proclaimed. Myriad
problems, tensions and crises lie ahead, he said, but Jesus says, "I am in
the future."

Going forth means reaching people regardless of skin color, age, economic
background. "Nobody is excluded," Bryant said. Methodists must make
disciples of the millionaire and the pauper, the "PhD and the no-D," he
said.

In Christ's church, there are no big and small members, no controllers and
controlled. Christ tells his people to "make brothers and sisters out of
them in my name," Bryant said. 

Baptize and teach them, he said. "Teach them what I taught you," Bryant
said, taking on the first-person voice of Christ. "Stop trying to fix my
stuff up. Stop trying to water it down. Stop trying to make it palatable.
Stop trying to please everybody."

If that means being unpopular or politically incorrect, so be it, he said.
"But the church must stand for something."

"Jesus Christ is lord of the world. He is not a buffet choice," he said.
Methodists must "stop apologizing for Him."

The Rev. John Maxwell, founder of INJOY Inc. and a leader in the Wesleyan
Church, built on that theme of the Great Commission. Using Joshua 1, in
which God tells the Israelites to go into Canaan, Maxwell laid out a vision
for the people at the Millennium Event.

"As we go into the 21st century, He is asking us to take new territory,"
Maxwell said.

What is needed today, he said, are the same four elements that enabled the
Israelites to take the Promised Land: God's willingness to partner with the
people; courage and obedience of God's people; bold leadership; and "timely
encouragement" from the people themselves.

God was ahead of the Israelites when they entered the Promised Land, and God
will be ahead of his people when they enter the millennium, Maxwell said. 

Maxwell's not fretting about the new millennium. "I'm going to have a good
time," he said. "I'm going to praise God, because every good gift comes from
the Lord."

Referring to those who are worried about the millennium, he said: "If you
looked at the Christian community, you would honestly think we have no God."

People around the world are afraid of the new millennium, said Bishop
Graciela Alvarez Delgado of the Methodist Church in Mexico and a vice
president of the WMC's North American section. They are afraid because
they're superstitious, guilty, lonely, she said, speaking in Spanish with a
translator at her side. Because of the absence of God in their lives, they
fear the worst and feel they're at the end of the their lives. 

But our hope is in Jesus Christ, she said. "We have to recognize that Jesus
Christ, the one who has been the hope for all the centuries, continues to be
the hope for the new millennium."

Alvarez Delgado noted the growing disparity between rich and poor, the
growing problems of violence and crime, along with other social ills.
"Brothers and sisters, it is very urgent to find solutions for these poor
people. ... We need to proclaim the hope for the ones that are suffering."

Social justice was a strong theme throughout much of the preaching and
praying at the event.

CME Bishop Thomas L. Hoyt Jr. used the parable of the landowner hiring
workers for his vineyard to show how the Kingdom of Heaven's value system is
different from ours.

"We can't really evangelize, we can't witness (to) a right, until we get our
value system straight," said Hoyt, first vice president of the WMC's North
American section. Describing how Christ challenged the value system of the
day, he said: "Jesus' whole ministry is subversive." It is meant to change
the world, and it is meant to change us, he said.

One of the most powerful messages of justice and forgiveness came from the
Rev. Grace Imathiu of Kenya, who tied the Old Testament stories of Abraham
and Joseph to the suffering of Africa. Imathiu, a leader in the Methodist
Church in Kenya, is working on her doctorate at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tenn.

"This is the millennium that will go down in history as the millennium where
20 million Africans were sold into slavery and another 200 million in Africa
died in slave hunts," she said. "Thank God this millennium is about over."

She recounted how Joseph was betrayed by his jealous siblings and sold into
slavery in Egypt. "Like Joseph, Africa finds herself alienated from her
siblings, and I search this story trying to figure out why Africa receives
such animosity from her siblings."

Like Joseph, Africans had to change their names to unpronounceable ones
given to them by "the pharaoh of colonialism," she said. They had to learn
the language of the English and walk and talk like the English, French,
Portuguese, she said.

"Joseph's story is yet a good story for us in Africa," she said. "It gives
me so much hope. It is the story of forgiveness."
 
The stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph are also stories about
privilege - the privilege of a favored son or wife over others in the
family, and Imathiu examined privilege in the context of Africa's problems
today. She noted the disparity between the West's quick response to the
crisis in Kosovo and its non-response to the genocide in Rwanda a few years
earlier. When Rwandans were being "chopped up like firewood," Americans were
watching the O.J. Simpson trial on television, she said.

The poor nations of Africa and the world have been reduced to being beggars
because of the debt burdens they carry, she said. The impoverished countries
have had to cut down on health and education services in order to pay back
the high interest on their debts - though they may have repaid the principle
amount three times already. Thousands are dying in hospitals that have no
drugs, Imathiu said. 

If all of the African debts were cancelled, that would hardly affect the
booming economies of the affluent nations, she said.

Joseph and his brothers had a relationship that even betrayal could not
change, Imathiu said. The Joseph story "makes me glad to say I'm not that
African woman from Africa; I'm Grace, your sister. I have a name and we have
a relationship, and nothing, not even this millennium's crazy history, can
erase that."

We are all related as branches of one vine, the Rev. Rob Blackburn said
during the closing worship service Nov. 21. "We believe in the one true
vine. Our peace and our unity this morning is simply in that."

Each branch needs the others, said Blackburn, pastor of Central United
Methodist Church in Asheville, N.C. "Each of us has part of the truth, but
none of us has all of the truth" until we all come together and hear each
other out, he said. "We round each other out."

In the new millennium, a lot of people will be hungry for the fruit of the
true vine, he said. People are "fed up because they haven't been fed, and
they're tired of living on spiritual junk food."

But only by abiding in Christ will the branches bear fruit, he said. "When
we abide in Him, we will pour out our life without counting the cost."

Jerry Dunn, head basketball coach for Penn State University, drew a strong
response from the audience with his witness. Dunn, a United Methodist, said
he never knew his biological father, but was raised by "an extended family
extraordinaire" that loved him and gave him the foundation of his faith.
"For years, I felt cheated and deprived of the father-son relationship that
I never had," he said. Finally, as an adult, he turned to the only person he
could talk to, "God, my father," and realized that the only father he had
ever needed had been with him all along. 

At one point during the Millennium Event, the participants - bishops,
pastors, laity, youth - filled out commitment cards, indicating how they
intend to be in ministry in the next millennium. As the Christian recording
duo Watermark played "Amazing Grace," the crowd sang and brought the cards
up to the ballroom stage, which had been converted into an altar. There, the
Rev. H. Eddie Fox, director of World Evangelism for the WMC, stood.

"I have the feeling that this could be a moment when we physically move,"
Fox said, right before the people left their seats. "Christ has said yes to
us, now we're invited to say yes to him."

Fox had begun his message by noting that God first said "yes" 2,000 years
ago. "Christ Jesus is God's 'yes' to the world," he said.

"Yes!" the crowd repeated.

Christ is calling us to be ambassadors of hope, Fox said. "Where do you go
for hope when your bonfire falls in?" he asked, referring to the Nov. 18
tragedy that killed at least 12 Texas A&M students and injured many more.
Where do you go for help when shooting erupts at a school?

We are ambassadors of hope, and the hope is Jesus, he said. "You can be sure
that this world doesn't have the last word."

The Methodists didn't stay holed up in their convention hotel for the
Millennium Event. On the first night, after worship at First United
Methodist Church downtown, they poured out of the sanctuary for a community
block party. With the urban sounds of the Salvation Army Harbor Choir
filling the night, the Methodists mingled until late in the evening. The
Salvation Army is another organization with Methodist roots.

The next night, an even larger crowd of some 1,800 people walked several
blocks from the hotel to Sam Houston Park, where 5-year-old Cameel Rishmawi
from Bethlehem relit a candle that he had first lit at the Church of the
Nativity, which is believed to mark the spot of Jesus' birth. The fire was
passed from candle to candle, until the park became a field of light, and
filled with the sounds of Christmas carols and praying.

On the third day, some 60 people went out into the community as members of
work teams to do ministry - painting, home repair, sorting food and clothes.

Throughout the Millennium Event, participants were clearly experiencing the
renewal that they intend to share with others. One of the Bible study
sessions, led by Bishop Alvarez Delgado, focused on the Old Testament story
of God breathing new life into the dry bones. CME Bishop Nathaniel Linsey
picked up on that theme afterward.

"The bones are dry in the church, but these bones can live again," said
Linsey, WMC regional secretary of world evangelism and co-chairman of the
event. "We are here to bring about a transformation, and we are here to
bring about a renewal. We are here to set the world on fire!"

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United Methodist News Service
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