The Appointment as the Only Power of the Bishop

I can understand the appoinment is a power, but it is not the only power the Bishop has. It is in fact the lowest form of authority for our Bishop. It has however, become the most important form of power Bishops use. At least, people seem to think so because everybody seems to be deathly afraid of the Bishop moving them and sending them to the great beyond. It seems to me it has been used with great efficiency in order to prove authority and power by Bishops. Do we really need more of this kind of cheap and petty power mongering? I don't think so. For me, manipulating appointments is not the key role of the Bishop!

For me the key role of the Bishop is to safeguard the sanctity of our beliefs and theology from false doctrines and teachings! What if our Bishops started using all that power to discipline churches in the way it was intended. What if they started dealing with the pastors teaching untruths from the pulpit? This would be a positive and helpful use of their power instead of using it to make churches pony up or fall in rank politically. Isn't that the real reason we gave the Bishops all that power in the first place...so they can protect the church from false teachers and lies taught from the pulpit? The Bishops have completely and utterly failed us in this way! Not only do our Bishops seem to give a rip about the fundamental beliefs of our faith, they are often the ones trying to push for us to scrap them. Once again...the foxes are guarding the hen house.

More "Holy Conferencing" is not Going to Bring Us Together

I recieved and email from the DS yesterday and I was amazed. It was a forward from our Conference regarding an event the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. Now, I preface this by saying that this is supposed to be the top of our organizational structure. The conference is always dogging us to support conference stuff and when I go to meetings and things at the conference level they seem to feel like the conference has really important things to add to the life of the church and they imply that we as pastors should want to get involved and be part of all the really important ministry they are doing.

Anyway, the email I recieved says,

Student Forum 2007, to be held May 24-27 at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington will focus on holy conferencing and the General Conference process... "This year we are announcing a year of Jubilee from legislation instead of recieving and debating new legislation, students will have the opportunity to engage in Holy Conferencing with one another in order to better listen to and understand issues that are important to the church today," said Rev. Meg Lassiat, director of Student Ministries, vocation, and Enlistment at the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, which sponsors Student Forum

Your welcome to look it up yourself at the UM web site for Student Ministries. I couldn't make this up. I guess I found myself thinking, "Is this what we are about?" Is our goal as United Methodists to make better politicians or to make Disciples? When I read the Gospels I don't see Jesus talking about parliamentary procedure anywhere! In fact, I don't see anything about conferences, voting, or resolutions except when the Apostles together voted on the apostle that was to take Judas' place after he hanged himself. Most everything was done by the consesus model. So here it is....

We are always hearing from the Conference how we should be attracting young people to our churches and how they want us to be relevant, but what is supposedly the best we have to offer...the General Conference is offering a retreat in the State of Washington(one of the most remote and obscure places in the country) and wants us to send students to this thing for the sole purpose of helping them learn how to be better bureaucrats? This is the best we have to offer? This is what makes the people in the pews sick and distrust our key leadership. We don't need any more argumentative, legalistic, debaters in the UM! We need young people who know and love Jesus...not the discipline. That is only going to happen when Jesus gets to be the center of what we do...without Jesus and him crucified at the center we are just making more pharisees.

Take a look at Passion for instance. They have been influencing thousands of young people in colleges from all over the world and what do they do at their conferences? They bring in the best speakers, preachers, and worship leaders the church has to offer. They focus on Christ and glorifying Him, they try to build up the faith and devotion of young people because they know if they love Jesus, then Jesus will help them discover truth. When I took some students to passion there was not a single legislative session or discussion about how we would win the world for Jesus through voting resolutions down or up. I came back so rejuvinated in spirit and ready to live for and share Jesus with the world. I ask you...what are these poor UM students going to go home with?

It is OK for us to be holding our key leaders accountable for what they do! They definitely feel they can hold us accountable. WE need to start asking them what these things have to do with Jesus. I sent an email to my DS about it because it is nearly impossible to find a way to actually talk to any one of these General Conference people...they simply are not accessable to me so I sent an email back to my DS asking her to pass on my dissapointment with the conference. It is not wrong for the people who are asked to pay the bills (my church paid almost 20% in apportionments last year) to ask people to be accountable for the funds and resources we send them to do the ministry.