Reflections

One on One

with Bishop Paup

Transcript as it appears in the March/April Channels

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

I look forward to traveling throughout the Annual Conference this spring - opportunities to be in each of the districts to share where we are moving as a missional church and a missional Annual Conference. Today is an opportunity to introduce to you some of my thinking, some of where I believe we are going together as an Annual Conference of this The United Methodist Church.

In the temptation narrative as recorded in Matthew, Chapter 4, Jesus answered the tempter, “It is written one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” You and I are called to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God, or as John 1 puts it, as the Word. Consider these words from the first chapter of John’s Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things came into being through the Word. What has come into being in the Word was life and the life was the light of all people. The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and lived among us. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” The Word is the source of life for all. The Word is the source of light for
all. The Word is the source of grace upon grace for all.

“The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood” is the way that Eugene Peterson says it in his translation in The Message - this person of the Word we know as Jesus Christ. Jesus both embodied the Word and pointed the way to the kindom of the Word. Jesus’ words of teaching were grounded in the Word. To the shema, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and strength, he added you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The living out of these two great commandments are measured against such questions as posed by Jesus in Matthew, Chapter 25. How did you respond to the hungry, to the thirsty, to the stranger, to the naked, to the sick, to the imprisoned. While Jesus’ words were grounded in the Word, Jesus’ very life was so grounded. The Word in his deeds becomes the way by which we are all called to live.

Yet it is for that very reason that we fall short of this calling, that the Word offers to us all, grace upon grace through the act of salvation in the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is as we experience and open ourselves to the fullness of such grace that we are most able to receive the Word - life and light from the Word and the words that are to define our lives. These words Jesus offers to us in the great commission as recorded in Matthew 28. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Word and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” And at his ascension Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Word has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

We have been blessed the last couple years in the conference to have resource persons coming into our midst in the symposium that was called for the clergy and for our connectional table. The first of these symposiums brought to us Dr. Inagrace Dietterich from the Center for Parish Development in Chicago. It was Inagrace who helped us focus biblically our study together on the great commissions as represented in the four gospels. We began together to take a look at what it means for us truly to be a missional church and a missional annual conference in this 21st century. The church was born in response to the Word and to the grace upon grace offered by the Word to become flesh. The church is not the Word but it is called to bear witness to the Word. Such witness is offered when the church follows the examples and lives by the commands of the Word become flesh. When he church lives fully in this way there is probably no reason to use additional words to describe the essence of what the church is. If the church were always the church, there would be no need to define it as loving, caring, serving, even missional. Yet the church, as the people within it, falls short of the calling of God and stands in need of grace upon grace. The Word offers us words which can assist us in becoming what we are called to be. This is the significance for me of the word missional and its use today in describing what we are called to be as the church.

As United Methodists we describe our mission as making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. The transformation of the world is in fact God’s mission. It was for the sake of transformation, salvation, redemption, restoration, reconciliation that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ. As Christians in response to God’s activity in Jesus Christ, we take on the mantle of discipleship and commit ourselves to be agents of God’s mission. To be a missional church means that following the leading of the Holy Spirit, we are working, indeed we are living, for the transformation of the world into the realm or the kindom of God. Our DNA as followers of John Wesley defines the missional church as relational. We seek community where we support and hold one another accountable as we grow in our relationship with God, with one another within the community of the church, and with those beyond the church. Using the spiritual disciplines of worship, study, prayer, and fasting, a relational community has developed. Even as it is transformed by the grace of God, so the church becomes an agent of transformation beyond itself. It is when the church is fully and wholly relational that it truly becomes missional.