Reflections

One on One

with Bishop Paup

Transcript as it appears in the January 2007 Channels:

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

Let me say as we begin today what a joy and privilege it is for me to continue to be part of the life and ministry with you in this Pacific NW Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.

I must tell you that I have comeback from Mozambique inspired by the recognition of the work of our church around the world. I have had other privileged opportunities to be on various continents of the world to see us at work, but the chance to stand with colleague bishops on the continent of Africa, to hear from African leaders of governments what it means for them to have us stand in solidarity with them even in such a meeting, was in fact an inspiring moment.

But even more so to be able to enter into worship in some of the settings with our United Methodist sisters and brothers in the Maputo area of Mozambique, to be able to go into one of the nearby villages and experience some of the work of UMCOR in helping to construct housing in these villages, to see the de-mining program that continues to follow the years of war in that nation, all of this part of the work of The United Methodist Church, truly gives me hope for this time in history and for ways in which you and I together with our colleagues can be part of God’s efforts around the world.

The last couple of years has brought interesting and lively discussion in the Council of Bishops around our mission statement of making disciples of Jesus Christ, and we have added to that for the transformation of the world, because we want to be clear that discipleship involves us in not only growing closer in our relationship with God and one another but then causes us to reach out in response to God’s gift through Jesus Christ in wanting to be part of God’s mission, in wanting to make contributions that help to make such a difference around the world.

We have done work in the Annual Conference, and that work has joined the efforts of other Annual Conferences and general agencies of our church, including our Connectional Table in the denomination, to be in collaboration about specific areas where we may be able to be of help in this day.

And there is a call to action that has been adopted by the Council of Bishops at its most recent meeting that we believe is one way of putting forward our desire to see hope in action in a variety of ways across the church.

The four areas that we identified in particular are: Living the United Methodist Way, starting new churches and renewing existing congregations, reaching out and caring for the children of our world, and stamping out the killer diseases of poverty and especially malaria and HIV AIDS.

Let me speak a moment about living the United Methodist Way because I think it is very much in concert with what we are talking about in this conference as what it means for us to be a Missional Church. I have said that there are times clearly that if we were the church as God intended the church, as God spoke of the church in scripture, we would not need adjectives such as missional to describe who we are. We would know what it means to be church.

But we are human, we fall short of Gods calling. We even do so as the church, and part of the way in which I think God calls us into ongoing reflection, the sermon, the study, is to be recognizing ways in which by God’s grace we can be lifted to new understandings of what it really does mean to be that body of Christ, that church in the world committed to the realm of God that it might come on this earth even as it is in heaven. So we use such words as missional to describe what we believe we’re called to be about.

Missional for me is not just about what it is that we do, but it’s also how it is we live our life in community together and with God, and so as part of the Missional Church indeed we are called to live the United Methodist Way. Giving gratitude for the opportunity to be part of the Wesleyan movement and the Wesleyan movement’s response to the Gospel of Christ in the world.

The general rules of The United Methodist Church are, I think, a concise way of describing the components of the United Methodist Way. They describe practices that place us in the pathway of God’s grace, enable us to be attentive to God’s call and then move us into mission. These Wesleyan practices form us into disciples of Jesus. It is our belief and experience that those who practice doing no harm and doing good to all and participating in worship and prayer and Holy Communion and scripture study, Christian conversation and fasting, that these are ways we experience personal transformation, and then together become participants in Gods transformation of the world.

As people of the 21st Century who live the United Methodist Way, you and I are called to be a community of believers, who both corporately and individually offer hope to the world through our being together and then through what it is that we do.

Even in this conference we recognize through the focus on the missional church that we will have increasing opportunity, I believe to be a relevant voice for Jesus Christ in this region of not only the United States, but also of the Pacific Rim.

The mobility on the Pacific Rim continues to impact the demography of the Pacific Northwest. Increasingly we have new sisters and brothers who come from all over the Pacific Rim of this world and come into our region, and together we have new opportunities to learn what that’s going to mean for us, learning from them and they from us, as together we seek to respond to this changing world in which we live. But it begins with this invitation to community.

Just this past Sunday I was in one of our congregations celebrating with them in the midst of their stewardship campaign and as I had opportunity to speak with various persons of that church, I learned of some of the different ways in which they came to that congregation in the first place and was inspired to hear the story of one man who responded to a telephone call at the time that congregation was being organized.

This telephone campaign reached the neighborhood, the community where this new church was being organized, and this man, a non-churched person, responded to an invitation to come to that church. Now today, several years later, he is an active leader in that congregation---a disciple of Jesus Christ who looks to that initial telephone call as the one that made the difference in his life. He now, out of the inspiration of that experience, is reaching out to others in the name of Christ, believing that they too, can be invited into a community experience that in turn will transform their lives, and through their response help God in God’s work to transform the world. We will continue to talk about what it does mean for us to be “Missional” in our life together as disciples of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for the leading of God’s holy spirit in our midst.