Why I'm jumping on a sinking ship

The United Methodist Church is a sinking ship. Amid dwindling numbers and fewer new professions of faith the church is dying. Truth be told by it's founder John Wesley's definition the church is already dead.

“I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power"-John Wesley

There is no power in a lot of the worship within the United Methodist church. Children who are born and raised in the church are leaving Christianity at an alarming rate (6 out of 10 men will walk away from their faith in college) those that are hanging around, are finding spiritual fulfillment outside of the Methodist Church. An example of such an event can be found on one of my previous posts. So why jump on a sinking ship? Why move towards ministry in a church that has hit an iceberg is going down fast? Because I believe in Jesus. I believe in redemption. I believe that "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still"-Betsie Ten Boom).  I believe that there is a better way than what we are doing now. I believe we can remove the fluff and regain the power. I believe that we can hold ourselves to a higher standards of our interactions with others without defending it with "i'm just a broken person". I grow so tired of seeing Methodist Pastors resort to snark and name-calling as if it somehow improves their point. I often find this occurring in articles posted by United Methodist Pastors. It's not a single place it happens either it's a total top to bottom epidemic. It occurs in letters coming from leaders of General Agencies all the way down to pastor's personal blogs. Look no further than the latest post on RethinkChurch. While my brother in Christ Morgan makes great points they are delineated by his name calling and snark used when dealing with Albert Mohler. I'm no fan of Mohler's either and goodness knows I've been way too snarky and condescending with those I disagree with but to do it on a nationally published article is not the time or the place. The points made in the post were outstanding (I would rather see an easter doodle from Google, but it's important to know the role faith played in Chavez's life) but I found myself wondering if using terms like "outragicals" did anything to improve the quality of the article. We must move on to better things. I'm jumping on the UMC boat because all of the work of going through candidacy has taught me that helping is a spiritual gift. I see people on this sinking ship grabbing as many buckets as they can working and working to bail out water and keep the ship afloat. It's time for me to roll up my sleeves and start bailing out water and lend a hand. How do we "fix" the UMC? Can the UMC be fixed? I believe it can because I believe in Christ's ability to redeem the broken and the UMC is most definitely broken at this point. I'm not anyone special. Just a small certified candidate for ministry in the UMC, but I do have a few ideas about how to fix the UMC.

1. Trim the fat (General Boards and Agencies all the way down to local congregations have too much fluff and fat. Get rid of it. Better budgets and more efficient use of mission shares.)

2. Accountability (As a pastor you swear to uphold certain ideas and rules. If you can't uphold that deal there need to be consequences. Ineffective leadership with zero accountability is killing the church)

3.End Online Seminary (Sorry I know it's "producing lots of UMC pastors" but it's killing the church because it's producing pastors that are the same person they are when they started seminary because they were never forced to interact and grow. This is really an argument of quantity over quality. Online or predominately online seminaries are producing large numbers of pastors but if 10 out of every 100 they produce is effective it's still a failure)

4. Increase educational requirements (Many Pastors coming out of seminary are ill equipped. Pastors get to small churches and realize they have to lead "Children's Church" with no training or idea how to most effectively communicate the Gospel of Christ to young children. That's just one example of how ill equipped some seminaries are leaving pastors)

5. Establish a better balance between personal and social holiness (Wesley tells us we need both, but right now the UMC is so sold out on social holiness at the expense of personal holiness that we're creating form with no power. I can hear the arguments coming in now "social holiness leads to personal holiness" that may be true in some cases not all. Whereas Wesley interprets the Bible to say in James that our works are an outpouring of our faith. )

6. Make room for more voices (right now there is no room for middle ground. If you want to have a voice in a conference, agency, church, etc you have to have a certain voice. You have to agree with the views of those allowing your voice to be heard. I despise the IRD, but their article about the revolving door at the general agencies has some truth to it. I as a moderate Methodist would not be allowed a place at the table at most of the general boards and agencies or even some local churches. That must change. We must quit seeing every issue in the church as win/lose and view it as a chance for holy conferencing and hope)

These are just thoughts. They are things I hope can happen and I feel would help the UMC regain some of the power to go with it's form. It's the hope of these things that leads me to grab a lifejacket, hop on board, take a bucket, and start bailing out water. God can redeem all. Maybe there's hope for the UMC yet.