One of the saddest things in life is “the feeling of having gone on the trip, but having missed the adventure,” Greg Haugen told a room full of Christian leaders recently. Most of them nodded in assent.

Haugen, the director of International Justice Ministries in Washington, D.C., was one of the most anticipated speakers at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit Aug. 7.  He spoke about the profound work his group is doing to secure justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression.

In the world at this moment, 1.5 billion people have no access to health care. In developing countries, 60 to 85 percent of prisoners are never convicted or charged with a crime; 27 million people are living in slavery and 2 million children have been forced into prostitution. Just today, 25,000 children will die from hunger.
For these people, one of the absolute hardest things to believe is the Christian assertion that God is good, that God is love.

As believers, we have to step back and ask ourselves, just what is God’s plan? Haugen said. But when we do, to what’s often our astonishment, the answer becomes clear.

“We’re the plan” said Haugen. “God don’t doesn’t have another plan.” Hard as it might be to accept, you are God’s plan to address the injustices of our world.

Haugen encouraged those present to make their leadership matter by leading in the things that matter to God.

“Discover what God is passionate about, and pursue that,” he said, claiming “justice is at the core of the heart of God.”

But even considering the scope of the brutal injustices in this world can make a person feel bolted to their chair. It’s work that feels, “hopeless, scary and hard,” Haugen said. All of us would rather lead in situations that are cheerful, safe and easy. But people can pretty much take care of themselves in these scenarios.
For those who want to pursue the “more demanding climb,” Haugen encourages them to refocus on what God is and what God can do.

“Re-center on the basis of our hope,” he said. “If God is passionate about it, God is responsible for it.”
He illustrated this point by asking people to remember how the disciples fed the 5,000 with only five loaves of bread and two fish.

“It seemed to them when faced with such an impossible task, all they could do was sit in the paralysis of despair. But Jesus, simply said, ‘what do you have? Give it to me.’ Jesus didn’t ask what they needed. He asked that they have and would they give it to him.”

When the work is of God we’re simply asked to give all we have and trust in God to act, said Haugen.
Working in justice ministries is also scary, said Haugen, who related dramatic rescues of people from slavery that International Justice Ministries have undertaken.

Those slave owners were capable of violence, he said. “But we’ve experienced God. Jesus didn’t come to make us safe. Jesus came to make us brave and to release us from the mediocrity of safe bets. He called us to follow him beyond what we can control so that we can experience God’s wisdom, power and love.”

But doing so can often feel too hard. To address the difficulties, Haugen recommends choosing not to feel safe, developing deep spiritual health, pursuing excellence and seizing joy.

Mother Theresa used to say she couldn’t do her work for 30 minutes without prayer. “If we can get through an hour, or a day, without prayer, we need to consider getting a new life’s work or pursing our old life’s work in needs ways,” Haugen said.

Christians, as they grow, have to leave the safety of the Christian cul-de-sac. They have to choose to pursue excellence and re-claim the rigor of thought and excellence of execution.

“We’ve had enough of the Christian-adjusted scale of mediocrity,” he said. “We need to be evaluated by our outcomes.”

And, perhaps most importantly, leaders in justice ministries need to choose to seize joy.

“The first thing to disappear when spiritual discipline departs is laughter,” said Haugen. “We need to do away with the exaggerated anxieties of self-seriousness. There’s something wrong if Jesus’ yolk is light and ours is heavy. The joy of the Lord really is our strength.”

Haugen’s shared his own feeling about faith when he remembered being a teenager and working out in the gym, trying to build his muscles for football. On the other side of the gym, he remembered, were the body builders – the gym’s elite.

Those boys had grown huge, bulging chests, and arms and legs – lifting, stretching, and toning But for what purpose? Haugen asked. They didn’t really do anything with their muscles. “In a crunch, they were called in to open the jam jar when it was stuck.

The world is waiting to know God through us, Haugen said. Do we really want to be spiritual jam jar openers?

“We are God’s plan.” It can be an adventure of the rarest joy.

In a poem, Father Kilian McDonnell tells an ancient story. The gist is this:

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country.’”

Talk about imperious. Not one for conversation, this unknown god issues edicts to strangers; a command – simply, “Go.”

At 75, Abram and Sarai were to scuttle their lives and become sojourners on the road to some mumbled nowhere.

Abram blanched at the thought that from two desiccated lumps this God of the wilderness promised to make a great nation. Yet he answered:
“You come late, Lord, very late,
but my camels leave in the morning.”

At Bishop Peggy Johnson’s consecration service July 18, Bishop Susan Morrison delivered a sermon based on Genesis 12 and McDonnell’s poem, The Call of Abraham.

Bishop Morrison, a clergywoman from the Baltimore-Washington Conference was retiring after 20 years of being a bishop and she spoke to Bishop Johnson, who became a bishop that day.

Her message was simple. Climb up on your camel and “claim your vulnerabilities — your strengths and your lesser strengths.”

Too many people in the church feel a need to hide their wounds, getting caught up in their “reverendness.” But “our faith enables us to move beyond vulnerabilities and claim whose we are and who we are. And it is sufficient,” Morrison said.

The monk Thomas Merton once wrote, “Humility consists in being precisely the person you are before God.”

In a sense, this is what Morrison was preaching to the new bishop – and I believe to the 50 or so clergywomen from the Baltimore-Washington Conference who were gathered in the pews.

You don’t have to spend a long time with our conference’s clergywomen before you learn a common lesson from them. They live, as they believe, that all people, in the broadest spectrum of their uniqueness, were created exactly as they are in order to be loved and to bring glory to God.

These clergy women gathered on the steps after the service to sing to Peggy. They wanted to give her a blessing as she traveled into becoming Bishop Johnson.

They sang, “Stepping out on the Promises,” a song from their shared past.

Each of them knew that the bishop’s journey, as well as their own and that of each United Methodist in the conference, won’t be entirely comfortable.

God calls God’s people to some untidy places where it’s not always easy to feel capable, or even relevant. But the point, as Bishop Morrison said, is to honor the journey.

“It’s about claiming who we are. Because in the end, God’s call is not about us. It’s about living and telling the story, the old, old story, of Jesus and his love.”

Our camels leave in the morning.

Twenty years ago Susan Morrison, who was director of the Council on Ministries in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, had to go buy shoes. She had, through the moving of the Holy Spirit, surprised the church by being elected a bishop.

Morrison attended the jurisdictional conference with no plans of the episcopacy. She hadn’t packed clothes appropriate for a consecration. She wasn’t even sure that this was something she really wanted.

But the wind of God had blown and started a pilgrimage journey of justice, outrageous love and audacious grace that helped shape the denomination.

At this session of the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference, Bishop Morrison is retiring. While she has spent her episcopal ministry away from Baltimore, many members of the Baltimore-Washington Conference claim her as their daughter, and mother, in faith.

On July 16, the conference honored Bishop Morrison and Bishop Violet Fisher, who is also retiring, in a worship service.

As part of the festivities, those present were encouraged to ask questions of the two retirees.

The Rev. Vicki Starnes rose and asked the bishops what wisdom they would offer to her 15 year-old-daughter, who feels she might be called to the ministry.

Bishop Fisher had soulful advice to offer. “Tell her to stay in the Word,” she said, recounting how she had started preaching at the age of 16. Reading the Bible helps one discover the joyful and sometimes difficult disciplines that accompany one on the Christian journey.

Bishop Fisher told about, as a young woman, connecting with older women pray-ers, who taught and nurtured her.

But mostly, any young woman considering the ministry should remember that “this is the day,” the bishop said. “Start preparing.”

Bishop Morrison’s advice was more concise: “Well, simply, you go girl,” she said.

She then told about a time early in her ministry when she was meeting with some of the first clergywomen to be ordained in The United Methodist Church. These were the pioneers, Morrison said. They had encountered obstacles of every kind. One woman told her story and it wasn’t an easy one. But she said, “I’d just give nothing for the journey,” Morrison remembered

That spirit is the kind Bishop Morrison encourages everyone in the church to discover and make their own.

“It been one helluva journey,” she said. “It’s a glorious journey.”

When asked what piece of music brings her joy, Morrison chose the hymn “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” and the crowd sang it along with her.

Her’s has been a glorious walk – a journey that has touched more people that she’ll ever imagine, and her legacy resounds.

What do we wish for in a bishop? What do we yearn for in those who lead our church?

On July 14-18, members of the Northeastern Jurisdiction will meet to discern from among 13 candidates who will be elected to serve in the ministry of the episcopacy. There are four men, two African-American and two Asian, one Hispanic and eight white bishop-hopefuls.

Before the voting, the delegates will have the opportunity to interview the candidates. I’m glad for the opportunity to learn more. Statements sent out about the delegates paint them as a pretty homogeneous bunch. Their visions appear to merge together. Methodism seems to be bred in their DNA.

They are counciliar leaders, who view themselves as “encouragers.” Only two mention the word “power.” On the whole, they seem intent on merging social justice with vital piety, and addressing church decline with discipleship. As a group, they also tend to use too many exclamation points. (Vicki Miller Brendler used five exclamation points in just her vision statement.)

My favorite candidate of the group is the Rev. Peggy Johnson, of the Baltimore-Washington Conference – just because she seems to be outside the mold of district superintendent going on to glory. She embraces the Holy Spirit in bold and surprising ways. She also expects the church to rise to God’s expectations and seems to have the courage of her convictions.

She is a United Methodist – heart and soul. But she’s a United Methodist who will surprise you by popping up in places where the church hasn’t always been comfortable, and encouraging people to learn from their disagreements.

She can be cynical when it’s called for, but her faith in possibility is so genuine that it can startle you. She is an interesting choice for bishop because she’ll allow God to help her define what it means to be the church in this place and time.

But the other candidates also expressed some interesting sentiments.

Rev. Brendler, of the exclamation points, who is from the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference, said she is “courageously available,” to God and believes the church “needs to find creative ways to offer Christ to those who are seeking a deep experiential knowledge of God.”

Linda Campbell-Marshall, of New England, would like to see the church stop “wasting generations of God’s precious time (and children) quarreling over who can come to ‘Common Table.’”

The Rev. Aida Irizarry-Fernandez, who was endorsed by MARCHA, envisions “a church always in movement and constantly renewing for the sake of the weak, marginalized, the poor, the immigrant and the sick.” Bishops, she said, need to be vessels that “go to the Potter’s wheel to be reshaped over again to meet the changing needs of those they serve.”

Bo-Joong (BJ) Kim of New Jersey cites the Baltimore-Washington Conference’s own Rev. J. Philip Wogaman as a guiding influence and claims it is “important to participate in the making of public policy in the community we serve as a church.”

Constance Youngmi Pak of New York and Eric Stephen Park of the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference, made up acronyms for their vision of the church. Pak wants to AIM with accountability, inclusiveness and membership; and Park has four pillars that make up the WORD: worship, outreach, relationship and discipleship.

Park, by the way, has his own blog, at www.pewboy.net. He believes that “the church’s people need to stop acting as though they are living in a culture that accommodates the Christian narrative and begin to focus instead on developing new and creative ways to make that narrative intelligible to a spiritually hungry people.”

And Dorothy Watson Tatem, of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, says, “We, the church, cloister in praise, worship and prayer; we go out in praise, service and personal storytelling – all for the glory of God.”

She has perhaps the best written statement. Watson Tatem says: “The Pentecost Principle is that of sustained fervent prayer to seek the Divine Mind and then a willingness to move from the pew on to the pavement, from temple to turnpike, from sacred retreat to road in order to share with the stranger in comprehensible language that which God has done in our lives and the availability of the power of the Holy Spirit to all.”

That’s United Methodism. And like our bishops it can be good, bad, beautiful and ugly all at the same time. This is indeed an opportunity for wishing and for discernment.

“Live your life on tip-toe,” the Rev. Don Stewart once preached at a conference staff meeting.

It sounds flip until you try it. Balance on the tip of your toes and your body automatically begins to anticipate. By reflex, you open up to a sense of adventure, that something just might be about to happen.

Preaching on one’s tip-toes can give a sermon a new pitch. Traveling on tip-toe makes you hurry up and slow down all at the same time.

At a recent Baltimore-Washington Conference staff meeting at the episcopal residence, while Bishop Schol cooked everyone lunch, I asked some of the staff to “jump” as I snapped their pictures.  They let go of their inhibitions as their feet left the ground. It was like living on one’s tip-toes in the extreme. There was no room for care – just a shard of a moment that felt like life wasn’t business as usual.

Jump. You’ll feel it.

The staff surprised me. People’s personalities were reflected in their jumps. Some took a running start and leapt. Others composed their jumps to be artistic; everyone raised their arms. It was praise. There was joy. There were even grass stains.

I love that the people were not afraid to jump, that they didn’t let propriety and party manners inhibit them. The conference staff jumped – with joy and bold certainty – the same way they do their ministries.

 In 1932, two women, who chose to remain anonymous, listened to God and wrote down what they heard.

Their writings were published in the devotional book “God Calling.” 

In January, the Rev. Rod Miller bought this book for several people at the Conference Center. The book sits in people’s offices and occasionally it speaks to its readers in ways they feel compelled to share.

May 6’s entry touched a chord within me, especially the phrase “sublime audacity.” I don’t yet fully understand the implications of those words. But they delight me. The following words are also echoing: 

Bury every fear of the future.

Be full of Joy

Do not limit God at all.

Hope all the time.

Wonders are unfolding.

How can you be overwhelmed when God is with you?

You are pilgrims.

It is the daily strivings that count.

Be quick to learn.

Pray daily for faith. It is Gods’ gift.

Service is the word of my disciples.

Never limit God’s power.

You are making one spot of earth a holy place.

Let inspiration take the place of aspiration.

Truth is many-sided.

Live in God’s presence.

There is no room for fear in the heart in which God dwells.

Nothing is small to God.

Absorb beauty.

Reflect. Persevere.

Make God real.

Claim big, really big things, now.

I, your Lord, am not only with you on the journey – I planned, and am planning your journey.

Go forward boldly.

Learn to love discipline.

Love and rejoice on the grey days.

Put love into action.

Claim great things.

Prayer re-creates.

Joy. Joy. Joy.

“Chabadza” — it’s one of the best words I’ve heard recently. It’s from Zimbabwe and has no English translation.

Suppose you’re walking down the road and you stop to greet someone working in his field. “Hello, how are you doing? What’s up?” all these are typical American salutations. But, in Zimbabwe they say, “Chabadza,” which roughly translated means, “Greetings. Let me stop and while and help you with what you’re doing. We’ll work together, we’ll talk a bit and and then I’ll be on my way.”

Chabadza is the sharing of a a moment, a participation in the task at a hand and an acknowlegement that life is best when it’s shared.

Life in Zimbabwe now, as we read about it in news reports, provokes many causes for concern. Hyper-inflation, the AIDS pandemic, poverty that is denuding the country of hope, and fearful political uncertainties.

United Methodists from the Baltimore-Washington Conference share a partnership with Zimbabwe. We’ve said “chabadza” to one another.

According Ecumenical News International, outdoor prayer service have been banned in some parts of the country.

This ban has been tied directly to the balloting for president. Post-election violence is reported to have left at least 50 people dead and displaced thousands of villagers.

In May, goverment leaders and police attempted to prevent worshippers from entering Harare’s Christ Chruch. Riot police blocked the entrance of the congregation, who were attempting to attend a worship service. Civic leaders report on their blog that “the women, in their anger, broke down the fence to get in.” Up to 80 of these women were arrested. 

In the presidential elections on March 29. President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party lost its majority in parliament. According to the official results, which have been disputed, none of the four presidential candidates managed to get the majority vote required to avoid a second round.

Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party, are to participate in a runoff election June 27.

The U.S. State Department has curtailed nonessential travel of Americans to Zimbabwe. In this time of hardship, our partnership will have to be heavy on prayer.

One United Methodist leader from Zimbabwe, who has visited the Baltimore-Washington Conference, looks at the challenges facing his country with eyes of faith.

“Confronting hardship head-on and finding hope has produced a new kind of disciple,” he said. “It’s no longer, ‘God remove these mountains,’ but rather, ‘Give us the strength to climb our mountain.’”

It’s a climb we should be making together.

In Jo Chesson’s office in the Conference Center there’s a homemade check on poster board, a prop used in in a presentation by the children from Calvary UMC in Frederick, who made a donation to Nothing But Nets.

There’s a mistake on the check. A last minute gift was added, so white masking tape with writing on it in magic marker covers the money figures. The check is for $253.50

The additional donation was given by a girl who contributed money she had been saving to buy herself a Nintendo Wii. As much as this girl yearned for a Wii, something in her heart yearned to help children in Africa more.

She knew that every $10 she gave would buy an insecticide-treated bed net to keep mosquitos from killing children in Zimbabwe. The ideas of malaria and mosquito-born disease killing one person every 30 seconds are much more distant thoughts than the fun video games could provide. But she acted like a disciple. She gave.

The adults in this girl’s life would prefer that her name not be mentioned. They believe her gesture is just as meaningful as those from the other Sunday School students at Calvary. They may be right. But it’s a gesture that is being repeated in a surprising number of instances by children who want to reach out and give sacrificially to other children.

Chesson has seen it time and again as she travels around the conference promoting the Nothing But Nets initiative. Someone’s imagination is sparked by the lives and suffering of those they never met and they act. They give.

There’s an old Charlie Brown cartoon. Michael Lindvall writes about it in his book “A Geography of God.”

“Linus is chomping on a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and stops to observe his hands. He says to Lucy, ‘Hands are fascinating things! I like my hands … I think I have nice hands. My hands seem to have a lot of character.’

Waxing eloquently, he goes on, ‘These are hands which may someday do marvelous works! They may build mighty bridges or heal the sick, or hit home runs, or write soul-stirring novels! These are hands,’ he cries out to Lucy, ‘which may someday change the course of destiny!’

Lucy looks at Linus’s hand and says, ‘They’ve got jelly on them!’”

Too often, we dismiss our hands, our potential, the ability of our imaginations to reach out and change the course of destiny. Or, we hesitate to get our own hands dirty.

Chesson herself struggles with this. She is the project coordinator for the partnership between the Baltimore-Washington and Zimbabwe annual conferences.  Last week she got an e-mail about deteriorating conditions in Zimbabwe. Run-away inflation is causing extreme hunger and shortages of medication. Teachers at a school the conference supports have been attacked. People in that region are eating their dinners and then traveling into the woods to sleep because soldiers are burning down homes in the middle of the night.

Chesson hears these stories and wants to make a difference, she want to put her hands to action. And so she promotes the HOPE Fund and Nothing but Nets in her off hours.

We’ve all got jelly on our hands. And we all want our own version of the Nintendo Wii. But the children at Calvary have the right idea.

We all need to get out the masking tape and make some changes to what we’ve intended to give or to do. That, Chesson says, is the real heart of discipleship.

All the tribes of The United Methodist Church gathered in Fort Worth April 23 through May 2. There were 992 delegates and about 1,000 others who gathered to watch and witness as the church tried its best to create “A Future with Hope.”

Almost immediately, they adopted John Wesley’s three rules: “Do no harm. Do good. Stay in Love with God.”

Holy conferencing and conversation made all things feel possible. The young adults of the church made their first address ever and stressed the importance of “interaction over action.”

Even the dry, analytical finance report took on spirit when Bishop Swenson proclaimed: “Observe the cup. What we give, we receive. What we receive we give. We not only lift the cup. We are the cup. Let us be the cup overflowing in a thirsty world.”

It felt as if the denomination’s newly adopted four areas of focus were within its reach: eliminating poverty, improving world health, building new faith communities and developing new leaders.
And then, for me, hope crashed when Muland Aying of the North West Katanga annual conference rose to speak in the debate on homosexuality.

“There are things that exist in this world that we would rather not hear about; we would rather not see; we would rather not touch. However, we live in this world, and we have to hear, see and touch these things. However, we do not have to be influenced by those things that we hear, see and touch,” he said. “It’s very sad, Bishop, that The United Methodist Church continues to advocate things that come from the devil.”

Suddenly, the hope felt a bit hollow.

Words wound and his words cut into the heart of the church’s debate on homosexuality. Could we be the church and allow these words to be uttered about the gay men and lesbians standing next to us on the floor?

Apparently we could.

The church upheld its stance that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching and it rejected, by a margin of 10 percent, the proposed statement “Faithful, thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness.”

We couldn’t even agree to acknowledge that 45 percent of the church thought differently than Aying. It made one feel weak, and furious and battered.

In protest the next day, people witnessed to their desire for inclusion by shrouding the altar in black cloth, and gradually, piece by piece, moment by moment, shards of hope began to reappear.

Holy conversations began between all different kinds of people. But for me, it was the worship that reminded me that God’s grace can not be bound by the whims or the workings of any person or any church. That seemed a cause for hope.

Throughout the proceedings of General Conference, liturgical moments were woven in. The altar table, lectern, baptismal font and communion chalices were made of trees knocked down in Hurricane Katrina.
Broken pieces of people’s lives were collected, laid on altars throughout Mississippi and given to the delegates as they reflected on the cross in front of them, a mosaic of broken things made whole in God.
Plants, started from seeds throughout the United Methodist connection, grew throughout the convention hall.

And the bishops preached.

Bishop Minerva Carcano questioned her firm conviction that United Methodists could faithfully achieve their vision of overcoming poverty in community with the poor.

“I’m not sure we’re smart enough, disciplined enough or compassionate enough. But I don’t lose hope, because there is hope beyond ourselves,” she said. “That hope beyond ourselves is Christ Jesus.”

This hope beyond ourselves also resounded in a sermon by Bishop Joao Somane Machado of Mozambique, who told those gathered that “the church is blessed with men and women, lay and clergy, with tremendous gifts and vitality. We need to do what we say … it’s the actions we are missing,” he said.

And Bishop Ernest Lyght of the West Virginia Area preached: “Wake up, church! Get up, church! When men, women and children knock on the doors of the church, they are looking for fresh bread. They want to encounter a vibrant faith. They want to embrace hope for tomorrow. They want to experience extravagant love that includes them.”

Bishop Violet Fisher of the New York West area continued to deliver hope with her challenge: “What does it mean to open our hearts for the transformation of God’s world and be the Gospel?”

Her question was answered in a sermon by Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, who lifted up those of both sides of the debate on homosexuality — those who seek hospitality and those who value holiness.

“When we concern ourselves only with holiness, we become rigid and inward-looking. We make an idol of our purity,” Jung said. “When we concern ourselves only with hospitality, however, we lose our sense of who we are. Our identity is blurred and we lose the language of our own faith.”

Jung invited United Methodists to live in the tension of those two theologies, but cautioned, “Christianity is not about being theologically correct. “It’s about following Jesus,” he said.

And then Bishop Gregory Palmer, the new president of the Council of Bishops, from the Iowa Area, closed the 2008 General Conference with the words, It is “incumbent on you and me as people of Christian faith that we not become stingy with the blessings—stingy with what we have received from God.”

Then the people left Fort Worth, returning to their ranks among the 11.4 million United Methodists in their 48,000 churches around the world. They became a living benediction. And hope was released.

On April 30 General Conference voted on issues of homosexuality, even as the church continued to pursue opportunities for mission and ministry across the globe. It was an emotion-filled day, punctuated by a refrain of “Yes, Jesus Loves Me.” Mike McCurry, of St. Paul’s UMC in Kensington, writes about it in an e-mail home to his pastor.

We had a difficult and emotionally draining day here at General Conference.  For all the good work we have been doing to focus on the priority areas that our church has identified (leadership, church growth, poverty, health and diseases of poverty), sooner or later we knew we would face the issue of homosexuality.

Every General Conference since 1972 has wrestled with the issue and the result has remained largely unchanged. That topic dominated debate today and will likely be the thing (alas, maybe the only thing) that gets reported in the mainstream secular media about General Conference.  And the headline will likely be: “Methodists Maintain Opposition to Homosexuality.”

Here’s what happened: the legislative committee responsible for this topic reported a petition to the entire General Conference that would have dropped the current language in our church law, The Book of Discipline, which says “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider (sic) this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Instead, the committee proposed new language which said: “Faithful, thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness… We therefore ask the Church, United Methodists and others, and the world, to refrain from judgment regarding homosexual persons and practices as the Spirit leads us to new insight.”

The General Conference rejected this new language by a vote of 501-417 (55%-45%) and went on to uphold the current “incompatible” language with some slight modifications.  We reaffirmed that “all persons are individuals of sacred worth created in the image of God” and that “families and churches should not reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends.”  Late tonight, we also upheld (by a slightly larger margin) the prohibition on “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals” from serving as clergy or candidates for clergy in the UMC.

Those with good memory will recall this is almost exactly the same result – substance and vote – that occurred at the General Conference four years ago in Pittsburgh.  But it was no less painful for all sides of the debate.  Those who deeply believe that homosexuality is a sin and contrary to our Christian teaching feel they would lack integrity if they did not stand up and say so when defending church law.  Those who believe that God is guiding us to a new understanding of Scripture feel equally compelled to speak the truth that our church is deeply divided on this issue.

This was the first time in seven days of deliberation here in Ft Worth that I felt we failed to measure up to John Wesley’s three rules for holy living: “Do Good, Do No Harm, Stay in Love With God.”  We have done much good here.  Our debate today was truly done in a spirit of “holy conferencing” and I felt the tone and tenor of the debate was far less polarized, angry, and close-minded than four years ago in Pittsburgh.  But it is inevitable – on this issue that almost divides the church in half – that great harm is done when one side or the other is required to prevail in debate. 

There were many tears and sad faces as the consequences of the vote sunk in.  Many delegates and visitors stood in silent protest as the business of the General Conference concluded before a dinner break.  A soft chorus of “Jesus Loves Me (Us), This I Know” echoed around the Hall as the formal business of the plenary session droned on.  Ours is a merciful God and my guess is that God shed a tear or two for our brokenness, too.

But here’s one bright spot in the day: Delegates and friends from the Baltimore-Washington Conference met on the main stage/altar of the General Conference at lunchtime today with our brothers and sisters from the Zimbabwe conferences of the Methodist Church and reaffirmed our special relationship with that country and the church and people there. 

We had heard an amazing report this morning about Africa University – a gem in the rolling hills of northeast Zimbabwe where students from 18 countries across sub-Saharan Africa attend classes at a modern, well-equipped institution of higher-learning that the United Methodist Church with the grace of God willed into existence nearly two decades ago.  Africa University has managed to thrive and continue its wonderful work despite the political and economic meltdown in the country since the early 2000s.  

The hope our brothers and sisters from Zimbabwe have for their country and the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe – amidst such awful hardships and deprivation – was wonderful tonic.  God helps us through all our hardships and trials and is waiting for us there “on the other side” to renew God’s covenant with us anew.  We will keep marching to Zion, weary though we are at the end of a tough, tough day.

Blessings to all my St Paulsters –
Mike