DIFF Notes “Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best”

Posted on May 16, 2012 by revkennydickson

“The Brooklyn Bothers Beat the Best” is a film to put on your list for September if you like quirky characters (Jim and Alex,) road story genres, catchy though offbeat music, and don’t have “virgin ears.” The Story is about two down on their luck and life musicians, Jim and Alex, who have the universal dream of musicians, to be successful as determined by big audiences and paydays. Their following of their dreams deliver decidedly more modest results as the duo literally play anywhere and everywhere, from a street corner in front of their out of gas car, to a non-paying gig at the Theta, Beta, Potato fraternity. As with all journey films, the characters grow as they travel down the road touching the lives of others and visa versa. While the major theme is to follow your dreams, there is a twist; follow your dreams AND be content to where they take you.

It may have been “Easter after effects,” (I saw this the week after Easter) but I saw elements of a certain road trip 2000 years ago. As with the journey of the Brooklyn Brothers, the Disciples had great visions of Israel, under the leadership of Jesus, taking their home back from Rome, and Israel winning its true autonomy. As with Jesus and the disciples, this group travels the back roads, communing with ordinary and marginalized people. As Jim points out to Alex, “this may be it,” that maybe they are not to hit it big. Maybe they are just to play their music and whoever likes it, likes it, and they should not let the fact that their dream life is not their life take away from the fact that they ARE living their dream. In essence, Jim is asking that perhaps they should be content rather than frustrated when their expectations are not met. This was of course a major component of why Jesus was crucified, the peoples’ expectations verses the true essence of Jesus as the Messiah. And it always threatens to detract, if not derail, our dreams and purpose if we see fulfillment ONLY in achieving or living out the dream just as we imagine.

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Monunmental

Posted on May 15, 2012 by revkennydickson

My friend and collegue David Weber posted the following link to a Huffington Post article and I marked down yet another reason why I will not go to Branson, or as I refer to it, “the place where the Love Boat sank.”  This story is wrong on so many levels, the most important of which is as Rev. Weber points out, that for the $5 million the Branson cross is expected to cost, 500 wells could be dug in Africa and other areas where people are dying for the lack of clean water.  Given the choice between one monument where people who lack little if anything can go and be guaranteed an audience with Jesus, or 500 wells where hundreds of thousands of people with little or nothing can go and be assured of receiving life sustaining water, I wonder WWJV, which would Jesus visit?

The other levels where this is wrong include the fact that developers are promising  visitors an “encounter” with Jesus.  While certainly Jesus can be encountered anywhere, even at the “Magnificent, Monumental Branson Cross,” it seems that “the developers” are working as booking agents for Jesus. Here’s assuming he’s there for 8 shows a week, and don’t forget to tip your elevator operators.

Yet another level where this is wrong is the claim that, while the Golden Gate Bridge and the Gateway Arch are “secular” monuments, the “Magnficent, Monumental Cross in Branson” will be the first “monument to the ‘spirit of man.,” Putting aside there are other monumental crosses that are theoretically non-secular,  executive director Kerry Brown probably meant to say that the cross is built to the Spirit of God, though his original statement is probably closer to reality.

This article offers insight and examples of misunderstandings so many persons and institutions of faith have regarding humanity and God. A continuing challenge for many  Christians and congregations is the reality that the purposes for which they were originally created, to honor, serve and glorify God, can become secularized, and lose their sacred calling.  When congregations fail to keep putting the desires and ministry of Christ first, fail to put first the great commission to make disciples of Christ, and when they fail to put the needs of non-church members ahead of what they the congregation want or think they need, they lose their sacredness, their being set aside by God to do the work of Christ and become secular monuments to the glory of themselves.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/branson-cross-worlds-largest-cross_n_1510283.html

 

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Jewels From Jules

Posted on May 10, 2012 by revkennydickson

Jules Winnfield, the repentant gangster in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” when trying to explain why he was getting out of “the life” to his unrepentant partner Vincent Vega said his decision came after he “had what alcoholics call a ‘moment of clarity.’” The precipitating event for Jules’s life changing, and perhaps lifesaving, decision was his and Vincent’s escaping death and 6 bullets fired at point blank range. While not presented in the same understated irony as the “hand-cannon” scene in “Pulp Fiction,” General Conference 2012 provided the United Methodist Church, in an ecclesial sense, an equally shocking and surreal moment in time. Everyone going into the GC knew it was going to be a difficult process. Few if any thought it would end with so little few legislative accomplishments and no success in restructuring the denomination. While many are saying nothing was accomplished, I believe that, if we take the time to look back at the event(s) of GC, as Jules did with his life changing event, there is much that may still be accomplished by the GC 2012.
As Paul received his vision when the scales of blindness fell from his eyes in Damascus and he was able to see his calling to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, GC 2012 revealed the UMC as it is, a body that is more divided and less trusting than believed or acknowledged before, and a body that can no longer continue the allusion that all is well and united. This General Conference, there were no legislative “victories” to camouflage the fear, anger, and divisions within the General Conference and the denomination. One of the chief symptoms of the above is the lack of trust among the various constituencies within the denomination. Elders mistrust Episcopal leaders, progressives mistrust conservatives and visa versa, and the American Jurisdictions don’t trust the Central Conferences and visa versa. Certainly these feelings have been present in prior conferences, yet this year there was no legislative action or other accomplishments to put a united face/mask on the Church at the Conference’s end. This year, there is no doubting that we are as we appeared, broken and operating amid substantial dysfunction including the reality that we are a worldwide body that does not know how to operate as a worldwide church.
While this true portrait of the state of the denomination is ugly and hard to look at, GC 2012 provided the Church a moment of truth and clarity, and, if we will truly look at ourselves, the first and foremost step has been taken if the denomination is to be, not only revitalized, but salvaged. Amid all the disagreements and differences at GC, there were two areas of commonality. One, everyone realized that the church is struggling to survive and two, everyone wanted others to make the major compromises necessary to address the denomination’s weaknesses. Prior to GC 2012, as with GC’s 08, 04, 00, and 96, I have heard calls from both sides of the various issues/caverns that divide the UMC, that God can unite the church. Looking back at the 5 GC’s since I entered ministry, it seems that what people meant when they say God can unite Christ’s church is that God can convince the other side to see the light, as I see it, and agree with my understanding and interpretation of scripture upon which I base my beliefs and actions. Too often we believe that we will be united as soon as God removes the log from the other side’s eye. For the UMC as for the subject in Jesus’s parable, the log in the other’s eye is not as big as we believe and the speck in our eye rivals if not surpasses that which blinds the other side. The reality is we all have logs in one eye and through the other one we see only through a glass darkly. The only way to improve the vision for everyone, and hope for genuine unity for the whole, is for each one to humbly accept the limitations of their own understanding and beliefs, while recognizing the validity residing within the beliefs of those with whom we differ. Some or many on each side refuse to compromise in belief or practice because they believe they are upholding the honor and truth of God. In reality, such supreme confidence in knowing the truth and desire of God is brazen confidence that in and of itself is an offense to God. Were the Apostle Paul to offer one bit of instruction to the post GC2012 UMC, I believe he may retweet to us his teaching to the church in Philippi:
Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love?
Any fellowship together I the Spirit? …. Then make me truly happy by agreeing
wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with
one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble,
thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own
interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude
that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think equality with God as
something to cling to.     Philippians 2:1-6

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In All The Family 2

Posted on May 10, 2012 by revkennydickson

The other day in a post about family systems and the UMC, I stated my observation and fear that elders, specifically elders determined to be “ineffective,” were being seen as THE “identified patient” responsible for the decline of the denomination.  It seems this understanding has been ratified by the General Conference with the removal of guaranteed appointments for elders AND no CORRESPONDING action that identi…fies or proscribes removal of ineffective Bishops, closing of ineffective churches, and genuine restructuring of general boards and agencies.  Possibly I missed some legislation (i hope) or I am being too sensitive and over reacting (I pray) but, given what I have observed, the GC, by inaction in providing ways to measure and address other parts of the UMC family system, has” identified” the cause of the dysfunction of the denomination to be ineffective elders.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, there certainly are clergy that have lost their effectiveness or, by slipping through the ordination process, were never effective.  I cannot think of any elder who would say otherwise. However, as someone who studied and believes in systems theory, I believe that dysfunction is systematic and is operating in all parts of the system and to identify and address only one part of the system is wrong and will not produce a healthier system/church.  Through its actions, identifying elders as the place of dysfunction, and easing the way for their removal from the system, two results are likely.  The first is that elders will become, or judged to be, even less effective as greater pressure, attention, and examination of them is brought into the system.  Also likely is the transference of dysfunction from other parts of the system being placed upon them as they have now been “identified” as THE source of dysfunction. Frustration and perhaps hopelessness will set in and the dysfunction within the elders, and system/church as a whole will increase.   The second possibility is that elders will become more functional as ineffective clergy are removed, but since dysfunction in other parts of the system were not addressed, the system will remain dysfunctional and a new patient, congregations, Bishops, or boards and agencies will be “identified” and the system as a whole will still continue to grow in its dysfunction.  It seems at this time, the GC has done what so many dysfunctional families have done, given into the power of homeostasis that protects the current system at all costs, rather than take advantage of an opportunity that seemed to be present to address the dysfunction throughout the church and make systematic changes that would result in higher functioning and a healthier church that is better able to make disciples for Christ for the Transformation of the world.

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In all the Family

Posted on May 10, 2012 by revkennydickson

I saw earlier my friend and collegue Clayton Oliphint reference his Family Systems Imagetraining in seminary regarding the reality of homeostasis, the resistance to or sabotage of change in any system, especially dysfunctional systems.  I to have thought back to systems theory with all the talk of and focus on, both in the run up and at General Conference, ineffective clergy.  It seems that ineffective clergy have become the identified patient, ie the primary cause, of the dysfunction within the UMC.  Systems Theory teaches that unless the dysfunction is addressed systems wide, ie the dysfunction that exists in all parts of the system, the dysfunction will remain even if the identified patient is fixed, whereupon the dysfuntion will simply be blamed on another member, and next identified patient of the system.  Certainly there are ineffective clergy but in the midst of the conversation about ineffective clergy and Guaranteed Appointment, I have not heard conversation about how or why clergy become ineffective.  Some are ineffective because they do not have the gifts and grace necessary to be ordained to specialized ministry, and somehow slipped through the ordination evaluative process.  Others had the gifts and grace, and were at one time effective but in the stress and rigors of ordained ministry have lost that effectiveness.  I realize there have been initiatives and work regarding sustaining clergy effectiveness, but these have consisted of a mixed bag of contining education programs at best, and a part of the clergy effectiveness evaluation process at worst, which for at risk ineffective clergy intensifies pressures, lowers morale, and often increases  ineffectiveness.  While the structure of the denomination was addressed in the Call To Action, primarily in the structure and oversight of boards and agencies, what has not been addressed in any widespread or official level is the dysfunction of laity, local churches, general boards and agencies, and episcopacy.  If one believes in systems theory, there will by no lessening of the dysfuntion within, or improving the effectiveness of, the UMC until the dysfunction of the entire system is recognized, admitted,  addressed and yes changed.

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