{"id":149,"date":"2009-01-16T11:30:11","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T11:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/what-happened-in-missouri.html"},"modified":"2009-01-16T11:30:11","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T11:30:11","slug":"what-happened-in-missouri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/what-happened-in-missouri.html","title":{"rendered":"What Happened in Missouri"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"missouri.jpg\"<\/span>Back when Patton Dodd<\/a> asked initially asked me to consider blogging for Bnet, he wanted to play on the “Dispatches” subtitle of my book<\/a>.  That is, he wanted to take advantage of my frequent travels to write about how the “emergent church” conversation is being embraced (or rejected) around the country and the world.<\/p>\n

Well, I spent the better part of this week in central Missouri, addressing the annual continuing education event of the Missouri district of the United Methodist Church<\/a>: the Missouri Ministers’ School.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, I delivered my stump speech for the last year or so, “Ten Dispatches from the Emergent Church<\/a>.”  It was, I think, well received.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday afternoon, I was on a panel with the other three presenters.  Again, it went well.<\/p>\n

And on Thursday morning, I had about an hour long public conversation with Missouri UMC bishop, Robert Schnase<\/a>.  That’s when the wheels came off.  <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nHe and I had, I think, a good conversation about the nature of the
\nchurch, and our ecclesiological differences were evident.  The
\nMethodists call their inter-church ecclesiology the “connectional
\nmodel,” which was instigated by Methodism’s founder, John Wesley.<\/p>\n

But earlier in the conference, I had encouraged the UMC ministers
\npresent to stop filling out forms.  The UMCers, by their own admission,
\nhave to fill out an overabundance of forms — Schnase explained to me
\nthat once per month, every church has to fill out a form that askes
\nfour questions: How many professions of faith? How many baptisms? How
\nmany in attendance? How many small groups?  Then they also have to fill
\nout an extremely long and complicated form required at the end of the
\nyear.  One pastor told me that his secretary has been working on that
\nform and nothing else for the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

Well, of course, it didn’t go over well with the bishop that I had told
\nhis charges not submit their required reports.  He refered to himself
\nas a “numbers guy,” he poked some fun at me by wondering whether I care
\nabout numbers when it comes to book sales, and then he used an analogy
\nthat others told me he uses regularly: He said that everytime you go to
\na doctor’s office, the nurse takes your blood pressure, temperature,
\nand weight in order to track your health over time.  He said this shows
\nthat numbers can be a valuable indicator of health.<\/p>\n

I took issue with this on a three levels.  First, I think it’s a bad
\nanalogy, and I think that church leaders are often rpone to bad
\nanalogies.  In his analogy, he (the bishop) is the physician and the
\nlocal church is the patient.  That’s problematic in itself.  But it
\nalso brings up the question of how does one best gauge the health of a
\nlocal ecclesial community?  Are those the best four questions to ask? 
\nProbably not, as Willow Creek recently revealed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think the only way this analogy might work is if the pastor is the
\nphysician and the individual congregant is the patient (though this has
\nproblems, too).  In that case, the pastor’s job is to gauge the
\nspiritual health of the parishoner by checking in regularly and keeping
\ntrack of spritual health over time.  Then the onus is on the parish
\nminister to determine what are the best questions to ask.<\/p>\n

Second, as the bishop admitted, the monthly reporting is a drain on
\ntroop moral because, of the 900(!) Methodist churches in Missouri, the
\nvast majority go many months in a row with no professions of faith, no
\nbaptisms, and flat or decreasing attendance.  This is reflective of the
\noverall denoument of mainline Christianity in the U.S.  Why not ask the
\npastors to relfect on other indicators of spiritual vitality rather
\nthan raw numbers?<\/p>\n

Finally, I said that nurses take these stats every time you visit the
\noffice primarily for liability reasons — to make sure they’re not
\noverlooking something like a spike in blood pressure.  A nurse from the
\nback of the room shouted me down when I said that and said that’s not
\nwhy those numbers are taken.  So, I could be wrong on that count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when Patton Dodd asked initially asked me to consider blogging for Bnet, he wanted to play on the “Dispatches” subtitle of my book.  That is, he wanted to take advantage of my frequent travels to write about how the “emergent church” conversation is being embraced (or rejected) around the country and the world. Well,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-emergent-church","category-travels"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Happened in Missouri - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/what-happened-in-missouri.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Happened in Missouri - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Back when Patton Dodd asked initially asked me to consider blogging for Bnet, he wanted to play on the “Dispatches” subtitle of my book.  That is, he wanted to take advantage of my frequent travels to write about how the “emergent church” conversation is being embraced (or rejected) around the country and the world. Well,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/what-happened-in-missouri.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-16T11:30:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/missouri.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Happened in Missouri - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/what-happened-in-missouri.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Happened in Missouri - The New Christians","og_description":"Back when Patton Dodd asked initially asked me to consider blogging for Bnet, he wanted to play on the “Dispatches” subtitle of my book.  That is, he wanted to take advantage of my frequent travels to write about how the “emergent church” conversation is being embraced (or rejected) around the country and the world. 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