A Swift Kick

An old Calvin and Hobbs cartoon shows Calvin with his homemade storefront. His sign offers “swift kicks in the butt” for a dollar. Hobbs asks him about business. Calvins’ reply, "Terrible considering I’m offering something everyone needs." 

I’ll put up my dollar. Because have you, my United Methodist friends, noticed something?  With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic we  have virtually ceased our battle over LGBTQ marriage and ordination.  

Yes, I know that in subterranean back rooms of some churches and annual conferences groups on both the left and the right are plotting their exit strategies and playing their Richelieuian power games. Under cover of Covid they are making their plans to seize as much power as they can.  But that really isn’t the story.  

The story is that in the clear light of day we United Methodists have adapted quickly to the reality of cultural, social, and technological change that we so long ignored, but which frames any Christian response to the COVID 19 pandemic.

In rediscovering mission in the midst of crisis I hope we have re-discovered who we really are. We United Methodist are at our best when we let our full humanity respond to a deadly crisis. In this one we have almost instantly become leaders rather than followers on an important social issue, and uniformly so. 

We shut down our churches and went online and will remain online longer than most civil and state authorities require.  Because we care that humans are safe and healthy.  We have expanded and  extended our ministries to the poor, especially where there is food insecurity.  Forced to use online tools, we have extended not only pastoral care but evangelistic outreach to people who had slipped away in the old ways of doing things. 

Latecomers, we have finally accepted the reality that “social distancing” has been happening in our communities for decades. And with increasing skill and enthusiasm we are discovering that social media are a tool for overcoming the problem.   

In short, we have gotten on with our ministry and mission in the context and with the tools available to us. And we didn’t need to have a general conference to do it, or an annual conference, or a board or agency. Although to be fair they have come along behind to offer support, which is as it should be. 

Because the natural leaders of the Methodist movement are pastors and congregations, as they always have been. And trusted to lead, because there was no other choice, they have performed magnificently.

For this to happen we just needed to turn away from squabbling at the trailing edge of the mid-20th century culture wars and get back to following the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He stepped outside our walls and beyond our borders long ago.

United Methodists, like our predecessor Methodists and really even our founder John Wesley are not good at dogmatic theology and systematic legal structures.  We are not good at defending Christendom however conceived, or tinkering with the border defenses against the world outside. The fetid air inside those walls was killing us. Ironic that shelter in place was actually the swift kick in the butt that put us outside.  

We are far better at finding new frontiers. We better in places where the environment throws challenges at us that we can hardly imagine surviving. We’re better in the places where the old structures, be they ecclesial or intellectual, simply don’t work if one wants to get on with living. We’re better at inventing new tools than tooling up factories for manufacturing Christians. 

We are better at helping create new cultures and civilizations than trying to sustain the old, and in our heyday that is what we did. In England, the United States, and across the globe we built schools and universities. We taught children to read and write and love God and their neighbor. We built libraries in our churches! We built cathedrals!   

But something happened to us. Instead of using these establishments as springboards for mission we became The Establishment. Then, washed up into mid-mod backwater since 1968, we had been so afraid to get our feet wet that we stayed onboard fighting with each other while the world sailed by. 

Then this deadly challenge swept us all overboard and into the river. And amazingly we discovered that the water was inviting, and that we actually could swim. And most of us, finding the strength in long atrophied muscles, are looking forward to going further and deeper. 

My suggestion to the General Conference when it finally meets? Don’t break up the ship. Pull up the anchor. I think a lot more of us might want to come back on board.