June 1, 2023

Dear Hyde Park Family,

Among my leadership roles beyond the local church is that I serve as the chairperson of the Florida Conference Board of Ordained Ministry for the United Methodist Church. We evaluate and recommend persons to serve as clergy in our Conference. Our work culminates every year with our Annual Conference gathering in Lakeland, set for next Thursday through Saturday. I certainly appreciate your prayers for our work.

Last year, our Board invited consultants from the Forum for Theological Exploration to help us improve the way we do our work, including identifying implicit biases in our perceptions and processes, improving communication, and navigating through change. Those two consultants, Stephen Lewis and Dori Baker, presented insights based on their book “Another Way: Living and Leading Change on Purpose.”

Their wisdom was not only helpful to the Board of Ordained Ministry of the Conference; I think they are applicable to all of us, in whatever vocation, life stage, or walk of life we find ourselves in that requires courageous, adaptive leadership.

Here are seven of their most powerful insights. I hope you find them meaningful:

· Dialogue is an essential leadership practice and a core process for change.

· Leadership is a communal practice that builds the capacity of a team, community, or organization to envision and enact a future informed by the past and the diverse people around us.

· Strengthen your capacity to embrace mystery by thinking about, playing with, and adapting to uncertainty, because it, like death, is inevitable.

· Leadership is more about public listening than public speaking.

· The wisdom of our ancestors and descendants is always present and available to us, so remember to welcome them as we face the most difficult tasks of our lives.

· Learn from multiplicity. Most of us are more than any one thing simultaneously. Appreciate the complexity of other stories and perspectives.

· There is a future that mourns if you and I do not step into our purpose.

As people of Pentecost, let us open ourselves to the ongoing, innovative work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. May we each step into our purpose, and claim the leadership voice that God summons of us.

Happy Pentecost!

May 25, 2023

Dear Hyde Park Family,

This Sunday, we join with Christians around the world in celebrating Pentecost Day, the birthday of the church, when the Holy Spirit touched the earth and ushered in a fresh experience of God’s presence and power on earth.

On that day, Peter stood before the crowd and preached his very first sermon, referencing the ancient prophet Joel:

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17)

Peter’s words cast a vision of a time when all people, younger and older, are captivated by a sense of God’s love, and compelled to share that love with others.

It is in that spirit that our Bishop Tom Berlin has asked United Methodists across our state to take up a special offering this Sunday, in observance of Pentecost. It supports two vital ministries in our connectional system:

YOUR YOUNG WILL SEE VISIONS: THE WARREN WILLIS YOUTH CAMP

Part of the special offering will support the youth camp at our Warren Willis Campground in Leesburg, Florida, which for decades has introduced thousands of children to the saving love of Jesus Christ. Many of our most dynamic lay and clergy leaders in Florida first experienced God’s love at Warren Willis, and our support of this ministry will ensure that “young people will see visions” of God’s grace for years to come.

YOUR ELDERS WILL DREAM DREAMS: SCHOLARSHIP AT GAMMON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

The special offering will also support a special scholarship at Gammon Theological Seminary, one of our denomination’s historically black seminaries. Gammon’s endowment is small relative to other, better-known seminaries, affecting its ability to support and train bright, gifted African-American ministerial candidates to serve in the wider church. This scholarship is named after the Rev. Dr. Geraldine McClellan, one of the pioneering clergy of our Conference, and a graduate of Gammon.

To give to this special offering and help the young and old dream dreams, click here.

See you Sunday!

May 18, 2023

Dear Hyde Park Family,

This Sunday is the convergence of two observances, one civic and one liturgical. First, it is Graduation Sunday, in which we will honor the high school seniors in our worship services with a video and a prayer of blessing. It is also Ascension Sunday, in which Christians around the world remember Jesus’ final moments with the disciples before ascending into heaven.

It’s not often that graduation and ascension occur on the same Sunday, but there is some connection between commencement addresses typically heard at graduations and the speech that Jesus gave to the disciples.

Commencement speakers often seize the significance of the moment and challenge the listeners to rise to the occasion. They widen the graduates’ gaze beyond their own social circle, and summon them to be part of something greater than themselves.

Here are some of the more notable commencement speeches offered in recent history. Listen for those common elements:

From Vaclav Havel:

Whether our world is to be saved from everything that threatens it today depends above all on whether human beings come to their senses, whether they understand the degree of their responsibility and discover a new relationship to the very miracle of being. The world is in the hands of us all. (Harvard University, May, 1995)

From Elie Wiesel:

My good friends, we are all waiting. We are waiting, if not for the Messiah, as such, we are waiting for the messianic moment. And the messianic moment is what each and every one of us tries to build, meaning a certain area of humanity that links us to all those who are human and, therefore, desperately trying to fight despair as humanly as possible and–I hope–with some measure of success. (DePaul University, June 15, 1997)

From Bono:

This is the straight truth. The righteous truth. It’s not a theory; it’s a fact. The fact is that this generation — yours, my generation — we’re the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this stupid extreme poverty, where, in a world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in its belly. (University of Pennsylvania, May 17, 2004)

Then there is this speech, offered 2,000 years ago, during a commencement ceremony on a mountain top. Assembled were students of Jesus’ traveling seminary, who had spent more than

three years learning, practicing, attempting, failing, and trying again. For this simple band of commoners, the world had changed. They were no longer fishermen and tax collectors, they were world-changers-in-the-making.

And their time had come. When Jesus stood before them, before he took off into the clouds, he gave his address:

This is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:4-8)

Like all great commencement speeches, Jesus seized the moment. He told the disciples that there were challenges ahead, but that they were to carry the gospel of God’s love to the furthest reaches of the earth, beyond their small social circles. Along the way, they would not be alone, for the Spirit would come upon them. They would receive the Spirit’s power and comfort to achieve great things for the Kingdom, and participate in God’s ongoing project: the healing of the world and redemption of all creation.

Congratulations to all of our graduates, from preschool, high school, college, and beyond. More importantly, let us hear Christ’s commencement address for ourselves, calling us to a deeper commitment and a greater love.

See you Sunday!

May 11, 2023

Dear Hyde Park Family,

For this final installment of “Why the UMC?” I offer a few of the many reasons why I continue to be drawn to Wesleyan theology and practice, and why we can be excited to be part of the continuing United Methodist Church.

United Methodists have a beautifully nuanced understanding of God’s grace. John Wesley found a way to hold these contrary truths together: 1) There is nothing we need to do to earn salvation; 2) We need to accept Jesus as our Savior to be saved. Wesley navigated the tension between them through his notion of prevenient grace, in which our very ability to choose to accept Jesus is itself a gift from God, at work long before we realized it. That grace continues to work in us through a lifelong process of leading us to faith in Jesus (justifying grace) and then shaping us more into the image of Jesus (sanctifying grace).

United Methodists live in the center, in the way of love. We are a people of the via media, the way of the center. We take the best of two ideological opposites and forge a third way that allows us to be unified in the essentials of our faith while allowing latitude on lesser matters of interpretation. When we are at our healthiest and best as a church, we model the kind of non-binary, non-dualistic thinking that is a hallmark of the Wesleyan tradition.

United Methodists practice an open table in communion. I often hear from new members how much they appreciate how we welcome all people to receive communion, regardless of membership in this or any other church. We believe that the communion table belongs to Jesus, not to any one church, and Christ invites all who earnestly seek a relationship with him.

United Methodists are connectional and impact the world. From the small groups that meet in a local church to the missions and efforts that span the world, we are a connectional people. Our denominational structures ensure that our faithfulness on the local level is amplified on a global scale. We support hospitals, relief agencies, community service centers, schools, seminaries, and missionaries near and far. We are making a difference.

United Methodists understand shared governance and holy conferencing. We have a unique polity and structure in our denomination that reminds us that no one person ever has sole authority to make all the decisions on any level. The local church has shared governance between the clergy and laity, and among the various elected leadership committees. The denomination has no pope or president, but is guided by a gathering of delegates in holy conversation. The Annual Conference is given spiritual direction by the bishop, who presides over decision-making by clergy and lay representatives. I love that in the United Methodist Church, we discern God’s future together.

The United Methodist Church is itself a work in progress. God’s sanctifying grace has been at work in the people called Methodist all throughout our history. When we have gotten it wrong as a church, God has nudged us toward perfection in love. We overcame our structural separation over slavery in 1939. We began ordaining women to be clergy in 1956. We allowed divorced pastors to remain as clergy in the 1960’s and 1970’s. We are navigating new challenges over LGBTQ inclusion, and we will get there. God loves the church enough to meet us where we are, and loves it too much to leave it there.

I love serving a congregation that will be part of the continuing United Methodist Church. For nearly 125 years, we have been part of the remarkable work of the Holy Spirit here in Tampa Bay and throughout the world. It is a joy to make God’s love real together.

Grace and Peace

May 4, 2023

Dear Hyde Park Family,

The United Methodist Church rescued me from a crisis of faith. I was fresh out of high school, in my freshman year of college, when the tightly wound and insulated world of my fundamentalist faith began to unravel.

At first, it was a simple tug here and there, on various threads of the fabric of my faith. There was my biology class – required for my pre-med major – in which I studied Darwinism, evolution and the persuasive writings of people like Stephen Jay Gould. There was my Introduction to Religious Studies class, in which I read philosophers of religion like Schleiermacher, Tillich and William James. And there were encounters outside the classroom, with earnest persons of a different religious perspective – and some with no religion – whose thoughts were too compelling to casually dismiss.

One day in the library, I bumped into a fellow student named Frank, and the subject of biblical literalism came up. I insisted that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, which was the standard teaching of my religious upbringing.

“Hmm,” Frank said. “Even the part where he died?”

One by one, with each pull of a thread, my precisely woven fundamentalism started to come apart at the seams. I remember thinking, “If this one thing I believed isn’t true, then this other things must not be true, which means none of this is true.”

A SAFE PLACE FOR QUESTIONS

Fortunately, and by the grace of God, I had started attending a United Methodist Church just two years before going to college. It was Pasadena Community Church in St. Petersburg, served by the Rev. Dr. John Stroman as the senior pastor. During that first bewildering semester of college I paid Dr. Stroman a visit.

We were seated next to each other in a high school gymnasium, watching our church basketball recreational league play one of the other churches. I did not expect to sit next to him, let alone have a conversation with him about my crisis of faith. But this seemed as good a place and time as any to strike up a casual conversation about a deeply consequential matter.

“Dr. Stroman, I think I’m struggling with my faith. I’m having lots of questions in college that I don’t know how to answer.”

There in that gym, as our heads swiveled from side to side to watch the basketball game, he offered a response that was gracious and substantive. He assured me that the history of Christianity is filled with people who have asked hard questions about the faith, and that even entire Christian communities and eras of time have been marked by expanding the theology of the church. It was the kind of wider, larger perspective that brought me comfort that my struggles were neither unique nor terminal.

THE BEAUTY OF THE QUADRILATERAL

That would be the first of many conversations between me and Jack Stroman, along a journey that would bring me greater and deeper appreciation for Wesleyan theology. I came to realize that human intellect and reason was a vehicle – not a barrier – for understanding the Bible and Christian tradition. Feeling free to ask questions and use my mind enabled me to have an even greater sense of biblical authority.

He was the first person to introduce me to the concept of “liberation theology,” the subject of his doctoral dissertation. He explained views of Christianity from a Latin American context, and how people’s cultural perspective shapes their understanding of the faith. I began to see how unrealistic it was to expect all people around the world to view the Christian faith through Western, American eyes. Indeed, God so loved the world, and Jesus came to save us all. But how one understands that love and salvation is unavoidably shaped by one’s cultural conditioning, one’s experience.

This is all to say that what we commonly understand as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral – Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience – is not only a hallmark of United Methodist theology; it was also instrumental in rescuing me from my crisis of faith.

Over time, I became less anxious about asking hard questions, out of fear that my faith would unravel. Instead, just like muscles grow through exercise by tearing muscle fibers so they can regrow stronger, becoming a United Methodist enabled me to not only stay a Christian, but grow closer to Jesus in ways I could not before.

THE CONTINUING UMC

I may offer additional thoughts in next week’s Midweek Message, but for now, if you’d like to have more reasons why it is great to be part of the continuing United Methodist Church, you can watch my interview last week for a web series titled “Hope Springs Eternal: Positive Conversations about the United Methodist Church.”

You can also watch a video from our elected leadership gathering last February, in which I share reasons I am excited for us to be an ongoing part of the denomination, along with a presentation by our District Superintendent, Emily Hotho, related to church disafilliations happening in our Annual Conference.

Finally, you may choose to join me for a two-week book study at the end of this month on Bishop Ken Carter’s new book Unrelenting Grace, in which we will explore the beauty and richness of our United Methodist core values of grace, holiness and connection. To find out more and to sign up, click here. 

Grace and Peace,