GC 2020: To Every Thing There is a Season
Frank Holbrook 0 GC 2020
My blogging efforts have reached a turning point. Over the past month or so I’ve written about thirty thousand words concerning GC 2020. I’ve posted mostly about potential separation while always understanding that GC 2020 might not be about separation, it might concern itself with re-fighting the fight of GC 2019. I don’t think anyone wants to see GC 2019 v. 2.0.
My torts professor in law school often quoted Benjamin Cardozo’s famous line “A Supreme Court decision is not like a railroad ticket, good for this day and date only.” The quote must not be as famous as I imagined since it didn’t turn up in my quick Google search. I hope I have it quoted verbatim, but I’m confident I got the sense right. What does this have to do with my posts and a turning point?
The posts I’ve written since I started the blog weren’t intended to be good only for the day and date they were posted. I’ve tried to consider broader issues. For example, the posts on Paul and Barnabas and Gamaliel’s Advice addressed how factions might treat one another at GC 2020. Other posts tried to consider other big picture issues facing GC 2020. I’ve tried to offer the outlines of a plan I termed the Plain Grace Plan. I guess not unsurprisingly, that is one of my posts that has the fewest total views. With the exception of the posts in the category “Life in General”, my posts are intended to be read together; they are intended to cause the reader to think about a number of issues from an admittedly slightly different perspective.
Now I will be turning more attention to trying to craft petitions that address the issues I’ve raised and use the approaches I’ve outlined. I’m working with some thoughtful and committed individuals with the goal of getting petitions on file. We’re not a blue ribbon panel of denominational thought leaders. But we are judging our work against the standard of the Golden Rule; the right question is “Is this the way I’d want to be treated?” We’re doing a lot of thought experiments.
I’ll still be posting, but at a slower pace. If you are new to the blog, I encourage you to go read the archives. None of my posts were driven by the thirty second “news” cycle (or attention span) encouraged by the internet and social media. You might think of the GC 2020 posts as reference material or opinion pieces, not “news” items. I’ve tried to avoid camouflaging advocacy pieces by calling them “news”. Bookmark the site and come back from time to time, it’s not going away.
Throughout the years I practiced law I saw more and more demand by clients for an immediate response to every problem. Overnight mail started it, the fax machine accelerated it, personal computers and e-mail shortened the time further. Cell phones and texting made lawyers on call 24/7. Increased connectedness enabled by our technology advances makes people think that every problem should have an immediate answer. My former partner told me once that when he began practicing law his firm had a policy that no letter was sent out after 4 PM. The partners were concerned that a response would be too rushed and not give a problem enough thought. Can you imagine a policy where no e-mail, text message or tweet would be responded to in less than 24 hours? How might that change the “debate?”
Is it possible that our improved technology has driven the Wesleyan idea of connectedness up to (or perhaps beyond) its limits? Can we arrive at new connectionalism in light of our new technologies? Should we? Isn’t that one of the underlying reasons we’re struggling to be in connection with one another? What is social media’s proper role in connectionalism? Is a tweet a substitute for a phone call? Is a FaceBook page a substitute for a face-to-face encounter with someone who needs Christ? Is a promo video for an upcoming sermon series better than a member offering to give someone a ride to Church? Thinking about these and similar questions might help us arrive at better solutions. New is not always better; “that’s the way we’ve always done it” doesn’t make it right.
I’m not quitting the blog, I’m just announcing that I think I’ll be slowing the pace and changing the mixture of topics for my postings. We’re still in a time of discussion and discernment but we’re quickly transitioning into a time of preliminary decisions. The upcoming petition deadline changes priorities. We will soon turn from a time of “what if?”, to a time of “how do we make this work with the tools we have available?”
One can spend their time discussing the problem or trying to be part of the solution. We seem to have a tendency to get stuck in the “discussion” phase and be slow to move to the implementation phase. Am I the only one who ever sat around a meeting in a room surrounded by newsprint and easels and watch people throw out ideas about how to solve a problem? Am I the only one that ever thought “Haven’t we done this exact same thing for the last five years?”
One final question for today. Has anyone ever been in or around a stagnant church where a building campaign or major remodel took place? There’s usually a lot of questions, skepticism and anxiety early in the process. There’s a lot of bickering; factions develop and coalesce around strong personalities. But usually cooler and wiser heads prevail. Once the project is underway people are committed to making the project a success. They forget their earlier divisions and come together on the mission. A declining church may be revitalized by the building project. I think as a denomination we are embarking on a building or major remodeling campaign. We’re at the phase of questioning, skepticism, anxiety, bickering and factions. We’ve been there quite a while. It’s time for cooler and wiser heads to prevail.
My good friend David Reed shared with me an incident that occurred at one of our local churches. Of course, it wasn’t a United Methodist Church; events like this never happen in our denomination. Other than David, the names will be omitted to protect the innocent. There was a heated debate about whether to build a new sanctuary. Some members kept going back and forth on the issue. An older member of the church finally stood up and told those members who couldn’t decide that they were like squirrels. Everyone wondered what was meant by the comment. The member went on to explain, a squirrel crossing the road that can’t make up its mind often ends up getting squashed by the oncoming traffic. If Jesus was still providing us parables today and he lived around here, he might offer us the Parable of the Squirrel. There’s a sermon that will preach.
