Bishop Scott Jones preaches at JCCS closing worship: Through change, keep eyes on God

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TOPEKA, Kan. — Clergy from Nebraska, Kansas East and Kansas West were sent forth to do ministry following a closing service that included communion and a message from Kansas Area Bishop Scott J. Jones.

Jones and Bishop Ann B. Sherer-Simpson led the communion liturgy together and the district superintendents from the three annual conferences served the elements.

Jones’ sermon encouraged pastors to keep their eyes up, focused on God.

“I have a recurring dream,” Jones said. “It goes like this. I’m late, rushing across campus, down a hall, because I’m supposed to be some place, and I realize I am not prepared.”

In much the same way, many pastors today are unprepared for the challenges they face in ministry today.

“Brian McLaren has been helping us understand why ministry in this part of the 21st century is difficult,” Jones said. “We’re liable to be in this situation for a long time. It’s going to go on for another 50 or 100 years.”

But when ministry is this hard, it’s easy to get discouraged, to focus on what’s going wrong, to lose sight of our goal of making disciples for the transformation of the world. I

nstead, we get hunched over and beaten down, seeing only the trash on the ground in front of us.

“How often are we guilty of doing that?” Jones asked.

Recently a church consultant flying to meet with the United Methodist Council of Bishops sat next to another church consultant on the plane. The second consultant asked the first, “You are an amazing denomination, but you all are in a funk. When are you United Methodists going to get out of your funk?”

“I think the purpose here today is to help us get out of our funk,” Jones said. “The world needs a vital and vibrant United Methodism. I think there are three problems in the world for which God has already given us what we need.”

The first problem is worldview.

“We live in a complicated world,” Jones said. “Life was simpler in the early 20th century. We don’t have that luxury anymore. Atheism is gaining steam. A materialist worldview says life is short and then you die, so get as much as you can in that short period.”

The fastest growing part of the population has no Christian frame of reference.

Jones said just across town from the hotel where the clergy session gathered is a church family that proclaims a Christian heresy. They talk about God in ways that alienate people. In the same way that Christians struggle to distinguish between the Taliban, who offer a different kind of heresy that most Muslims condemn and reject, those looking at Christianity from the outside struggle to distinguish us from other Christians.

“And yet God’s given us what we need, a Christian world view essentially in our doctrine, essentially in the scriptures,” Jones said. “We’re not always sure how to connect with those who are seeking, but all the answers are in the holy book that we just read from. God has given us the job of being stewards of this message. Can anything be better than the calling to be a United Methodist preacher?”

The second problem is the world has a problem with relationships and connections. Robert Putnam wrote a book called “Bowling Alone.” In it, Putnam points to a number of factors that have caused every form of community in American culture to decline since 1964. One reason is air conditioning. People stay indoors instead of going outside, where they can interact with their neighbors. A second factor is television. People spend more time watching television than talking to their spouses or friends.

“We know how to connect people into small groups,” Jones said. “We know how to build community. And yet the problem runs deep because there are people out there who say life is about the toys you have.”

Jones used a scene from the movie “Up in the Air” to illustrate the point. The consultant played by George Clooney in the movie travels all over the country to fire people. In the scene Jones showed, Clooney’s character is leading a sales workshop. He asks his audience to imagine carrying a backpack with everything they own in it, including their cars and homes, and feel the weight of it. He says, “Try to walk. Kinda hard, isn’t it? This is what we do to ourselves on a daily basis. We weigh ourselves down until we can’t move.” Clooney then tells them to imagine setting the backpack on fire, freeing themselves from what’s weighing them down.

“As the movie goes on, we learn that it isn’t just stuff he wants to get rid of,” Jones said. “It’s also relationships. Moving is living and you want as few encumbrances as possible.

“Our message, the doctrine we’ve been given, is loving is living,” he said. “We experience love in worship, and then we share it. Part of what we do in our churches is build community. We are in the business of building relationships, and we do it better than almost anybody else.”

Third, we live in an increasingly diverse society, and we need unity to bind us together.

On the eve of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, lobbyist Mark DeMoss launched the Civility Project, an effort to promote civility nationwide. He asked politicians of both parties to sign a simple three-line pledge:

“I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. I will stand against incivility when I see it.”

After two years, only three members of Congress signed the pledge, and DeMoss dissolved the organization.

“Is it any wonder that our politicians are taking the political life of our country lower and lower and lower?” Jones asked. “We United Methodists have a diverse church. There are people in your annual conference that you disagree with. There are people in other annual conferences that you disagree with. We have Korean congregations. We have African American congregations. We have immigrant congregations. One of the beauties of the United Methodist Church is that we live together. We’ve learned to be respectful of each other, listen to each other. Praise God we’re stuck together. That’s our calling to model to a larger culture.”

Jones said there’s a fourth gift the United Methodist Church has to offer and that’s our history.

“There are times when we’re not quite living up to our potential,” he said. “We’re not preaching our worldview convincingly, we’re not building bridges, we’re not as unified as we’d like to be, and that’s when we need to go back to our history and remember the times when we’ve done it better.”

Jones closed with a challenge to all the clergy present.

“My request is that you quit looking at the ground and put your eyes on the Lord, remember the blessings and how God has already acted among us and is still acting among us,” he said. “It’s a scary time to be a pastor. It’s a scary time to be a Christian. But we can point to the one who is able to do far more than we can ask for or imagine. Take that confidence, take that certainty that God is going to do far more than we can image, and when you leave this place, serve the Lord.”

Photo: Kansas Area Bishop Scott Jones, Photo by Britt Bradley