Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation

The mediation team

On Friday, January 3, the United Methodist Church made national headlines when a group of 16 church leaders (from diverse theological, ethnic, and cultural viewpoints) proposed an agreement of separation. This mediation team has created this agreement in service to the delegates who will go to the General Conference in May. They represented very different and significant values in our twelve million member global church. The proposal is called "The Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace Through Separation," or “The Protocol” for short. This page is dedicated to offer an unbiased explanation of The Protocol to educate members of St. Matthew’s UMC and the broader community.

The authors of The Protocol did what many within The United Methodist Church have done and are doing. That is, they are making a proposal for a way forward in a divided United Methodist Church. This team represents diverse points of view within our denomination. While we give thanks to God for our diversity, it also presents us with some challenges and this group has proposed a way for us to work through some of the issues generated by this diversity.

As United Methodists situated in the Valley Forge area, we are seeking to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, faithful to the scriptures, and faithful to our tradition as Methodists. We are seeking to welcome all people into the full life and ministry of the church, and, more deeply, into the grace of God. We are seeking to live together with our siblings across the world, even those who are in very different contexts. They have much to teach us.

The news media has picked up The Protocol as a lead story and many may perceive that its a “done deal.” It isn’t. The Protocol has to be considered along with the dozens of other petitions brought to the General Conference this year. It does have a reasonable chance of passing, since there seems to be a coalescing of support for it. However, implementing any plan will take years to work out with much prayer, discernment, and cooperation from differing points of view.

The material below gives some facts, explanation, and some reflections by prominent church leaders. It contains the following (click on the link to view the original source):

1. Press Release by authors of The Protocol

2. The Protocol itself (8 pages)

3. FAQ’s by the protocol authors

4. A list of reliable, unbiased news sources for UMC Information outside of mainstream media.

a. The United Methodist Church Official Site www.umc.org

b. The United Methodist News Service. www.umnews.org

c. The Council of Bishops www.unitedmethodistbishops.org

d. The Eastern PA Conference of The UMC www.epaumc.org

5. A response from Bishop Peggy Johnson, bishop of the Eastern PA Conference of The United Methodist Church.

I encourage you to read the mediation protocol. And I encourage us to give as much to each other and to those who differ from us as we possibly can. In this way, they will know we are Christians—by our love.

If you have any questions about The Protocol or the polity of The United Methodist Church, you may email me at pastorjohn@stmatthewsvf.org or call me at 610-688-7055 to talk or setup an appointment.

As pastor of St. Matthew’s UMC, I pray that the headlines will not distract us from accomplishing the ministry that God has set before us at St. Matthew’s. The best way for us to face any changes to the United Methodist denomination is for our congregation to be as strong as we can be.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John

Pastor's Pen: Be a Part of Something Bigger

A lesson from Paul

It started one morning when I got out of bed. My feet hit the floor, and I immediately felt a sharp shooting pain in my right heel. It eased up a bit as I headed downstairs to make coffee, but it kept coming back throughout the day. I kept up with my running since it didn’t hurt while I ran. I first thought that this just came with being a fifty-year-old man; aches and pains do come with age. This continued for a few weeks. Then I woke up one Saturday to the same sharp shooting pain in my right heel; except, this time, it didn’t go away. I limped around all day and learned that it is hard to function when one of your feet isn’t working properly.

I decided to call the podiatrist first thing the following Monday morning. Fortunately, I got in to see the doctor quickly and discovered that I was experiencing Achilles tendonitis. She prescribed a break from running (5 weeks and counting now), insoles for my shoes, some exercises and stretches to help the tendon heal and a night splint to hold my foot at the correct angle to appropriately stretch the Achilles tendon and help it heal.

Thankfully, it is slowly healing and the pain is subsiding. This experience has reminded me of a truth that Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 12. In that chapter, he compares the church to the human body:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ… Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

Paul reminds us that as members of the body of Christ, we each have a role to fill in the life of the church; the church is incomplete without us. If we do not share our time, talent, and financial resources with the church, the body of Christ cannot function at full capacity. It is like if I expected my daily routine to be the same without the full ability to use my right foot. 

In October we reflected upon our stewardship of the resources that God has given each of us to allow the church to accomplish its ministry. On October 27, we were asked to turn in our time and talent survey as well asour financial commitment card so that the church can plan for next year’s ministries and activities. If you have not already done so, please take a few moments to complete them and return them to the church office. Without each of us doing our part, the local body of Christ called “St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church” will not be able to accomplish the ministry to which God has called us. It is my hope that we can do so because God is calling us to exciting things on behalf of his Kingdom.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John

What’s missing this Fall?

Don't Forget this Important Back to School Item

Unfortunately, a new item has been on more and more parents’ shopping lists this year: bulletproof backpacks. The too-numerous school shootings in recent years punctuated by the recent shootings in Dayton and El Paso have only reinforced demand for child-sized body armor. It is a sad commentary on American life that we would rather use active shooter drills to teach our children how to minimize casualties or equip our children with body armor than to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines and/or institute universal and comprehensive background checks. 

The reality is that our children are facing issues we didn’t while we were growing up. In addition to the proliferation of gun violence driven by domestic terrorism, they face a planet increasingly destabilized by climate change, skyrocketing costs for the higher education that they require to enter an uncertain economy, and a healthcare system that is almost unaffordable to all but the wealthiest. 

Parents want to prepare their children as best they can for this rapidly changing and increasingly hostile world. We sign them up for and encourage their participation in organized sports to teach them the value of physical exercise and teamwork. We push them to participate in extracurricular activities like Boy and Girl Scouts, music and art lessons, school clubs, and community service organizations to help them round out their personalities and college applications. We want them to have friends, so we set up playdates and drive them to meet their friends for movies and games. We do this because we want them to be prepared and healthy individuals. 

All of this is important to our children's development but a key question we need to ask during this back to school season is this: What are we doing to nurture our children’s souls and teach them how to care for the part of themselves that endures to eternity? The truth is that their soul is the one constant that stays with them as they grow up, graduate high school, go to college, enter the workforce, meet their spouse, start a family, and change jobs several times. It will be with them as they experience their own healthcare crises and care for their parents (us) in their old age. It will be with them as they take leadership of our economy’s businesses, our society’s institutions, try to solve the problems that prior generations bequeathed to them, and tackle the new issues that will emerge in their lifetimes.

At some point, their education will become dated and, unless they have learned how to teach themselves new skills and knowledge, it will begin to fail them. Their bodies will get older and will no longer perform with the peak athletic performance that allows them to dazzle their peers. The hard truth is that some of things that we consider most important deteriorate over time, and the best we can do is slow that decline. Our children may not yet realize this, but one day will hit them. Life is hard and it will batter and bruise us and wear us down. 

However, their soul and their relationship with the God is what abides throughout all these changes. Indeed, it is their spirituality and relationship with God that can best sustain them as they endure the storms and crises of this life. So what are we doing to promote the spiritual development of our children? What are we doing to connect them with a strength and love that can help them survive all the challenges of life and thrive in the midst of it all? 

As we enter the hectic pace of the fall school schedule, let us not only worry about school supplies and clothes, practices schedules and club meetings. Let us also encourage our children to invest their time and energy into a relationship with a God whose love can sustain them through the best and worst that this life will throw at them. We can give them no better gift than a deep and abiding relationship with the God who loves them and will always be with them. 

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John

Battery Critically Low?

Plug into the Holy Spirit

Have you noticed that more and more people seem to be having trouble keeping their phones charged? I went into a great new coffee shop next to the district office yesterday after an appointment with our district superintendent, Dawn Taylor Storm, and noticed that almost everyone was charging their phones while they sipped their coffee. Outlets and power cords were everywhere. As I walked out with my dark roast in hand, I saw someone get into their car and immediately plug their phone into charge.

My guess is that this has happened to you more times than you care to think about: You unlock your phone and see that the battery icon is in the red and the phone says that you need to charge before it shuts down. If there is a symbol of this present age it is the low battery icon on our smartphones. We are in constant motion, trying to do more and more, be more and more places, and meet the ever increasing demands on our lives. We keep adding more stuff to our task lists and schedule and, much like our phones, there just doesn’t seem to be enough power to sustain us. We keep getting the “battery critically low” message earlier and earlier in the day.

When this happens with our phones we usually have the good sense to plug them in and top them off so we can keep texting, answering emails, looking at Instagram, and listening to our favorite playlists. If we don’t connect them to power, they will enter low power mode - where the screen dims, the processor slows down, and the cellular radios look for updates less frequently. If we persist in our usage of the device without charging, it will eventually shut down and refuse to power up until it has been plugged into power long enough for the battery to regain a sufficient charge. After missing a critical text or being stuck in a waiting room with nothing to do because our phone battery has died, we learn a fundamental truth of this technological age: Charge your battery whenever you can. It never hurts to plug in and top off your power reserves because you never know what life will throw at you next.

So why do we ignore this when it comes to our spiritual lives? Why do we push ourselves until our souls are completely drained and we have nothing left to offer ourselves, the people around us, and God? Why do we refuse to look for a power source? All too often we seem too content to wander about in a “spiritual low power mode” with the battery light of our souls flashing red. When this happens, our ability to function normally is severely impaired. The symptoms are easy to spot. Our personal lives are out of whack. Our relationships with the people we love are frayed. God feels remote. There is no joy to life. We just shuffle from one task or activity to another.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way because there is a power source readily available to us. As followers of Jesus we have access to an inexhaustible supply of energy for our souls. It is called the Holy Spirit and Jesus offers the Spirit to us as a gift. It’s time to stop living with our spiritual batteries in the red. Seek God’s Holy Spirit in worship, prayer, and reflection and discover that there is more than enough power in Him to face whatever life sends your way.

Grace and Peace,
John

St. Matthew’s Welcomes Everyone

Pastoral Response to the Special Session of General Conference

As you have likely heard, the special session of our denomination’s General Conference met this week to address several options to address our differences as United Methodists with regards to the full inclusion of LGBTQ members - specifically in the areas of marriage and ordination.

We are a global church and we are not of the same mind when it comes to this so many expected this special session of General Conference to be a difficult one. And it was. After a narrow vote, the option known as the Traditional Plan passed even though some of its components had been ruled unconstitutional by our judicial council. Other parts of this plan are still under review and what is ruled constitutional will go into effect in January of 2020. The Traditional Plan maintains our current restrictions on same sex marriage and ordination and adds enforcement measures for pastors, district superintendents and bishops who do not honor these restrictions.

For our LGBTQ members and our members who have family and friends who identify as LGBTQ this vote was incredibly hurtful. For United Methodists who believe our Book of Discipline when it says that the church should fully welcome and embrace all persons because all people are made in the image of God and have sacred worth - this vote was disheartening. They find it hard to understand why some are denied access to marriage or ordination of everyone is made in the image of God and has sacred worth. And even some who voted for the Traditional Plan are dismayed at the pain this vote caused so many. This has been a difficult and challenging week for United Methodists.

To help us understand in detail what occurred at General Conference and to address any questions you might have, we offered a forum on Sunday during our Sunday school hour. Our bishop and district superintendent will also be here on March 27 at 6:30 pm to provide more information and address questions.

At this point, I want to pause and affirm a fundamental truth about this congregation - we have always welcomed everyone and we will continue to do so. That is who we are here at St Matthew’s. As a pastor, I have always welcomed everyone and I will continue to do so. As United Methodists we affirm that all persons (regardless of their ethnicity, religious background or sexual orientation) are made in the image or God and have sacred worth. We will continue to be a church for all people and welcome everyone who comes through the doors. We will continue to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

There won't be any major changes right away. We will keep everyone posted and plan for the future together. In the meantime, don't let anything get in the way of loving your neighbor. Pray for our church and our denomination. Pray for all those who are in pain or feeling anger or grief at the moment. Be kind and loving toward those with whom you may disagree.

I suggest that we follow the General Rules that the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, set down for us:

Do no harm: Avoid speaking ill of anyone and treat everyone with compassion and empathy.

Do good: See who is hurting or troubled in your midst and offer them comfort. Actively look for opportunities to help others.

Stay in love with God: No matter our differences, the one thing that holds us together as a church is Christ. When we come together to worship and serve God we are brought closer together. Come to worship, take Communion, pray and study the Bible together. Let God be at work among us!

In Christ,
John

Patience is Hard

What the latest Avengers movie can teach us about patience

A couple of weeks ago, the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe hit theaters. Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of ten years of movies that began with Iron Man in 2008. For those who are not fans of superheroes and comic books, the Avengers is a team comprised of “Earth’s mightiest heroes” who come together to defend the planet from threats both terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Spider Man, Dr. Strange, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, War Machine, Falcon and the Black Panther combine their considerable talent and skill to fight the villains that would crush those without super powers.

In Infinity War, the Avengers square off against Thanos, one of the most powerful villains in the galaxy, who is bent on gathering the Infinity Stones and then using them to eradicate half of the universe’s population. From the far reaches of space, to New York City, to the continent of Africa, the Avengers fight to stem the tide of Thanos’ invasion. The movie ends on a cliffhanger and it seems that Thanos (the bad guy) has won the day. Our heroes seem defeated and the forces of evil look ascendant.

After the credits rolled and Marvel gave us the usual post-credit trailer, movie goers silently filed out of the theater and were unsure of what to make of what they had just seen. In all respects, it was an excellent movie but it was a hard one to watch. The good guys didn’t win. Our heroes were vanquished. The good news is that Infinity War is the first of two parts of this chapter in the Avenger’s story. We will get to see if our heroes can reverse their fortunes and defeat Thanos when the next Avengers movie hits theaters next May. The bad news is that we have to wait a year to see what will happen. A whole year!

As I walked out of the theater, I remember feeling the same way back in May 21, 1980 when I went to see Episode 5 of Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back. That movie ended with our hero, Luke Skywalker, defeated by Darth Vader after having learned that the villain was actually his father. The Empire had nearly defeated the struggling Rebel Alliance and everyone’s favorite smuggler-turned hero, Han Solo, was captured by the ruthless bounty hunter Boba Fett. There were so many unanswered questions at the end of that movie and I had to wait three years until Star Wars Episode 6: The Return of the Jedi debuted and I could find out the fate of my favorite characters. Three years!

It about killed me to wait three years to see Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance defeat the evil Galactic Empire and it’s killing me to wait until next May to see if earth’s mightiest heroes can defeat Thanos and somehow undo the terrible destruction that he wrought. Of course, it is hard to be patient when you’re invested in characters and stories like these. However, there is no other choice. The directors and producers will release the movie when it is done. Until then we have to wait.

The pastoral side of me, realizes that this period of waiting is an opportunity to develop my capacity for patience, which is one of the fruits of the Spirit described by Paul in Galatians 5:22. God’s ways are not our ways. God acts in God’s own time. Sometimes God waits to answer our prayers and sometimes we don’t receive the answer for which we hope. We want to know when God will hear our cries for help. We want to know that the results of the biopsy will be OK. We want to know if the surgery will go well. We want to know if God will bring peace to our troubled world. We want to know that things will be OK. And because God is not our genie in a bottle, we have to wait until God reveals his plans. This brings us back to the need for patience. The good news is that God does not leave us alone in our waiting. God is present through it all, even when we don’t feel that presence. God also sends the Spirit to create within us patience. As Paul writes in Galatians, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

It is a good thing that God helps us in this way, because it is not my nature to be patient. I want to know if the Avengers will defeat Thanos. I want to know if our church’s strategic plan will bear the fruit we hope it will. I want to know so many things - right now. But I must wait. And in the meanwhile I am counting the Spirit of God to bring me the fruit of patience.

Grace and Peace,
John

Patience in Advent

Not Everything has to be Instant

The season of Advent is all about patience as we prepare to celebrate the Christ’s entry into our world so long ago in Bethlehem and anticipate his coming in final glory at the end of the age when God establishes his Kingdom. The problem is that most of us (including myself) are not very patient. We live in the instant age where we can pull our smartphones out of our pockets and look anything up, anywhere and anytime. We can order something from Amazon and have it delivered the next day for $3.99 (if you are an Amazon Prime member). Amazon and Google have even rolled out same day delivery to select cities in the country so lucky customers only have to wait a few hours to receive their purchase. We can stream millions of songs instantly via Apple Music or Spotify and get sneak peaks at unreleased albums that the artist has just finished recording.   We can download a movie from the internet to watch in just a few seconds. No more driving to the video rental store and waiting in line to check it out. We can choose from a smorgasbord of pre-prepared meals from the the grocery store and pop them in the oven instead of diligently gathering the necessary ingredients and following the step by step instructions of a recipe and then waiting for it to finish cooking. For these and so many other reasons we are terrible at waiting and have become extremely impatient as a society.

Nowhere is this impatience more on display than the Christmas season for which retailers now start decorating the week before Halloween. My boys didn’t have a chance to collect their candy and come down from the resulting sugar buzz before Santa, Christmas lights and holiday music appeared in stores. Churches start singing Christmas carols on the first Sunday of Advent rather than dwell for a time in the slower, less joyful hymns of Advent. And so we rush around in a constant state of stress because we can’t and won’t slow down. Indeed some of us have forgotten how to do so.

However, we must recover the art of waiting and cultivate patience in this season of Advent if we are to truly experience the joy of Christmas and the birth of our Savior. The ancient Hebrews waited for centuries before the Messiah appeared. Surely we can wait a few weeks to bask in the joy of Christmas. Join me in trying to slow down this month and work to linger more in the moment. Let us try to recover what it was like to wait for something we knew we wanted and deeply needed. If we can do it we will find that Christmas is even more joyful and our shouts of praise will be even more exuberant when the Christ child is born into our hearts once again.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John

Priorities

We make time in our lives for what is important

Several years ago I decided to become a runner. I needed a way to improve my cardiovascular health and relieve the stress that comes with being a pastor. The decision to take up running was easy. Actually becoming a runner and putting in the miles to see the benefits that come from running was not nearly so easy. Over and above the fact that my body was not conditioned to run distances, I faced the challenge of finding the time to run in my hectic schedule. Like almost everyone else these days, I didn’t have a lot of free time on my calendar. My schedule was already full of important events and tasks and it took an iPhone and Google Calendar to keep track of it all. Running was going to be one more thing to try and squeeze in.

At first, I tried to find the time in my schedule to run. The truth is that finding the time to run didn’t work so well. My days and weeks were already filled with things to do and places to be. I didn’t have any empty slots in my calendar where I could just lace up my running shoes and run. When a time slot did occasionally open up in my schedule, the circumstances were always less than ideal to run. I was too tired or I only had a short period of time before I had to be doing something else. Consequently, my runs were sporadic and I couldn’t make significant progress towards my fitness goals.

After a month of struggling to find the time to run, I realized what the problem was: I was trying to find the time to run and I wasn’t making the time to run. If this was going to be a priority in my life I had to treat it as a priority and not an afterthought. That meant scheduling the time to run before I filled my schedule with other things. From that point on, I decided to schedule time to run before I scheduled other things. Of course, some things - like Sunday morning worship and my prayer time - are inviolable and I would have to schedule around them but the truth is that I usually have some say in the rest of my schedule. Instead of being the last thing to go on my calendar, running became one of the first things to get scheduled. It should come as no surprise that this worked. Before long, running was a regular part of my weekly schedule. I started accruing the necessary mileage to see improvements to my cardiovascular health. As the weeks passed, I started could farther and faster. My ability to handle stress also improved. The more I ran, the more stress I could handle.

For this to happen I had to make running a priority. When we make something I priority it shapes the way we use our time and resources. We allow it to claim our time and attention. The good news is that often we see a return on our investment of time and dedication.

In Matthew 6:25-33 Jesus asks us to examine our priorities:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is  thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ … 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

There are a lot of things that consume our focus, energy and resources. There are many things that compete for our time and money. Some of them are important. However, Jesus is saying that the most important is the Kingdom of God. He reminds us that God’s Kingdom should be our priority. He is also saying that a paradoxical things happens when we prioritize God’s Kingdom: we end up receiving all the other things about which we normally worry. So as we engage in our stewardship campaign at St. Matthew’s, I invite you to ask yourself, “How am I using my time, talent and financial resources in service to God’s Kingdom? Is God’s Kingdom the top priority in your life? I invite you to answer those questions as you prayerfully consider the gifts and talents survey and financial pledge card for the coming year.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John