Charge Conference. Two words that send chills down the spine of clergy and laity alike within the tribe called United Methodist. This Annual General Meeting. Think end of year reports. Think justify your existence to an institution who only remembers you exist when it comes to whether you are paying your fair share or not. Charge Conference.
I know, I’m being a bit melodramatic. (A bit?, some say with a soupcon of incredulity.) It is that uniquely United Methodist institutional dance that defines us as ...um ... weird? No. I’m sure other denominations engage in the same sort of fol-de-rol. But this is ours. And actually what happens during the official Charge Conference is, for me at least, less important than the concept behind it. Like so many things, we have taken Charge Conference and turned it into something that services the institution rather than the Kingdom of God. We continue to hope that the churches behind the Charge Conference hoop jumping exercise are focused on the Kingdom, but we won’t know that - usually - from Charge Conference.
But behind it is something significant, I believe. First of all “Charge” is the official designation of the basic unit of United Methodism. Usually “Charge” equals “Church.” But sometimes more than one church comes to make up a charge. Thus we have things like a “two-point charge” - meaning two churches come together to make one charge. So, for all intents and purposes, the most important and official meeting of the year is when the local church comes together to declare that they exist and are keeping faith with the larger body and are staying true to the charter, the discipline of the United Methodist Church. It ought to be a celebration. It ought to be a party, but we’ve turned it into a business meeting. Sigh. OK, I understand a need to get business done. I understand dotting i’s and crossing t’s - though a more than casual reader of these weekly shouts into the darkness would have cause to wonder about my attention to grammatical detail. Still, the point is, I know that we are an institution that there are certain things we have to do to maintain that institution. But the focus should be elsewhere. Institutional maintenance should be done behind closed doors, not to hide it, but to minimize it. What is significant is the body, the community, the family that we are to become. And are becoming. Let’s celebrate that. How? Well, by conferencing.
A Charge Conference is when the Charge (church) come together to Conference. Conference has become synonymous with meeting. With power point boredom and vision casting into our five year plan for strategizing our mission and purpose statement. With droning reports on the minutia of daily responsibilities. But that isn’t what Wesley had in mind when he drew up the structures of the Methodist movement within the church of England. The movement was to revitalize the church, to bring life back into what had become in many places a shell of outward observance with no heart or soul or purpose for individuals or the community. He wouldn’t have done that by layering more institutional rigamarole on top of an already top heavy church that was drifting farther and farther from the people in the parish, living often literally at the door step of the church building.
So, Wesley came up with the idea of conferencing. Conferencing is more about the people than it is about the system. It is more about the state of souls than it is about the state of the church. If there are numbers reported it is numbers of contacts, numbers of souls won, numbers of sermons preached and numbers of times communion was served and received. It was about the life blood of the community. And the conference structure was written around a series of questions designed to get people to engage. To participate. To feel a part of the body. To know that this is a group of people who have your back. And care about your journey. And want you to deepen your faith. And be led by the Spirit. That’s not the kind of thing that normally comes out of Charge Conference these days, but I believe it was what was intended.
Kind of like what Paul described in these few verses from Galatians.
Galatians 5:25 - 6:2 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. NRS Galatians 6:1 My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. 2 Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
The first thing to remember is that Paul didn’t put numbers in the text of his letters. Those were added much later by guys who weren’t always paying attention, or so it seems to me. These verses are in two different chapters as you can see. And every other bible scholar puts them in different texts. But I see a flow here that connects them. And it is the flow of the community as it lives the life of the Spirit.
These are the verses that immediately follow the listing of the fruit of the Spirit. The text with which we at Aldersgate have become almost too familiar. But even though we notice that the different aspect of the fruit of the Spirit are relational, we still tend to think of them as individual. In other words we view the call to display these dimensions of love - as in love that is joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled - as something for each of us. And I don’t want to dispute that. But I would suggest that perhaps Paul was suggesting that we display this multi-dimensional love as a community as well. That gives us scope to focus on areas of strength and giftedness.
To say, for example, that I can demonstrate the gentle love of the Spirit more effectively than I can the joyful love, is to talk about spiritual gifts and not just personality traits. The ability to work in the life of the church in certain dimensions and with certain emphases is a part of giftedness. And we want to follow those gifts, we want to live out that presence. So, Paul claims, if we want to live by the Spirit, let us be guided by the Spirit. Let the Spirit choose how we will function as a community and as individuals. Let’s not assume, for example, that we all have to do the same thing, have the same demeanor as we go about fulfilling the same task which is making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
We are in this together, says Paul. We are on the same side. All this fighting about who has it right, about which method of baptism or communion is more biblically correct, about what style of worship we engage in, is all about conceit, about envy, about competition. But, aren’t we in competition with the church down the road? Well, no, not really. There are more than enough folks who haven’t yet been convinced of the value of belonging to a community of faith that we don’t need to do a better show than the church on the other corner.
OK, so how do we do that? How do we impact the lives of those who don’t think they should bother? There are two important ideas in the first two verses of chapter six that seem to answer that question. They say in essence that we ought to stand for something, and that we ought to be a place of acceptance and support.
But, aren’t those mutually exclusive? If we take a hard line then we can’t accept those who disagree, right? Or if we want to be accepting of everyone then we can’t take positions, can we? It’s a false divide, I believe. Paul talks about restoration in a spirit of gentleness. That should be our mode as a community of faith. Restoration means investment in the other. It means that we don’t wash our hands of those who fall. It also means that we don’t turn up our noses at the sin that caused them to fall. We bear those burdens as though we were Christ Himself. When Jesus said he came to fulfill the law, he meant that he was willing to give his life, he was willing to sacrifice himself for the world he came to save out of love. So we give of ourselves to any and to all who need us.
If we live by the Spirit, we will love like Jesus. We conference, we the church, the charge engage the world and love like Jesus.
Shalom,
Derek
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