At a time when some churches are suffering from declining membership, Community United Methodist Church has been growing by leaps and bounds. The beginning of this rapid growth roughly corresponds with your arrival as pastor in 1988. What benefits do you see from a larger church, and do you see any drawbacks? If so, how are you dealing with them?
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Has the rapid growth changed your job?
Oh, yeah. We've gone through the changes from a small church structure where the pastor goes to all the meetings and is intimately involved with everything going on, to the medium sized church model which is where more of the ministry happens through committee, people in lay leadership in the congregation and now I've just been to the training on leading the large church , and how to structure effectively because I can't continue to visit in homes and go to all the meetings. There's way too much going on, so. And one way we're doing that uniquely is to try and structure to do this so that the paid people, ministers or whoever is on the paid staff by not doing more of the ministry as we grow, but that we're doing more training of lay people, so they're doing the really great stuff which is visiting, and caregiving, and that's going really well. There are two basic congregational models, one where you pay the ministerial staff to do all the caregiving and the other is you have a lay-lead congregation with the laity pretty much mobilized to be the church and that's the model that we're shooting for, the lay-lead. How can a church grow and still maintain a feeling of Christian intimacy between its members? I think it's been a huge stretch for people who were active in this church ten years ago when I came, to make it through all the changes to the size and kind of congregation we are now. That's an awful lot to expect of people. And some people have been alright with all that change, and some people haven't. They wanted a smaller church or a different kind of feeling. But I maintain that you can still have a small feel but we have to work at it like crazy. It doesn't just happen naturally. Basically, that's through the small group ministries. If you join our church and you don't join the choir or get involved with MYF or the camping group or a circle or a mission team or something, that connection may not happen. So I really do think that what people are looking for in a church is to be known and to know others and that only happens in smaller groups. It doesn't happen with 250 people lining the pews on Sunday morning. So our challenge is really to keep people connected in smaller groups to keep that kind of family church going. You have preached sermons which address several current political issues. You have, I believe, spoken in favor of equal rights for gays and lesbians, against casino gambling, and in favor of gun control. Would you like to make any comments on any of these issues? Well, it's kind of interesting. There's an article on my dad in the most recent issue of Washingtonian magazine, and it talks about him as the greatest preacher in the DC area because he addresses political issues, but not in an in-your-face way but he's a good scholar so he does his homework and he isn't afraid to talk about the issues that are going on in society. It better describes him than me, but I have a touch of that. I'm not afraid to wade into the waters of discussing things that I know a lot of people will not agree with me about. I don't do that a lot but I do it strategically when I feel like it needs doing. Where should the line separating church and state fall? Specifically, should Christians support amendments allowing voluntary prayer in schools? Should the government provide aid to private religious schools? Is there a 'Christian' position on these issues? Should Christians be involved in politics at all? Yes, Christians should be involved in politics. In fact the United Methodist Church, part of our character has always been to be, to have a voice in the current social issues facing the times. That dates back to John Wesley. About prayer in schools, there's nothing saying people can't pray in school. My children can stop and pray any time they want in school. For themselves, and that is meaningful for them and their faith. But to impose one tradition's prayer or even prayer in general from multi-traditions on a school population when they are there to learn to be educated in a secular society I don't think is appropriate, so I have not been in favor of prayer in schools, but that's a misnomer too, I mean you can pray any time of the day or night that you want to as a Christian person anywhere. Voluntary prayer, I don't really know what to think about that. I don't think there's a great problem there, but I'm not really sure what my position would be on that. The United Methodist Church doesn't have private schools because they were seen as white flight. We have been strong supporters of public education and if there were public funding for private schools I think that would need to be done very very carefully so that it's not just alternative education for those who can afford it. In term of inclusiveness, that being fair for all ethnic groups I would think that that would need to be done very very intentionally because our tendency is to create private schools for wealthy kids from the suburbs, mostly white kids who can afford it and that's hurt education I think. One of my parents graduated from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas where the first integration happened, and my generation then, the high school I attended was a third white, a third black, and a third hispanic in Austin, Texas. So a lot happened in that one generation. I got on the church's web site and I looked at your links and there were links to a whole lot of things, including the 700 Club. I clicked on that link and up popped Pat Robertson with a statement that God had chosen Ronald Reagan to be president in 1980. Do you believe that God chooses sides in elections? I don't believe God is playing favorites or pulling strings to make the right people get elected. I think there's good within all of us and there's sin within all of us and part of the electoral process is electing those people who we think really do have the integrity and the best will in mind for everyone and hoping they do a good job and not lose their commitment along the way. And if they do, it's time to elect somebody else. I don't think God is so intimately involved in choosing those candidates. That's our responsibility as citizens and as Christians. I don't think that it's appropriate for a congregation, or for a pastor as leader of a congregation to come out in favor of candidates. You'll never hear that from me from the pulpit, saying vote for this person because their views are right, or God's views. I may agree with that person but that's my doing my citizens' bit. But I do think that we need to get as organized or more organized than the mainline churches, particularly those of us who have positions that would be considered liberal on a lot of issues. In fact one of the women in our church who has just been ordained as a deacon Ruth Compton is now hired as a lobbyist for the Board of Church and Society at the United Methodist Building and that's one block from the capital right down there on Capital Hill. It's engraved on the outside of the building "The Methodist Building". I do think it's important that we have a presence, a lobbying presence there, and that it represents the stands that our denomination takes. To be a United Methodist, you don't have to agree with all the social principles, but we're in there pitching and trying to make a difference. I don't know that we're as organized as you'd consider the far right but... Due to technical difficulties, the tape stopped at this point. Sorry. |