Barneyisfat

Bishop Janice Riggle Huie has asked for those known as Methodists to begin a United Methodist movement. As a strong United Methodist I believe that the movement she speaks of, a movement to revitalize the church through prayer, worship, study, peace, and fellowship, can only be achieved by missions. Bishop Huie said, "The United Methodist movement invites belief in Jesus Christ over the cultural gods, the practice of forgiveness over hate, peace over violence, a better life over poverty, health over sickness." It's time to move past our current structures and paradigms and enter into a new generation of Methodism. This generation will, if it intends to be successful, be more focused on missions than our predecessors.

This Methodist movement is already growing rapidly in the Phillipines and much of Africa. The United Methodist Church in America is shrinking, but our brother and sister churches overseas are rapidly growing. The American churches are driving with our dome lights on and have almost entirely forgotten that headlights exist, much less that they must be on to have any effect. In our local churches we care more deeply about the color of carpeting in the aisles than the unsaved in our own congregation, the condition and placement of the big Bible on the altar than the homeless that live among us, and the polished state of the big brass cross we hold up than the dying masses overseas. Our priorities are far from where they should be. We have slowly become a people of preservation.

The people of Israel were a people of preservation. Although they knew their status as children of God, they still rarely worked towards advancing his cause or teaching those outside of their small community about the creator God. "Missions" for the people of Israel meant teaching those who came of their own volition. It rarely included reaching out with the good news of God or working towards social justice, although both issues are raised and shown to be important to God in the Old Testament. (Micah 6:8, Isaiah 58?)