A IS FOR ANXIETY Salina's Bicentennial Center is a basketball arena, ringed by a concourse filled with the predictable array of church-related display booths, each promoting something while feeding you candies and cookies, Halloween-style. Whenever conference grows tedious, you can find the restless circling the margins of conference, transgressing the boundaries and clock-watching of The Order Within.  This year, my favorite was the Center for Pastoral Effectiveness of the Rockies. Three times I wandered there, chatting amiably and jotting notes that helped frame what most always happens at conference:

Amy, one of the conference's younger clergy, brought the opening sermon.  Amy's brother works at a restaurant that -- how to say this at Annual Conference -- does a lot of business late at night.  Many of the clients are HIP -- Hospitality Industry Personnel -- who spend their days working at restaurants, hotels, and such.  As she thought about that, what progressively bugged Amy was that the HIP Crowd has stolen the purpose and function of the church, commodifying and commercializing what is supposed to be our calling. The old rules of Benedict, for example, taught those inside the monastery to welcome as Christ anyone who came to the monastery's door.  "The Christ in me," they practiced, "greets the Christ in thee."  Fast forward several centuries to today and picture an Old Woman, trained for decades in Benedict's way of experiencing God.  Today she's in a nursing home and can't remember what she ate for breakfast, but she's in the lobby, welcoming absolutely everybody -- genuinely, authentically -- perhaps because years of training transformed her perceptions so that she truly sees God in every person.  The absolute antithesis of today's gatekeeper, compulsively sifting the few who get in from the many to keep out, She is Christ, inviting everyone in.   So it was rather stunning, knowing all the themes conference would accent with Bishop Schnase tutoring Kansans in his book and after Amy's sermon, that communion servers ignored the visitors in the dimly lit balcony.  It was difficult not to sense symbolism in the extra-long lines at the back where people snaked slowly down the unlit stairs to the servers nearest the exits.  When the line shrank a bit, I decided -- no big surprise -- not to follow the herd but to venture toward the distant servers with no waiting.  Half-way there, they walked back to the bishop, thinking their work was done, so I -- no big surprise -- adjusted my plan to fit the institutional church and headed toward my superintendent who had no apparent line needing her but stayed ready anyhow.  She gave me a good hunk of bread, intentionally let her fingers touch my hand, and looked me gently in the eyes as she spoke to me.  Suddenly, it didn't much matter that the institution and the planners revealed such a clear contradiction, probably completely unaware.  What mattered was the one person who acted as pastor, priest, friend and Christ.   That woman, and the Old Woman in Amy's sermon, seem not far from what the General Board of Discipleship desires we be in its Rethink Church effort.  Developed after interviewing people the United Methodist Church rather repels -- people aged 18-34 -- the designers urge those inside the Methodist Monastery to experience church anew as a community -- as communal -- but stretch that experience beyond Sunday and beyond the building.  It's rethinking as returning … experiencing church not as static institution but as one of the original "social networks." An institution tends to accent nouns, sameness, consistency, dependability.  In that culture, the phrase "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" easily sounds like a flattering description of how things are.  Instead, designers urge those within the Methodist Monastery to transform nouns into active verbs … making our mission the always actively opening of what's momentarily closed. Sitting in the distance, up the stairs in the unlit balcony of Salina's Bicentennial Center, you wonder how each of the 600 voting delegates are making sense of this, down on the lighted floor, sitting around the tables with clean, white tablecloths.  You hope they notice the obvious difference between them and the Others in the balcony, and feel the nudge to brazenly open that doorway, despite the traditions and rules of order, but you don't hold your breath.  You wonder how many will go to www.10ThousandDoors.org or www.RethinkChurch.org, how they'd feel if they honestly named the demographic niche of their congregation at www.Find-A-Church.org.    The proposed program comes to the conference for official adoption.  The bishop asks if anyone wants to speak.  For a while, nobody moves, then a lone voice says "I will."  He moves to Microphone 4 and says he's from Delphos.  We should be Christ-focused, he says, not lacking absolutes as the Open Hearts rhetoric implies.  When Jesus talked to the Woman Caught in Adultery, he didn't condemn her, but he also said "go and sin no more."  We ignore the sin of lifestyles -- and here he hesitates, assessing whether to say what he's thinking, then continues -- from the spectrum of using children to homosexuality … which is clearly condemned by scripture.  I hate to put a damper on all our enthusiasm for the denomination's effort, he says.  The Bishop called for a voice vote which, figuring there are 600 voting delegates -- sounded like 597 to 3. Next the conference screens a video on diseases of poverty, promoting bed-nets to help protect African children from bug bites that transmit malaria.  In Sub-Sahara Africa, one child in five dies of malaria by age five.  The video urges the church to imagine casting a wider net.  It's working for me.  In the soundtrack I'm hearing the lush legato strings, the simple melodic strands of horn, then piano, thicken the texture.  If you xtract those melodic motifs for the choir to hum throughout worship the Sunday we show that clip, it could work, then elaborate some motifs into a choral piece that develops the ideas: imagining, doors and nets, actively opening them, ourselves. Robert Schnase, bishop of Missouri, is this year's obvious headliner, giving non-readers the tutorial to his book The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. This morning it's the overview:

After completing that Cliff's Notes tutorial, Schnase accents two difficult teachings in his ideas.

Schnase then explores why his book has been well-received [and, unbeknownst to Schnase, why his ideas this morning are prelude to the message people will hear tomorrow night at Reconciling's Inclusivity gathering].

Then he summarizes how to misuse the book:

Thursday morning, the conference hears about its connectional ministries.  In the desire to be on-topic, some reports veer dangerously close the donut-table example of misusing the trendiness of "radical."  I'm at attention when the guy reluctantly talks about doing prison ministry – http://discipleprisonministry.jimdo.com/ -- and needs more money. Partly because I've given-up some weekends to visit people in prison, and partly because the flower shop where I eat lunch each day employs prisoners on Work Release, I see his work as ministry and risky and the whole lot.  It's a long ways from feeding the grazing Methodists in the parlor on any Sunday morning.  So when Paul Wilke invites Kansas West delegates to turn to their neighbors at the table and say "Just Be Radical," you wonder what they're thinking as they humor him and repeat the words.  Donuts or Prisoners?  Like the earlier video on bed-nets for African kids, Paul again asks each of us to imagine … this time: a Holy Headline of what the newspaper might say if we were truly radical.  I jot down: "Vitality, Joy Erupt as Former Outcasts Transform Dull Church."  I decide there's little point in contributing it to the list taped to the gym wall down below, which had maybe 20 headlines from 600 people. Schnase zooms-in to critique problematic systems in many churches.  There are systems in your church, he says, that are and are not conducive to achieving your mission.  Like a car that has separate systems for fuel, braking, transmission and such, your congregation has various systems.  The system dynamics explain how things happen in a particular way.  He tells the story of a family in which Dad wanted the kids to take-out the garbage on Wednesday night, before the garbage truck arrived on Thursday morning. Every Wednesday night at 6, he'd find his kids somewhere in the house, doing their thing, and remind them it was Wednesday night, the pick-up is Thursday morning, and to take-out the trash.  "Ok," they'd say, nodding their heads, and Dad would leave … and they'd continue doing their thing.  Dad would notice.  At 7, he'd return, and everything would repeat.  Same result.  At 8, Dad would return, exasperation growing, and everything would repeat.  Same result.  At 830, Dad, now angry and ballistic, yells at them to take-out the trash.  The kids look at each other, at him, wondering why he's so ticked.  Things changed when Dad, with no conversation, took-out the garbage one Wednesday night at 6, telling the family at dinner that for doing it he'd paid himself the kid's weekly allowance.  That news prompted a moment of silence in the kids, until they asked if he were serious.  "Yes," he said.  "Things have changed.  Every time I need to take-out the garbage at 6pm Wednesday, I get your weekly allowance."  From that moment on, without any prodding, frustration or drama, the kids took-out the garbage on Wednesday night, usually at 559pm.  In families and in churches, there are systems that dictate how we act, and systems can change.   Consider your congregation's evangelism system.  Honestly, in most United Methodist congregations, the system is to hope and pray that six Methodist families move into your neighborhood, a few magically find us, and some join.  The problem is: that system is too passive.  It was effective in the Fifties when social customs and laws closed everything but churches, and church attendance was considered normative, but today everything competes with church.  The system's logic and behaviors must change.  Another problem is: the passive logic hopes another church does the work of conversion from no-faith to following the way of Jesus.  Third problem: We want you to value the music we value -- organ, Bach, cantatas -- even though scanning the Kansas radio, there are no 24-hour organ stations.  "So come be like us," our churches often proclaim, "and act old."  To emphasize his point, Schnase tells the story of a church in McAllen TX that wanted to reach students at UTex PanAm, so they designed a college Sunday School class but it failed and barely ever took-off because they church people made a series of wrong assumptions: that college students wanted to meet at 945am Sunday, that they wanted to wear suits and dresses, that they wanted to meet on the second floor of the Methodist church building.  It took the church a while to learn that the students would get engaged when the church relinquished those requirements, and adapted to the students meeting two Sunday nights a month, eating pizza from 9-11 in a house across from campus.  The church became more evangelistic by going-to the people.   The church had to shift from a come-to notion of church to a go-to behaving as church.  Think of where your congregation already has maximum contact with non-church people.  It may be a mission project, a High Holy Sunday, a seasonal festival or an annual fund-raising dinner.  Shift its solitary purpose from fund-raising to finance the status quo -- raise the dollar goal for whatever good thing you're doing -- and add a second purpose: to positively engage new people and invite them to participate in experiencing and following the Divine.  Set your goal on boosting energy and participation numbers. Learn how to market and publicize those broader goals effectively.  Computers and software make it easy and affordable to make color print pieces; use the most dynamic photos of your people and your energy to reach your targets.  Ideally, add a pertinent follow-up event to your primary splash event … a concert, a new program or whatever promotes your mission and meets the needs of the new people.  When pitching these new ideas to your Church Council, present the whole package as a ministry you feel called to do for the church, and ask for their prayers and blessing.  Position the Council to function as a permission-giving group instead of exercising its prerogative to protect.  And with any new initiative, count only the Yes votes.  In your churches, give permission to people ready to start the new things your church needs.   Ask yourself: If each person in my church offered my quality and effectiveness of invitation to Christ and church, would the church thrive or die?  Most Methodist perceive inviting as somebody else's job.  It occurs at the margin, if somebody does intentional, risky, radical inviting.  It must occur, and be authentic, or people will sense its hollowness [with both inviting and tithing].  How do we find our own authentic voice?  Schnase tells two personal stories from the margins, and here I perked-up my ears, because they're also stories from the closet. In both examples, he conceals that he's a bishop.  First, the Bishop rents a car.  While chatting through the billing details, he learns the clerk is Methodist, that he and his fiancé prefer one style of music, and recommends two churches with music that fits the couple's style.  Then the manager -- a very active Methodist leader -- outs him as Bishop, but in four years at work the churchy leader never invited his clerk to church.  Second, the Bishop and the waiter at a fancy hotel for some Clergy/Spouse dinner.  The server and the Bishop are both introverted wallflowers, backs pressed to the wall, watching the convivial people.  Gradually, they inch toward each other and start chatting. The server's body is ornamented with tattoos and piercings. "What is this," the server asks, nodding to the crowd.  "They work together," the bishop replies, adding "What kind of work do you think they're in?"  The server scopes the crowd, and guesses. "Insurance?"  "Actually," the bishop says, "they're Methodist pastors and their spouses."  The server divulges that he was Methodist and his name is probably still on the roll.  "Do you want to meet your pastor," the bishop asks, which startles the guy because he doesn't think of himself as having a pastor.  "Which one do you think is your pastor?" the bishop asks.  The buy again scans the crowd.  "That one," he says, nodding his nose at a very old man.  He has, Schnase says, picked the one person in the crowd apparently most unlike himself.  Then he invites the waiter's pastor over … a woman several years younger than the guy.  In both stories, we are to emulate the closeted bishop and -- was this also his point -- to ignore obvious or potential violations of scripture.  Was the engaged couple sexually active? We don't care.  Tattoos? We don't care.  But that other thing -- the thing he doesn't dare say, the thing Delphos hesitated to say but did, the stuff that would certify us as radically risky, passionately and extravagantly intentional, about that thing we silently and vociferously care.   How shall I incorporate the Bishop's teachings into my congregation's presence at Wichita Pride 2009?   If Schnase is the headliner, he has competition from the discussion and vote on the Constitutional Amendments … 32 pieces from the global General Conference that met last summer.  All those amendments go to annual meetings of regional conferences around the world, like this meeting of Kansas West.  Refreshingly, there's no dodging by tabling or wordsmithing.  Instead, there's a presentation by Kansas West delegates to last summer's global meeting, each summarizing the upshot and history of the amendment so people know more before voting.

A brief discussion period followed, with another discussion period tomorrow before the vote -- delayed to then to permit clergy to be ordained tonight a vote on the amendments.

From the Bi Center, we race across town to Salina Trinity where 50 people have signed-up for the Inclusivity Dinner sponsored by Reconciling, despite the caterer capping dinners at 40.  Audrey Krumbach from the national Reconciling staff in Chicago flew into Wichita and drove up.  Joining the crowd are some Mennonites from Newton who want their churches to open themselves, and came to sit-in on the Methodist version.  They invite the Methodist to sit-in on their event: Fri 5 June 7pm at Newton Faith Mennonite, 1500 N Anderson.   Lest people miss her subtlety, Audrey begins by calmly saying she's angry at Bishop Schnase's title.  Clearly, this will not be your normal church banquet speech.  Why exactly she's angry I missed – and I attribute that lapse to the dual distraction of openly confessed anger and the tasty potatoes.  My notes resume with Audrey's praise for Walter Bruggemann and Denise Hopkins, both of whom understand the Psalms as expressing either Orientation [like Psalm 23], Disorientation [like Psalm 22 or 55] or Reorientation [like Psalm 31.7-8].  Today's United Methodist Church, she says, is in a time of Disorientation, needing Reorientation in Christ.  In good Southern fashioned, Audrey leaned into her Georgia tradition and called us to name our fears: Incompatibility, Institutionality, and Insipidness.

But don't despair, for help is available to the Disoriented Church.  As in Psalm 31, there is hope, despite the institutional church's betrayal of those who know God's presence in the lives of queer people. God's grace permeates our broken lives, and grace is working today in the Church Disoriented.  Mapping that unknown land are guideposts, urging us to trust God's grace [see John 3.17], and transforming our fears in ways that reorient us to God:

After Audrey spoke, a woman unexpectedly made her way to the microphone, and faced the crowd at Salina Trinity.  "I am," she said, "just so grateful to this church for welcoming me when nobody else would." I wonder what Schnase would have thought, had he been at the Inclusivity Dinmer, listening and thinking.  I suspect it would have made him nervous to be eating with Reconciling folks, to hear his book critiqued even glancingly, and -- as a Bishop -- to represent the easy target of those angry at the insipid institutional church that's incompatible with its espoused values.  But I think Schnase would have felt some undeniable integrity in being-there with people committed to fleshing-out the pursuit of the church's mission with "practical clarity," in a chicken and potato dinner that's "understandable and do-able" in most Methodist churches, that weds Jesus' teachings with "the transformation of the world," that urges believers to do more active practicing, and that by intentionally going-to the group the come-to church most insistently casts-out, he'd rekindle his belief in the intentionally and extravagantly risky, being passionately radical about adapting to the subcultures desperate to hear genuinely Good News. I think he'd initially be glad that he wasn't on his home-turf in Missouri, that in Kansas he could blend-in -- sans celebrity, sans institutional role -- and be exactly what he preaches and teaches. And I think he would've liked the unexpectedness of it all, supposing he was driving to yet another speaking engagement to a bunch of official Methodists, then accidentally ending-up hearing honest talk -- Audrey's anger and evangelistic passion, then tear-filled gratitude for finally finding a church that feels like home.  He's a guy who loves the realities that sprout in unexpected places, and there's little difference between the Rent-A-Car counter, the wall at the hotel banquet, or a dining room at a church where folks ponder how to put his words into action with one of today's most despised groups. Friday morning, the tellers distributed the ballots to voting delegates and discussion continued:

The votes for Kansas West won't be announced until after all the global votes are totaled.  In the meantime, stop being blandly typical, safely accidental, and stingy. Instead, practice being intentionally risky, extravagantly radical, and passionate.  Intensify your notions of faith development, hospitality, worship, missions and generosity.  Swap your sense of what's wrong with a "disciplined consideration" of The Other as both different and right.  Your institutionalism, swap for innovation and active creativity. And name one disintegration you dislike in your life … one strong, important belief that you stifle in order to conform to the deadly blandness of the Disoriented.  If I do that instead of wondering about vote results from now 'til November, I'm thinking there's a lot I could discover.

LAWRENCE FIRST, WICHITA COLLEGE HILL -- RECONCILING CONGREGATIONS First United Methodist Church in Lawrence became a Reconciling Congregation on 8 July 2008, punctuating efforts that began in 2006 and continued for several years. When Bishop Dick Wilke visited in Jan 2008, a church-wide survey confirmed support for being a Reconciling Congregation that truly seeks to have "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" that welcome all people. Last month, the church council of Wichita College Hill unanimously voted to be listed as a Reconciling Congregation. Those who know the College Hill community are not surprised. Home of Viceroy class -- the group that in 1997 pioneered the idea of being a Reconciling group -- CHUM's declaration evolved from its statement in the weekly bulletin the "Who We Are" which explicitly includes all persons regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. For CHUM, affiliation with RMN affirms the congregation's primary purpose: "to develop a Christian community wise in the ways of the Spirit, bold in the ways of justice, and graceful in relationship with all creation." The Sunday after the vote, Pastor John Martin preached that, if full inclusion were "merely a local church issue, it would be important to declare ourselves a Reconciling congregation, but we must also recognize that we live within a denomination that excludes gays and lesbians from being fully included in the life of our church.  Therefore, we say publicly that we support the full inclusion of all persons, and we mean all."