Bishop Mike Lowry

 Wednesday I returned from our mission investigation trip to Monterrey with Randy Wild and Dawne Phillips. Reports of violence tend to dominate the news from Monterrey.  Our trip was quite different.  Under the gracious hosting and guidance of Bishop Raul Garcia (Eastern Conference, The Methodist Church of Mexico), we felt (and were) quite safe.

I came away not only enthused about mission possibilities but inspired by their faithfulness and spiritual courage.  We have much to learn from our brothers and sisters in Mexico.

One of the great inspirations was hearing about the work of the Holy Spirit at Temple el Buen Pastor.  In 1973 with the church and conference in steep decline, a regular district preachers’ meeting was held.  In the midst of their worship, a powerful intervention of the Spirit happened.  During the sermon people started to confess their sins, pray out loud and seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  That event marked the turnaround of the Methodist Church of Mexico.  Today it is a growing church (both the local church and the larger Methodist Church of Mexico) sending missionaries out to others!

Temple el Buen Pastor seats about 150 in worship in a cramped physical facility.  Every time they get up to that amount they start a new church somewhere else in Monclova. They’ve started something like 13 new churches.  The most recent was just this year.  They are reaching out dramatically with ministry to the poor and engaging in deep conversion experiences. They look like what early Methodism sounds like.  I cannot help but wonder if God sent the 3 of us to Monclova to learn what the Lord longs to do for us.

A thin ribbon of dawn sliced the eastern skyline in glorious splendor but what drew our attention was the stark, sharp concertina wire forming a deadly lace of metal on the outer fence of the Boyd Unit Friday morning as we waited to enter a series of gates, check points and searches to arrive at last to a gym that was transformed into holy ground.  In my devotional reading I had somewhere come across the phrase, “whenever someone new enters a room, Christ comes in. But oh, he comes in such disguises.”

Sunday night I returned exhausted and elated from a 4 day Karios at the Boyd Prison Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections.  In our last small group gathering (the “family” table of St. James) the inmates (or “brothers in white”) asked us (the 3 free-worlders) what we got out of the Karios. My answer was simple.  I received blessings at Boyd.  The greatest of those blessings was to see God at work in transformative power.  I was blessed with new friends.  I was blessed by the Spirit far beyond what I had hoped.  The list goes on.  I do not do it justice but write in awe of the power and presence of God at Boyd through the work of Karios.  I also recognize the great battle that takes place daily in that location between good and evil.

Abstract theological concepts like sin and salvation, repentance and redemption, take on flesh and blood form.  They hurl about the room explosive charges of energy and anger, regret and renewal.  In a population where respect, love, and care are rare commodities, the gospel is truly good news.  We free-worlders are careful to honor the humanity and privacy of the brothers-in-white.  An unwritten but firm code is that one does not ask what action or sentence placed an inmate in prison.  We do not seek how long they have to serve.  Respect means willingness to allow a brother in white his privacy. They share but only when they have reached a point of spiritual development and trust.  As I grew in my own journey (blessed by the  brothers in white) the phase “there but for the grace of God” took on new depth.

Forgiveness is taken seriously here.  Anger is strong, and grace is not cheap.  They wrestle hard with the Lord’s Prayer, especially the phrase “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others.”  Some already profess Christ as Lord and Savior but face the reality of a deep failure to live the Christian life.  Others reject God.  Still others have readily given themselves over to the worship of other (false) gods including Satan and evil.  They make much of the distinction between being a Christian and being Christian!  I think we in the free-world can learn a great deal for them.  I know I have.

The inside team (brothers in white) who have been through Kairos, committed or recommitted their lives to Christ as Lord and Savior, and who are giving genuine evidence of walking in newness (righteousness) of life, were awesome sacrificial servants. I encountered two of the greatest missionary evangelists I have ever met at Boyd on the inside team.  One African American, the other Anglo American, they reached across gang, racial, ethnic, religious and other lines risking their own safety to share Christ in ways that truly put together love, justice, mercy and evangelistic passion. One of them was known simply as Demon before his conversion to Christ.  The other was someone who went around beating up people.  They are now living a level of sanctification that I hope in my better days to merely immolate.

I thank the men of Boyd for the blessings they bestowed on me.  I thank also my fellow team  members – both those on the inside and outside team.  They are heroes of the faith, not perfect, just walking in the way of faith.  I will write more in the next blog.

I see the Spirit of the Lord moving among us as we struggle to engage the church we love in transformation.  Over and over again, the call of a new day in the Lord beckons us into the future.  Recently this conviction has come to me through a variety of events.  Allow me to explain.

 One of the Four Focus Areas of the United Methodist Church is the development of new places for new people (new church development) and the transformation of existing congregations.  (An important aside:  I vastly prefer the term transformation over revitalization or renewal.  We don’t need to, and in fact can’t, go back to the past – which the “re” language suggests.  We need to be transformed under the Lordship of Christ as the church of the 21^st century.)  Thursday, September 30^th, our area (and I personally) was blessed by Dr. Fred Allen, Executive Director of SBC 21, guidance and leadership in transformation.  SBC-21 is Strengthening the Black Church for the 21^st Century.  It is one of a crucial transformational partners as we move through this wilderness way.

 The Core of the SBC 21 plan of action is: 

1)      Selection of 25 vital congregations to serve as Congregation Resource Centers (CRCs).
2)      Teams of lay and clergy from CRCs to serve as a resource with partner congregations (PCs).
3)      Utilize geographic and needs-specific models to meet rural, urban and suburban church needs.
4)      A strong intentional focus on the laity.

We have a long way to go, but the Spirit is blowing among us with fresh ways of thinking and acting.

Tuesday, May 25^th, I had the privilege of joining an ecumenical group for a Conversation with Leaders of the China Christian Council.  Brite Divinity School graciously hosted the gathering along with the Tarrant Area Community of Churches.  As I listened to the Rev. Gao Feng (President of the Christian Council – representing the registered Protestant Churches), I could not help but think that we have much to learn or more accurately relearn.

Rev. Gao’s group purports to represent some 20 million Protestant Christians in China.  Their group is “registered” with the government.  There are other “unregistered” protestant Christian gatherings in China.  By all accounts the 20 million figure is low.  In fact, a more accurate number may be closer to 40 million.  The Christian movement is growing rapidly in China.

Repeatedly I was struck the reference to the Christian Church in China as “post-denominational.”  There is an affiliation but it is a loose one.  One of the Brite professors present who had more detailed knowledge than I said that it was a relationship more like what we might have with the National Council of Churches.  The Christian Church in China reported 3,700 pastors (1,000 of which are female).  You do the math.  By my rough count that means there was one pastor for every 5,405 active(!) lay persons.  They reported 55,000 churches and “meeting points” (many of which are house fellowships).  That means each ordained clergy had 14.85 churches or meeting places they were responsible for!

Behind all this is obviously a vibrant movemental sense of the Holy Spirit at work.  Lay leadership in ministry is common and vital to the movement.  Much of the preaching is done by lay leaders guiding house fellowships.  (The leaders insisted in not calling them house churches because as they put it “there is only one church.”)  Instead of focusing on church buildings, most of the members worship in homes.

Hit the pause button and ask, “Where have I seen this before?”  Here are three quick answers: 1) The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, 2) The Celtic missionary movement from Ireland in the 5^th – 7^th centuries, and 3) The early Methodist movement.

It’s time to go back to the future!  We need to loosen our structure and allow ministry to flourish as a lay movement under the power of the Holy Spirit once again.

As I begin this Year of Our Lord 2010 (A.D.), I offer a new blog. I’ve entitled it This Focused Center based on The Message (a paraphrased translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson) version of II Corinthians 5:14-15. “Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”

My subtitle is Reflections on Christ and His Church. As I wrote in my Wilderness Way #28 column, I hope to share what I am reading and wrestling with. Together I hope and pray that we can live out of the focused center of life with Christ. Truly he came for all and he came to include us “in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”
I offer this blog out of a conviction that we need to turn and return to a deeply Trinitarian expression of the Christian faith. More explicitly, it appears to me that much of contemporary mainline theological/cultural reflection appears to have a vague sense of God, a passing acquaintance with Jesus as Lord, and little conception of the work of the Holy Spirit. I want to invite us to be focused as explicitly Christian; that is to say, living out of the focused center of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – crucified and risen for all!

Three quotes I ran into in my reading last fall stick with me. First, somewhere Philip Yancey wrote: “How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo?” I think was C. S. Lewis who said about Christ as our focused center: “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” In meanderings through Willie the Shake (William Shakespeare that is) there is a line from Henry V which clings to my soul. ““This is a stem / Of that victorious stock, and let us fear / The native mightiness and fate of him.” I may have the quotes wrong but they ring of truth for me. We are called to live from this Focused Center. I will try to write ever 3 days or so. You are invited to share a comment or thought.

Given the hectic-ness of my schedule I will only be able to reply spasmodically. Together as we wrestle and reflect on the truth of life and the truth of Christ and the truth of the Great God three in One – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I pray we can live the resurrection life, “a far better life than people every lived on their own.”