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Andrew C. Thompson

Category Archives: Arkansas Conference

The Arkansas Conference of the UMC

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference

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We’ve recently adopted a new logo for the Arkansas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. This logo will be used for all print and digital communications for the conference moving forward. The wording “United Methodists of Arkansas” is featured prominently on the logo, emphasizing both the peoplehood of the church and their contextual location of mission and ministry. The bottom of the logo also features the phrase “disciples making disciples,” which proclaims the heart of our mission to call, initiate, and form faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.

You can access a news release about the new logo, which offers downloadable digital files for churches to use.The news release also explains the wording, symbols, and color scheme of the logo.

Revival? We can expect it.

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference, Evangelism & Mission, John Wesley, JW Journal

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Wesley preachingJohn Wesley had a long career in ministry—stretching from the mid-1720s to his death in 1791. During that time, he personally experienced many ups and downs. The movement he led also waxed and waned during that time. But there is one thing that always strikes me about Wesley’s attitude:

He always expected revival to occur.

Take this example from Wesley’s Journal, where he describes a visit to Tewkesbury in March of 1775:

“Many here have been lately convinced of sin, and many converted to God. Some have been made partakers of the great salvation, and their love and zeal have stirred up others. So that the flame now spreads wider and wider. O let none be able to quench it!”

Reading that passage, you can’t escape the great sense of both optimism and expectation that is bound up in Wesley’s report. It is an attitude that is tied to Wesley’s great confidence in the Holy Spirit—which is not named in this Journal entry but is certainly in the background.

Work of the Spirit

When Wesley speaks of the conviction of sin and conversion to God, he is alluding to the Spirit’s work in drawing us toward God. And when he refers to the possibility of partaking in “the great salvation,” it is a hopeful statement of the great possibility we all have for life in the Spirit, even in this present life. Wesley’s words about the love and zeal of believers stirring up others and the flame of revival spreading outward are his way of describing how the Holy Spirit works within a local community.

In all of this, there is in Wesley the belief that God’s work will proceed and will expand continuously—in other words, that revival will happen!

But we should note also that Wesley is suggesting that there is a particular way the Spirit works for revival. The Spirit doesn’t work without people, and the Spirit doesn’t work with people against their will. Instead, the Spirit works in and through people as they experience the salvation of Jesus Christ. That should say something to the people called Methodists today, who are hungering for revival.

Gary MuellerMy recent annual conference meeting in Little Rock, AR, emphasized a three-part theme: Discerning, Discipling, Daring. In their joint laity-episcopal address, Bishop Gary Mueller and Conference lay leader Karon Mann provided wonderful context for what such an approach to ministry ought to look like.

We have in many ways already discerned our path forward through our conference’s Imagine Ministry restructuring and re-equipping process, although what Imagine Ministry will look like must continually be discerned as it evolves. We must now get serious about discipling, that all-encompassing process of forming men and women into mature disciples. And we need to be willing to take risks—approaching our ministry and mission with a certain amount of daring, based on the confidence that the Holy Spirit will guide us.

‘In this together’

I also think one very important component to this work of the Arkansas Annual Conference (like all annual conferences) is its connectional nature. We are all in this together. And only by sticking together can we faithfully work to renew the church in our day.

But if we do stick together—and if we devote ourselves fully to the calling God has given us—then we have every bit as much reason to expect revival as John Wesley did at Tewkesbury.

The sheer sense of expectation was one of the things that struck me about the vision Bishop Mueller and Karon Mann gave my annual conference a few weeks ago in Little Rock. As they closed their address to the members of the annual conference, Bishop Mueller said, “It’s time for us to experience spiritual revival.” He then went on:

We can only share what we have experienced, been transformed by and committed ourselves to. We need to experience Jesus’ love that is so powerful it accepts us just the way we are. Experience Jesus’ love that is so powerful it is unwilling to leave us just the way we are. Experience Jesus’ love that is so powerful it gives us what we absolutely need but can never get on our own—reconciliation with God, healing, wholeness, second chances, the Jesus way of living, joy, generosity, compassion, and hope that is eternal in every sense of the word.”

Those are hopeful and hope-filled words. The hope bound up within them is a hope well founded. It is grounded in the scriptural promise that we will receive the Holy Spirit, who will teach us and guide us in every way.

Because God’s promises can always be trusted, the gift of the Holy Spirit also means that revival is coming. We can downright expect it!

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This article originally appeared in the Arkansas United Methodist newspaper’s July 5, 2013 edition. Reprinted with permission. You can see the article in its original form at this link.

2013 Arkansas Annual Conference

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference

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The 2013 session of the Arkansas Annual Conference is almost here. The annual conference will meet in Little Rock from June 9-12 at the Statehouse Convention Center.

I think there will be a lot of energy at the annual conference this year, and the conference staff has been working to put together a program that will help to equip us to do faithful ministry in each of our local contexts. In this video, Bishop Gary Mueller offers and invitation to this year’s annual conference and explains his hopes for a “3-D Faith” focus for our time together in Little Rock:

For more information on the upcoming session of the Arkansas Annual Conference, go here.

Imagining no malaria

03 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference, Evangelism & Mission, United Methodist Church

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One of the most exciting ministry initiatives that Methodists in my part of the world are engaged in right now is called Imagine No Malaria. It is a project designed to help eradicate malaria deaths by 2015.

This is a worthy project. We don’t think much about malaria in North America, but in sub-Saharan Africa it is a major killer. A child dies from malaria once every 60 seconds. The disease kills over 600,000 people per year. And the tragic aspect to these statistics is that malaria is 100% preventable with the right treatment, the right protection, and the right education.

I’ve written about Imagine No Malaria in a recent piece I did in the Arkansas United Methodist newspaper. There, I give some background on the problem of malaria and on the United Methodist Church’s efforts to combat it as part of the general church’s “Four Areas of Focus” ministry initiative. I also offer a view as to how engaging in Imagine No Malaria can be a real means of grace to those helping and those receiving help.

The Arkansas Conference of the UMC has been a major player in the Imagine No Malaria effort. I’d encourage you to check out the overview provided on the conference website. Check out my article as well, and consider giving to what is clearly a deeply important cause.

An Exploration into Doctrinal Preaching

29 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference, Doctrine & Theology, Jesus Christ, Preaching, United Methodist Church

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What is the value of “doctrinal preaching” in the church today? And how should one go about it? Those were questions I had the opportunity to investigate a few months ago.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to serve as the “conference preacher” for the Arkansas Annual Conference session this past summer in Fort Smith, AR. My task was to preach the Sunday evening and Monday evening worship services. I was excited, of course. But it was a daunting task as well. There were a lot of my fellow Arkansas clergy colleagues in the congregation with a lot more wisdom and experience than me. Many of them are among the men and women I most admire in ministry and pastoral leadership.

The reason I was asked to preach by Bishop Charles Crutchfield was largely because of a new role I have in the conference as our “Wesley Scholar.” So I took that reason to heart. I am not the most accomplished preacher in our conference by a long shot, and I don’t have the decades of service that many of my colleagues do. But I have committed myself to a form of ministry and scholarship that seeks to connect the contemporary church with the vital heart of the Wesleyan tradition. I spent several years training for that task academically in a doctoral program at Duke Divinity School, and I have been teaching in the area of Wesleyan studies for some time (first as a graduate student and now as a professor at Memphis Theological Seminary). What I ended up asking myself was this question: “What would it be most important for a preacher who is also an academically trained Wesleyan theologian to offer to an annual conference?”

The answer I came up with was to develop two sermons that would attempt to capture key Wesleyan doctrines and present them both with reference to their biblical foundations and their relevance for contemporary ministry. This is what I consider to be “doctrinal preaching,” and it is not the kind of preaching you hear most often in churches today. In most Methodist settings, you are apt to hear what is called “inductive preaching,” which is a narrative preaching style that tries to get at the heart of a Scripture passage by telling stories that illustrate the meaning of the text from different angles. Another common style of preaching that can sometimes be heard in Methodist settings is expository preaching, where a Scripture passage is interpreted very carefully in almost line-by line fashion (and often illuminated with reference to other, connected passages of Scripture). And yet another preaching approach that is seen more often nowadays is topical preaching, where sermon series are developed around biblical themes or themes of Christian discipleship and preached over the course of several weeks (e.g., a series on the Ten Commandments, or a series on the Apostles’ Creed).

The justification for doctrinal preaching, in my mind, is that it puts the contemporary preaching task at the service of a broader historical tradition and that tradition’s interpretation of the Christian faith. The “tradition” here is actually a “community,” nothing less than an expression of the Christian church as it has existed across both space and time. Doctrinal preaching as I began to think about it in my preparation to preach at annual conference would accept that we in the present have much to learn from our ancestors about the interpretation of the Bible and the core elements of faithful discipleship. And doctrinal preaching would also stand against the liberal individualist temptation to think that faith is about each of us figuring out what we want to believe in order to gain a sense of self-authentication. In short, doctrinal preaching, I came to believe, ought to be about reinvigorating the meaning of doctrine as “sacred teaching” vital for the present, which has been handed down to us by the saints who have gone before us.

This was my thought process, anyway. I want to share the results of one of the two sermons I preached at the annual conference, which the folks at Good News Magazine were kind enough to run in an edited version this past autumn. But let me mention a couple of things beforehand, particularly for preachers who read this with interest. First, I don’t see the kind of doctrinal preaching as being at odds with any of the preaching styles I mention above (inductive, expository, or topical). In fact, I think my own use of it incorporates inductive and topical elements in particular. In that sense, doctrinal preaching is more of an approach than a style, although I write that without having thought through the terminology as much as I might want to do. For what it is worth, I also don’t think it falls into the trap of “deductive preaching,” at least as that might be seen as deciding the issue beforehand and then reading one’s theological view into the text (or ‘stacking the deck’ homiletically). The reason for this is that the doctrine one would preach is not something arrived at individually; it is rather the received testimony of the church dogmatically codified in both an historical and ecclesiastical sense. Doing the homiletical work of presenting such doctrine in the preached word still requires a great deal of biblical exegesis, and it requires a fair amount of investigation into the tradition’s engagement with the doctrine in question as well.

Second, I want to push the notion of doctrinal preaching as the best way toward doctrinal renewal in the church generally. When I wrote on doctrinal renewal a few months ago, I got this response from a reader on this website: “Help me to understand how such a doctrinal renewal would take place, Andrew. Since the church currently takes a casual attitude toward doctrine and largely ignores the extensive doctrinal standards of the UMC, how would it be possible to get back? Should pastors and Bishops be tried for heresy, for example? How many? I am certainly not opposed to ‘doctrinal renewal.’ i just don’t see the path from here to there.” I think many people think of doctrinal renewal in unfortunate, black-and-white terms — as if our options are either doctrinal laziness or a new inquisition! Preaching doctrine seeks a much different path; namely, the path of faithful shepherding by those entrusted with the care of flocks.

With that out of the way, feel free to check out an edited version of the sermon I preached on the doctrine of assurance with the title, “Memory flashes and the knock of Jesus.” [That is the title the magazine gave it; I had originally titled it, “The Power to Become Children of God.”] You can find the published version of the sermon at this link. The other sermon I preached at annual conference was entitled, “Pressing toward Perfection,” and it was on the doctrine of Christian perfection. As anyone familiar with Wesleyan theology will know, the doctrines of assurance and perfection loom large in Methodism over the past 300 years. They are key aspects of how we understand salvation.

Welcome to Arkansas, Bishop Mueller

20 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference, South Central Jurisdiction, United Methodist Church

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Following the election of new bishops Cynthia Harvey, Gary Mueller, and Mike McKee, the Episcopacy Committee of the South Central Jurisdiction went to work making assignments of our college of bishops for the next quadrennium. With the retirement of Bishop Charles Crutchfield, the Arkansas Annual Conference is due to receive a new bishop to lead the ministry of the United Methodist Church in our area.

This evening the Episcopacy Committee completed that work and announced the assignments before the gathered body of the SCJ Conference. For my fellow Arkansans, I’m happy to announce that we will be receiving Bishop Gary Mueller.

We’ll all get the chance to know Bishop Mueller over the coming months, but I wanted to provide a little preview in case readers are interested to know. Welcome, bishop!

 

2012 South Central Jurisdiction

19 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference, Leadership, South Central Jurisdiction, United Methodist Church

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I am currently at the 2012 session of the South Central Jurisdictional Conference in Oklahoma City, OK. In the United Methodist Church in America, a jurisdiction is a collection of annual conferences tied together by geography, by common missional ties, and by governance through a college of bishops. (The whole body of bishops in the UMC is known as the “Council of Bishops,” whereas the bishops in a particular jurisdiction is known as a “college.”)

Jurisdictions meet together once every four years. A four year period of time is significant in the United Methodist Church because our General Conference meets on that schedule. Thus, we call a four year period a “quadrennium.” Thus we say that both General and Jurisdictional Conferences meet “quadrennially.”

The purpose of a jurisdictional conference is to elect bishops to replace those who have retired, and then to assign them to episcopal areas that they will oversee. The jurisdictional conference (through its episcopacy committee) also moves bishops after they have served an appointed amount of time in a given place (usually 8 years, although exceptions are made to allow bishops to serve 12 years in an episcopal area at times).

There are some shared ministries of jurisdictions, and thus there is other business to focus upon at the jurisdictional conference. But all the energy, and most of the work, is centered around the election and assignment of bishops.

I mention all of this because many faithful Methodist folk in our local churches really have little clue about the way the church is governed at this level. The work of jurisdictional conferences is crucial, if you consider that the leadership of our bishops is itself crucial to the work of the church in practically every way. I will try to update my blog once or twice over the next couple of days to let people know what is going on, and I will certainly post at the end of the conference to let people know who the new bishops in the South Central Jurisdiction will be.

A final note: If you do follow current issues in the UMC (or particularly in the SCJ), then you probably have heard about the controversy surrounding Bishop Earl Bledsoe. Bishop Bledsoe has overseen the North Texas Annual Conference for the past four years. He has been recommended by the episcopacy committee of the jurisdiction for involuntary retirement, and earlier this morning Chair Don House from the episcopacy committee gave the committee’s report and recommendation. We will be discussing and voting on the report this afternoon. It is an extremely difficult situation for all involved. I’ll do my best to report what happens with regards to this issue moving forward.

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