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Andrew C. Thompson

Category Archives: United Methodist Church

A Shepherd's Message

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by admin in Advent, Arkansas Conference, Bible, Pastoral Care, United Methodist Church

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There are many bishops, with many different gifts. I’ve always thought that the greatest gift a bishop can have is to be a true pastor to the pastors under his charge. Here is a remarkable example of that virtue in the person of my bishop in the Arkansas Conference, Bishop Gary Mueller:

The Apostle Peter teaches the presbyters of the church that they are to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.” He also says that the church’s leaders are not to do this for personal gain or through an appetite for power. Rather, they are to be “examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2-3).

In this season of Advent when we have so much for which to be thankful, I am thankful for a bishop with a pastor’s heart—who has a deep and abiding love for his pastors which flows from his deep and abiding love for Jesus Christ.

 

Methodist House: The Path to Ordained Ministry

14 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by admin in Memphis Theological Seminary, Methodist House, Theological Education, United Methodist Church

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Dr. Johnny Jeffords joined us at Memphis Theological Seminary this week to discuss the journey towards ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. The luncheon was part of the Methodist House of Studies‘ ongoing series of fellowship gatherings designed to build community and provide opportunities for Methodist students at MTS to draw on the wisdom of ministry practitioners.

In addition to serving as senior pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Memphis, Dr. Jeffords is also the chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry for the Memphis Conference. That means he has a unique insight into how ordination candidacy works for those seeking to become deacons or elders in the UMC.

2014-11-11_Jeffords visit 4

One of the real highlights of our lunchtime conversation was in getting to hear Dr. Jeffords speak about how he sees the candidacy process both from the annual conference-side of things and from the candidate’s perspective . Here are some of the things he mentioned:

  • We need to clearly understand the relationships between the local church, the District Committee on Ministry (or DCOM), and the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry (or BOM). Local churches should only put forward candidates for ministry that they would want to have serve as their own pastors. (That’s a pretty good criterion to go by, if you ask me.) The DCOM also needs—for practical reasons—to understand itself as the primary body to discern which candidates will ultimately be ordained or not. That’s not to deflect the responsibilities of the BOM; it is rather a reality about how much time a given body will spend with a candidate and how workload is distributed.
  • Formal training for both DCOM and BOM members is essential for these bodies to understand their roles and perform them well. That has to be matched by a personal commitment of each DCOM or BOM member to undertake his or her work with seriousness, intentionality, and prayer.2014-11-11_Jeffords visit 5
  • Candidates themselves need to know that the church will be more discerning in the future about who needs to be a pastor in the United Methodist connection. Knowing and embracing our Wesleyan doctrinal distinctives is necessary. Understanding and agreeing with our polity and form of ministry—also necessary. It isn’t up to a DCOM or a BOM to determine who is called to ministry; it’s just up to them to determine who is called into ministry in a particular annual conference of the UMC. The church is in a stage where it has got to be more robust about how it goes about identifying and preparing its future leaders. And this is ultimately a good thing.
  • In preparing for both written and oral responses to doctrinal questions, a candidate should be able to articulate answers in a couple of ways: 1. Knowledge and agreement with our core doctrines with reference to Scripture and the Wesleyan tradition. 2. How our core doctrines relate to ministry and the living of the Christian life. You can be too academically sterile on one extreme, and you can be too mushy/personal on the other. So the balance would be in having the ability to respond with theological rigor and integrity while also being able to speak meaningfully about how our understanding of the triune God, the Lordship of Christ, the sacraments and other means of grace, justification & sanctification, etc., make a different in ministry and discipleship.

These are just a few of the highlights. There was much more, and it was all great. (All the summaries above are, of course, from my own notes and are not a transcript of what Dr. Jeffords said.)

2014-11-11_Jeffords visit 3I’ve been counseling students for years who are working through ordination candidacy while they’re also going through seminary. I’ve never found that they have an issue with candidacy being a demanding, even rigorous process. The objections they tend to raise have to do with the seeming opaqueness or confusing aspects of the process. Usually that is due to poor communication of one sort or another, and sometimes it is due to the inherently “institutional feel” that candidacy processes have taken on in the contemporary church.

The good news is that these challenges can all be fixed. The bad news, if that’s the right word for it, is that the work of fixing our problems is dependent on intentional, focused work by those in the relevant leadership positions in each annual conference. The Memphis Conference at least is fortunate in having a leader the caliber of Johnny Jeffords as it moves forward with the work of its own Board of Ordained Ministry.

For other posts about the Methodist House of Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary, click here.


 

Fellowships for Doctoral Study

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by admin in Theological Education, United Methodist Church

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Are you a United Methodist planning on pursuing a doctorate in some area of theological studies?

A Foundation for Theological Education (or AFTE) is an organization that annually awards fellowships for doctoral studies to United Methodists. These are called the John Wesley Fellowships, and they can go a long way in making a Ph.D. or Th.D. program affordable for aspiring scholars who have strong Wesleyan commitments and a love for the church.

Dr. Joel Green of Fuller Theological Seminary has written an article explaining the John Wesley Fellowship Program. Applications are now available on the AFTE website and are due on January 20, 2015.

I mention the John Wesley Fellowship program because I have firsthand experience with it. I held a fellowship when I was in my doctoral program at Duke, and both the support from AFTE and the camaraderie I developed with other fellows in the program were very important factors the whole time I was in my Th.D. program. So if you are heading toward a doctoral program in theological studies, you should check it out!

AFTE_2


 

Up Close: The Frank Schaefer Appeal

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by admin in Christianity & Culture, United Methodist Church

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The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church met in Memphis, Tennessee, this week.

On Wednesday morning, the public hearing was centered on the appeal in the Frank Schaefer trial. So it had some interest for me on a number of levels. I was able to attend the hearing, which offered insight into the working of the Judicial Council—clearly one of the less well known parts of United Methodist polity.

I’d never before experienced a Judicial Council hearing before. So I took some notes on how the proceedings went. Here is how the ‘movement of the morning’ went, so to speak:

1) Dr. William B. Lawrence, the chair, called the hearing to order and offered a description of the nature and function of the Judicial Council for the benefit of those present.

2) Dr. Lawrence then explained the purpose of the public hearing that day (i.e, the Schaefer appeal), and the procedure to be followed throughout the hearing.

3) The nine Judicial Council members then introduced themselves.

4) An opening prayer was offered by one of the JC members.

5) The hearing proper began with the presentation of the church’s argument by Chris Fisher, counsel for the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference of the UMC.

6) Next the presentation of Schaefer’s argument was given by Scott Campbell, who was serving as his counsel.

2014-10-22_Judicial Council 4

Frank Schaefer speaking to the media

7) Mr. Fisher was then allowed 5 minutes for a rebuttal, since the appeal was made by the church (and thus had the burden of overturning the decision of the lower court in the Northeastern Jurisdiction).

8) Dr. Lawrence opened up the floor for questions by members of the Judicial Council to either party, which followed for the next several minutes.

9) A closing prayer was offered by a Judicial Council member.

10) The public hearing was adjourned. (I believe the entire process took around 1 hr 30 mins.)

In all, it was an orderly and eminently reasonable expression of how the United Methodist Church goes about discerning difficult issues within the life of the church. There were clearly supporters of both parties present in the room, but no one attempted to disrupt the proceedings or cause a ruckus. (The only annoyance was a local member of the news media, who couldn’t get his microphone adjusted the way he wanted on the lectern and kept moving around between speakers in a way I found fairly unprofessional.) I would suggest that the hearing I witnessed ought to serve as a model for how all public meetings of the church should occur: with order, decorum, a respect for our polity, and mutual faith in the goodwill of all those present.

For what it’s worth: One of the first questions I was asked when I mentioned to some people that I had attended the hearing was which side (counsel for the church or counsel for Schaefer) seemed to do better in oral arguments. My only answer is that both litigators (Chris Fisher and Scott Campbell) seemed to me to present their cases well.

The problem in making a judgment any more specific than that due to two factors: the objective strength of the arguments they were making rests on their use and interpretation of numerous previous Judicial Council decisions (cited by decision #) and clauses in the Book of Discipline (cited by paragraph #). I have no familiarity with the Judicial Council decisions, and the Book of Discipline references were made so quickly that I didn’t get to write them down. (The one exception here that I noticed was an interesting strategy by Chris Fisher, the counsel for the church, which involved an interpretation of the “just resolution” provisions of the Discipline, which can be found in par. 2701 and following; I remembered this part of Fisher’s argument because it came up numerous times in his argument and would typically be the kind of theme I would have expected from his counter party.). So I’m sorry I can’t offer more substantive commentary than that.

Note: I believe the Judicial Council will announce its decisions for this case and the other matters before it during this session sometime early next week. When I see that news release, I will link to it here.

Update 10/27/14: The Judicial Council has upheld the appeals court’s reinstatement of Frank Schaefer. See the article by Linda Bloom of the United Methodist News Service on the Judicial Council affirming Schaefer’s reinstatement as clergy. Kathy Gilbert writes that the decision won’t end United Methodist same-sex debate. The text of Judicial Council decision 1270 can be found here.

 


 

Care for Children: A Wesleyan Calling

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by admin in Arkansas Conference, Evangelism & Mission, John Wesley, Local Church Ministry, United Methodist Church

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The ministry of early Methodists impacted the lives of men and women in remarkable ways. Under John Wesley’s leadership, the Methodist revival in the British Isles emphasized a gospel that included concerns for both body and soul.

The Methodist preaching of the time called for a renewal of the heart through faith in Jesus Christ. But it also taught that those whose hearts had been renewed would be changed in their outward lives. So for people of that time, it was only natural that powerful preaching services and prayer gatherings would go hand in hand with social outreach to feed the hungry, heal the sick and educate the unlettered.

One part of the early Methodist movement that often gets overlooked is the Methodists’ deep concern for the welfare of children. When John Wesley and other young men met to organize their spiritual lives in the way that would eventually be called “Methodist,” their Irish friend William Morgan led them in gathering together a group of poor children for instruction. The project was so successful that they eventually had to hire a local woman in Oxford to take on the role of schoolteacher.

The commitment to the wellbeing of children would become a hallmark of the Methodist movement when it began to expand in 1739—a point made by Richard Heitzenrater in his excellent book, Wesley and the People Called Methodists. One of the first major projects that John Wesley undertook after he committed to field preaching was the Kingswood School near Bristol, England, which was founded to provide education and Christian instruction for the poor children of the area.

Wesley also gathered the children in the places where Methodism spread so that they could form “little societies” similar to the societies intended for grown-ups. One of the questions Wesley began asking new Methodist preachers in 1766 reads, “Will you diligently and earnestly instruct the children, and visit from house to house?”

Wesley at times admitted that he found ministry with children to be difficult, but he never let that stand in the way of pursuing it at every opportunity.

Ministry with children in Arkansas

Many of our local churches in the Arkansas Conference see ministry with children as one of their primary activities. I think it’s encouraging to recognize how deeply embedded that commitment is in the Methodist DNA.

Wesley himself defined Methodism first and foremost as the “religion of the Bible.” And in that sense, it’s also true that the Methodist devotion to ministry with children is an outgrowth of Jesus’ own teaching: “Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).

Arkansas state flagThis past June our annual conference approved a Childhood Hunger Initiative that will seek to address food insecurity among children across the state of Arkansas. The hope is that every local church in Arkansas will participate in some way to help end childhood hunger across the state.

There is already good work being done on that front through various agencies, of course, and it is important to publicize and support it. Our local churches represent a huge resource to start new projects addressing children’s hunger in their own contexts, as well. So congregations ought to think creatively about what they can do to spread the gospel by caring for hungry children.

‘With utmost care’

We’ll be hearing more about this new initiative in the weeks ahead. As we prepare in prayerful and practical ways to commit ourselves to this good work, drawing on some Wesleyan wisdom might be helpful.

Wesley once referred to children in a sermon as “immortal spirits whom God hath for a time entrusted to your care, that you may train them up in all holiness, and fit them for the enjoyment of God in eternity.”

He believed children were gifts of God, as we all do. His point here is not just about the value of children, though. It is about the profound responsibility of Christian adults to guard them, protect them, provide for them and raise them as followers of Christ.

That’s an issue of faithful stewardship—care for the little boys and girls God has placed in our midst. So I think Wesley’s pastoral advice serves as a fitting word for us to consider as we embark together on a great missional ministry:

“Every child therefore you are to watch over with the utmost care, that when you are called to give an account of each to the Father of Spirits, you may give your accounts with joy and not with grief.”

________________________________

This article originally appeared in the Arkansas United Methodist newspaper’s October 3, 2014 edition. Reprinted with permission. You can read the article in its original form at this link.

 


 

Certificate in Wesleyan Studies

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by admin in Memphis Theological Seminary, Methodist House, Theological Education, United Methodist Church, Wesleyan Theology

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John Wesley Seal (1)_vectorizedlargetransparentWe’re offering a Certificate in Wesleyan Studies to students in our master’s-level degree programs here at Memphis Theological Seminary. The certificate program was approved by the MTS faculty last spring, and it is now available to students as of this academic year.

I’m really excited about this new development. I see the Certificate in Wesleyan Studies as the centerpiece of the new Methodist House of Studies here at MTS. Let me tell you about it…

What’s the purpose of the Certificate in Wesleyan Studies? It is really two-fold. First, the certificate program will give students the ability to focus a certain number of hours in their elective coursework around courses grounded in the study of the Wesleyan tradition. The courses that already exist offer a diverse range of subject areas: theology, church history, pastoral care, evangelism, rhetoric & religion, denominational studies, and leadership studies. Future courses are in the planning stages that will broaden that range into both preaching and spiritual formation. By taking advantage of these offerings, students can immerse themselves in a level of Wesleyan theological formation that we believe is unique.

The second purpose of the new certificate program is to demonstrate to church judicatory bodies that the Methodist House at MTS is serious about Wesleyan formation for pastoral ministry. Take my own church as an example: the United Methodist Church. We want our United Methodist graduates to be able to go before their Boards of Ordained Ministry with an M.Div degree under one arm and a Certificate in Wesleyan Studies under the other. We want bishops and annual conferences to know that they can send their students to MTS with the knowledge that they’ll be able to take advantage of innovative coursework designed to bring theory and practice together—all in a distinctly Wesleyan accent.

It is true that the requirements for the Certificate in Wesleyan Studies are not particularly easy to attain. Earning the certificate requires 15 hours of coursework in approved courses, in addition to active participation in the Methodist House of Studies during one’s student career here. We allow no transfer hours—all of the courses that apply for the certificate must be earned here at MTS. In our research about certificate programs during the development stage last year, we found that almost no certificates require more than 15 hours save those that are intended to result in some type of professional certification. In other words, we’ve set the bar high on what a student will have to accomplish to graduate with the certificate. But here’s the truth of the matter: That’s exactly how we want it.

We want the Certificate in Wesleyan Studies to really mean something, and we want our graduates who earn it to know that as well.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I believe Memphis Theological Seminary will be offering a wider range of coursework in Wesleyan Studies than any seminary in the United States within two years. We have a critical mass of faculty here who believe that the kind of traditioned approach to theological education that the Methodist House of Studies is advancing is crucial to how we will be going about forming men and women for ministry in the future.

We want to be on the leading edge of those changes.

And you know what? There are plenty of people out there who are considering seminary and wrestling with God’s call right now. If you are one of those people, I hope you’ll join us.

 


 

Methodist House of Studies @ MTS

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by admin in Memphis Theological Seminary, Methodist House, Theological Education, United Methodist Church, Wesleyan Tradition

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Good things are happening at Memphis Theological Seminary! I am excited to be able to announce publicly our new initiative known as the Methodist House of Studies. There will be much more to come. In the meantime, see the introductory video below:

 

 


 

We need a 'culture of call' in the church

10 Thursday Jul 2014

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

≈ 2 Comments

Our recent annual conference in Rogers, AR, featured a persistent theme that needs to be transmitted to every congregation in Arkansas.

The call. Specifically, God’s call upon the lives of women and men into ministry.

We’re all called, of course. Every one of us. Every baptized Christian is meant to be a minister of the gospel in one way or another.

I’m mostly interested in talking about the call into ordained ministry here, though.

That was the theme I kept hearing in Rogers.

Bishop Gary Mueller emphasized it many times. It was there in the great preaching we experienced. The Rev. Adam Hamilton spoke at length about its prominence in the way his church teaches confirmation. And it popped up in video after video of our retiring clergy.

Each time, the speaker in question would comment about how important it is to recognize the call—either in yourself or in someone you know. Oftentimes a call into ministry is persistent-yet-subtle. The right kind of environment is needed so the person called can really sense what is happening. Mentors and friends are crucial in helping those who are called to discern the nature of their calling.

Opening worship service at the 2014 Arkansas Annual Conference in Rogers, AR

Opening worship service at the 2014 Arkansas Annual Conference in Rogers, AR

I don’t think the frequency of people speaking about the importance of the call into ministry at our annual conference was any accident. I believe there is a Spirit-led energy in the church in Arkansas to focus on this work. For revival to happen, raising up the best leadership will be essential.

We need strong clergy leadership for the church to thrive in any age.

The Apostle Paul teaches us that “the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him.”

Yet in order for anybody to call on Christ Jesus, we have to know him first. So Paul goes on: “But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14, RSV).

The church must have preachers to proclaim the word of God, priests to celebrate the sacraments, and pastors to care for God’s flock. For those people to get where they need to be, they’ve got to hear God’s call and respond to it.

The Rev. Cornelia DeLee gave a humorous slant on God’s call when she shared her own attempts to avoid it during her retirement video: “You can run like Jonah,” she said. “But eventually you’re gonna come out dripping and puking seaweed to preach a 7-word sermon.”

Better not to run at all, of course! (If only it were that simple.)

Actually, Jonah’s story is a pretty good window into how difficult responding to a call from God can be. Because God’s call often interrupts our lives—and sometimes directs us to go places we’d never have dreamed about otherwise—it can be intimidating to say the least.

So many of those called in the Bible didn’t think they had the stuff to serve. Many of them saw themselves as people “with unclean lips,” in the words of the prophet Isaiah.

Sometimes it isn’t that responding to the call is the most difficult part. It may be hearing the call in the first place that is the challenge. This was my story, in some ways. I had many people urging me toward ministry from an early age. They saw what I could not. I also received some direct signs from the Holy Spirit, but for a long time I misinterpreted or just plain disregarded them.

The difficulty in hearing or responding to God’s call (or sometimes, both!) means that young men and women need a church around them that can support and nurture them. The right type of youth ministry is crucial. But youth group alone is not enough. The church has got to be invested in youth at every level.

Of course, some people get called at a later point in their lives. So the culture of call in the church needs to be present everywhere: in worship, in small groups, even in church administration.

We also have to do what people in our day sometimes tend to shy away from: direct engagement and prompting. If you know someone in your congregation that you believe is called into ministry—whether it’s a youth or someone older—you should start praying for that person daily. Then you should start figuring out a way to engage that person in conversation to let him or her know what you’ve seen.

Think about it: The Holy Spirit could be trying to use you to convey Jesus’ deep desire to bring another servant of the gospel into ministry. If you suspect that may be the case, then don’t delay.

The Spirit and the church are counting on you.

_____________________________

This article originally appeared in the Arkansas United Methodist newspaper’s July 4, 2014 edition. Reprinted with permission. You can read the article in its original form at this link.

Discipleship Formation: A Wesleyan Approach

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by admin in Discipleship, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, John Wesley, Means of Grace, Practical Theology, Spiritual Formation, United Methodist Church

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Andrew Thompson teaching at the TN Annual Conference on June 10 2014My annual conference road show continued this week at the Tennessee Annual Conference at Brentwood United Methodist Church in Brentwood, TN. I taught a session on ‘Equipping’ for Discipleship as a part of Bishop Bill McAlilly’s four-part teaching series covering the themes of:

Discover | Equip | Connect | Send

The spirit both in Brentwood this week and in Paducah, KY, last week at the Memphis Annual Conference has been wonderful. Indeed, it seems the Holy Spirit is at work amongst the folks of these two conferences. It is also tremendous to see how much the annual conference sessions seem geared toward making conference a real means of grace. (The difference between how annual conferences are run now compared to those of my early years in ministry is remarkable.)

The great tech crew at the Tennessee Conference have already uploaded the teaching session I led. For anyone interested, here’s the link (w/ my part starting at about the 14:45 mark):

I’m trying to capture something of the scope of engaged discipleship in a Wesleyan framework in this session. Within Wesleyan spirituality, we can never separate what we are doing as disciples of Jesus Christ (including how we’re being equipped!) from what it means to grow in holiness of heart & life. That means that discipleship is really about sanctification—how our hearts are being transformed by God’s love and how our spiritual gifts are being cultivated towards real fruitfulness.

Feel free to leave comments or questions below. The material here is part of what I think is of most importance in the life of the church today. I’d love to hear your thoughts, too.


 

Equipping the Saints for the Work of Ministry

30 Friday May 2014

Posted by admin in Discipleship, Spiritual Formation, United Methodist Church, Wesleyan Theology

≈ 3 Comments

Memphis Annual Conference

Memphis Annual Conference

I’ve been asked by Bishop Bill McAlilly of the Memphis and Tennessee Annual Conferences to teach a session on “Equipping” at the upcoming sessions of those annual conferences in Paducah, KY, and Brentwood, TN. My contribution will fit into a larger theme of “Discover—Equip—Connect—Send” that will guide the workshop portions on engaged discipleship.

I wanted to offer a preview for those who are interested in the session on Equipping who will be attending either of the annual conference sessions. This material might also be helpful for others who are thinking about what it means to be nurture, formed, and prepared for engaged discipleship generally.

Breaking out the movement of the call to faith and formation of discipleship into these four categories is a very helpful way to think about what it means to live into the fullness of the Christian life. Within the area of Equipping, I think a number of important practical and spiritual themes must emerge:

  • First, the conviction that all baptized Christians are called into ministry. Indeed, I believe this is the very heart of discipleship when we practice it in our lives. Those who follow Jesus do so in order to know him—which means both to be in communion with him and to go forth in his name to do what he calls us to do.
  • Second, the recognition that God calls us into the particular types of ministry for which we have nascent spiritual gifts. When Jesus says that God the Father will send the Holy Spirit in his name, he says that the Spirit will teach us and will remind us of all that Jesus has said (John 14:26). The Spirit’s ‘teaching’ is akin to gardening in the sense that it nurtures wonderful things within us that grow up and can then be used for their intended purposes.
  • Third, the understanding that spiritual gifts must be cultivated in order to reach their full potential within us. This is the movement from having the capacity for some good thing to having that thing as an active part of who we are; in other words, it is the move from potential to actualization. The best reference here is probably the cultivation of holy virtues, which are excellences of character that come from grace-infused habituation.
  • Fourth, the realization that spiritual gifts are meant to be used for building up the church. We are given gifts for the upbuilding of the body of Christ. That is as much a core part of the Apostle Paul’s moral teaching about the life of discipleship as anything. It’s implications are great indeed: if we want to be counted as faithful, then we will constantly be engaged in the work of discerning, cultivating, and applying our gifts for ministry as a way to extend the mission of Jesus Christ through his holy church.
Tennessee Annual Conference

Tennessee Annual Conference

The key text for the Equipping session will be Ephesians 4:10-16. There’s a wonderful rhythm to this passage, which speaks about gifts given by Jesus Christ to appointed leaders in the church, who then help to equip all Christian believers, who then engage in the work of ministry, so that all of us would come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. It starts and ends with Jesus, in other words. But in the process every single one of us has an important role to play. When we come to understand how central that calling is upon our lives, then I believe it can become revolutionary to our understanding of what the Christian faith is really all about.

The Memphis Annual Conference will be held June 1-4, 2014, in Paducah, KY. My teaching session on Equipping will take place at 10:25 a.m. on Tuesday, June 3rd. I’ll do about 40 minutes of presentation, and then we’ll have time for around 20 minutes of small group discussion about some of the Wesleyan spiritual framework for equipping discipleship.

The Tennessee Annual Conference will be held June 8-11, 2014, in Brentwood, TN. My session there will take place on Tuesday, June 10th beginning at 10:35 a.m., in a format similar to what we’ll do in Paducah the week prior.

For anyone attending either conference session, I’ll look forward to being with you in a few days. If you have any questions or comments you’d like to offer in advance, feel free to do so in the comments section below!

 


 

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