A.D.D.-U.M.C. October 31, 2010
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Mission of the Church, Transformation and Change, Vision.Tags: Church Leadership, Mission & Purpose, Values, Vision
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Church, church, you are distracted by many things…
In response to a pastor’s call to pray for the people of Haiti (and the current cholera crisis), I heard a lay person whisper, “I thought we took care of that!” I think she was referring to the earthquake response earlier in the year, but we hardly “took care” of anything. Conditions in Haiti have been horrible non-stop 
since the quake, even though the UMC and other denominations and relief agencies have moved on to other concerns. We suffer a subtle but significant attention deficit disorder — trying to attend to so many things that we pay attention to virtually none for more than a fleeting instant. We want to focus on leadership AND new churches AND reaching new audiences AND revitalizing existing churches AND be in ministry with the poor AND global health AND church growth AND rethinking church AND A Call to Action AND elimination of root causes of poverty AND Nothing But Nets AND Change the World AND AIDS AND disaster response AND apportionments AND guaranteed appointments AND the elimination of institutional racism AND General Conference AND a hundred meetings/workshops/seminars/task forces/tables AND… Jesus wept.
There is no clear priority order for any of these things. If the UMC could do one — and only one — of the things listed above, we would find ourselves mired in an endless debate over what it should be. And most people would be fine focusing on one, but within moments would shift focus to something else. All this because we are not really sure why we are here. We are pulled in so many directions, and because we aren’t sure where we ought to go, we are “tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine,” debate, and division. Everything is important, so nothing is more important than anything else. Everything is a priority so that nothing is a priority. We dabble in a little of everything so that we don’t have to excel at anything. There is nothing to be held accountable to because we never bother identifying concrete missional objectives to measure. We just count instead — the number of members, the number of churches, the number of dollars — which tell us very little about how well we are “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” We are regularly accused of mediocrity because that is all people see. It is virtually impossible to comprehend all the good things The United Methodist Church is doing because we are doing a little of so very much!
