During this Sunday’s sermon, we will return to the theme of the Lord as shepherd, probably most familiar to us in Psalm 23. The sermon will be available on Holston View United Methodist Church’s website.
Today’s preparatory text:
Mark 6:34 (NLT)—Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
By Chuck Griffin
When I first established the Methodist Life website, I had two basic intertwined purposes. One was to provide Wesleyan meditations through the “Life Talk” blog, and the other was to create a space for basic small group information. Both, I hoped, would encourage deeper, more communal discipleship.
The Rev. ‘Debo Onabanjo’s Monday LifeTalk contribution, combined with my preparatory work for this Sunday’s sermon, caused me to think about the basics of living as Methodists once again. Most of us are aware there are big changes coming—in a little over a year, we hope to see the activation of a denomination firm in its support of traditional Methodist principles.
As we consider our verse from Mark today, I want to reassert something, a forecast that frankly has annoyed or perplexed at least a few of my fellow conservative Methodists. This impending division, and all the strife surrounding it, will prove useless if we do not become a different kind of church than the UMC currently represents.
It is not enough to say, “We are traditional,” and then think everything is fixed once we’re operating under a new name and logo. Like the excited but confused crowd waiting for Jesus’ boat to arrive, we have to relearn how to hear the one true shepherd’s voice and function as a unified flock.
Early Methodists were good at this. First, they took the Holy Bible seriously, intelligently approaching it as the inspired word of God. They let it guide them in their understanding of the earliest church doctrines, and then they did their best to live their lives according to those principles. In particular, they met in small groups, holding each other accountable regarding their regular engagement with God and their pursuit of holiness.
Let’s remember that the current United Methodist Church already is traditional—on paper. If we were still living as people of God’s word, bound tightly in communal accountability, no changes would be required to our Book of Discipline. I believe we would be a force against the creeping secularism infecting parts of the global church today.
In a new denomination, we still can be such a force, but we who call ourselves traditional Methodists have to understand that most of us fail to live according to the Methodist model, at least in America. (We have much to learn from our more communal brothers and sisters in places like Africa and Asia.)
How many of us are truly immersed in God’s word, treating the revelations there as a life-or-death matter? How many of us find ourselves committed to a properly organized Christian small group, one determined to reach lost sheep and grow its members into reflections of Jesus Christ’s glory?
Restless sheep, gather into flocks to listen to the shepherd’s voice. Listen intently, as Christ still has great compassion for us. He will teach and guide us, and we will move as one.
Lord, as you do new works through the movement called Methodism, keep us rooted in your very biblical truths about community and holiness. Amen.
Methodist Life 
I agree that change must occur beyond labeling.of the new church, but what that change should/will be is something that must be decided over time by the community, and not just the theologians. Numerous articles have been written about the need for small groups, and I agree, but I also think that making them mandatory would be a grave mistake that may handicap the church from the very beginning. I think there is a need for patience and a substantial amount of grace for the folks willing to join this new venture–that may mean following the patterns, traditions of the old UMC for awhile until it becomes obvious to the community that these habits no longer make sense (and this may take a generation to accomplish).
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I would agree that no one should be forced into small groups. That would make them pointless. Small groups do need to become our underlying paradigm, though, and you’re right, this might take a generation to accomplish.
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