Faithful urged to imagine church future
04-02-2010Heather Hahn
Editor
Throughout the month of March, Bishop Charles Crutchfield and Imagine Ministry team members traveled around the state to share this message: The church must change to remain relevant in American life.
At regional meetings in Little Rock, Fayetteville, Wynne and Camden, the bishop encouraged United Methodists to share their thoughts about what form those changes might take.“In order to be the church effectively in the 21st century, we are going to have to be a church that has changed the way we do the ministry of Jesus Christ,” Crutchfield said in a DVD shown at the beginning of each meeting. “The Gospel is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. But the way in which we hear and appropriate the Gospel into our lives is different from generation to generation.”
The DVD, which will be shown in each local church, conveys some sobering information about declining participation in Arkansas Conference.
Among the statistics the DVD showed:
- From 2004 to 2008, the number of Arkansas United Methodist churches declined from 722 to 697.
- More than half of the conference's congregations in 2008 had a worship attendance of 34 or less.
- More than half of the conference's congregations had no baptisms in 2008.
Crutchfield and Imagine Ministry team members stressed that they did not have the answers for reversing the decline. They were eager to hear from United Methodists around the state about their ideas.
“We want to include as many voices as possible in this conversation,” the bishop said.
To that end, he is urging every congregation in the Arkansas Conference to hold gatherings where churchgoers can weigh in on three questions:
- What hope does your congregation find in looking at the future in a different way?
- What worries your congregation the most about this conversation regarding the future?
- What are some ways your local church can act differently to realize the hopes we have for our future?
Individual United Methodists also will have the opportunity to share their responses to these questions in a Web survey at www.arumc.org/imagineministry. Survey data from each church will be sent to that church for review in early May.
Churches should consolidate these conversations into one response no longer than three pages for submission on June 7 at Annual Conference.
The regional meetings offered the first glimpse of the broader discussion local churches will have. At the end of each meeting, the floor was opened to comments.
More than 600 people attended the first regional meeting on March 7 at Pulaski Heights UMC in Little Rock.
Jan Owens, a lay speaker at Quapaw Quarter UMC in Little Rock, said she and most other United Methodists struggle with how best to witness to other people get them to come to church.
“Somehow, we have to get it into the members of our congregations how we do this without turning people off and making people think we’re just Jesus freaks,” she said. “We have to make people understand why we feel happy going to church.”
Ryan Rush, senior pastor of England First UMC, said one challenge United Methodists and other Christians face is that a number of people have been hurt by the church.
“We have to build relationships, go where they don’t expect us to go,” Rush said. “They used to call Methodist ministers when Arkansas was still a territory, ‘swamp angels’ because they went into the swamps where nobody else wanted to go.”
Reggie Russell, the senior pastor of St. Paul UMC Maumelle, suggested that churches need to adapt to changes in their surrounding neighborhoods. He gave his own church as an example. Increasingly, he said, whites are moving into what was once a predominantly African-American neighborhood.
“We have to reach out to those who are different than we are, those who may speak a different language or the color of their skin is different,” he said. “I feel more comfortable worshiping in an African-American church, but if it means building up the kingdom of God for the purpose of my Lord, then I’m willing to bring white people into my church.
Several echoed his sentiment with a hearty “Amen.”
Crutchfield formed the Imagine Ministry team last summer to examine how the Arkansas Conference does church. Any proposals that grow out of these conversations will be taken up at the 2011 Annual Conference.
Susan Ledbetter, an associate pastor at First UMC in Bentonville and Imagine Team member, said in the DVD that she is hopeful about the church’s future in Arkansas.
“What seems negative ultimately gives us an opportunity,” she said. “I didn’t sign up for a lost cause. I signed up for a cause for the lost.”
To learn more about Imagine Ministry and fill out a Web survey on your hopes for the church, visit www.arumc.org/imagineministry.
