| A unique mix of politics, faith BY ERIK ALSGAARDUMCONNECTION STAFF  At the age of 40, in 1994, Mike McCurry already held his dream job: spokesman for President Bill Clinton. By the time he was 44, McCurry had left the White House to do, as he says, something different.
That something turned out to be, in part, church school superintendent at his home church, St. Pauls UMC in Kensington. I had always been active at St. Pauls, even throughout my time at the White House, said McCurry. Shortly after I left the White House, Chet Kirk, who was then senior pastor, asked me to take a job they had not been able to fill here at St. Pauls for a long time. For McCurry, who led a very public professional life for many years, facing lights, cameras and reporters on a daily basis and who found himself in the media vortex of the Monica Lewinsky-President Clinton scandal, his life today is very different. A lot of my career was devoted to public service, he said, but Ive become more convinced that in the small, quiet places of the faith community, you can have a bigger impact on peoples lives. Another difference. At the June Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference, McCurry was elected as one of nine lay people to the 2004 General Conference, to be held next spring in Pittsburgh, Penn. For me, its going to be fascinating to learn a lot, said McCurry, who will be a first-time delegate. I know there are a lot of issues that are very important and that well have to wrestle with, but Im going to try and keep my eye on the ball, which is a broader set of issues, I think. As a life-long Methodist, McCurry is well aware of some of the issues facing the next legislative meeting of United Methodism.  Look, he said, we can get all caught up in issues related to Bishop (Joseph) Sprague (Chicago Area), or to homosexual ordination, or the things that have traditionally captivated General Conference, or we can get on with this very serious business of how we go out there and reach new people with the Gospel.
For McCurry, politics and faith not only mix, they can mix well. Partisan politics Democrats and Republicans and whos up and whos down I kind of agree that thats not the primary place that the church needs to locate its work, he said. But, in the business of impacting a community and dealing with those who are dispossessed and doing a lot of things that are inherently political, thats right there at the core of what were called to do in the Gospel. McCurry said that for his journey of faith, he has recognized that a high-spirited group of people who are driven by faith in God can do an awful lot of good work that many would consider political, even though its not partisan political. Now a consultant for corporations and non-profits, McCurry works on increasing better communication with what he calls a skeptical public in the age of non-stop information. McCurry has served on the Board of Governors at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., since 2000, and is also involved in a start-up internet company, Grassroots Enterprises, Inc. While at the White House, McCurry grew increasingly concerned about the amount of information bombarding Americans on a daily basis, and how people would or would not be able to sort out what matters most. Communication, he said, especially the old traditional methods, was growing harder and harder. In the 21st century, groups are going to have to think more clearly about how to communicate effectively and, in the church, theyre going to have to think about how to evangelize in a virtual way, he said. If you rely on primarily television, you miss many opportunities to connect with people. McCurry thinks The United Methodist Church, as a denomination, has been too reluctant to communicate its message to the outside world. We somehow or another have not expressed ourselves well when it comes to making disciples, and I really am excited about seeing in the church the idea that we, too, can be just as evangelical as more fundamentalist denominations. Mike McCurry, at this stage of his life, seems to be enjoying it to the fullest. The expression of my faith is almost seamlessly interwoven with my professional experiences, he said. Its all kind of come together nicely for me. | 
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