| Be not a frayed (church,
that is) Whenever I exercise at my local YMCA, my mind drifts to obtuse and strange things. I was lifting weights (after doing my 35 minutes on the treadmill) the other night, and a very scary thought crossed my mind. As I lifted, I noticed the only thing keeping the weights connected to the handles was a thin black cord. Very thin. As I did repetitions 10, 11 and 12, I began to ponder how such a thing could support the tremendous, humongous, gargantuan amount of weight I was lifting. (Okay it was 105 pounds. Honestly. But in my book, thats a lot.) Then I noticed the little plaque mounted on the bottom of the steel bar at the base of the machine. There, in small print, were the dimensions should anyone need to replace the cable. And then I knew. This was no mere cord, no mere strand of wire. This was a cable, composed of several strands of wire. Cable, not cord. Then my mind thought back to San Francisco. If youve ever been there and hopped a ride on the famous cable cars, you may have seen how the cable pulleys and motors make it all work. According to Don Holmgren, spokesman for the museum, the cables are one-and-a-quarter inches thick, and consist of six steel strands of 19 wires each, all wrapped around a sisal rope. This provides the strength and flexibility required to withstand temperature changes and the gripping and ungripping of the cable cars themselves, he said. The basic design, he added, is virtually unchanged since 1873. Why all this discussion of cables? Ive been pondering the health of our United Methodist Church lately. It seems kind of frayed. Some for instances: z People debated and discussed whether the church should support the war in Iraq. Thats well and good. With the war winding down, you watch: people will take up the issue of whether the church should be involved with reparations in Iraq in partnership with other relief organizations, and/or in partnership with the government. Not how the church should respond, but if. z Because of the economy, people are being laid off, it seems, almost daily. The rapid rise and fall of the stock market has people wondering if theyll have anything left in their retirement fund. Meanwhile, billions of the worlds people have no clue what retirement leisure means. z Membership in the church continues to decline in the United States. If current trends continue, The United Methodist Church will have more members outside the United States than inside before I retire. This is not a bad thing. However, how a U.S.-dominated UMC shifts its mission and ministry emphasis will be cause for both praying and fraying. So yes, I think the church is frayed. Thank God its not broken. Thats because The United Methodist Church, for all its faults, is like that piece of cable many strands, many churches, wound and wrapped around one another, making the sum stronger than its collective parts. One of the incredible strengths of The United Methodist Church is that we are connectional. Often ridiculed, sometimes questioned, the connectional fibers of our church enable us to make disciples for Jesus in places you and I can hardly imagine: from missionaries in all corners of the world to Saving Stations on street corners in Baltimore and Washington, to wells dug deep in the soil of Africa. All this is made possible, not through the strength of one strand one church but through the many strands, the connected churches, making many strong cables. I will never be able to understand how a local United Methodist church could not support the idea of what John Wesley called connexion and still call itself United Methodist. Sure, there are times of frayed-ness. How we respond to this fact of life is whats important. It is at the times of being frayed when churches seem to seek out someone or something to blame for their condition. And it is at that moment when church leadership needs to begin the process of reattaching the church to the whole cable to reaffix it to the core, to support missionaries locally and overseas, to support 100 percent of church askings, to provide social outreach ministries that meet peoples needs, to seek justice and mercy for members and community, to make disciples of Jesus Christ. If the church doesnt, the fray continues. The grumbling and murmuring grows. When it does reattach, the fraying subsides and the church is made stronger. As that happens, as the one wire the local church is made stronger, the whole cable is, too. In other words, a church should ask itself, Are ye cable? Be not a frayed. | 
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