| NEWS Opportunities for Learning The Revs. Craig Miller and Rob Weber and several other church-development experts will be teaching at the2004 School of Congregational Development Aug. 5-10 at Ginghamsburg UMC in Tipp City, Ohio. The school focuses on new church development, turning around churches and working with high-potential churches. Registration, which is $400, is due before July 5. More information on church development is available from theBaltimore-Washington Conference Board of Congregational Life. Spiritual Leader Checklist | Training seeks to make God real in a fragmented world BY MELISSA LAUBERUMCONNECTION STAFF  United Methodists must become storytellers, and not just story dwellers if the church is to flourish, a group of 30 local church leaders learned at a workshop at First UMC in Hyattsville.
The workshop, held March 26-28 and sponsored by the General Board of Discipleship and the United Methodist Publishing House, was titled Connecting Making God Real in a Fragmented World.  Churches must learn to step out of the assumption that attending church is the norm, said the Rev. Rob Weber, a pastor and author from Shreveport, La. We are living in an age of cultural transition. Were trying to do ministry one way, but its a different world.
According to Weber, todays society centers on velocity: things happen fast, information abounds, people have innumerable choices and the globe is shrinking. Many people today are not connected to the Christian story. They drive past churches and have very little idea of whats happening inside. We live in a fragmented and fractured society, he said. In addition, said the Rev. Craig Kennet Miller of the  General Board of Discipleship, the church is just beginning to learn to effectively minister to and with baby boomers. However, in a year and a half, in 2006, the country will experience its largest youth boom ever. The influence of the millennials, those born between 1988 and 1984 will peak in the years 2006 through 2012. More kids are in this generation than in any other in U.S. history, Miller said. There will be a 20 percent increase in the amount of young people between 1990 and 2005. That has major implications for the church. Millennials, Miller said, grew up with Rodney King and the L.A. riots, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Oklahoma City bombing, the school shootings in Columbine, the Clinton impeachment, the D.C. snipers and the September 11 bombings. hey long for spirituality and God, Miller said. They dont want to go bowling. They want the church to teach them to pray. They want real relationships. Theyre looking for reality. They want to know whats true. Churches that dont adjust to these new realities run the risk of becoming antiquated and irrelevant, Weber said. According to Miller, in todays model of church, a professional minister does the ministry for people and does academic preaching in a church with programs run by committees. The competition is with the church down the street to have better programs. In 1965, Methodists were the largest denomination because we were organized, Miller said. But this model has become obsolete. The 21st century model of church, Miller continued, is a ministry of the baptized, the pastor does relational preaching and vision casting while spiritual disciplines are developed by the members in small groups. Vision, not program, is central. In the old way, pastors were clerics who maintained an organization. Their main role used to be counseling. Todays pastors are called upon to listening to the congregation, community and God and then cast a vision of where the church is going, Miller said. Miller also pointed out that conflict still arises in this new model, as it does in every church, approximately four years after the pastor arrives.  Pastors must create a small, but spiritually healthy core group of people around them, he said. The conflict is usually between three or four people and the pastor. The core group insulates the pastor and shared leadership is the goal to lead the congregation into the future.
None of us is just converted once. Life is a series of conversions, Weber said. To become tellers of, and participants in, Christs story, the church must recover its memory, identity and purpose. |
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