²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.  ~ Romans 8:22-25

I write this a few days after the close of a worldwide conference of our United Methodist Church.  And I find myself confused, deflated, and once more?  I’m aching, aching, aching for Jesus to come again.  I’m not a big “second-coming” theologian, but right now, I’m calling on that a LOT, because I don’t know where else to turn.  And when that happens – when humans fail, when the church fails, when our brokenness has the final word:  I go to Jesus.

O Jesus.  O Jesus.  OJESUS.  How have we come to this?  Please, O Jesus, come crashing onto the scene and set things right.  Please, O Jesus, help us be the church you long us to be.  O, Jesus: Turn our tables!  O Jesus: turn over our conniving antics, our human strategizing, our political, divisive tactics and our ugly, ugly ugly words of hate spewed on every side (and written and affirmed into our own UMC Book of Discipline) towards God’s people one and all.  And fill us with the love that God bore into us from our very conception.  Help us to know one another by name, help us to see and value one another — and your church — as you do – a holy entity of love, embrace and grace.

When I call upon my Lord, and I think of the incarnation … I return immediately to my good ole’ GENX love of  Tony Kushner’s Angels of America … and this is the very image that comes to my mind.  Jesus? Angel? … Love of God that is so big, so expansive, so powerful … it just busts on through whatever wall or barrier we might try to put up:

But still, there are times (and this is one of them) that even going to Jesus lands me unsure logistically.  As as an ordained clergywomen serving a vital, growing, young and older and all ages together too, Reconciling congregation, I find myself leading from a pile of wreckage after the goings-on at the St. Louis General Conference.  I find myself leading from a big, ugly, mile-high pile of squashed dreams, broken hearts and weary, wounded souls.  You see at this big meeting of the United Methodist Church, we … once again … as an institution … continued to trample on God’s people, specifically upon our LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters.  As a worldwide church, we approved a plan that our own Bishop Hagiya described as follows:

“By now you have probably all heard that the General Conference Special Called Session is now over, and the Traditional Plan prevailed (53% – 438 votes to 47% – 384 votes). Although it does have repressive ramifications to our LGBTQI community, the Judicial Council has ruled much of it unconstitutional. At the same time, this decision is also symbolic in its implications because it signals a turn of the United Methodist Church to a more judgmental and political entity that is against inclusion and for exclusion.”  ~ Bishop Grant J. Hagiya; Los Angeles Area Resident Bishop

Indeed, this repression signals a turn in our large church body.  And it indeed has brought many of us to tears and despair and righteous anger.  Myself included.

I have begun thinking about my call to ministry and my ability to serve a church that has taken this action.  I have begun thinking through a personal and professional exit strategy, and how I could use my gifts to serve God’s church in another capacity.  In this current space we find ourselves in, with this action, these words, this plan … I am bereft of the foundation to do the ministry that I am called to do.  As a deeply, inseparable and foundational piece of my theology, I do not understand or experience God as exclusionary or punitive.  I do not understand my LGBTQIA+ clergy brothers and sisters and lay brothers and sisters as any less of God, or any less ordained to serve God.  I full heartedly trust that God wishes our UMC facilities to be open to LGBTQIA+ weddings, and our UMC clergy to be fully open to performing them.

And I also see ashes; feel the heat of destruction; smell the burnt air.  I hear God’s people crying.  I see our LGBTQIA+ church that is angry and scared.  I hear allies and advocates pondering aloud: “What now? …  Maybe I should leave?  I could go join the UU or UCC or Episcopal church down the way?  What do you think, Pastor Melinda?”

O Jesus.  O Jesus.  OJESUS.  How have we come to this?  Please, O Jesus, come crashing onto the scene and set things right.  Please, O Jesus, help us be the church you long us to be.   

As I write this, I think of my own two children that my clergy husband and I are raising in this church of harmful ways and words.  But?  That is not their experience; they are loved so well in this church.  They are loved in this family, and learning that God is love.  They are disciples themselves not because I wish them to be, but because this church has helped them to see and trust in a loving, playful, forgiving, all-embracing God; in our Lord and Savior and God’s grace that is always with us … in the school classroom and in our beside prayers.

I recall our dinner church just last night where we began to prepare for the Lenten season.  Last night, we had a campfire and invited the church to consider what they might let go of/take on this Lent.  We wrote our ideas on slips of paper and put them into the fire.  And then … we continued being church.  We celebrated this month’s birthdays and baptisms with cake.  We read the Bible; we sang.  We formed small groups and shared our lives in Christ with one another.

In the midst of this macro-level global wreckage, we gathered and we churched in east Long Beach.  I saw tears.  I shed some myself.  And I helped my own children place their Lenten “letting go” papers into the fire while watching others do the same.

This is the church that I know and I love.  Whether it is called the United Methodist Church; whether it is a global, multi-million dollar, mainline institutional church … or not — this is the church that I serve and that my children are being raised in and that I know and love with my whole heart.  This is the church that I was ordained to serve. and that I will serve until I no longer can.

So, where I find myself now … is that I am waiting.  I am waiting to understand and to see the logistics of moving ahead.  I don’t wait well; I may need your help (yoga, anyone?) I am waiting in the wreckage (somewhat stymied) to see what is being born.  Because I trust that God is not done with us yet.  Where the UMC in its current configuration has lost my trust, God and Jesus have not.  Nor will they ever.  And God is simply not done here.

This Sunday evening, I will travel to be church with our California-Pacific conference and hear from Bishop Hagiya.  I invite you to join me, as you can.   Let’s hear his wisdom in what being church looks like in the wreckage.  Let’s listen together how God is working to bring something new, ever bigger, more inclusive, more expansive, more loving and whole —  into the Western church — because I would say that I saw it last night … it’s already underway.

Something new is being born.

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.  ~ Romans 8:22-25

Special Worship Service

Sunday, March 3, 2019, 6:00PM
Pasadena First United Methodist Church
500 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91101

Your pastor chixta, mama, sister in Christ,

Melinda

 

It’s been a few years since I sat down to blog.  It hasn’t been for want of things to say or even time to write; it took me some time to get to the bottom of why I stopped.  What came to me was that the lag-time between my posts has been the result of a bit of a feeling of futility with larger systems at play in the world.  And yes, this was triggered by the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  Indeed, it’s clear that across the American political and cultural spectrum that our 2016 presidential election was a jolting, electrifying, never-turning-back shock to the system.  And?  I do see that electing Donald Trump to the White House, while utterly debilitating to some, was incredibly freeing and even energizing to others.

And?  It’s this piece that continues to really gnaw at my heart.  For it’s never been clearer that there is a unfathomably deep chasm at the core of our culture, communities, families — systems — that continues to wreak devastating affects on us all.

Part of my work as a pastor lies both in deep listening to God’s people and creation as well as working to bring people together to do this listening work.  Because that’s what Jesus did … all … the … time.  He brought people together.  And he listened.  Lately, I think of the young Jesus in the temple:

“After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”  ~ Luke 2:46

And I will admit?  This bringing together-listening work is taxing and full of setbacks.  I’m not going to lie.  (Doesn’t lying on a blog defeat the whole point of this?  I mean isn’t a blog really just a modern-day personal confessions forum?)  I do have days where I would truly rather just hear from, read about and engage with people who think, talk, dress, dream and act as I do.  People who vote like I do.  People who see the world and respond to what we see in similar ways to mine.  But truth is … that? is exactly this that has landed where we are.  In this unfathomably deep chasm.

And the hard truth here is …  that’s not my role as a Christian leader, nor is it our collective role as disciples of Christ.

Our work together is to welcome the stranger.  Yes, that does mean welcoming the immigrant seeking asylum or a safer, better way of life, yes it does mean that stranger.  But it also means that stranger next door or down the hall or in the next cubicle … who voted differently than you.  And the person who uses words that you don’t or makes choices that you wouldn’t.  And the person who has a different educational background and is in a different income tax bracket.

I am not a social scientist.  But I do see that in a world where we are seemingly evermore connected, evermore bombarded with knowledge, facts, photos, videos, sounds and tastes of the world around us … we are equally evermore at a loss engaging with the other.  We are both bereft of opportunities to come together in community …  and I would say … that even more importantly?  We all too often neither prioritize nor value those times and places of coming together to play, eat, learn, sing, share … just to be.  Because that’s how God designed us — to be together, to listen to one another, to learn about and share life with one another.  With those similar and different from us.

As a pastor in a suburban east Long Beach, I truly spend as much (if not more) of my time helping people to value the gift of community and guiding people to learn practices of what that actually looks like than I do writing a sermon or reading the Bible.  I spend as much of my time just meeting with people, listening, engaging, inviting … over and over again … as I do visiting folks in the hospital, officiating weddings or memorial services.

Many would say that this is not a pastor’s work.  And, I beg to differ.  I would say that it is likely one of the very few things that we can do to affect the transformative change — the transformative change that Jesus died on the cross for — in the world in which we live today.  It is only in this work, this communal listening, getting to know one another — those similar and different — their experiences, their stories, their narratives work … building relationships across the chasm that we are ever, ever going to truly affect the transformation that God has put … at our fingertips.

Help me hear your story.  Help me see a bigger picture of what God is doing with us all.  Just text me and let’s meet for a cup of coffee.

And?  If I have already heard your story, or you are itching to go deeper into what God is doing with us all … invite someone you don’t know that well … to coffee and just listen.

Engage.

Be brave for Jesus.  Be brave for the world.  It’s at our fingertips.

 

 

 

You may think it would be the fatigue of the long hours, or the heartache of walking with parishioners through loss.  You may think it’s the exposure to ravages of poverty, racism, homophobia, abuse, sexism, hunger in our community.  You may think that it’s the immense disparity of the world’s resources. You may even think it’s the media’s misconstruance of what following Jesus looks like.

And truth is that all  of those experiences do weigh upon this pastor’s heart.  Heavily.  Constantly.

But the thing that takes the greatest toll on my faith, my energy, my commitment as an ordained clergywoman?   It’s the unspoken, but constant and underlying pressure of these two questions:

• “Who else is coming?”
• “How many were there?”

Some context for us.  I’ve been going pretty much nonstop since mid-April.  And not surprisingly, the pace has taken its toll.  It’s taken me some time to get here, but I’m in the middle of vacation time, and I’ve finally been able to slow down, to listen, to see, to be.  I’ve been prioritizing … nothing; prioritizing nothing because it’s in that nothingness space where God speaks to me the most clearly.  And, among other important things like playing with goats and swimming with my littles, I’ve been needing to do a whole lotta nothing , and just listen to God.

In the quiet of prayer, in watching the sunrise, the sunset, I have found these two questions coming to me.  As I’ve prayed to God to release me from the anxiety permeating my church leadership, these two questions keep coming.  So, I’ve begun to pray to let these questions go, and be freed of their immense hold on me.

Why?  These questions are so normal, so typical, and get posed from all corners of the church — from all ages and stages of parishioners to clergy colleagues and friends to church growth experts to district superintendents and Tables I, II and III.  But for me?  What God has helped me see?  Every time the questions are posed; every single time (whether in a text message or social media or at church council) these questions are posed … I feel my heart start to pound; my pulse begin to increase; a clenching grow in my tummy and a wave of nausea rumble through me.

These questions are gonna kill me.

I know that they come from a good place.  Well, maybe they do.  At best, these two questions come from a place of sincere longing for God’s church to grow — God’s church to expand the world’s capacity for love.  At worst, these questions force ministry (and my efforts) into quantitative structures that can be judged worthy, successful, “growing,” … via numbers and personalities.  My middle school pre-algebra equation would look like:

(large numbers  + “key personalities”) @ ministry event = SUCCESS

These questions deem something worthy, fundable, successful, and mark one’s follow-ability factor.  And they are constant.  The questions are constant.  And both the questions and answers can be just as unforgiving, just as damning, as the folks and the paperwork posing them.  These questions wear on my soul as they force me to make ministry quantifiable, objectifiable and culturally appealing.

And, in my experience, steering the world toward the heart of God is none of these things.

In the end, I guess what has come to me is that when the church has come to a place where its work, my work, is constantly put to the test of numbers, success, popularity, cultural appeal?, we teach its people to evaluate the mission of the church with the wrong questions.  And, these wrong questions betray the mission of the church.  God’s church isn’t here to pack in the numbers and prove to those already present that we are doing something cool with our time. (But we are – ha!)  God’s church is here to help God’s people to grow spiritually, to know Christ, to learn healthy, life-changing, heart-transforming habits of living.  God’s church helps us know what being God’s family looks like.  The church leads us to deeper understanding and living out of holy scripture; of serving like Jesus and being a part of God’s beautiful design for creation.

But right now, I’m wrestling deeply with my current call and place of ministry and the simple truth is that these two questions are gonna kill me.  They are constant and relentless.  They are degrading, unnerving, life-sucking, exhausting.

• “Who else is coming?”
• “How many were there?”

My prayer this day has become …

God, guide me.  Humble me.  Steer me away from the hold these questions have on me, on my heart and on my call.  Free me to do the ministry you have gifted me to lead.  In Christ’s name, Amen.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1

Dear Beloved Church,

just stop.

stop.  stop.  stop.  stop telling me to calm down.  i know it might unnerve you that a little woman is a loud, passionate disciple of Jesus, but that’s who God made me to be.  and i’m not going to calm down.  it isn’t my way: God has called me to be LOUD for Jesus.  And you, church, the United Methodist Church, you approved my ordination as an Elder in Full Connection.

so stop telling me to calm down.

because i’m not going to calm down, be quiet, sit back and let the Holy Spirit work to “bind us together.”  it’s not my way.  i’m not going to calm down because you church saw and nurtured my gifts, and God ordained me to use those particular gifts to disciple God’s people.  to share the love of God with everyone.  to lead God’s people into a growing relationship with Jesus the Christ.  to engage with and lead the community into following and serving like Jesus.

and your actions paralyze me and God’s work in me and through me.  your actions of silencing, denying, ignoring, hurting God’s people;  your actions (tacit and articulated) have pronounced who the church is before I can even begin to minister.  those headlines about defrocking my colleagues for officiating a same-gender wedding?  those FB posts about the UMC halting the candidacy of my LGBTQIA colleagues?  my community reads the posts and sees the headlines.

and when i’m getting my much-needed (#wishthatwasnttrue) grande with cream at my local Starbucks with my clegy collar on?  these people in my mission field who read the headlines and see the posts … they shake their heads in disgust and turn away from me.  they don’t even let me begin a conversation; your hypocritical actions have paralyzed my ministry, my own call from the very start.  yes, your denial of the Gospel of inclusion, your lack of Biblical obedience, your holding hostage of God’s love and a relationship with Jesus and the community of faith called the church … your actions paralyze my capacity and my ability to disciple God’s people.

Church, you stifle God’s call in me, so i’m not going to just calm down.

you see, i am witnessing God do so many new and exciting things in the Long Beach, California church i serve.  i have baptized babies and served communion; i have preached and taught and been a voice for justice with my church.  i have seen hearts transformed and i have witnessed lives changed because of a relationship with Jesus Christ.  but you, church, are paralyzing my efforts as you are forcing me to be inauthentic about our church and my theological understanding of the inclusive, ever-expanding love of God.  you are inviting me to lead the local church that professes a love of God for all of God’s children … but is part of an institutional church that systemically denies that love to our LGBTQIA sisters and brothers.

Church, you stifle God’s call in me, so i’m not going to just calm down.  

i cannot calm down and i won’t calm down when i feel like i am having to share an inauthentic portrait of the church with people wanting to know … because people in my mission field?  they do want to know.  they want to know God; they want to walk in the way of Jesus; and they want to their pastor to be open, transparent and authentic about how she perceives God and what their church says about who God loves and welcomes.

so stop telling me to calm down.

and start telling me how we are going to take the way, way overdue steps and journey together to being the church that God birthed through the Holy Spirit some 2,000 years counting.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1

#itstime

 

~ Pastor Melinda Teter Dodge

There I was just sitting there, like I do, listening for the umpteenth time to one of my lead pastor’s Sunday morning messages.  And then, it hit me.  It just hit me.  Like a ton of bricks this inescapable, palpable wave of deep loss and sadness flowed up over me and visibly through me.  As he finished the sermon and the tears were streaming down my cheeks, panic set in as I thought to myself:

“OHHHHHHH CRAP!  What comes next?  WHO’S up next?  OH NO …  I think it’s me.  Yeah, it’s me.  I’m supposed to invite the offering and … Aiyiyi … now I have to get up in front of all these people and bare my blubbery face.”  (which I then did, mess that I was).

Now, granted, there is no doubt that part of my sadness is just sheer exhaustion.  Every female in my family has this attrative trait wherein exhaustion = weeping at the drop of a hat.  Plus, my entire household and I have been on the family plan with a particularly long-lasting virus.  One of the four of us has been in some varying stage of this illness for over 2 weeks now.  I had felt just recovered enough to be present on this particular Sunday to co-lead worship.  In retrospect, maybe I should have rethought that?  So, all said, I could write my blubbery weeping off to exhaustion or being sick.  Or both.

But, in my heart, I know that’s not what it is.  No.

In my pastor’s heart, I know that these tears were springing up from a deep well of love for God’s people, and in particular, for God’s people gathered as the church body that I serve.

Yesterday morning was All Saints’ Sunday, and in the United Methodist Church tradition (and many other churches), on this annual day in the church calendar, we remember collectively the saints who have gone before us.  For many of us, it is an important ritual where liturgy is shared, communion is offered, candles are lit, and bells are rung.  We read the names of church members and church loved ones who have died in the past year.  We verbalize and ritualize our communal loss.  We lift up our hearts in deep, collective sadness.  We mourn together.  It is a powerful, ancient ritual commemorating loss as the community of faith; a tradition that most of the major world religions practice.

And my pastor heart was so heavy for our loss.  As names were read, I saw the faces of these people of God before me.  As names were read, I recalled hospital visits, phone conversations, committee prayers, and short chuckles and long laughs here and there over the past four+ years.  Ideas, wisdom shared, and group experiences with these saints wafted through me.  You see?  I remembered being present in their lives.  I remembered these saints allowing me (little ole’ me) into their lives.  And while I felt immense loss, I also had a surprising wave of deep gratitude and humility pour through me.  I found myself so deeply grateful for these saints gone before us, their hard work, their witness and dedication to Christ with the lives they led.  And then, I found myself looking out at all the saints still present and at work with me, and another wave of gratitude poured through me.

You see, my pastor’s heart is with God’s people.  My pastor’s heart holds so very, very close these people that I serve.  I am called to lead them closer to Jesus; I am called to equip these saints.  And God made me the kind of pastor that does this work best by being in relationship with these people.  So, I hear their stories, their celebrations, their sadness.  I see God at work in them and through them.  I cry with them and I laugh with them.  I try to accompany them on the journey while I am able.  And then, I miss them so very much when they are gone.

But the beautiful surprise of yesterday was not that the sadness welled up and out of me.  The surprise was the well of gratitude that poured over me.  I am so grateful and humbled by the church allowing me in; by these people who barely know me, and yet, open their hearts to me, share their stories with me, entrust their confidences, joys, anxieties, doubts and even their  spiritual health to me.

What an immense blessing, honor, privilege to serve in such a vocation.

And my gratitude simply overflows.

May God grant me this sense of deep humility every day until our next All Saints’ Sunday …

Peace, peace and peace once again,

Pastor M.

Like you, perhaps, I am weary of the battle that is being waged in our church family.  And I am embarrassed that what so many of God’s people see and know as the United Methodist Church is that we harm people:

• We charge clergy, bring them to trial and defrock them.
• We excommunicate.
• We silence burgeoning calls to ministry.
• We injure our LGBTQIA brothers and sisters over and over again.
• We alienate entire communities, families, and younger generations.

Yes, I am weary and embarrassed of this battle.  Moreover, my heart is extremely heavy knowing that I am part of a church, ordained by a church, that continues to injure deeply God’s people all the while proclaiming that we are following Jesus.

What the world sees of our church right now is not the hours and hours dedicated to ending homelessness or malaria.  What the world hears of our church right now is not the pastor’s bedside prayer before surgery or the supportive words to a teenager struggling with self-esteem.  What the world knows of our church right now is not our call to love our neighbor, or our call to be a voice of compassion, or our call to listen and walk together with all of God’s people.

No, that’s not what the world is observing of the United Methodist Church.  The world sees that we are a church divided over human sexuality, sexual orientation and who God will or won’t bless in a Christian marriage.  The world sees a church that injures the LGBTQIA community. The world sees a church that remains silent (but divided anyway).

And, as weary as I am of it all, I know in my heart of hearts that it’s long, long past time that we take responsibility to change the rhetoric.  It’s long past time that I stop complaining about the media telling me who my church is and isn’t, and do something about it.

It’s not enough I officiate a same gender wedding.  It’s not enough what I believe, or profess, or how i walk my walk.  I remain part of a church family that is hurting generations of God’s people in the very name of God.

Yes, I believe God calls our church to be open to every one of God’s people.  Every one.  No one is to be excluded.  Yes, I believe that every one of God’s people is born to experience and thrive in healthy relationship with one another.  And yes, I believe that God created each one of us to be unique and beautiful — exactly how God designed us. But, it’s not enough that I believe this.  It’s not enough that I lead a local church from this perspective.

God calls me to be a voice of justice, to stand up and be loud for God’s love. God calls me to end the hurt that my very own church is inflicting. God calls me to do more than do what is right. God calls me to lead the way with the gifts that God has given to me.

And so, I am stumbling ahead with this weary cry in my heart that I would be one to stand and be loud for God’s love.  But, I also know that I don’t stumble alone, and I ask you now:

Will you join me?

Will you join me to change what the world sees, hears and senses about our church?  Right now, in this moment, will you:

• Contribute financially?  We are raising funds to launch a media campaign in the Cal-Pac conference professing that we are a church of love for all … you can read more about it here:

Click here to change our headlines about Marriage Equality 

•  Show up in person on October 10?  We are hosting a very special Renewal of Vows ceremony on October 10 in different local churches across the California-Pacific Conference.  Married same gender couples, friends and family, supportive clergy and churches are all invited.  Let’s celebrate Marriage Equality and be loud about it.

Click here to get the party details and let us know YOU will be standing with us.

Come, I invite you to be weary with me.

and may God push our weariness into the ancient, yet always newborn, cry for justice and love.

~Rev. Melinda Teter Dodge