"Sharing Your Story - BC/AD" IV

Isaiah 62

I am writing this blog entry from Phoenix after a long day of meetings with 50 other Board of Ordained Ministry Chairpersons from across the country. I was enjoying that many of the chairs that what I shared with you in our open gathering, that this is the generation in which the spread of the gospel will no longer be church-centered but rather centered outside the church walls in our businesses, classrooms, neighborhoods and even our recreational activities. It is the generation in which your response to the call to ministry is every bit as important as mine. If we take that move of God seriously, then we will see God do things greater than we have dared to dream. So I encourage you to continue to listen for the call of God on your life.

The important thing for me in Isaiah 62 is that conversion stories are not just about individuals. Churches, communities, and even nations can have conversion stories. This chapter is one describing Israel on its return to the homeland after exile under the Babylonians and the Medes and Persians. During exile, they felt abandoned and punished by God. A companion reading would be Psalm 137, describing the horrible pain they experienced in exile. Isaiah 62 is a joyous prophecy of restoration.

American Christianity tends to be highly individualistic (about me and my relationship with Jesus), but the Bible in both testaments is not so. God's guidance was for the whole church or the whole nation. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit falls on the people as they worshipped together. In American history, there have been two "Great Awakenings" that have shaped the kind of nation and religious people we are. Some are saying we are in a third one, but it is really too early to tell.

In Isaiah 62:2-4, the prophet declares that they will be given a new name. They no longer will be called forsaken or desolate. Instead they will be called beloved and married. The people of God who have been separated from God are now being reconciled and reunited. We are pretty good at seeing when individuals backslide and separate themselves from God, but I wonder if we are so apt to see when that happens as families, as churches and as communities. I invite you to join me in praying for your families, for St. Luke's United Methodist Church on her two campuses, for the United Methodist Church in the United States and around the world, and for the USAmerican Church, that we might see where we may have become distracted, sinful, and separated from God and his purposes for us. Then pray that we will be reconciled and reunited with the LORD so we can truly be his people.

We are watching a major religious shift happening all around us. Some have named the mainline churches, including United Methodists, as "dead," "irrelevant", "out of touch," "sinful," "hypocritical" and a host of names. In the Bible, a new name always meant a new reality. I dream of day when God calls us "newly alive," "a powerful force for changing lives and changing the world," "a holy and compassionate people," "a people who make his love real wherever they go." What new name would you like to see God call the church and what new reality would it describe? In the end, it has to be a work of God. That's true for us both as individuals and as groups.