I’m working on something new! It’s a collaborative project here on Substack with my Duke Divinity School friend
, a UMC pastor in Indiana. We’re calling it And Can It Be? Re-meandering United Methodism and we just launched it today!United Methodist readers, this is especially for you. The details are below….
To you lovely readers who are not part of the UMC, you might find this new Substack interesting (check it out below), but I won’t harbor any hard feelings if you don’t. You’ll hear from me again in a couple of weeks with the next Still a Beautiful Church Hope-Letter!
Introducing: And Can It Be? Re-meandering United Methodism
So, you’re wondering, what is this new Substack all about? Twice a month Jared and I will be sharing letters about our dreams and hopes for the future of The United Methodist Church. After all, it’s been a … season …. amiright? We’ve endured conflicts and disaffiliations and across-the-board restructuring and now we’re preparing for a General Conference, and whew. Now is a fitting time to pause, to breathe, to imagine a future with hope. With this Substack, we want to create a space on the interwebs where we can constructively and collectively dream about what could be for this Church in which we serve, this Church we love.
Below is a little preview from the About section, and here is a link to the first letter entitled “Imagining Our Future Into Existence.”
"Today the United Methodist Church is experiencing its own Great Reformation, finding itself in the crucible of denominational schism, aging congregations, and shifting cultural forces.
Could it be, however, that this is also a time in which the conditions are ‘just right’ for new life to emerge? Could this be one of those Yellowstone, kairos moments that is waiting for someone to get the proverbial pebble moving, who will re-introduce that which has been lost and is willing to do the long, slow, difficult work of re-meandering the Church in order for new life to flourish once more?"
I hope you’ll join us in this conversation!
Ooooh! This is going to be great!