Traveling through time

I read this recently from an United Methodist official about what was wrong with the church:

"For several reasons, the Methodist have to date shown less adaptability that most others who share the same background history.

"The same facts which account for the decline of Methodist influence also explain the Methodist difficulty in meeting other churches and confessions on a basis of equality and open discussion.

"Black people are leaving -- first a trickle, then a small stream, soon a soaring river. We are not keeping them, we are not being open as a church and we are not preserving black leadership. To put it bluntly, we are falling. I do not belied that we will ever be able to say that we are an inclusive church in regard to our black membership until our Bishops feel free to make appointments without regard to race.

"Where ever I go, I have to ask the question, "Where are the black people, where are the Spanish speaking people, where are the poor, where are the people who do not feel comfortable worshipping in a Sunday suit or who don't even have a Sunday suit? Where are they? And what are we doing to include them in our church.

"It frightens me even more that we are losing our young people. Never has an age needed the church more than the church responded less."

Can we dispute any of this?

The interesting thing to me is that this was written by Tom H. Matheny of Centenary College in an address to the Bishop's Banquet in -- get this -- July 30, 1980.

THIRTY FOUR YEARS ago.

And what have we learned since? A man named Charles Allen is quoted in the same article, which I found while we were cleaning and throwing away the old in our church restart on Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, as saying, "Twenty-five years from now in the year 2001, I picture the United Methodist Church to be pretty much like it is today. I believe that the church will be preserved until the end of time."

That's church with a little c, as in the United Methodist church, not the Church universal.

First, his math is a little strange for twenty-five years from 1980 is not 2001. Further, his vision was askew, but the church, the United Methodist one, was already hemorrhaging and it is bleeding out today.

Our options are simple: We can be the church of the year 1980 or 1990 or 2000 or 2010 or we can try our best to be the church of 2020, while living in the year 2014. That's it. If we don't do everything we can to be everything we can be to those who live outside our walls and are actively choosing to no be apart of whatever it is we're selling, then we won't be.

And the Gospel suffers. And the people suffer more.

Matheny closes the piece this way:

"I am reminded of a dialogue in the boom by H.G. Wells, the Time Machine. The Time Traveler, you will recall, is the principle character who relates a tale of universal despair. The Time Traveler was so filled with despair that he thought there was no solution for man. But the narrator at the very close reminds us, 'If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.'

"That is what is different about the Christian community," Matheny writes. "We can fact the great problems. The problems that would seem insurmountable to others, the problems that would cause despair in others. We can do this because we are the church of Jesus Christ and even if the problems appear to be insurmountable we need to move and act and love as though it were not so."

It is high time we get about it. There are pockets  of success in our denomination as I write this. There are also pockets of resistance to a complete overhaul of our churches. As long as there is, as long as we're living in 1980, we will slowly but surely cease to exist. We will most certainly live only if we choose to live, not as the though in the past but learning from past mistakes.