Clerics confront meaning of ‘Offering Christ to All’

Convocation speakers
cover UMC heritage
of seeking to save souls

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
More than 300 Southwest Texas Conference clergy members confronted this month in Kerrville what “Offering Christ to All” could mean for the church.
They examined the new conference vision statement March 7 and 8 during the 13th annual Bishop’s Convocation for clergy members at Mount Wesley Conference Center.
“Our speakers forced us to confront our challenges,” Bishop Joel N. Martinez said, “but they also reminded us of the rich heritage we receive from scripture in the Wesleyan tradition.”
Those guest speakers—the Rev. Billy Abraham, Albert Cook Outler professor of Wesley studies at Southern Methodist University, and retired Bishop William B. Oden, bishop in residence at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology—both spoke of the saving-souls heritage of The United Methodist Church.
“We cannot come to terms with the saving of souls in a way that will begin to do justice to (John) Wesley,” Abraham said, “if we do not face the tough choices that confront us in the doctrinal and intellectual renewal of the Christian faith as a whole.”
Modern American culture “is really nervous about a robust Christianity,” said Abraham, a Southwest Texas Conference clergy member. Alternatives to Christianity—offered by people who have wanted Christians to give up their faith—are not what they were made out to be.
The result, he said, is that Christians are “recovering their intellectual nerve to articulate and defend the Christian faith as a viable option for the thinking person.”
“People in the United States are open to hearing the gospel,” he said, “and Methodists are very well placed to respond to the need.”
Abraham said the mandate from John Wesley, founder of the worldwide Methodist movement, that “we have nothing to do but save souls” was “enacted in practices that are gone.” He called for the recovery of Wesleyan traditions through which the Holy Spirit will work.
“We must look to the work of the Holy Spirit,” Abraham said, “to know the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the deepest levels of our souls.”
Oden observed, “The Bible was in Wesley’s DNA.”
The question facing the Southwest Texas Conference, Oden said, is how to get the vision of Offering Christ to All “into the DNA of our biblical heritage and at the same time acknowledge our diversity.”
“How do we take this conglomeration of people who have answered the call and mold ourselves into one body, one out of many?” Oden continued. “How can we have unity in the midst of diversity? How can the love of Christ hold us together when we have such diverse views?”
Oden pointed to the methods Paul spelled out in Ephesians as a way to make one people in Christ out of many.
The retired bishop said the world today is unlike any Christians have ever lived in.
“What we are all seeing is a world in which religion and violence have merged,” he said. “There are cultures in which fundamentalism is so entrusted that people have decided defending God’s honor means death to anyone else.”
Because of global communication—“what happens on one side of the world shows up in living rooms on the other side”—people all over the world are searching for new ways of “being human,” Oden said.
“A new search for humanness happens occasionally, but we’re not sure where it will lead,” he said. “But the seeds are there, in our church.”
If “Offering Christ to All” is only a quadrennial statement, it isn’t going anywhere, Oden said.
“I am sick and tired of our church deciding we can be saved by programs,” he said. “In the cycle of starting and stopping programs, we don’t deal with the question at heart—what is Jesus Christ calling us to do?”
Oden called for The United Methodist Church to “move us to a new time so we can recover the preaching theme that is our foundation.”
“We have nothing to do but save souls,” Oden said. “With unity we agree that everyone can hear the word of Jesus Christ. That is our mantra, and no greater mission can be found.”