Get outside churches to offer Christ, lay leader advises

Carol Loeb delivers
her final Lay Leader’s
Report June 3 in
Corpus Christi.

Southwest Texas United Methodists need to get outside their churches to begin “Offering Christ to All.”
Carol Loeb delivered that message, echoing the new conference vision statement, June 3 in Corpus Christi during her yearly Lay Leader’s Report.
“You see there is a world out there that is starving to know God,” Loeb said in her final address as conference lay leader. “Our Jewish ancestors are so right. The story must be told from generation to generation, and there are a multitude of generations waiting for us to respond.
“We cannot do it by sitting comfortably in our churches. We must be in the world to make a difference.”
Loeb, a member of Asbury UMC, Corpus Christi, and a lay delegate to the April 27 to May 7 General Conference, told of an encounter that she and a Kansas delegate had last month in a Pittsburgh restaurant with two 28-year-old men.
“They initially asked to borrow the catsup from our table and, hearing our accents, asked why we were in town,” Loeb said.
When the men learned Loeb and her friend were Christians attending a church conference, they spent the next hour peppering them with faith-related questions.
“My friends,” said Loeb, 2004-2008 chair of the Council on Ministries, “we don’t have any idea how many people are out there with the same questions. Is that what John Wesley meant when he said to go into the bars, coal mines and wherever the people are?
“We just have to be accessible outside our churches.”
If church members aren’t true to the new conference vision statement, they will become increasingly isolated from the rest of their neighbors in South Texas, Loeb said.
“That, my friends, is not a pretty picture, for God is building a new community among us,” she said. “We can no longer just see the people that look like us because most of our neighbors don’t look like us anymore—any of us.
“There is a diversity of age, lifestyle and culture in our neighborhoods that we must not only recognize but accept with love. Focusing on our new vision and mission statements will help us do just that.”
Loeb urged all laypeople to judge their ministries and actions against the new vision and mission statements.
“As I have said every time I have taken this podium for the last three years, I will say again,” Loeb said. “There is a world outside these doors that wants to know Christ. Are we in the church standing in their way?
“Are we busy doing church work, or are we doing the work of the church? Are we busy just going to meetings and putting in our time, or are we making disciples and changing the world around us?
Laypeople must claim their work in the church and secular society as a ministry no matter what the job is, Loeb emphasized.
“As Jesus said, God will put you somewhere,” Loeb continued. “Where he puts you he expects you to be the church.”
Loeb urged church members to spread their wings like eagles in three particular ways:
> Helping start new churches.
> Expanding men’s ministries in every congregation.
> Getting more involved in mission work.
Starting new congregations is the best way to expand God’s kingdom, Loeb said.
“I am a product of a new church start,” she said. “In Corpus Christi 27 years ago, Asbury was started under the leadership of Carl Rohlfs and with the help of many laypeople from our area churches.”
Helping start new congregations may mean temporarily leaving our current church home to teach a Sunday school class, attend worship or make calls in a new neighborhood for a start-up fellowship.
Research shows, Loeb said, that if churches can attract husbands into fellowship, the rest of the family will come along 93 percent of the time. The figure is 24 percent for wives alone.
Furthermore, Loeb said, Southwest Texas United Methodists should minister to those on the fringes of society before taking care of themselves.
“Too many of our churches are not taking advantage of the missional opportunities that are available—either because of lack of knowledge or lack of equipped leadership,” she said.
Loeb expressed appreciation for her four-year tenure as conference lay leader.
“I only wish each of you laity could have the opportunity that I have had the past several years to travel around this conference and see our connection at work—in other words, the whole picture,” she said.
“… It’s been an incredible privilege to represent you as your conference lay leader. For, in being your leader, I have been the learner. … I look forward to continuing with you in hopes that touching the hem of your garment, I too may soar.”