Viewpoints -- April 2002

Speak your mind!

"Viewpoints" is an open forum for Indiana UM lay and clergy members to speak out on any matters relating to the life of the Church. Letters must be signed and should include the name of your local church, along with a daytime phone number. All letters may be edited for clarity or length. Deadline for the May/June issue is April 18.

Challenge question:

Is the Church doing its part in participating in the evolution of our United Methodist-related colleges and universities?

Send to Editor, Hoosier UM News, 1100 W. 42nd St., Suite 210, Indianapolis, Ind. 46208; fax - 317/924-4859; or send e-mail to Editor.

Church & Society use of temperance funds

When the 1960 General Conference merged the former Board of Temperance with two other boards to form what is now the General Board of Church and Society, it provided that funds vested in any one board "shall be conserved for the exclusive use of the appropriate division of this board." Because GBCS has failed to do this I filed a formal complaint with the Council of Bishops on Oct. 2, 2001.

My complaint is twofold. First, [GBGS has spent] little or nothing on alcohol and drug education between 1984 and 2000 in spite of receiving roughly $16 million from property originally owned by the Board of Temperance.

Second, the top GBCS leadership [has tried] to deceive the Church about what they are doing in the way of alcohol and drug education .. At Louisville [General Conference] in 1992 there were over 1,500 petitions from 34 states asking for an Independent Commission on Alcohol & Drugs. It failed because GBCS General Secretary Thom Fassett vigorously opposed it. He did promise that 25 percent of their funds in the coming quadrennium would be used for drug and alcohol education, a promise not reflected in GBCS report to the 1996 General Conference.

GBCS reported to the 2000 General Conference that it spent "almost $1 million" on alcohol and other drugs. The problem is no one at Cleveland or the Jurisdictional Conference in Albuquerque can tell me what the Church got for its money.

I will be at the March, 2002, meeting of the General Board of Church and Society and will present a proposal for spending the income from Board of Temperance property on the areas of work assigned to the former Board of Temperance. The time has come to stop spending that money on everything but the areas assigned.

Time for young adults to 'stand up'

I am also a Generation Xer. I found the March article to be very interesting, because a year and a half ago I could have been the author of that letter. Growing up I was always very active in the church. High school was the best though, youth group, camps, conference activities. It seemed there was something to do every week.

Then high school ended and, I have to admit, it was pretty disappointing. Suddenly, all the activities ended, and it just seemed like I didn't matter to the church anymore. I floated around to several area churches before settling at Dyer UMC. They didn't really have any young adult activities but they seemed opened to the possibility. After I had been there about a year, I went to see Pastor Mark Wilkins. I told them I was disappointed. I felt there was nothing for me; the church was just letting me down.

Then Pastor Mark asked me a question that changed everything "Well Holly, what are you going to do about it?" He told me that if I wasn't getting fed maybe "I needed to take off my bib and put on my apron." After that I took on the role as Young Adult Coordinator for the church. Over the past year and a half we have made great strides in our church for young adults and learned something very important. It is not the conference or the churches that need to make Generation X a priority. WE have to make ourselves a priority.

Also mentioned in the March letter was the CCYAM winter retreat. I was one of the 18 young adults at that retreat [along with] with three other young adults from my church. That retreat wasn't an embarrassment, it was an immeasurable blessing to us. Not only did we find other young adults in similar situations but we also found a committee willing to support us in anyway possible. I left that retreat as one of the new Calumet District Representatives for the CCYAM.

I have spent the past few months trying to get other young adults in the conference to join us in activities. I have gotten very little response, every time I talk to someone new I get the same response: I have school, I have work, there is just no time. Which leads me back to the point that we have to make ourselves a priority. We are adults now; we cannot expect the church to make us a priority when the church is not a priority in our lives. It has been my experience that if we stand up and say we want young adult ministries to be a priority, the church will be more than happy to back us up.

Hunger ministries re-examined

For centuries now, Christians have been clothing the naked, healing the sick, comforting the afflicted and feeding the hungry. Although the world will always be in need of such work, I think we have actually been doing a very good job. Unfortunately, we have become so habituated to some things that we never think to reexamine those problems we most love to address â€¦

How do we arrive at estimates of hunger? Often, social service agencies and advocacy groups base their estimates on the numbers of people who apply for food assistance. In other words, the high estimates of hunger are in reality a measure of people who are actually being fed - a measure of success being reported as though it were a disaster! It must be considered that "hunger" is not the same as "starvation."

Indeed, that may well account for a large number who occasionally go hungry because of poor management of the money and resources they do have, rather than a total lack of resources or access to assistance.

Curiously, in the midst of reports about widespread hunger, one study addressed obesity as a serious emerging health problem. The big surprise in this report is that the poor were much more likely to suffer from it. Does this mean we should stop feeding the hungry, even if they aren't actually starving? Definitely not. On the other hand, I do think it is time we objectively reassess our views of poverty and hunger.

John Wesley did much more than feed the starving in 18th century England. Early Methodists taught the poor and disenfranchised to better themselves morally, physically, spiritually and intellectually. Some churches are now sponsoring Life Skills Training. This is a step back into an old Wesleyan tradition. We are all familiar with the aphorism that asserts it is better to teach a man to fish than it is to just give him a fish.

Ironically, some of us have, instead, opted to hook him up to a funnel and force-feed him. It is time to rethink this issue and move on to some areas we have neglected in recent years, things like education and the building of moral and spiritual character.