By: Scott Parrish

Scott Parrish — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:35:19 +0000

You certainly hit the frailties, faults, and tension points in our current expression of “connection.” I’ve been thinking along the same lines in recent months, but came to the conversation more along the lines of the economic earthquake and restructuring. In particular, the Big 3 offers some insight into how an old, traditional institution with baggage must reconfigure or renew in ways to be viable today. What about the “connection” being a shared dream, a shared approach to thinking and talking about those dreams, and in this a shared mission and ministry. I think that once upon a time that was the intent, but we’ve lost it all in the machinery. So now, it’s all become a top down machinery with interest in mataiing status quo, and connection has merely become an empty, rather heartless, institutional funding and personnel mechanism. I think it’s time to rework the denom terms of the local church and those needs in missin and ministry, in finance and personnel, and with all the denom having that focus on the primary node. Too many of the individual nodes are sick; in a healthy system they would be well connected and this would happen through clergy and laity. I’m a mission pastor and campus minister at midcareer who loves the potential of the UMC but is realistic about the challenges. I blog @ http://kudzulife.blogspot.com/search/label/denomination

By: stushie

stushie — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:24:04 +0000

Great post. Presbyterians have the same problems and yet we keep speaking about connectionalism, too. I think its a verbal mechanism to camouflage our denial about what’s really going on.

By: D.G. Hollums

D.G. Hollums — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:29:59 +0000

Can’t wait for the next post! Thanks for putting this one up!

Comments on: Redefining Connectional – Part 1

By: Scott Parrish

By: stushie

By: D.G. Hollums