In a few hours I leave Jamaica, after a wonderful week
here. Last year, I blogged daily on my
experiences; this year I found myself more caught up in those experiences and
less inclined to step back and look at them critically. I do have some thoughts about the church
experience, but will come to that later.
I was writing this while sitting in the lobby of the Wexford
hotel, tuning in to the livestream of Carter Tabernacle CME Church (www.cartertabernaclecme.org). While the internet access here does not
appear to be high speed, which causes the feed to cut in and out, I didn’t have
to put on anything other than shorts and sandals. That’s important to me. While The Church of
the Inner Spring or its cyber derivatives are never a substitute for f2f
fellowshipping with the Saints, this was
a delightful way to worship while on vacation.
Where to begin? We got here on Easter Monday, and aside from
the airline losing one member’s luggage, our arrival was relatively
uneventful. (I’m seeing right now that I
should write every day. There are SO
many experiences that don’t get recorded if I don’t write them down at the
time). The members of the delegation
were:
(I'll have to come back and list the members and churches after I get them from the organizers. I dare not do it from memory lest I leave someone out...)
Some of them were with the group last year; some had come in
previous years; some were new.
My notes say that I’m first to talk about the wonderful
hospitality shown us by our hosts at Good News CME Church, and indeed the
entire Jamaica Annual Conference. Every
day we were treated to a family-style feast featuring curried chicken, curried
goat, fried chicken, escovietch fish, peas and rice, and salad This open-air church always had bottles of ice-cold water and other cold beverages available for us to drink. Our Jamaican hosts always made sure that we, the
visitors, were fed first, and offered us the comfort of dining in their newly
built Steph's Place, an addition to the Pauline B. Grant Early Childhood Education building. The namesake, Stephanie Crispinelli, perished in the Haiti Earthquake and her family set up a foundation to assist people in developing countries. I think it merits highlighting that they chose the Pauline B. Grant Early Childhood Education center, under the auspices of the Good News CME Church, as a recipient of that funding. The building is newly-constructed, and can serve as a multi-purpose facility.
I may be out of line for these comments, but this is my
personal blog with my personal views.
From what I can gather, the CME Church in Jamaica appears to be growing
via both planting and assimilating/converting.
I think the number of people may be greater via the latter method, while
the number of charges increases via the former.
Either way, the people, coming from a wide diversity of spiritual and
theological backgrounds, have to be taught the basic tenets of Methodism, and
the history and polity of the CME Church.
Much of this happens at Annual Conference. Every interaction has the potential to be a
teaching moment.
I’ve only visited one of our CME Churches in Africa, but the
recent influx of several hundred thousand new members there suggests to me that
the situation is similar in the Motherland.
Which is why I believe there is a need to put SEASONED leaders in our
overseas assignments, as these leaders must teach new converts AND navigate a
myriad of cultural factors. (I’m can't even comment on the implications of sending the Bishop elected with
the least number of votes to the Motherland.
Between that and the indigenous African Bishop, what message does that
send about how we regard Africa? And
have we no thoughts for expanding into
the rest of the world? What will
happen then? Will we have an indigenous
European Bishop? An indigenous Asian,
South American, or Australian one? What
does the term “overseas missions” mean to people who live outside the US,
people we regard as potential recipients of our missionary efforts? I totally understand the
North-American-centrism of our US-originated
Christian denominations; I just think it might be time to re-think
it. And I’m not talking just about the
CME church. OK, end rant.)
Some members of the USA group were particularly taken with
one chorus sung at Good News:
I want to go to holiness.
I’m tired of the lukewarm-ness
I’m tired of the poor conditions.
I want to go to holiness.
It sort of caught fire with us, and we found ourselves spontaneously
breaking into the chorus on the bus on
our last trip away from the Conference.
It’s quite a fitting song. Not
just in Good News CME, not just in the CME Church, but in many of my
interactions here in Jamaica, I see a fervor for holiness, a thirst for
knowledge of the True and Living God. I
see a marked contrast between some of us who have so many material things, but
who can’t be bothered to pray too often or too long – between us and between
those who are willing to gather in a borrowed location (or even in changing
locations) just to come together and praise the Lord.
In the Annual Conference, I sat immediately behind the Pastors’
bar. When they were making their
reports, I noticed the report of a man who has Bible Study only once a month,
but when he has it, the majority of his members come. It seems to me that things such as sacrifice, perseverance, and endurance here are more than just concepts: They are very real phenomena, very real in a
Third World sort of way, which is a completely different scale than those
phenomena in a First World kind of way.
(The fact that I use the terms “Third World” and “First World” rather
than “Developing Countries” and “Industrialized Countries” highlights not only the
differences, but some of the attitudes that make those differences so
pervasive.)
The Annual Conference began on Tuesday
morning. Like every other Annual
Conference in our church, there were morning devotions, and then the
presentation of the Bishop. Don’t know
if it’s because he’s a Dukie or because he’s SUCH a Methodist, but Bishop Reddick
has a clear and logical organizational style that’s been missing in our
Zion. I didn’t take notes on all the
sermons and Bible studies presented, but I did note that the opening teaching
was from John 21:20-22, and the topic was “You Must Follow Me.” He started out by going through the seasons
of the Christian year, and arriving at Eastertide (as he went through them, he
explained their theological meanings and significance in the life of the church; e.g., not just
Kingdomtide, but “Kingdomtide comes after Pentecost, and its color is green,
which is the color of growth. He is
already the King; the kingdoms of this world become His Kingdom. He is here.”)
So we then moved to Eastertide, and Bishop Reddick compared Peter’s
response to Jesus’ questions about loving Him to our own responses to Jesus: “Yes, Lord,
but …..” In this text and in our
lives, Jesus is telling us to follow Him.
This text reminds us to grapple with the question, “what is the Lord
calling me to do?” and as a corollary, “what
purposes does God have for the CME Church in Jamaica?” There are lots of bodies; what does God call THIS body to do?
I’m skipping over a few examples of Bishops and Missionaries in Jamaica
responding to that question, and going
to the closing, which reminds us that perhaps God is calling us to FOCUS. Bishop Reddick left us with three closing
points:
·
We are each called to be not someone else, but
ourselves. We are God’s richness. What
does God call us to do? What is our identity?
The richness of Christian fellowship is learning to appreciate one
another.
·
Christ wants us to be constantly edified in His
Grace and Love. God wants to build us
up, and we are to build each other up in the Lord.
·
The church is not just a building; a building is
where the church meets. But there must
be a plan for the building – a plan from the inside out. We must count all the cost to finish the
building, and then must persist in working the plan.
I thought this address was particularly well done, for two
reasons: 1) there is the teaching
element. As I said, people come from diverse theological
backgrounds, and every moment is a teaching moment. The address started out by taking people
through the Christian year: the times/duration
of the seasons, the meanings, the colors and their significance.
We have plenty of CMEs Stateside who have served for decades and don’t
understand these things. 2) this address
was also well done because it emphasized individual importance. I can’t know what it’s like to live in a lesser-developed
county with lots of people from industrialized countries always coming in and
throwing their cash and culture around. (The
closest I can imagine is being a poor Southern black girl in a New England prep
school. Even if the people don’t say it,
there’s a marked difference – I remember one weekend trying to scrape up enough
money to get from Boston to NYC. Kids in
my class were going to Aruba for that weekend.
I didn’t even know where Aruba was. We were in academia, and I could
hold my own with or best most of them intellectually, so that’s how I coped,)
But there could be a tendency, when two very disparate cultures or
economic situations come into contact – there could be an opportunity for
resentment, dependence, and/or an air of superiority. I think Bishop Reddick’s teaching was
designed to emphasize individual importance, and rightly so.
I’ve gone off topic again. But it's my blog; I can do that. The
Annual Conference was great: Presiding
Elder Rev. Dr. Ore L Spragin, Jr. did
Bible Study each morning, taking us through the 5th and 6th
(and maybe into the 7th) chapters of the Book of Acts; Presiding
Elder Rev. Elroy Ewart preached the Communion sermon; Rev. Clementine Mays did
the morning meditation on the first
business day, and Rev. Lena Laing preached the closing service that night. Both the Connectional Lay Leader, Mr. Cliff
Harris, and the Connectional Missionary President, Dr. Princess Pegues, were
present and had breakout sessions to instruct the congregations in how to
organize Lay Departments and Women’s Missionary Societies.
A few of us from the US: Rev.
Clarence Kelby Heath, Rev. Manuel Henderson, Rev. Clementine Mays and myself,
all serve on our Annual Conference Committees on Ministerial Examination. As such, we were privileged to sit with the Jamaica
Region’s Chair as she examined some candidates.
It was sort of like building a house while living in it: candidates were present, and clearly active
in ministry, but the undergirding structures (study, examination, and
understanding of the Holy Word and the Discipline of the CME Church) needed
shoring up. We agreed to keep in touch,
and I believe this process will be useful to everyone, as this is another place
where teaching and training can occur.
There were some deviations from the scheduled order of business, mostly
necessary training breakouts. The
Jamaica Conference took time during one of the worship services to have the
Quadrennial Celebration for Bishop and Mrs. Reddick. They then showed appreciation to all the
missionaries and to every single member of the visiting US group. That was amazing, and we are deeply
appreciative of the great lengths to which they continually went in order to
welcome us. It was beyond kind.
The final day was for Disciplinary Questions and the most beautiful
part of Annual Conference, the Ordination service (when I take my kids to
conference, I give them a pretty long rope, but they have to make Communion and
Ordination). Again, I was privileged to
participate, not only with the laying on of hands as an Elder but also with
reading Scripture. I’m not trying to
brag, but I am incredibly grateful when I realize that I’ve participated on the
Annual Conference level in Holy Communion, Ordination and, in my own
Conference, as a Bible Study teacher. It’s
quite humbling to look around and realize that so many people who are equally
qualified never have those opportunities.
Annual Conference Pictures can be found here: You should be able to click on the blue hyperlinks, but I've left the web address in (in parenthesis) so you can cut and paste that if need be.
Getting there:
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(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202808395264791.1073741868.1048146180&type=1&l=6d28765c93)
(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202810512037709.1073741869.1048146180&type=1&l=4c1f34d61e)
(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202815043350989.1073741870.1048146180&type=1&l=33504670ed)
(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202828551768691.1073741873.1048146180&type=1&l=ee51601db6)
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