I am a self-avowed, practicing evangelical.

As part of a denomination which has in my view suffered at the hands of theological liberalism, I am not ashamed of my beliefs regarding the divinity of Christ, authority of Scripture, the reality of both eternal gain and eternal loss, and the urgency of gospel proclamation. Certainly not a fundamentalist, but clearly evangelical.

Yet there is a danger in this designation; there is a sickness in the "camp."

It's this: sometimes we are so concerned with being right that we forget to be nice.

I see this in myself all the time. In those debates within the United Methodist Church, I rely on sarcasm and arrogance to make my points. I surround myself with people just like me who serve churches just like ours. There are folks within the denomination I simply ignore because their label is wrong.

In my desire for truth, I've neglected love.

Jesus never said, "By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you take strong stands on divisive issues."

Instead: "By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Perhaps being nice is the best way to be right.

Most American companies employ specialists in brand management, which is the art and science of marketing products to consumers.

Brand management has its origins with Procter & Gamble , my wife Julie's employer for the first seven years of her career in sales. Among other things, brand managers work hard to ensure that their products: 1) have high visibility in the public eye; 2) stand out among competitors; 3) achieve a public perception of quality and innovation; and 4) have an attractive appearance.

Some of today's most effective brands include McDonald's Golden Arches, Nike's swoosh, Mercedes' logo, and anything Apple makes these days with an "i" in front of the name. You seen any of those international icons, and you're pretty sure of the quality of the product you'll buy. The national or international "branding" works well at the local level.

So who manages the "Methodist" brand?

For years, many Methodists have bought into the idea brand management for church works the same way as it does for commerce.

So we've had centralized marketing, usually stemming from denominational offices in Nashville, New York, or Evanston. Through the years, they've given us the cross & flame logo, Catch The Spirit bumper stickers, the Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors mantra (a phrase brimming with internal politics if there ever was one), and now, more recently, ReThink Church.

All to decidedly mixed results. Safe to say that if any corporate brand managers lost more than 30% of their business in 40 years, the consequences would be severe and the restructure would be dramatic. But as we've gone from 11 million members in 1968 to 8 million now, we've continued to insist that better versions of the same thing will turn the ship around.

But not when it comes to brand management.

Here's the key difference: when you see the Golden Arches, you know essentially the experience that awaits you. That experience is even more predictable when you see the Chick-Fil-A "C," but that's another story.

Yet when you see a Methodist Church from the outside, the experience inside can vary greatly. What you'll experience at Myers Park UMC in Charlotte, for example, will be dramatically different from what you'll encounter at Granger Church in Indiana. And those distinctions have to do with style; when you throw quality into the mix, the variables rise considerably.

So centralized marketing in a large & unwieldly denomination is, I believe, doomed from the start.

All that is a long way of saying that we want to be our own brand managers at Good Shepherd. We don't take part in the denomination's well-intentioned efforts, whether it's Methodist bumper stickers or even ReThink Church.

No one had to help us think up There's An App For That. Or A Christmas Story Christmas. Or even Rubber, Meet Road. Those all come out of our unique church culture and our mission of walking together into this community.

Because when it comes to church-world, we believe the best brand management is local brand management.

Sometimes the eyes of an outsider can help you see things in an entirely new light.

A couple of years ago, our District -- the Charlotte District of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church to be precise -- held a continuing education event in which the focus was recapturing John Wesley's legacy for 21st Century churches.

It's the kind of subject that, if you've been a Methodist any length of time, makes perfect sense.

I brought a couple of our staffers to the event. One of them had not grown up in any church, much less a Methodist one, had come to faith as an adult, and as a result had spent most of her Christian study time focusing on Jesus, Paul, and Moses rather than John Wesley.

As we listened to the various presentations, I asked her what she thought.

"It sounds like a cult," she answered. "I've heard a lot of talk about Wesley and none about Christ."

Wow.

Because she didn't share the presuppositions and language of most Methodist clergy -- Wesley is the best example of lived out theology we have -- our gathering sounded to her ears like the Christian Scientists talking about Mary Baker Eddy or the Mormons talking about Joseph Smith.

Now I went to a seminary that loves Wesley the most of all (so they say), and I became a Methodist as a result of looking for someone who was smart, biblical and believed in free will. Mr. Wesley was the guy, and here I am.

But language, presentation, and presuppositions matter.

If you assume your audience already shares your presuppositions and understands your insider language, you can come off sounding much crazier than you really are.

As we minister in the midst of a culture largely ignorant of Wesley and his genius, I suppose that means we'll focus more on doing the kinds of things Wesley did rather than quoting at length the kinds of things he said.

As some of you know, John Wesley included this instruction in his "Directions For Singing" that prefaces every Methodist hymnal:

Sing [these hymns] exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.

Someone on our staff read that and said, "He's a bit pretentious, isn't he?" Actually, I've cleaned up the observation a bit to make it blog-suitable.

Anyway, David Crowder had much the same response upon reading Wesley's instructions. Because John Wesley told him he couldn't alter one of his hymns, Crowder did. And not just any hymn; he revised what is in many ways the Wesleyan hymn, O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing.

Here's Crowder teaching the song and then explaining his rationale for modernizing parts of it. The interview picks up at about 2:00 in, and is worth the wait for the fun it pokes at Methodist pretension:



So whether it is hymnody or ministry, be careful of taking yourself too seriously.

And of forbidding people from doing things they otherwise might not have considered doing.

In my almost-20 years of full-time ministry in the United Methodist Church, I have overheard some "you can't make stuff this up" remarks come out of the mouths of United Methodist people. Preachers, usually.

Most of what follows is first-hand, with a smattering of reliable second-hand quotes as well.

• A pastor to his youth pastor: "You shouldn't do so many altar calls in youth group. It might make kids doubt their confirmation."
• A District Superintendent to his flock of pastors: "Has anyone ever heard of this Gordon-Connell (sic) Seminary? Is it legit?"
• A DS to a pastor in the 4th year of a first appointment: "It's time to start thinking about moving up the ladder. You don't want to stay where you are too long."
• A pastor to a PPR Committee in a church considering multi-site worship: "Where I come from we call that a two-point charge. And I'm not being paid enough to pastor a two-point charge."
• A parishioner during praise & worship: "This clapping's not Methodist!"
• A parishioner to a long-tenured pastor: "I think preachers ought to move every three and half years. That's as long as Jesus stayed on earth, after all. Then his humanity started to show and God had to call him to heaven."
• A Methodist seminarian regarding a youth group: "If the kids start talking about getting saved, I'm going to have a real problem with that."
• A pastor to fellow pastors as part of a continuing ed event: "I like Jesus. But he's not my Savior."

Fred Craddock has written expansively on overhearing the Gospel.

Sadly, there are times within Methodism when you overhear something altogether different.