As some of you know, we will soon be looking for someone to head up our Discipleship ministries at Good Shepherd. After five years on staff, James-Michael Smith will be leaving us at the end of April to prepare for and then pursue his PhD.

But I'll blog more on that and on him later.

As part of our search for a new leader in discipleship, we're working with some volunteers from Good Shepherd who consult with companies around the world in the areas of recruiting, interviewing, and hiring. You can read about their firm here.

Anyway, as we were talking about the kind of person we'd like to hire, we moved to the subject of beliefs. What kind of theology and values do we want this person to have?

So I immediately popped up: "I want someone who is a Wesleyan evangelical."

Huh?

I realized that, even in a room full of people in the "know" in this church, I was speaking jargon. So we went through a very brief exercise to define "Wesleyan evangelical."

Wesleyan: Candidates for this (or any) position on staff will need to embrace the notion that God gives people free will to accept or reject his offer of grace. This is as opposed to our Calvinist friends who believe that God predestines individuals either to heaven or to hell. Both views are firmly in the Christian family; it's just that one works much better here, in what is after all a Methodist church.
When it comes to end times theology, Wesleyans by and large reject the dispensational theology made popular by the Left Behind novels and instead embrace either amillenialism or historic premillenialism. I personally lean amillenial while my good friend James-Michael is more of an historic premillenialist.

Evangelical: Calling oneself "evangelical" in the first part of the 21st Century can come with some baggage. We hope not here. When we identify ourselves as an evangelical congregation it boils down to two core beliefs: 1) that heaven and hell are real and urgent concerns; and 2) that the bible is, in a mysterious way, uniquely inspired by God.
These views are in contrast to those held by many in mainline denominations -- namely, the idea of universalism (all people will ultimately be saved) and that the bible is merely a human document with no compelling authority over our lives today.

So that's how we summarize what it means to be a Wesleyan evangelical. I hope we can have a church -- and a staff -- worthy of the label.

As I mentioned in this post, I spent much of last week at the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church, held in Lake Junaluska, NC. I was actually elected as a reserve delegate to the Conference, so it was an honor to go.

The Southeastern Jurisdiction of the UMC covers the states from Kentucky over to Virginia, down through Florida, over to Mississippi and then back up through Tennessee to Kentucky again. You can read more about the jurisdiction here. The SEJ Conference meets every four years and its primary role is to elect and assign bishops.

What is a bishop in the United Methodist Church? They are specially consecrated pastors who are given oversight responsibility for a large region of Methodist churches. Once elected, a bishop no longer serves a local church but becomes the pastor to all the pastors in a given region.

The bishop for the Western North Carolina Conference, for example, has spiritual responsibility for the 1100 UMCs in the western half of our state as well as the 1500 or so pastors who serve them. Bishops are -- in theory at least -- responsible for teaching, guarding, and promoting the core doctrines of our faith.

At this year's Jurisdictional Conference, we in Western North Carolina received a new bishop, Rev. Larry Goodpaster. That's "Goodpaster," not "GoodPastor." You can read about him here. For the last eight years he has been the Bishop in the Alabama-West Florida region of our church. By all accounts, he did an excellent job there. He describes some of that conference's accomplishments in his recent book, There's Power In The Connection.

It seems like all of us who represented Western North Carolina were happy with this assignment. I'm not sure what direct impact this will have on Good Shepherd itself, but I sense that this new bishop is the right person at the right time for Methodists in our area.

Stay tuned.

This past Sunday, Methodist churches all across western North Carolina received new pastors.

Now, not all Methodist churches did so. In any given year, about 20% or so of the churches in the Western North Carolina Conference say good-bye to one pastor and then hello to a new one through a system called the itineracy. By itineracy, Methodism means that its pastors "itinerate" or "move." This year, "moving day" was June 24 and the first Sunday for pastors in new churches was June 29.

This system has its roots from the early days of the Methodist movement -- in England in the 1700s and here in the U.S. in the 1800s. It was an effective means of deploying clergy and serving churches in the days when people traveled on horseback.

Even in the 20th Century, Methodist pastors rarely stayed in one congregation for more than four years. While this ensured plenty of "itinerating," it often made for churches that had little continuity and pastors' families who had little stability.

These days, our denomination encourages longer tenures. In fact, I've only moved once in 19 years of ministry -- something that would have been unheard of a generation ago. I served nine years in Monroe and this week begin my 10th at Good Shepherd.

But the larger question is this: is a system that served Methodists well in the days of wagon trains and stagecoaches still viable in an era of wireless internet and megachurches?

Probably not.

These days, there is a real connection between stability in leadership and congregational health. The largest and most innovative churches in the U.S. -- not to mention in Methodism -- tend to keep their pastors for a long time.

In fact, Rev. Don Haynes, who has served at almost every conceivable level of the denomination, has some provocative commentary on the itineracy. You can read it here.

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By the way, while I did not "itinerate" this weekend, it was full -- Vacation Bible School, an emotional funeral, and then Sunday's worship. You can listen to the message here.