reboot

those of us that spend a lot of time with television, movies, or pop culture in general are familiar with the term "reboot".

in general, the term speaks to an endgame within a television show or franchise where the "world as we know it" is about to change. a bomb might explode and send our heroes back in time before a certain tragedy has occurred. a starship enterprise is reintroduced and re-imagined for a younger generation. a spiderman is recast as anyone other than tobey maguire. a batman is carved out of a darker and more realistic canvas, not out of one where the ridiculous notion that michael keaton could kick anyone's ass was ever permitted to happen.

in entertainment, a reboot happens so that characters we love can have a happier or more relevant ending or so that an old story can be told in a new way. and it happens all the time.

in the real world, reboots are easier said than done. a couple weeks ago, limbo talked around the idea of being "cynical about institutions". one easy reason institutions become easy to dislike is they are incredibly hard to change. once a hierarchical structure is put in place and once the top dogs in that structure feel the power and authority in their position, they will fight tooth and nail to keep that power and authority, and, more often than not, the "real" people on the lower rungs of the system are used as scapegoats and the means to an end they rarely have any significant power to change. sad but true.

let's look at my favorite local united methodist church for example.

during a training on sunday afternoon, donna used a great flow chart to show just how deep the rabbit hole of infrastructure goes as it concerns the united methodist church... the governing body of the united methodist church is called the general conference. under general conference falls jurisdictional conference, of which we are part of the southeastern jurisdiction. under that comes annual conference. we are part of the north alabama general conference. then, local churches are broken into and assigned districts. we are a part of the cheaha district. only then on the chart do we reach the local church. that's four levels of bureaucracy above us we are beholden to. that's a massive hill to roll a rock up when it comes to enacting any sort of change to the church corporate's bylaws and policies and such. and truly, that doesn't even begin to touch the levels of red tape and bureaucracy that the local church is then bulleted down into. disciples council, lay leadership, sprc, finance, trustees, worship missions, etc.

how on earth does anything ever get done?

in short. it usually doesn't. not unless we have a lot of time and a lot of patience. this struggle becomes an unintended lesson on god's time versus our time. unintended, but practical if we choose to practice in the institution of a local united methodist church.

on a smaller scale, though, huffman methodist, without malice and likely without true intent, created our own obstacle course. over the last thirty years, we became a senior pastor driven church, guided by the wind that was every senior pastor that came through and their respective educated experience and opinions on what was the best and most appropriate way to lead a united methodist congregation in huffman, al. the community's demographics around our church were changing faster than we could keep up with. so, in turn, we looked inward (for the most part) and stayed focused on how we could take care of ourselves instead of taking the time to examine why god was leaving us in the middle of this ever-changing community. a community that, by the mid-nineties, looking nothing like the membership of our church.

and so, in ways, we freaked. we became even more senior pastor driven. but unfortunately, we were matched with pastors that were either not long for huffman or not good fits or both. change was hard. we resisted. and, in the end, we went to war with ourselves (and our pastors) for several years.

as with any war, there were consequences. long time members and families left, frustrated by the lack of direction or the lack of leadership or the constant drama. fingers were pointed. blog-gates ensued. people were upset. people were blamed. people were right to be both.

as the dust settled, though, the church left behind in a community that continues to change became more focused. not on us, this time around, but something that was greater than ourselves, something that we wished we never would have lost sight of. but, having done so, we genuinely seemed interested in rallying the troops for one final stand. this time, we were no longer interested in fighting with each other, but for each other. for our community. for the greater good. for those that felt "left behind" right along with us in this community. for those that needed our help. for those that could help us every bit as much as we could help them.

and so, we would make a decision to reboot our story.

disciples in action: making and growing disciples.

embracing our community through the transformative love of christ.

one member of our long-range planning committee shared their thoughts on huffman's history of following through. they said, in so many words, that huffman umc had become consistent in "leaving the bow untied".

the thought was there. words may have even been used to describe the thought. but that's where it ended. no map. no plan to pursue those words. maybe a hope. or a prayer. or a wish. maybe lots of all. you know what they say, though....

wish in one hand, crap in the other. see which one gets filled first.

church, the act of doing church, has never been about wishing and prayer. although great amounts of both fit into the equation, nothing happens that we don't actively choose to happen.

we are a metaphor, a self-fulfilling prophecy. of whatever it is we decide to prophesy.

or we were. and we are.

do what you've always done. get what you always got.

and we did. and we will.

we prayed for guidance. we hoped for change. and then we opted out of the clause that asked us to do, do, do the work required to see it happen.

we lost friends. we lost families. we lost direction.

until we decided to push back.

it's taken years to get huffman back to this place. many have given up on us. many have proclaimed, stubbornly, that they were only sticking around to go down with the ship, as any good and faithful crew member would.

but we've decided to push back.

we made a choice.

we aren't going anywhere.

too often, we focus on our numbers. where they were. what they used to be. what they are now.

who cares?

what if we started a church in the middle of a community with 200 active participants. a community we need every bit as much as they need us. what if we decided not to get busy dying, but get busy living?

what if we hired two fresh new staff persons from outside of house and told them from the jump that we were no longer babysitting our left behind, but we were going to survive and succeed?

what if we empowered our other staff members to do the same, to find their passions and develop them in a way that would revitalize our church?

what if we called upon our creator and said we were ready be "who we might have been".

what if we looked upon our new era as our minas tirith and chose to believe our outcome could be the same.

for several years now, our church has been changing. from the inside out.

sunday, we celebrated the end of an era.

and the beginning of the next.

we'd love you to be a part of our success story.

for, we are going to succeed.

don't believe me? just watch.

the next four posts will give you some insight into the making of a mission statement to complement our new vision.

for now?

huffman united methodist church is dead. long live huffman united methodist church!

"embracing our community through the transformative love of christ."