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Finally United
Throughout my entire life, I have been involved in the Methodist Church. In April of 1968, we became the United Methodist Church. But just a decade earlier, churches like the one I grew up in were segregated and did not welcome the black community. It took the Civil Rights Movement to eventually unite us.
Then as United Methodist, we claimed to be “a welcoming church”, but our Book of Discipleship stated that homosexuality was incompatible with Christian teaching. We would not ordain or marry gay people. We have been divided on this issue since the 1970’s.
At our General Conference in May of 2024, we revised the Social Principles in the Book of Discipline, removing the previous language that was harmful. What a celebration it was! Now, we can be called The United Methodist Church and be proud of it.
It’s a freeing experience to follow God’s plan to be the Church. We are finally united and can move ahead, growing and fully becoming God’s instrument of love for all.
My First Sunday As A P.K.
shared by Collie Coburn
In June of 1967, my Dad took on his first pastoral assignment. He and Mom packed up the family and moved to Water Valley, KY. Waiting for us there was a beautiful red brick church with a lovely parsonage right next door. My older brother, Kimball Jr, younger sisters, Kathy and Cari, and I were very young. Cari had just been born before the move. Water Valley was a small rural community with lots of room for me and Kimball Jr to run around. That’s why Mom and Dad said we were always to let them know where we were going.
When I tell people that I grew up as a pastor’s kid (PK), I get mixed reactions. Some might imagine PKs as being automatically well-behaved young Christians. But for those of us who actually know preacher’s kids, we’ve seen that they can also be a bit on the wild side. I see myself somewhere in the middle. Being a PK can present certain challenges for a kid. But as you’ll see in my case, the challenge was more on the preacher.
Dad’s first challenge happened when he was preaching his first sermon ever at Water Valley Methodist Church on Father’s Day. To say he was nervous is an understatement. Mom had to slip out to take care of the needs of Kathy and Cari, so she took them home while my big brother and I stayed in the service. Kimball Jr sat quietly and listened, but I quickly lost interest and wanted to leave. I remembered the promise to my parents that I would always let them know where I was going. What happened next was reported in the local newspaper the following day.
“Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family.”
1 Peter 2:17 (The Message)
There were plenty of times I made Dad’s job difficult. But to be honest, I don’t quite remember this incident. What I do remember is how comfortable I felt at Church. Perhaps that’s why I always felt free to be myself completely. Church friends are like an extension of my own family. Even when visiting churches other than mine, I still find it natural to smile and chat with strangers. I hope you feel this way too.
When we feel loved, supported, and encouraged at church, it confirms we are part of the family. And when we love, support, and encourage others at church, we are strengthening the family. Let’s work together to build up the family of God and make the Church a place where no one wants to say, “I’m going home.”
See you on Sunday!
Collie
What Will Bring Us Back
I think it is about time. It’s about time we start filling up our churches again. The pandemic has kept our churches only half full, and sometimes less. There are those who predict that this will be the way from now on. They’ve shown that many of us have grown accustomed to watching our worship services at home on demand.
As comfortable as it is worshipping in pajamas, it will never take the place of being in community with friends and singing the songs to live music. Even though many churches are still wearing masks and not touching each other with hugs, kisses, or even holding hands, there is an undeniable connection when we’re together in the sanctuary and worshipping with each other.
When Pam and I are leaving and fellowshipping in the narthex, we can’t help but share some hugs and shake a few hands. I know we probably shouldn’t be touching others, but we miss it so much and find it difficult to hold back. I’m not saying it’s the healthy thing to do. What I am saying is it shows how much we miss it.
The Church is not an institution, a club, or an organization. The Church is the instrument of God. It’s the personal warmth and bond of faith that is the glue binding us together. We are a community of love that builds God’s Kingdom come, God’s Will be done. This is what will bring us back to Church.
Agape, Kimball, S.E.
I Just Want To Hug Somebody
This pandemic has put a hold on our ministry for two-and-a-half years. I miss being in your churches. I mostly miss the personal touch, I miss preaching to you, singing with you, and hugging you.
I realize why we had to stop hugging each other these past years, but I hope we never have to do it again in my lifetime. Being the Church is being in community, and being in community is a feeling you cannot have without the freedom of being together in worshipful dance, song, and touch.
Not only have we not hugged each other in church, we haven’t even held hands in a friendship circle. We haven’t been able to face each other without masks and joyfully lift our voices in song.
The scripture is true, “If we keep silent the stones will shout out” (Luke 19:40). I don’t believe for a minute this pandemic will stop the Church from being what she is called to be.
The Church is not a body that can be blown away by the winds of disease. We are built on a foundation of faith. We are filled with the Spirit of Christ that brings us together in a community of love, and nothing can stop us from hugging each other.
Agape, Kimball, S.E.
A Feeling I’ll Never Forget
It was 1968. I was sitting in the library of my college when I went into a dream state. I dreamed about the possibility of serving God in a way that would change the world. I felt it so deeply it brought a warm feeling of God’s presence in me. Tears welled up in my eyes and dropped on the page of a book on my desk. They startled me but I didn’t want to wake up and lose that feeling and the vision I was experiencing.
My tears were of sadness because we were losing 58,000 young men and women being killed in the Viet Nam War. Sadness because prejudice and discrimination were rampant throughout my southern homeland. They were also tears of joy that I could be a part of God’s plan to make a difference in our country and world. I had the privilege of preaching the confronting and challenging message of Christ in two little country churches on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. They weren’t what you would label liberal, but they listened, and gradually over time, began to be changed by the teachings of Jesus.
That day was a feeling I’ll never forget. It was a feeling I don’t want to forget. It was a feeling I wanted to carry with me for the rest of my life. Those tears gave me the blessed assurance my decision to follow God’s call into ministry was my center and destiny.
My wish for you is to have a moment like mine when you feel God’s guidance to use your talents to change the world.
Agape, Kimball, S.E.
Imagining
Pam and I have four children, two boys and two girls. The younger brother, Collie, at the age of eight, told us one Sunday morning that he did not want to go to Church. After some thought, we allowed him to stay home that Sunday.
He didn’t mention it all week, neither did we, but come Sunday morning he was dressed and ready for church. One week was a long time for our young son to realize it didn’t feel right to stay home while his family went to church. He missed his friends, the children’s choir, and Sunday School. It just didn’t seem like a Sunday without going to church.
For the past 15 months, the Christian community has missed going to church. And like Collie, Sundays haven’t been the same. Our children have missed their friends in Sunday School, hearing the stories of Jesus, and singing songs that help build their foundation of faith. The same goes for all ages in our churches. We miss celebrating communion, baptisms, and weddings. We’ve felt stifled in our ability to reach out to the lost, sick, and hurting. We’ve missed the joy of celebrating holy holidays together. This lack of connection has reminded us that the church isn’t merely a building, the Church is the people who gather together with imagination and the strength of God’s Call. Are you looking forward to getting back to church? Have you missed being together physically in worship with your brothers and sisters in the spirit of Christ? As soon as it’s safe, I hope you and your family will be back with the family of God to, once again, enjoy the fellowship that can only be felt when two or more are gathered in His name.
Due to the Covid crisis, technology has begun playing an important role of encouraging us in our faith. Many believe it will continue to do so in the future, not as a replacement of the local church, but as an enhancement to help us reach people where they are. It’s been exciting to see the church take bold steps using video, podcasts, and social media with open hearts and minds. Our Ministry’s Board of Directors has added a new media team to imagine with us new ways to help keep our ministry relevant and in touch with your needs on your spiritual journey. As our churches are imagining how to serve our Lord in today’s world, we as a Ministry of Evangelism in the Prophetic Spirit have begun creating video messages. These brief videos (3-5 minutes) include stories and music that will encourage you and your church to follow God’s Call. We’ve titled this new series OUR CALL. I invite you to share them on social media, download and use them in your church, or in your church’s videos.
May God bless and use our imaginations as we reach out to our world with the hope freely given. This is Our Call.
This Is Our Chance
I can’t think of a sadder situation than not being able to be with a loved one who is dying in the hospital with Covid-19. I ask that you, along with me, pray for the sick and dying during this pandemic.
Historically, pandemics have left cultural, political, and social changes that last far beyond the disease itself. The Spanish Flu of 1918, like Covid-19, was a virus. It killed approximately 50 million worldwide, including 675,000 Americans. As a result, this pandemic revolutionized public health, spawning the new fields of epidemiology and virology. It led several Western European countries to adopt universal health-care systems that are still in operation today.
I understand we will need time to go through a grieving period. Hopefully, as our bodies, hearts, and minds begin to heal, we will allow God to lead us to become a more unified country and world. Our churches are a most important part of this. We should not only be preaching “we’re all in this together”, but we should also be living examples of it.
This is our chance to do what Jesus told us we could do.
“I tell you for certain that if you have faith in me, you will do the same thing I am doing. You will do even greater things.” John 14:12
These past 41 years as I have traveled to your churches, I’ve seen how you’ve become more creative with music and media. I am very proud of the many churches that are making their services available online. This is something we are continuing to learn and will find to be an evangelism tool that will allow us to do greater things and growing things in the name of Christ. I am praying that we will use this time to put aside our disagreements and divisions and be the Church we can be and are called to be.
Evangelism in the Prophetic Spirit
In the mid-’70s, when I was finishing seminary, my dissertation for my Doctor of Ministry degree was “Prophetic Preaching From A Pastoral Base.” I never thought about any kind of ministry other than being a pastor in the local church. I admired the ministries of the prophets in the Old Testament. Jesus admired them, too, and certainly ministered in the prophetic spirit. His teachings were confronting and challenging, but they were also filled with love and hope. He was a prophet and he was pastoral. I saw in their examples how I wanted to relate to my congregations in actions and word.
I was blessed to have served 12 years in the local church before I began feeling my ‘Call within a Call’ from being a pastor to a servant evangelist. I knew wherever the call to evangelism took me, I would never let it separate me from the local church. If I commit the rest of my life to this new specialized ministry, it would have to be in a way that helps and supports the local church. And it had to be a ministry that mirrors the prophetic and pastoral ministry of Jesus … a ministry of love, confrontation, challenge, and hope.
It was a time when TV evangelists filled the airwaves with messages that were foreign to my belief with their lifestyles and the ways they preached the Good News. They put a disingenuous name on one of the great building blocks of the Church. As much as TV evangelists upset me with their cheap grace and preaching less than the fullness of the Gospel, I am disappointed in us who have let their ways push us away from evangelism. Do we do the same thing, in reverse, that they did? The Gospel is a double edge sword. It is personal and it is social. It is saving souls and it is saving society. Did we choose social justice and abandon evangelism?
This is why I named my ministry, “Evangelism in the Prophetic Spirit.” Evangelism is being a messenger for God, and God’s message is love, and that love moves us to love others through acts of peace and justice. We cannot compartmentalize evangelism into saving of self. It has nothing to do with numbers and building mega-churches. It is not counting heads, it is changing hearts. For me, it is partnering with local pastors to challenge, revive and grow their churches.
Let’s stop pushing and pulling evangelism around to fit our narrow-minded agendas. Evangelism is the fullness of the Gospel in all its Kingdom building ways. Let’s reclaim the true meaning and action of evangelism ~ Evangelism in the Prophetic Spirit.
The Rock Band and the Church (A Parable)
Once upon a time, some young people decided they wanted to become a rock band. They got so excited thinking about fame, fortune, and popularity. They talked for days about what the name of their band should be, what songs they’ll sing, what they’ll wear, and the kind of image they wanted to project. At the end of their meetings, they were full of themselves and couldn’t wait to tell their friends. They were completely ready to become rock stars, except for one detail that stood in their way. They didn’t know how to play their instruments!
Photo by Red Morley Hewitt on Unsplash
This story reminds me of the church. You can’t organize a church into being. Meetings do not a church make. A new name does not make a new church. Buildings, parking spaces, and technology are not the foundation of the church. No, it is people ~ committed people, spirited people, talented people, compassionate and giving people, who in community understand they are the body of Christ.
There are no shortcuts to being the Church. The Church is the instrument of God, an instrument that requires practice, an instrument that plays the joyful and calling music of justice, peace, hope and love, an instrument of faithful commitment to prayer, worship, witness, evangelism and action.
The Church does not strive for popularity, it strives for community, a oneness through love and understanding. The call to be the Church is not for ‘groupies’ (those who follow the band), but for ‘disciples’ (those who follow Christ). A rock band thrives by having groupies. The Church thrives by having disciples. A rock band needs ‘roadies’ to help set up the band on the stage. The Church needs ‘radicals’ with the courage to take the Good News of Jesus into all the world!
I Am A Beggar
Although I have a good education and enough money to get by, I am a beggar. To be Christ-like you must be a beggar. You can’t be demanding and controlling. It is a position of servanthood. Thank you for responding to my begging. Without your prayers, financial support, and belief in our mission to take the Good News of Jesus Christ into the world, my ministry of evangelism in the prophetic spirit would have faltered long ago.
The Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, bragged about the churches in Macedonia. Although they were going through hard times and were very poor, they begged for the privilege of sharing in the ministry and relief of other Christians (II Corinthians 8:1-5). Like those faithful nascent churches, I beg pastors and their congregations to allow me to serve them as a servant evangelist. I ask earnestly and humbly to bring the challenge and the Call of Jesus to them.
My mission is to help Churches focus on their mission. Admittedly, sometimes I fail, but other times I strike a spark in congregations. At those times the spark is visible and palpable and the people begin coming to the altar before I finish the Call. It is as though the feeling had been building and they couldn’t wait to come to God with a renewed commitment. I say ‘renewed’ because I preach mostly to churched people who have come to the altar before, but that fire may be only flickering or even smoldering. Church has become just another activity they do as part of a busy schedule. They hunger and thirst for that deeper meaning, and when it comes, they can’t sit still. They become the church on the move, being the best they can be, for Christ’s sake.
This is what I beg for. When it happens, I am renewed. My mission is done. My Calling is fulfilled.
Kimball Boyd Coburn 