Christian Unity and Chapel Hill United Methodist Church

Paul the Apostle was obsessed with Christian unity.  In Ephesians and Romans, he is concerned with unity between Jewish and Gentile Christians.  In his letters to the Corinthians, he writes about unity between the rich and the poor and between those with various spiritual gifts.

Unity is the hard problem of Christianity or any other ideological institution.  From the front lawn of Chapel Hill UMC, you can see at least four churches of different denominations.  Worshiping together is hard.  People have different dogmas, cultures, and musical preferences.  Some are rich, some are poor, and education levels vary.  Unity requires compromise and discomfort.  Most of us don't want that.

So we worship in separate churches, often right across the street from one another.  Black people worship at black churches and white people at white churches.  The wealthy worship at one church, and the poor at another.  There are churches for the elderly, and churches for the young.  And when they share a building, they often have their own services.

Litany (group prayer) at Chapel Hill UMC shows concern for breaking down barriers to unity

So, when I walked into Chapel Hill's sanctuary and saw a warm friendly congregation of diverse people worshiping and working alongside one another, my religious skepticism was challenged.  My heart was warmed.

I wrote Reverend Dave, told him a little bit about myself, and shared my perceptions, he wrote back and told me that the congregation was even more diverse than it looked on the surface.  The church is both politically and economically diverse, ranching from very poor to wealthy ranchers.  "There are many in our church that don't have access to internet or computers," he said.  And somehow, they make it work.  I'm sure it's not perfect.  What is?  The first century church wasn't.  If it had been, Paul would have been writing thank you cards instead of Second Corinthians. 

If I had the chance, I would ask the members of Chapel Hill about the benefits and struggles of working and worshipping in such a diverse group.  What compromises do they have to make?  How do they think it makes them better Christians?  What have they learned from the experience?

My Neighbor's Faith: Chapel Hill United Methodist (UMC) San Antonio 13 July 2014

CHAPEL HILL UNITED METHODIST 

 SAN ANTONIO, TX

One of the most important factors in choosing a church is the people who attend.  Studies show that if a person hasn't connected with about six people on the first Sunday they attend a church, they are unlikely to return.

We were greeted the moment we walked in the door.  They were assigned greeters, but I felt that their greetings were sincere, especially since they took some time to tell us a little bit about the church.  "We're a very diverse group here", one man told us.  The greetings kept coming as we got further in the building and made our way towards the auditorium.  People introduced themselves, asked whether it was our first time there and whether we were new to San Antonio.  They were warm and seemed generally interested in us.  They didn't try to shove the church down our throat, but they did go out of their way to make us feel welcome.  Towards the end of the service, they gave all of the first-time visitors a small loaf of banana bread as a welcoming gift.

Like the greeter said, it was a diverse group.  The church had members of all ages, and while I won't claim that they had members of all races, there was a healthy mix of white, black and Hispanic folks there.  The demographics looked a lot like the demographics of America, generally speaking.  It was a refreshing sight.

Front and center of the auditorium was the communion table, above it, a cross and to the left a podium all of them decorated for Pentecost.  On either side of the auditorium were two large projector screens upon which were projected announcements, hymn lyrics, and scriptures.  The choir box was in a corner and faced the church as a whole diagonally.  A television with faced the choir so that they could face the church while singing adding to a feeling of community.

That, alongside the fact that the pastor generally spoke from the same level at which the congregation sat gave the impression of a strong egalitarianism within the church that was echoed by almost constant participation from the members at every moment throughout the service.  They even had an open mic period during which members could discuss how God had acted in their lives during the week.  I thought this was profoundly open, since you never know what sorts of crazy things people are inclined to say, or whether or not they will cohere with the theology of the church, or of the pastor.  This tells me that a theology of open participation is more important to this congregation than complete orthodoxy.  Perhaps one might say that participation is orthodoxy, even when we err.  But now, perhaps, I'm putting words into the mouths of these kind folks, and I ought not do that.

Throughout the service we were impressed by a church that is willing to participate with the world around it.  Sarah counted at least 3 ongoing charitable projects mentioned in the announcements including assembling health care kits for immigrants in Laredo, and collecting socks and underwear for school children in need, and their high school group did a mission trip where they helped repair a flooded home in Eagle Pass. If that weren't enough we found others that the church was dedicated to when we toured the building.  Most noticeably, the church helps foster children, they hold a pantry from which frequently give food to the poor, and they had a pamphlet for Alcoholics Anonymous that was located in the bathroom, where no one would notice if an individual happened to pocket it.

And it wasn't just that.  Even the sermon addressed issues pertinent to the world.  The pastor chose the story of Jericho as his text.  At first, he brought the children up and showed them a veggie tales version of the story.  I liked the message he gave to the children, although I thought it was rather sanitized.  At the end of the veggie tales version, the citizens of Jericho flee.  That's not how the biblical account works.  The biblical account is a story of genocide.  It's a story that most Christians explain away by suggesting that all the people who were displaced and killed were evil.  Never mind the fact that this includes children, it's hard to imagine a functional city full of evil people.  Is Somalia nothing but evil people?  What about Detroit?  We know better, but those places would fall to an invading army.  Any society that can build large walls and survive a siege is functional, which means the members of that society have a certain amount of trust in each other, which means that they aren't deserving of being genocide victims, if any group of people ever were.

The pastor addressed this head on, and without any nonsense.  He said that he didn't understand the moral implications of the text, and that he didn't have any arguments against the skeptics concerning this text or texts like it in the Bible.  "I don't know who that God is who sanctions genocide, but I know who Jesus is."  He admits the seeming discrepancy between the Old and New Testaments on issues like this.  I loved the honesty.  The willingness to ask a profound question and then say in front of a congregation, "I don't know."  That's rare intellectual honesty.  That's a willingness to step outside the church walls and engage the world without a pretending to have a monopoly on truth or even on a valid perspective.  He didn't even place blame at the feet of people who couldn't overcome this cognitive dissonance.  He didn't threaten them with hell or challenge the integrity of their character.  And concerning the aforementioned explanations typically used by Christians he says, "none of these explanations hold water."

At the same time, it wasn't an abdication of faith.  The pastor maintained that he and his fellow Christians were believers in and followers of Jesus.  They didn't need to have to have all the answers, and they didn't always have to reconcile everything in scripture.  Scripture was a guide, an important guide, but just a guide to Jesus.  "We don't worship THIS," he said, holding up a bible.  "We worship the risen Lord."

For those of you who aren't students of theology, none of what I've mentioned here stands outside of the Methodist tradition.  Sarah, who grew up Methodist even says that the order of worship was almost identical to what the services she grew up with.   The following is something of an example of this consistency and of the use of the technology.  The following is a prayer common to Methodists in the UMC.  For those of you who are Evangelicals, it will look very progressive.  For those of you who are humanists, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised.



All in all, our experience there was positive.  The people were nice and the church had what I consider to be a healthy and balanced theology.  I think this church would be a great family for any Christian looking for a diverse, thoughtful, compassionate community that is active in charity.