The Coming Methodist Gridlock or Donnybrook

Karl Barth was once asked his reaction of the amazing response to his book on Romans. He said that as a local Swiss pastor he felt like a man climbing inside a church tower and falling. As the man reached out into the darkness he grabbed a rope —  the rope to the village bell!  The whole world, Barth said, seemed to have been longing for the peal  of that “bell of hope,” and the  era of Neo-Orthodoxy was born!

In the aftermath of a gridlocked General Conference in 2012, some of our bishops are offering creative, prophetic leadership. Though we deny them a substantive role  in the work of the General Conference and that body’s attempts to perfect the Book of Discipline, they do have the power of the pen and they are our shepherds.  The bishops are our spiritual leaders and one of the few remaining offices that almost all United Methodists want to retain.  When they speak, we need to listen carefully, and maybe even respond to them en mass with a bullhorn that says, “WE HEAR YOU.”