ReFocused or not, here I come. . .

Yes, I know how self-contradictory the title sounds. How can a thing be both small and momentous at the same time? Yet it is by relatively small tectonic adjustments that massive earthquakes are made. I witnessed one such earthquake today.

All Christians, I suppose, justly take pride in their religious affiliation and I am no exception. The denomination to which I belong has an honored past, golden with the valor of women and men who risked all to remove the ugly blight of human slavery and to win women’s right to vote. Today these positions may seem to require no special courage but when our denomination’s founders first rode out against the dark forces which seek to enslave humanity and deface the image of God in it, they required the kind of courage found only among martyrs.

When all the world seemed to be against them, including many of those who ought to have been their friends and fellow-champions within the church, these brave souls counted the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. And, though it meant the loss of every earned accolade and hard-won personal advantage, they “chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” (Heb. 11:25)

So, beginning in 1843, and building upon their methodistic Wesleyan heritage, the godly people who pioneered the Wesleyan Church committed themselves to the complete and total annihilation of the American slave trade.

Five years later, on July 19–20, 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention was convened in a Wesleyan Church (today a National Historic Site) in Seneca Falls, New York. The pledge of our people was clear and unambiguous. Historian and General Superintendent Emeritus, Dr. Lee M. Haines, quotes an early editor of the American Wesleyan (the denominational organ of its day) who declared shortly after the Civil War that “the paper was to be dedicated to acquiring absolutely equal rights for all, regardless of ancestry or color.”[1]

Following the successful fight to end slavery and win the right to vote for women our denomination turned its attention to the plight of the poor and, most especially, those suffering from the consequences of the drug and alcohol trade. Their tireless efforts helped to win important victories offering hope to multitudes of people suffering the sad consequences of chemical enslavement.

Those golden hours shimmered and glowed with what many hoped was to be an ever-increasing intensity. Having won battles as difficult to procure as these, one might naturally expect an unbroken train of victories and successes to follow. But such was not to be the case.

In what would be the greatest test of our national character and spirit, a shadow passed between our great Source of light and ourselves. I speak, of course, of the deafening silence which manifested amongst us during the civil rights struggle; silence at the precise moment when our voice and message ought to have pierced the cacophony of voices throughout our land. Based upon our scriptural and historical mandate it was a shameful stillness that seized many of our institutions and pulpits. Where was that zeal for full equality with which our predecessors first set out? Where was that deep and insatiable longing for justice that caused them to leave places of preferment and ease for hardship and hatred and ridicule? It had faded, lost in the gray haze of the shadow of our pitiful attempt to blend into the very culture to which we were called to be prophetic.

No words are sufficient to describe the present generation’s sorrow over the lost opportunity represented by our ecclesiastical silence during those turbulent years of civil strife. Indeed, we find no comfort or refuge in the fact that others within the broader Evangelical movement also failed. It wasn’t their particular message or heritage; it had been ours.

A lot of repair work has been going on over the past twenty or so years and I am greatly encouraged by much of it. It seems as if, especially in the most recent generation, there is a firm and settled determination to heal the racial wound and facilitate true Christian reconciliation between every disparate group.

But, today, during our General Conference, we took One Small Momentous Step in two directions at once: forward toward our future destiny and back to our original mission of being a prophetic people with a prophetic voice among the nations. Today we took seriously all our declamations of sympathy with Joel 2:28 and Acts 2:17 which speak of the gracious call of God to “menservants and maidservants” and both groups being empowered to “prophesy” (i.e. preach) by the unction and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Today, we trimmed our sails to follow those majestic zephyrs which our founders first set sail to. We began, with a small, but earth-shaking determination, to live out the conviction that the Lord is Lord of His church and, as such, is the One ultimately capable of determining who is fit to answer His summons to ministry. We affirmed, in the most unambiguous manner possible, our conviction that God has chosen women and men to lead his church; confirmed our strongest professions that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” ( Gal. 3:28 )

Today we elected Dr. Jo Anne Lyon as General Superintendent in the Wesleyan Church.

If you listen, you can almost hear a “great cloud of witnesses” applauding from the celestial grandstands!