Why Come to
Morgan Hill United Methodist Church

Why be Religious?

I believe that the biggest, most powerful, most practiced religion in the world is, and has always been, materialism. I believe that all the major World Religions have developed to stand against the dangerous World's Religion. Most of us spend more time thinking life will be made rich by what we own, than we will ever spend in any other journey of faith. Power in the world comes most often from wealth. Yet, this isn't the path to life. The evil of the World's Religion is that it becomes greed setting people against one another. Greed for power divides, and subdues. This is death.

People throughout the ages have sensed this danger and turn to the religions of the world to seek answers or paths that offer life-giving alternatives to the morality of riches. The major religions place value of true life and community on a spiritual and not a material base. They say, in one way or another, that the human spirit is lifted to its highest and best when we base our life on spirituality and interdependence.

The major religions of the world have formed around basic questions that lead on a spiritual path of faith and community.

Hinduism and Buddhism form around the question: Why is there suffering?

Native Religious Traditions form around the question: What is my place in the world?

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam form around the question: How am I related to God?

After thousands of years, each has untold variations of the spiritual path some that are quite distinctive. And yet, each formative question has leads to a surprisingly similar breadth of spiritual practice.

Why be religious? Because the alternative of faith is the path of possession and that is death, one way or another. And not only individual death, but death of society in greed and violence.

Why be a Christian?

I have actually done quite a bit of exploring of other religious and spiritual traditions. I have been lucky to have really good teachers in each and have seen great value in them. There are some things I have discovered that other religions do better for me than my own does. I learned to sit and meditate from Zen Buddhists. I use native practices to dream and vision. I dance prayer like Hassids and Sufis. There is a beauty and truth to the underlying spirituality of these different traditions that has great saving value, not only for the individual but for the world. My most important spiritual questions have evolved around my relationship to God.

From the basic question of How am I related to God, three major religious histories developed with two startlingly common traits. They are each people of the Book (the Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament and Koran) and each people of a word, Covenant.

Judaism says we are related to God in our obedience. Dialogue with God forms the passion of the Chosen People is its rich development of the Torah, and later Talmud. Covenant is a matter of obedience.

Christianity says that we are related to God as friends, through Jesus Christ, a real and living human being. Covenant is a matter of friendship or adoption.

Islam says that we are related to God in worship, or perhaps more accurately, the pilgrimage of living worship. Covenant is worshipping God.

I am a Christian, because I was raised in the Christian church and world, but also because I find my place with God in issues around friendship.

I believe that Jesus' most profound and powerful work is in breaking through barriers that people construct between themselves. He calls people into relationship with God through forgiveness. He calls people back into relationship with each other, especially confronting religious and political and racial prejudice and isolation. His life demonstrates that we find relationship in dying, relationship in forgiveness, relationship in compassion and relationship in resurrection. A model of spirituality.

I am a Christian because the challenges of community and my encounter with Jesus is true to my experience of life, and true to my own struggle to be human.

Why be a United Methodist?

I grew up in the United Methodist church. After a college conversion experience, however, I left Methodism for a time to explore other traditions. I started with fundamentalist and charismatic Christianity loving the way we studied the Bible and practiced a life of faith. I left these forms because we spent too much time trying to make mystery make sense. In a religious community where everything had to fit, I experienced first a over-reliance on the intellect and will, a magical urgency on prayer, an individualistic interpretation to salvation and a resulting greed in the spiritual life that was not helpful to me. I loved the commitment and energy devoted to the spiritual path that I have rarely seen in mainline denominations that I have attended.

I came back to the Methodist way, which from the very beginning, was more messy. Methodists got started as people who came together sharing their real lives, and helping one another grow in the spirit. There were three basic paths in the mystery and life of God's grace:

worship in community,
personal spiritual growth,
and compassionate service in the world.

Furthermore, Methodists have, for two centuries, maintained that their "creed" or "doctrine" is whatever a majority of Methodists vote to be true every few years. That means it changes a little all the time. It means we value the relationship with the spirit more than any set of rules or guidelines we come up with. We constantly discover the Bible anew. We are constantly engaged by mystery and our own differences and yet still one community. This gets to the very heart of the question of spirituality in Jesus. Relationship, not rules.

We confront evil divisions of the world by recognizing they are in us, in our community, and by agreeing that the spirit is alive and working in our diversity, and the dialogue in which we engage.

Right now, United Methodism is in a great struggle, having lost over half its membership in three decades. We are struggling to find ourselves as we approach a new millennium. In the struggle, and in our valued diversity, there are great tensions as we disagree about social policy: about abortion, life against life decisions, homosexuality and even about the extent to which we should be in dialogue. But in all those discussions and disagreements, the Spirit is at work teaching and calling us. We will learn new things from the struggle. It is a good time to be a United Methodist.

I love that. Of course I don't like when United Methodism votes against the things I believe in, but I love that we keep talking, and I love that we can do that. And that is finally more important than any resolution to agreement, or any clarification of mystery.

Why go to Church?

I love to worship with a group of people that are different from me. I love the music that many different voices make, it is the way God created the whole universe and to be a spiritual being is to vibrate with God's power in community. How else can one develop a mature spirit than to become intimately involved with people who are different from oneself, who are active in their personal growth, who are still worshipping together, breaking down the barriers of the world, and serving the world's needs. Anyone who is bored at church doesn't see this basic challenge in the work of grace.

Why go to Morgan Hill UMC?

If you live close by, I've found that the United Methodist community of Morgan Hill is good church to go to.

We are a faith community that is open to the dialogue of spirit.

We are a liberal church in Morgan Hill. This is not to say we are necessarily all liberal politically or socially, but we are liberal in our openness to differing views and paths, we are liberal in our laughter. Most of us won't force others into any particular beliefs, but we will challenge each other to spiritual growth.

We are working hard to make worship a place of inclusive language, inclusive space, where a variety of images for God are explored, and differences valued.

We are, right now, having a lot of fun growing in the spirit. Our children are enjoying church and by telling them stories of the faith, we are discovering them ourselves.

We are a church learning about intimacy, struggling with the hard distinction between the need for open hearts and yet good boundaries.

We are asking questions. We are now on the verge of new directions. It is an exciting time to be part of the church.