‘Thunder in the Desert’ is entry point to Discipleship University for black Methodists

Nashville, Tenn. January 3, 2008/GBOD--Some 200 United Methodist black church pastors and laity pressed their way to “Thunder in the Desert: A Symposium for Partnerships in Black Churches” meeting in Nashville January 3-5, 2008.

Sponsored by the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship, the gathering was designed to help participating churches plan and implement effective ministry partnerships between laity and clergy leaders.

The symposium is among the agency’s ongoing efforts to address leadership development, one of four areas of focus the denomination has set for the 2009-20012 quadrennium.

The Rev. Vance P. Ross, top executive for GBOD’s Leadership Ministries division, said that “Thunder in the Desert is an entry point to Discipleship University, GBOD’s ground-breaking new initiative offering leaders two-year learning experiences designed to provide skills and models that help reverse the decline in United Methodist Church growth and membership.”

Opening worship included a meditation, “There’s Got to Be a Better Way,” by the Rev. Safiyah Fosua, GBOD’s director of Invitational Preaching, who posed the question “Are you working hard or hardly working?”

Referring to the story of Jesus and his disciples in Luke 5:1-11, she said, “The disciples could say they had been working hard all night long doing what fishermen do,” she said. “Working smart came for them when they said, ‘Nevertheless Lord, we’ll go and try again.”

In closing, Fosua challenged participants to “beat the bushes and the hedges. You’ve been fishing too shallow—re-fishing in the same water again and again. Go out there to the deep parts where no one else is going.”

During the call to worship, the group responded that they can “hear the thunder (the sound of the sky tuning up for rain) even in the desert where they live.

“Lord, we are dry and thirsty in this place. Send your rain, send your rain, send your rain,” they plead.

“God is not through with the United Methodist Church, and the black church in America,” said the Rev. Tyrone Gordon, pastor of St. Luke Community United Methodist Church in Dallas. “The rain of renewal, growth and vitality is on the way. This event gives us tools to prepare for the coming rain.”

The Rev. Geraldine McClellan, district superintendent for the North Central District of the Florida Conference, brought 26 participants representing 11 congregations, most of whom had never attended a denomination-wide, connectional event of African-American pastors and laity.

“The Florida Conference is making intentional efforts to strengthen African-American congregations. The Office of Connectional Ministries provided $2,500 to assist clergy and lay to attend the symposium,” she said. The event, she added, is the kind of resource that will provide needed training.

“African-American United Methodist churches have a unique opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in communities and to people who confront the varied issues of people of the Diaspora,” says the Rev. Lillian Smith, director of Connectional Ministries for the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual (regional) Conference, which had five congregational teams in attendance.

“This gathering is designed to help clergy and laity better partner together to better fulfill their mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” said Smith.

Working in groups related to their demographics, ministry teams completed ministry action plans and submitted them during the closing worship service.

The Rev. Frederick G. Outlaw, district superintendent of the Bay Pines District of the Alabama-West Florida Conference, led the opening plenary with the topic, “Why the Bible? By Whose Authority?”

“The Bible is the record of the affirmation of faith for a particular people, in a particular place, at a particular time, responding to the call of God on their lives,” said Outlaw.

He shared a poignant story about his father’s death. While a student at Tennessee State University in 1961, Outlaw said he received the word that his father’s body had been found “floating in the river … riddled with bullets.”

He had watched his father, a master brick mason, stand his ground against white masons who refused to pay black workers for their labor. That stand, he believes, was the cause of his father’s death, although it was ruled a suicide.

“There is a God whose grace lifted me up, simply because I stay with the Bible,” he said.