Will better organization solve the problems of the United Methodists? No, it usually doesn't solve any denomination's problems. Per Rev. Heyduck-
It looks to me like the proposed solution is a more efficient and authoritative bureaucracy. Sounds like the usual solution those with power offer.
In most organizations, the people in charge are managers, more MBA or MSM (Master of science in management, not main-stream media, although the shoe might fit for the Methodists) than M.Div. When you have a hammer, problems look like nails and when you have an MBA, everything calls for a five-point action plan complete with a PowerPoint presentation. Now that I'm done teaching MBA classes, I can say that without getting fired.
That's not just a Methodist problem. Southern Baptists can have a lot of the same problems.
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It's a bit of an old story, but this piece on accused child witches in east Africa is troubling. As charismatic churches grow in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, the concepts of spiritual warfare and countering demonic activity also grow. When you take that meme (which can be abused even in the modern US) and take it to an area where animistic religions can look demonic and emotional parishioners can take normal teenage rebellion as being possessed, such charges aren't too surprising.
What is surprising is an active exorcism industry, where charismatic "pastors" are charging for exorcisms. Wolves in shepherd's clothing. Even worse is vigilante killings of the kids.
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The Jordan is a bit too polluted to be baptized in, sayeth an environmental group. A lot of modern rivers don't flow as well as they used to, as water gets sucked up for irrigation and city use and, especially in developing areas, comes back worse than it came out and often flowing at a slower rate. The shot in the piece shows the Jordan as something I'd not want to go for a swim in, but if I were in the sentimental mood to be dunked in the same place were Jesus was dunked, picking up a skin infection might be a risk worth taking.
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I spent my sophomore year at Eastern Michigan; they are in the news for kicking a Christian student out of counseling program for trying to avoid working with a gay client. A federal judge threw out a lawsuit looking to get her back in the program and the theocon lawyers supporting the student are planning to appeal.
In modern counseling ethics, you're supposed to put your personal faith on the shelf while serving clients. That's hard for many people of faith to do, especially when they are having to council someone who is doing sinful things and you're supposed to keep your mouth shut about that. A similar case is going down in Georgia, where a student was kicked out of a counseling program for not renouncing her orthodox stance on homosexuality.
I didn't have such issues getting three college degrees in business as an evangelical, but in the areas of accounting and finance and economics, my faith actually leaned me a bit to the left of financial orthodoxy. Were I looking for a degree in counseling or psych, I'd likely need to get it from a professing Christian school, for you seem to need to buy into a culturally-liberal worldview to get through the system.
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