In their book, "Being United Methodist Christians," a trio of United Methodist pastors reflect on the history and theology amid worldwide diversity, and urge members to be proud of our heritage.
Guests: The Rev. Andy Langford and the Rev. Ann Langford Duncan
- Learn more and/or purchase "Being United Methodist Christians: Living a life of grace and hope."
- The sermon, worship and study resources are available at Cokesbury.
- The videos are available at AmplifyMedia.com.
- Andy Langford, Sally Langford and Ann Langford Duncan are ordained elders in the Western North Carolina Conference of The UMC.
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This episode posted on Nov. 17, 2023.
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Transcript
Prologue
Crystal Caviness, host: Let's celebrate being United Methodist. That single sentiment is the overarching message from a trio of United Methodist pastors whose new book titled, being United Methodist Christians reflects on the history and theology amid worldwide diversity and urges members to embrace our unique contributions and be proud of our heritage.
Crystal: Andy and Ann, welcome to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.”
Ann Langford Duncan, guest: Hello. Thank you.
Andy Langford, guest: Good to be with you.
Crystal: Well, I'm so excited that you're here. Today we're going to talk about your new book, "Being United Methodist Christians." I have a lot of questions about how that came about. And also I want to mention that Andy, your wife, and Anne, your mother, Sally Langford, is a part of this writing team that published this book. So let's just start off with tell us a little bit about yourself and then we're going to jump into the book.
Ann: Okay. You want to start Dad?
Andy: Okay. Also, I'm the older one. I have been a United Methodist pastor all of my career. I've served local congregations, I've been a writer. I served on the hymnal committee and I also edited our book of worship for 12 years. I sat on our, what we call the Connectional Table, traveled the world on behalf of The United Methodist Church. Twelve years ago, Sally, my wife, mother, and I, were asked to write a basic introduction to The United Methodist Church. Every 10 years ago they do this again, and we agreed to do that. It was understood to be a confirmation resource for adults. And so we did it and it has been selling well for 12 years. And during this period of disaffiliation and discomfort in our denomination, we were asked to redo the book. And as we did it, we had a lot of new information.
Almost all the illustrations have been redone, but we also realize that we're older. Both Sally and I are now retired from active ministry and Ann has been a minister and she can talk about herself and said she sees the church in very different ways than us. So the way we would do it is one of us would write a section, the other one would edit, we'd give it to the third, and we just kept going around and round on the circle. So it took us about nine months to do this book. So Ann, what have I missed? Who are you?
Ann: Thank you. I am the daughter of Andy and Sally Langford. Grew up in The United Methodist Church and still call it home. I majored in religion in undergrad and went to seminary at Boston University and never thought I would be a local church pastor. I had seen the behind the scenes enough to know that it was dangerous work. So spent a couple of years working as a case manager at a large homeless shelter in downtown Boston and also served in the Peace Corps in West Africa with my husband. But I have been in the local church as a pastor since 2011. So this is my 12th year and I love it. I love it. And it's affirmed and confirmed for me all the time that this is where I want to be. So yeah, and it's a nice perk that I'm the daughter of two people who've written books and been very involved in the denomination. So I think I've had a good sort of insider view and I'm grateful they asked me to come alongside them and to write together.
Crystal: Your dad mentioned that they brought you in because having maybe a different perspective because you are of a different generation than they are, but your mom, she did not grow up in The United Methodist Church, United Methodist. She grew up in the Baptist church, so she, she also brought a different perspective. I know she isn't here to discuss that herself, but it isn't lost on me that we really have three. You're looking at this book through three lenses?
Ann: No, I also serve in a different geographical area. So I'm in California, I'm a member of the Western North Carolina Annual Conference along with my parents, but came to California in 2019 and I'm now in the California Nevada Conference serving with them. So it's different, not the Bible belt. So it's different context for ministry. So I think that helped inform some of the illustrations in the book and making sure that we included, there's a lot of Pacific Islanders in the United Methodist Church in my area, and so we made sure to include them in the book. Yeah. But yes, dad, you want to talk about mom or her background?
Andy: Well again, and Sally came into it, she later in college and seminary decided she wanted to be a pastor, but her local Southern Baptist church would not allow her to speak. And the painful one was her father died who was a deacon of the church, and the family asked if Sally could speak at his funeral. And the congregation said, no, she's female. So that kind of tilted her to becoming United Methodist. And so she is very strong about some stuff, but she also brings a healthy skepticism about why we do things the way we do it. So the three very different perspectives really did enrich this book.
Crystal: Why do we need this book right now? And you kind of alluded to it a minute ago. Let's go a little deeper why people who are United Methodist, why is it not enough to just know how to live a Christian life in this world? Why do we need to know how to live a United Methodist Christian life?
Andy: Again, I'll jump in. I think for the last two or three years there's been some defensiveness on part of the mainline United Methodist system trying to justify who we are and why we do things the way we are, how we do theology, how we make decisions, and closing down this time of disaffiliation, somebody just need to say very positively, we're not going to debate the issues that have caused the disruption. Let's just be clear who we are, what we believe. We're proud of that, and I think everybody should be proud and celebrate who we are. So the old phrase is apologetic, which doesn't mean we're sorry for what we've done, but we're going to be pretty assertive about the joys and the benefits of being United Methodist.
Ann: I think in a local church, I've noticed that a lot of people don't know what makes us unique. And once they hear it, they're very excited about it. And for me as a pastor, it just brings so much joy. I mean, through all of my years and all of the congregations, even people who've been United Methodist for decades will hear something new and be like, that's amazing. And I think we have a great story to tell about John and Charles Wesley about Susanna Wesley, about women who have been able to serve in the church and the grace, I mean, who doesn't get excited about grace for ourselves and for others? So now it could be any, I mean, I think that we have, again, something exciting to share. And I think that there is a focus now in local churches, the ones that are staying United Methodist and claiming that it'd be just a renewal again, to be able to say, what is it that makes us so unique and special? And we tried very hard in this book to, we don't talk about this affiliation in the book, we just celebrate who we are and just hoping that it helps others to know when to claim the United Methodist name for themselves too.
Crystal: I was struck by two things as I was reading the book. One, it's a really wonderful introduction and really guidebook for a new United Methodist. But secondly, and you just mentioned that I've been United Methodist my entire life and I work for The United Methodist Church. And so I know, I would tell you, I would probably maybe get a B minus if I was being tested on my United Methodist knowledge. But I didn't learn that in church. I didn't learn about the history. I didn't learn about what makes us different. So why aren't we learning about that in church?
Ann: I don't know if pastors don't know it well enough or don't have the resources to share it, or we've been doing the lectionary cycle for so long and pastors think they just know how to teach new member classes and just use the same information they've used for years. But I mean, my hope is that, I mean pastors I feel like do know it. And then once they can sort of have this resource again, reignite this interest and bring it to the congregation. But Dad, you can maybe have more of a historical point of view about why it hasn't been emphasized.
Andy: One to say clear about the book. There's not a lot of new innovative information in this book. We're simply saying what I thought everybody already knew and try to put it down in a clear, concise way. And what we have discovered is clergy and LA said, I forgot that. I didn't know that. I may have heard that once upon a time, but I forgot how it all fits. So it's something we made assumptions about what everybody knows, and as one of the bishops said, it is time to remember to reclaim, to revive, and we can't revive unless we in fact know who we are. So let's remind you who we are. And in my local congregation, we asked if Sally and I could teach a Sunday school class. And they said, sure, you can do it. And then they said, well, could another class come? They said, well, could another class come? And so the first Sunday we had a hundred people who showed up, and every Sunday we got more and more people showing up saying, whoa, that's who we are. And I had last week, a woman said, if I read this book before our vote on disaffiliation, I would've not have voted the way I did. Why were we not told this?
Crystal: Well, we can't live in the past, but we can remember our past and we can use it definitely to inform our future. And that was another thing that was so interesting to me about your book, how it's interwoven the history, the Wesleys, the other founders of the denomination, early leaders of the denomination. You've got that story woven through it. Then you talk about our social principles and then you talk about, you discuss Fresh Expressions, which is a movement. It didn't start in The United Methodist Church, as you've said, it started in Great Britain, but it's a movement of creating new faith communities where people are, which is very Wesleyan. It is exactly what John and Charles Wesley did, and I love that you discussed the structure of the church. Why do we have General Conference? A lot of people don't know, well, who are these people? Where are the headquarters? That's a question you get. Where are the headquarters? Well, there's no headquarters because this is our leadership. So walk me through how you even approached organizing this book because it's all in there, and how in the world did you decide what to put in, what to leave out?
Ann: I don't know. Okay. There's six chapters. There's an introduction and a conclusion. I think the first chapter we call it What is the Bible sort of starting out that we've talked a lot already in our conversation today about what makes us unique as United Methodist and celebrating that. But we also want to remind people that we are Christian first and foremost, and that we celebrate that we have orthodox views and we're in communion with so many other communities. And just to remind people that the Bible is central to our faith and very important. So start with that. We look back at some history, John and Charles Wesley, we talk about our personal faith and what it means for personal holiness. So that's a chapter and then a chapter on social holiness as well, that we are people who are also out in the community and sharing God's love with others, and even at the end of the book, have an opportunity for reaffirmation of our faith.
Andy: We're responding affirmatively to some of the criticism. Some people said, well, Methodists no longer believe in the Bible. Well, that's simply silly, or we are no longer orthodox. Come on guys, we affirm the Apostles creed. What's more Orthodox than that? Don't label us. Let us tell you who we are rather than let someone else define us. So we try to do, the book could have been five times longer, partly my father was a United Methodist theologian and to whom the book is dedicated, and I was rereading some of daddy's stuff. His paragraphs went on for several pages. His sentences were 30 words long. I think this book's written at about a sixth grade level. Short paragraphs, short sentences, let's say where we want to stay and move on very quickly. So it's really written primarily for laity in local congregations who want, you can read this book in an hour if you want to, and at the end of which we give you lots of places you can go find out more material. If this was 400 pages long, nobody would read it
Crystal: And it was so accessible. That's what I loved about it. It could have been really dense because it's just full of information, but it's very easy to read. But if it had been 400 pages, what might've made it into the book?
Andy: The history of the church is so complex. I mean, there are 800 page volumes of the history of the Methodist Church, which stopped being written 40 years ago. So some things have happened since then. Theology, we all three love Theology. I think it's a very interesting thing. The shortest chapter in this book is the one on Methodist theology, but it's also the most important one. If you get what we say about Grace, you'll then know who we are as United Methodists. What accompanies the book is and did a series of six videos, which is a five to 10 minute introduction to the chapter. Her introduction to the chapter on theology and how it applied to her own personal life, I think is a highlight of this entire package. That this is not just academic, this is real, is personal. It transform lives.
Ann: Yeah. Our hope is that people can apply it to their lives and sanctifying grace, justifying grace, prevenient Grace, all three of them, and make it really practical for people.
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Crystal: I did appreciate, I walked away from that chapter understanding maybe for the first time that I could actually turn around and explain it. I’ve heard it my whole life. It's like, yeah, I get it. But I appreciated how you did explain it and I realized I read it alone, but it seemed very, I mean, the design of it, the layout, the format seems like it would be a great book study, which it was designed. I mean, it is designed for that too. And with these companion videos and their questions and even him recommendations, I love that.
Ann: Dad's good at that.
Andy: But we have been contacted by people who said they've already started using it. Some have already finished using it once, others are starting to use it. In January, Sally and I were on a video call with a church in Roanoke, Virginia. They had just finished reading the book and they asked some questions for us, and the conversation was just all over the map, but that's exactly what it's supposed to do to stimulate your conversation with other United Methodist Christians.
Crystal: A lot stuck out to me, but one thing that really resonated with me was, and I don't know, I don't know if it was something that you guys wrote or honestly I don't remember the source, but it was like we are not a people of one opinion, people of many opinions. And that's okay. That's actually welcomed.
Ann: The last church I served in North Carolina, remember there was a person had pickup truck, he had Trump stickers all over the back of the truck, and we had a new person who had been coming to worship, and I knew this person was more liberal and they got paired together one night to go deliver meals and we sort of had a Meals on Wheels kind of program. They came back, had a fabulous time together, had never met before that night, and became a team to deliver meals every Monday night. And these two men became great friends. And that's what I think we see in the church and what we can be where people who love Jesus and believe in grace and have been given this gift of a tradition, and there are many people that can be part of that circle
Andy: And some of this kind of funny stuff. We started figuring out who is United Methodist and Pat Sajak and Vanna White.
Ann: I love that.
Andy: Hillary Clinton and Nikki Haley are both United Methodist. How far apart can you be?
Ann: Beyonce is United Methodist. That was my dad didn't believe me, so we went and looked, but her church is in Houston and she gives significant amounts of money to their mission and millions of dollars she's given to that congregation in Houston, Texas. And she wasn't
Andy: The choir there don’t even know who Beyonce was.
Ann: Well, okay.
Crystal: We're glad that Ann was at the table for you, Andy.
Ann: Is that, I think that's just something to celebrate, that we're not monolithic or everyone has to subscribe to this one opinion. And if we're honest with ourselves, it's never been that way. I mean, if I look at it, my congregation, and sometimes I tell people this to reassure them, they think they're the only one that might have doubts about their faith. And I'm like, if we took a poll, we'd get 40 different points of view this morning, and that means you're welcome here and we all get to figure out this together and walk life together. And it's something to be celebrated. You don't have to. We believe in Jesus and we'll resist evil. That's what we say when we're baptized and everything else, we get to figure out together.
Andy: On occasion, we would have people would say, is it possible for me to join this church? Am I good enough? Am My joke was, look around you on Sunday morning. If we let those people in church, we'll let you into this church.
Ann: And it's so affirming for people too. They just get the biggest grin. It's like, oh, I can be here. I can fit here. You'll accept me, and we get to do this together.
Crystal: I don't know if it's a case that we've forgotten who we are or maybe we've never really known who we are.
Andy: I think we've forgotten. Again, I think it's the greatest statistic in the book and 1850 half of all church members in the United States were Methodists. One half of all Christians in United States were Methodist. What a wide diversity. And ever since then, we seem to be getting into our own little camps and our own little clusters. The more global we become, the more tribal we have become. And I think the recent experience shows that I think we have a witness to politics in this country of how we need to learn to listen to one another and trust one another. We will disagree, but we can still be at the table together. That is a unique perspective today and I think it's one that maybe God is calling us to promote.
Crystal: As you were writing, there's so much in the book, just so much knowledge and clearly the three of you brought so much knowledge and perspective to the table, but in researching writing a book, what surprised you the most?
Ann: Well, that we didn't kill each other through the process.
Andy: That's right. We'll eat Thanksgiving dinner together. One of the things we did in this, and some of it was kind of painful, and Sally did some and Ann did some, read all the books written, introduced United Methodist Church in the last 50 years, reread the Book of Discipline, went back through the hymnal and the Book of Worship. And we just kind of kept pulling stuff out. Say, whoa, isn't that neat? Everybody should remember this. I think one of the most interesting pieces of this, I think this will answer Crystal's question, we have forgotten. We all live in our own little units and our own little worlds. And so we assume that how we worship or church in Burlingame, California, is the same as in North Carolina. The majority of United Methodists now live outside the United States. We in this country think that every Methodist church is just like the one we worship in.
And one of the advantages we've had with this book is this is how Methodists do it in Ukraine. This is how they do it in Africa. This is how they're doing it in the Philippines. That enriches the conversation. And I think that's going to be probably the biggest struggle for our church in the days to come is what does it mean to be a denomination for who most of its members are not Western. There's going to be a steep learning curve for us, but at a joyful one, go to a church in Africa or in Eastern Europe into the Philippines. Those are exciting, wonderful places to be. They have so much to teach us and so we try to ...
Ann: You can probably join them online right now in this day and age.
Andy: In the first book, 12 years ago, we did not at that point, two thirds of the church is the United States. We could be US-centric. We could not do that with this book.
Crystal: That's an interesting, I appreciate Andy that you brought that up because as I read it, I was looking at it through my US-centric eyes. I appreciated the references to the worldwide denomination and I appreciated that because the connectionalism you guys made that so clear. But I appreciate you bringing that up because I see now how it doesn't necessarily matter if I'm a United Methodist in North Carolina or I'm a United Methodist in South Korea. This book, the information in this book is relevant to me as a United Methodist.
Andy: Yes. So we do hope that people around the world can read it. And so not just those in this country, again, the sales will be in this country, but that somebody in Zimbabwe can read it and celebrate that they are United Methodist.
Ann: I'm very fortunate to serve a congregation that is multi-ethnic. We have a woman who lives half a year in Brazil and she joins us on Zoom when she's in Brazil. She's Methodist there, but it's just fun to see what she's learning back there. And she shares pictures on Facebook every Sunday of being in our church. And it sort of happened since we wrote the book. But a woman who's the lay leader of annual attend. And it's just been wonderful. And our congregation is now raising money to support a student scholarship at Africa University where she serves on the board. And it's just this connection. And as I explained to the congregation, they get so excited about it. Again, it's like we could not support a university in the Africa. We wouldn't even know how to support a student. We don't have the resources, the connections. And then the Methodist Church, United Methodist Church gives that to us, and then we have someone who walks in the door and fills it home here with us. And yeah, I get to really see it here in my congregation lived out, the diversity I counted the other day on a Sunday morning, we had people from 14 different countries in our sanctuary. So
Crystal: That is a beautiful church, isn't it?
Ann: And a lot of them were United Methodists in their home countries, the Philippines, and in Tonga and then Samoa and just how beautiful it is that they get to come to this country and find a home in a United Methodist church.
Crystal: Well, as we finish up, what haven't I asked you that you want to make sure we talk about?
Andy: We've said already, I want people to be exceptionally proud of being United Methodist. We have so much to celebrate, go out and feel good about who you are, about where your congregation is. And I think with you mentioned fresh expressions, we are still taking in new members, we are still growing. We're growing around the world. We are still the largest Methodist denomination in the entire world. Celebrate that. Help us build upon that. We are going to have some good days to come.
Ann: If I can share just one more personal story, this Saturday, past Saturday, the church where I was confirmed and became a certified candidate for ministry disaffiliated from the denomination. And I have been very sad about that. And we had our charge conferences past Saturday and I shared that with the congregation, just a moment of vulnerability and saying I was having a tough morning. But I also shared with them that my son is being confirmed next Sunday on November 19th, and his best friend is being baptized and joining the church as well. And these are two 12 year old boys. And what a gift it is for Burlingame United Methodist Church to know. These two boys are going to get to say that they profess their faith in this building and in this community, and what a gift that this congregation is that they are loving these two 12 year old seventh grade boys and just what a gift it's, and for them to claim that and to know that they're making a difference in the world. And that's what I want for other people too, to know that our churches are vital and they are growing and that we have something special to share with people and that people are hungry for it and they want it and they just want to be invited in and for us to offer that to them. So I hope that this book is just a great resource for pastors to be rekindled for their own enthusiasm so that they can share it with their congregation.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing that, Anne. Well, I will ask you now the question we ask all of our guests on "Get Your Spirit in Shape" and that's how do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Ann: I'm nervous, Dad, what you're going to say.
Andy: So I'll go first so you can correct me. How I keep spiritually alive is I write, I read and I write. I'm an old person. I go to bed early, but I'll wake up at four and five o'clock in the morning and after I've gotten my cup of coffee and read the news headlines, I'll read for an hour and then I will write for an hour or two. And this book was one of the outputs of that, but is how if I keep absorbing things from what other people have said and then reflect it through my own life and then communicate it back to others. So I read and I write, that's how my spirit stays active and engaged.
Ann: Okay, I'll affirm that for you. This book could have been 400 pages. If we had just let him write, he would send a draft and say, okay, I need you to look at this chapter. And I would have to reply and be like, do not open this file again until I look at it. Because I knew what would happen is I'd get it back to him three, four days later and he'd already have a whole other draft. And so we had to put the brakes on and be like, you have to give us time. We're not up at 4:00 AM
Andy: You didn't wake up. You're not up at 4:00 AM working on this.
Ann: I kept remind, I'm like, you're retired. I still have young children and I have a full-time appointment and I do not. Yeah, you got to give a moment. I think maybe it's something that just really makes me excited is worship planning and I love planning sermon series and if I get bogged down in the administration of the church, which I do not enjoy, and I've spent so much time on the 2024 budget for my congregation this week, and it can drag me down and make me like, what am I doing? And if I can spend 15 minutes thinking about our advent series, I just get just so excited and I just feel like, okay, I'm renewed. I'm like, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. And I love creative worship and I love trying to find ways to appeal to everybody's full senses. I love doing children's moments and in the worship service, so I just get really excited about creating worship. It's my favorite part of ministry and it does feed my soul. I mean, I just love preaching on Jesus is the bread of life and putting bread makers in the sanctuary so we can all smell bread baking during it. And that's what I like to work on. It makes me excited when I get to do that. I was trying to find time every week where I can work on what I like, even in the midst of having to do so many other things in the church, my life
Crystal: And what a gift that your congregation gets to be on the receiving end of that. Yeah. And thank you. What a gift that your family, I know this isn't the whole family, but Andy, Sally and Ann, thank you for what you've given to the denomination to all of Christianity. Honestly, the book is specific to United Methodist, but as you started it out as talking about the Bible, talking about the Trinity, talking about, it's just such a great resource for all of us. So thank you for the time and commitment that you gave to this project and thank you for being guest on "Get Your Spirit in Shape."
Andy: Well, thank you very much for this opportunity.
Ann: Thanks for doing this, Crystal. It was fun.
Epilogue
That was Andy Langford and Anne Langford Duncan United Methodist pastors and authors discussing "Being United Methodist Christians," the book they wrote along with Sally Langford. To learn more about the book, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you will find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners, gysis@umcom.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, we invite you to leave a review on the podcast platform where you listen.
Thank you so much for joining us for “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” I’m Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we are together.
