Kim Reisman

Next Step was founded in 2005 as a vehicle for ministry in the areas of evangelism, spiritual formation, and leadership development. It’s been an amazing 8 years, full of challenges, surprises, and a great deal of meaning. Many of you have been with me from the beginning, some have come alongside me more recently, all of you have been wonderfully supportive.

Opportunities are currently unfolding that will necessitate a change in direction for Next Step. I’m shifting responsibility and will now be at the forefront of a new venture – A Wesleyan Accent – a web-based ministry providing free and subscription resources for Christian spiritual formation, catechesis, and discipleship in the Wesleyan way. It’s my hope that by clearly articulating the Wesleyan understanding of Christian faith, A Wesleyan Accent will contribute significantly to the task of strengthening discipleship, empowering mission and evangelism, cultivating ministry gifts of young leaders, and nurturing the professional and service life of young theologians.

There will be two main areas of the WesleyanAccent.com site – free resources and information, and subscription resources. The free resources will include blogs, sermons, articles, book reviews, and videos from leading voices in the Wesleyan family. Discipleship in the Wesleyan Way will be the subscription portion the site. Individuals and churches will be able to purchase annual subscriptions, which will provide access to an extensive library of small group lessons on all aspects of Christian theology. Additionally, Discipleship in the Wesleyan Way will support discipleship and small group development by providing resources for both leaders and participants through a platform of customizable curriculum planning and private group portals for ongoing communication and additional resourcing.

I’m excited about this new phase of ministry. A Wesleyan Accent will launch in the fall and you’ll be able to find us at www.wesleyanaccent.com. At that time, visitors to this site will be redirected to A Wesleyan Accent. In the meantime, if you’re new to Next Step, I hope you’ll explore the site as it is – there’s a lot of great content here that will remain accessible to you throughout the transition phase and beyond.

Thanks again for your support. I look forward to continuing to serve through A Wesleyan Accent!

Peace,

Kim

WORRY AND CONCERN

NAMING OUR FEAR AND FACING IT SQUARELY

President Roosevelt’s word in World War Two was a source of encouragement for the Nation. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

He was right. Naming our fear and facing it does two things. First, it often puts fear in a perspective that causes it to disappear.  I once went for three weeks with a growth on my back that one doctor suspected might be malignant. My wife Jerry was devastated, unable to escape thoughts of my death. Fear became my unwelcome but constant traveling companion and almost immobilized me

When we finally got the diagnosis, the burden of fear was put in perspective. No malignancy, no fear.

The second thing that happens is that in naming our fear we are forced to face it for what it is, and the fear often diminishes to the point that we can be confident that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Say no to fear and life a life that matters.

FEAR CRACKLES LIKE A FIRE IN EVERY LIFE

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.  Hold that word of Joseph Campbell in your mind for a moment. Anyone who is alive knows the experience of fear for fear crackles like a fire in every life.

Fear of failure that keeps us from risking or even trying. Fear that flows from our doubt about personal ability or even personal worth. Fear about the faithfulness of our marriage mate. Fear of being found out in our moral weakness. Fear of death. Our own death or the loss of a loved one. Fear that our children will not turn out good. Fear of no job when we finish college.  Fear of retirement because of economic insecurity.

The answer to fear is confidence, and the only way to confidence is to name our fear and face it squarely. So the cave you fear to enter may hold the treasure you seek if you are seeking to make life matter.

CONSTRUCTIVE WORRY

In my last word in this column, I said, Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.

That’s true, but let’s remember this, Worry can be constructive. It can be positive when we focus on what can be done about a bad situation. If anything is worse than taking life too seriously it is taking life too lightly, that is being completely unconcerned. Don’t worry, be happy is not a workable motto, nor is it a good one.

Yes, it is wasted energy to spend time lamenting what has already happened. Crying over spilled milk leads to emotional and mental disorder, but facing the circumstances and asking what can be done may be the begin of making life matter.

WORRY AND THE ROCKING CHAIR

In a Peanuts cartoon, Snoopy, the hilarious hound, is flat on his back on top of his doghouse.  He is not hilarious today but rather ponderous. “Rats,” he cries. “How can I sleep knowing that any moment a wolf could come by and blow my house down”. He continues, “Life has too many worries. Today its wolves,” and pulling out his tennis racket, he cries, “Yesterday, it was my backhand.”

Most of us have something to worry about: dismal economic conditions, a sick parent, children not doing well in school, a broken relationship…and on it goes. Worry has a major place in most of our lives.

But listen. Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.  Put that with Jesus’ admonition: “Do not worry about your life what you will eat or drink Can you by worrying add a single hour to life.”

Don’t worry, make life matter!

THE DIMINISHING OF RELIGION

The change of culture in the United States has dramatically lowered the status of children. This is the conclusion of a study out of Stanford University. Six out of every one hundred kids say they have tried to commit suicide. Homicide is the leading cause of death among blacks between fifteen and nineteen. One out of every ten teenage girls gets pregnant every year, a rate twice as high as in other industrialized nations. Drinking and driving is the number one killer of American adolescents.

Hold your breath. These researchers say that the primary cause for all this is the diminishing of religion.

It’s good to hear such a word when churches and religion are being viewed so negatively and the secular press takes every opportunity to paint the failure so darkly.

Being Christian makes a difference. You make a difference and you can make life matter.

Kim Reisman

Rediscovering First Things

Recently my husband and I remodeled our kitchen. Since I tend to be the one who can envision how I want things to look, before we began the project I sketched out a plan on graph paper. I understood the concept of weight-bearing walls and knew that would figure into the project, so I called a draftsman to make sure my idea was doable. Although I knew a little about weight bearing in construction, what I didn’t realize was that there would be one point that would be crucial to the whole endeavor. I discovered that I could bump out the back wall of my kitchen as I planned and a large beam could be put in its place to compensate; but if I left that one particular point without support, the house would collapse. One point. One point was crucial in bearing the weight of my entire house.

Renewal is a popular thing to talk about these days, primarily because we long for it so deeply in the UM church in the US. As I reflect on the concept, I am continually reminded that though renewal is sometimes connected to the discovery of new things, more often, it is a rediscovery of first things – a rediscovery of those foundational things that have proven to be strong enough to bear the weight of life and faith.

For United Methodists, those first things are our doctrines – those foundational things that bind us together with Christians across the world and throughout the ages, as well as things that define us as a community of Christians with our own unique place in the body of Christ. Like that one point in my house, these things are necessary to bear the weight of our UM “house.” They are the very things that have born the weight of 2000 years of Christians continually seeking to live into the kingdom of God unfolding in their midst. Renewal for the UM Church then, is intimately tied to a rediscovery of our first things, our doctrines.

Sadly, many people have no idea what UM doctrines are. We have, over the years, preferred the ease of open-ended musings to the much more challenging, but also more rewarding task of “faith seeking understanding.” In this way we have unwittingly placed the wondrous mysteries of Christian faith that are contained in our doctrines at a safe distance. Rather than reflecting on them and allowing them to become real for us, our doctrines remain vague and therefore make few intellectual and moral demands. That vagueness lulls us into thinking we can mold our doctrines into whatever shape we choose, turning them “into mirrors for our spiritual needs, real or imagined, rather than allowing ourselves to be reformed by them.”[1]

But this will not lead to renewal. Renewal is not born out of vagueness and ambiguity. Renewal is unleashed when people discover or rediscover what they truly believe, when they actually have something clear and substantial to become passionate about.

We must open ourselves to the power of the Holy Spirit to draw us close to the mysteries of God contained in our doctrines. Not doing so doesn’t mean that we will find other ways to approach the mysteries of faith; it means we won’t approach them at all, and thus have nothing of substance to become passionate about and nothing unique to offer the world.

It appears that much of the UMC in the US has lost the ability to clearly state what we believe and why, as well as what should be believed and why. This is painfully true in our common life together and sadly, often even more so when we relate to outsiders whom we hope to invite in. However, when we rediscover the power of our interior life, when we drink deeply at the well of the mysteries of God contained in our doctrines, our communal and institutional life is enriched, we are able as individuals and as a church to articulate the meaning and content of our faith in specific and persuasive ways, and the Holy Spirit is unleashed to move us toward renewal.

WHO IS REALLY BIBLE BELIEVING