For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.  (Galatians 5:1) 

Lent is a container—or a set of training wheels that give way to whatever grace has done in us and through us all. We have this season in time to be formed and set free for the newness of Easter. We are Holy Spirit people, a movement. Followers and sojourners. The walk of faith is contemplative, sure, but the Spirit is always moving. At some point, the Jell-O must go on without the mold.  

I was glad to pick up a book of poetry at First United Methodist Church in Lombard recently. It is a collection of devotions by the late Mary Oliver, and the church is using it as one aspect of their Lenten study. One of the poems had me thinking of containers and limits that must give way.

I have refused to live 
locked in the orderly house of 
     reasons and proofs. 

The world I live in and believe in  
is wider than that. And anyway, 
    what’s wrong with Maybe? 

                       - Mary Oliver

In early February, a team from the Northern Illinois Conference attended “Futuring Forward: The Reawakening of the People Called Methodis,” the first Fresh Expressions United Methodist (FXUM) national gathering. 

Read Rev. Harriette Cross’s report on their experience here and you will likely catch their infectious enthusiasm for the Fresh Expressions movement. While it’s been around for several years, increasingly more churches are inspired by it to pursue new ways of providing community and faith to neighbors who are unlikely to enter a church building on a Sunday morning. 

Amania Drane, a Northern Illinois United Methodist layperson and consultant to the Anti-Racism Task Force and Discipleship Task Force, was one of the people who attended the event. “This is a pivotal time in the history of The United Methodist Church,” she said. “Fresh Expressions gives us that opportunity to get things right, where we ‘see all the people’ [a Discipleship Ministries phrase] and invite them into spaces where they feel valued and welcome.” 

For Rev. Matt Smith, pastor of Warren UMC and Red Oak UMC, it’s not so much a new direction as it is a return to our roots. 

“I believe the UMC needs a renewal of Weslyan spirit and I think Fresh Expressions will fulfill that need,” he said. 

John and Charles Wesley worked alongside the Church of England but challenged its constraints when they found it necessary in order to help others grow in faith. Bishop Ken Carter, one of the speakers at the FXUM event, said, “I am a denominational bishop in a post-denominational world.” 

Perhaps this is a time to pray about the spiritual training wheels in your life, or the shoe determining the size of your church’s foot. For freedom Christ would set us free. 

A holy Lent to you. 

Know that I am praying for you.

*The Mary Oliver verse is excerpted from ”The World I Live In,” found in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin Random House, 2020)