An interview with Kirsten Sonkyo Oh, ecclesiastical associate professor of United Methodist Studies and Fuller’s United Methodist Church liaison, by FULLER Editor in Chief Jerome Blanco.
Jerome Blanco: How do you see God renewing the church in this present season?
Kirsten Sonkyo Oh: In a church history class during college, our professor drew several diagrams and asked how we saw the trajectory of the church throughout her history. I remember combining two of those diagrams: the pendulum and a straight central line. Prompted by the professor, I explained that the church seems to swing from one extreme to the other, yet God is sovereign, and God’s grace is wide enough to sustain these swings and still be about the work of renewing the church.
Truth be told, I see the church today and have difficulty seeing God’s work of renewal in it. The rising Christian nationalism, the ongoing racial strife, the exponential trauma caused by our church structures and leadership, the intrapolarity between the so-called “traditional” versus the so-called “liberal” Christians point to the extreme pendulum swings of our time. We seem to be in a space and time where the ways in which the church condones or participates in certain systems, principalities, and structures damages the witness of Jesus and shrouds God’s renewal work.
Yet we are advent people. We are called to participate with God by not only waiting for the coming of Jesus with hope, peace, love, and joy. We live in the now as we anticipate and prepare for the revealing of God by embodying these aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, especially in the midst of disappointments, precisely because we have seen God renewing the church throughout history with the transformative work of the Spirit. In other words, the very awareness of our transgressions and the realization of our lacunae that cause us discomfort are the work of God’s renewal—the beginning point of our repentance and hope-filled restoration.
JB: How are you seeing the Spirit at work in this way in the United Methodist Church in particular?
KSO: When we immigrated to the US, I was nine years old. In a land where everything was strange, the cross on buildings provided a sense of safe familiarity. Every time we saw a cross in this unfamiliar land, my family pointed to it in unison and said, “There’s a church!” When we saw churches with the cross and the flame, a symbol for the United Methodist Church (UMC), we exclaimed, “There’s our church!” While this sense of belonging to the people called the Methodists feels tenuous at this time of intense in-fighting and division, I believe the Spirit of God is at work in the UMC.
Currently, the UMC dominates the religion news sector with the continuingly slow, ever-contentious schism over the years-long, vigorous debate about the ordination and marriage of its LGBTQ members within the global denomination. The Global Methodist Church (GMC) has commenced as a newly formed denomination, and many UMC churches have joined or plan to join the GMC by disaffiliating from the UMC. The last few decades of grappling within the global church have been painful to both sides of the church, and the “United Methodist” name has been teased to mean “Untied Methodists” due to this schism.
On the divide, William Willimon has written:
In his stemwinder sermon “On Schism,” John Wesley begged those thinking about church divorce to stay and fight. Schism is always counter to the togetherness produced by Christ: “Separation is evil in itself, being a breach of brotherly love, so it brings forth evil fruit … the most mischievous consequences. It opens a door to all unkind tempers, both in ourselves and others.”1
Even Scripture pronounces divorce as an objectionable act (Mal 2:16). Yet, in our earthly life, divorce is at times urgent and necessary. I wonder if the schism is the stirring of the Spirit. Is the Spirit at work here? Would the dross of what is superfluous to our identity as the children of God, the toxicity of decades of “unkind tempers,” and the tainted witness of God’s compassion to the vulnerable persons in our communities be ameliorated as the UMC endures this painful divorce?
United Methodists observe a communion table where all are invited to participate because of the belief that the Spirit of God is at work throughout all lives through prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace. For generations, the UMC has struggled with what it means to practice this open communion with all persons. I believe that the kairos moment has come to clarify what that belief means for the church when it comes to certain human identities, social locations, and the resultant practices. The Spirit has stirred our hearts in new ways through the sanctifying grace, the refiner’s fire.
JB: How do we participate more fully in what God is doing in this regard?
KSO: I see God calling all of God’s children to ask critical questions about the world around us as the Spirit is shining a light on the significant ways in which the church has struggled with its identity/ies and its witness in the world. Perhaps we can participate with God by lamenting the normative ways in which US-centric polity and US-national identity have been woven into Christianity. God is inviting us to reimagine what it means to be church together—collaborate, co-labor, co-create the vision of God as the children of God. As fiercely faithful followers of Jesus the Christ, we are called out of tribal box denominations and into new paradigms of ministry within and without.
Alan Roxburgh, in Introducing the Missional Church, advocates that the word “missional” is not about the church but about God being up to something in the world that is bigger than the church. In addition, Rowan Williams writes, “It is not the church of God that has a mission. It’s the God of mission that has a church.” God is at work in the world to redeem creation, and God invites us to participate in this mission.2 Contextuality matters as we tarry desperately for new models of living within the global diversity of peoples and opinions and for authentic unity (not uniformity) in these new models for which Jesus prayed (John 17). I suggest the basics of the prophetic and missional vision of God’s work in the world through a more expansive vision of God’s visible and invisible church through missional and eschatological imaginations—an explicit sensitivity toward alterity.
Missional imagination invites us to integrate more clearly the liminal spaces of the church as already but not yet—the world as is and the world to come—as human beings in its midst. And it allows us to seek the Spirit of Christ to see where God’s Spirit is at work in order to seek the coming kingdom, an eschatological vision of the basileia: “[A] great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, [and I dare to add theological persuasions, cultural valuations, diverse human orientations, and other social locations] standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev 7:9). This basileia of God bursts out of the narrow containment of human capacities.
Nevertheless, in a National Council of Churches document, I have asserted human responsibility in this process: “The love of God and the love of neighbor for God’s sake is in itself an adequate hermeneutical key to all Scriptures as well as the telos of the transformed life. God’s justice and grace require human responsiveness and responsibility so that while God initiates and completes the work of justice and grace, human persons need to take agency in that process.”3 So when Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever” in John 14, I believe Jesus is promising the Spirit of truth who resides with us and teaches us to enact God’s work among us.
God’s Spirit is calling us to critical conversations, prayerful discussions, prayerful discernment, and processed communion. God is at work birthing a hopeful way forward to think missionally about how we incarnate Christ in our midst by being, hearing, and doing what the Spirit is saying to us individually and corporately.
JB: What is a prayer you have for the church in this time of transformation?
KSO: I want to harken to Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in John 17. I pray with Jesus for the genuine unity of Jesus’ followers. I believe that, within Christian practices of lament, responsible hope is inherent and embedded. This is not to say that the feelings of dissonance and utter disappointments can or should be evaded. In fact, these feelings need to be acknowledged and attended to.
O God, help us to hear what the Spirit is saying and doing in our midst. Help us to inhabit the transitions with grace and humility. Lord, have mercy. Because “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” (Psalm 139:12) Help us, O God. We want to be known as your disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35).
Kirsten Sonkyo Oh is professor of practical theology at Azusa Pacific University and ecclesiastical associate professor of United Methodist Studies at Fuller Seminary. She is an ordained elder in full connection in the California Pacific Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and represents the United Methodist Church at the National Council of Churches of Christ Faith and Order Commission. Dr. Oh has served as a pastor in several United Methodist Churches in Southern California and continues to speak and preach in various contexts.
Jerome Blanco (MDiv ’16) is editor in chief of FULLER magazine and FULLER studio.
An interview with Kirsten Sonkyo Oh, ecclesiastical associate professor of United Methodist Studies and Fuller’s United Methodist Church liaison, by FULLER Editor in Chief Jerome Blanco.
Jerome Blanco: How do you see God renewing the church in this present season?
Kirsten Sonkyo Oh: In a church history class during college, our professor drew several diagrams and asked how we saw the trajectory of the church throughout her history. I remember combining two of those diagrams: the pendulum and a straight central line. Prompted by the professor, I explained that the church seems to swing from one extreme to the other, yet God is sovereign, and God’s grace is wide enough to sustain these swings and still be about the work of renewing the church.
Truth be told, I see the church today and have difficulty seeing God’s work of renewal in it. The rising Christian nationalism, the ongoing racial strife, the exponential trauma caused by our church structures and leadership, the intrapolarity between the so-called “traditional” versus the so-called “liberal” Christians point to the extreme pendulum swings of our time. We seem to be in a space and time where the ways in which the church condones or participates in certain systems, principalities, and structures damages the witness of Jesus and shrouds God’s renewal work.
Yet we are advent people. We are called to participate with God by not only waiting for the coming of Jesus with hope, peace, love, and joy. We live in the now as we anticipate and prepare for the revealing of God by embodying these aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, especially in the midst of disappointments, precisely because we have seen God renewing the church throughout history with the transformative work of the Spirit. In other words, the very awareness of our transgressions and the realization of our lacunae that cause us discomfort are the work of God’s renewal—the beginning point of our repentance and hope-filled restoration.
JB: How are you seeing the Spirit at work in this way in the United Methodist Church in particular?
KSO: When we immigrated to the US, I was nine years old. In a land where everything was strange, the cross on buildings provided a sense of safe familiarity. Every time we saw a cross in this unfamiliar land, my family pointed to it in unison and said, “There’s a church!” When we saw churches with the cross and the flame, a symbol for the United Methodist Church (UMC), we exclaimed, “There’s our church!” While this sense of belonging to the people called the Methodists feels tenuous at this time of intense in-fighting and division, I believe the Spirit of God is at work in the UMC.
Currently, the UMC dominates the religion news sector with the continuingly slow, ever-contentious schism over the years-long, vigorous debate about the ordination and marriage of its LGBTQ members within the global denomination. The Global Methodist Church (GMC) has commenced as a newly formed denomination, and many UMC churches have joined or plan to join the GMC by disaffiliating from the UMC. The last few decades of grappling within the global church have been painful to both sides of the church, and the “United Methodist” name has been teased to mean “Untied Methodists” due to this schism.
On the divide, William Willimon has written:
In his stemwinder sermon “On Schism,” John Wesley begged those thinking about church divorce to stay and fight. Schism is always counter to the togetherness produced by Christ: “Separation is evil in itself, being a breach of brotherly love, so it brings forth evil fruit … the most mischievous consequences. It opens a door to all unkind tempers, both in ourselves and others.”1
Even Scripture pronounces divorce as an objectionable act (Mal 2:16). Yet, in our earthly life, divorce is at times urgent and necessary. I wonder if the schism is the stirring of the Spirit. Is the Spirit at work here? Would the dross of what is superfluous to our identity as the children of God, the toxicity of decades of “unkind tempers,” and the tainted witness of God’s compassion to the vulnerable persons in our communities be ameliorated as the UMC endures this painful divorce?
United Methodists observe a communion table where all are invited to participate because of the belief that the Spirit of God is at work throughout all lives through prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace. For generations, the UMC has struggled with what it means to practice this open communion with all persons. I believe that the kairos moment has come to clarify what that belief means for the church when it comes to certain human identities, social locations, and the resultant practices. The Spirit has stirred our hearts in new ways through the sanctifying grace, the refiner’s fire.
JB: How do we participate more fully in what God is doing in this regard?
KSO: I see God calling all of God’s children to ask critical questions about the world around us as the Spirit is shining a light on the significant ways in which the church has struggled with its identity/ies and its witness in the world. Perhaps we can participate with God by lamenting the normative ways in which US-centric polity and US-national identity have been woven into Christianity. God is inviting us to reimagine what it means to be church together—collaborate, co-labor, co-create the vision of God as the children of God. As fiercely faithful followers of Jesus the Christ, we are called out of tribal box denominations and into new paradigms of ministry within and without.
Alan Roxburgh, in Introducing the Missional Church, advocates that the word “missional” is not about the church but about God being up to something in the world that is bigger than the church. In addition, Rowan Williams writes, “It is not the church of God that has a mission. It’s the God of mission that has a church.” God is at work in the world to redeem creation, and God invites us to participate in this mission.2 Contextuality matters as we tarry desperately for new models of living within the global diversity of peoples and opinions and for authentic unity (not uniformity) in these new models for which Jesus prayed (John 17). I suggest the basics of the prophetic and missional vision of God’s work in the world through a more expansive vision of God’s visible and invisible church through missional and eschatological imaginations—an explicit sensitivity toward alterity.
Missional imagination invites us to integrate more clearly the liminal spaces of the church as already but not yet—the world as is and the world to come—as human beings in its midst. And it allows us to seek the Spirit of Christ to see where God’s Spirit is at work in order to seek the coming kingdom, an eschatological vision of the basileia: “[A] great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, [and I dare to add theological persuasions, cultural valuations, diverse human orientations, and other social locations] standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev 7:9). This basileia of God bursts out of the narrow containment of human capacities.
Nevertheless, in a National Council of Churches document, I have asserted human responsibility in this process: “The love of God and the love of neighbor for God’s sake is in itself an adequate hermeneutical key to all Scriptures as well as the telos of the transformed life. God’s justice and grace require human responsiveness and responsibility so that while God initiates and completes the work of justice and grace, human persons need to take agency in that process.”3 So when Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever” in John 14, I believe Jesus is promising the Spirit of truth who resides with us and teaches us to enact God’s work among us.
God’s Spirit is calling us to critical conversations, prayerful discussions, prayerful discernment, and processed communion. God is at work birthing a hopeful way forward to think missionally about how we incarnate Christ in our midst by being, hearing, and doing what the Spirit is saying to us individually and corporately.
JB: What is a prayer you have for the church in this time of transformation?
KSO: I want to harken to Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in John 17. I pray with Jesus for the genuine unity of Jesus’ followers. I believe that, within Christian practices of lament, responsible hope is inherent and embedded. This is not to say that the feelings of dissonance and utter disappointments can or should be evaded. In fact, these feelings need to be acknowledged and attended to.
O God, help us to hear what the Spirit is saying and doing in our midst. Help us to inhabit the transitions with grace and humility. Lord, have mercy. Because “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” (Psalm 139:12) Help us, O God. We want to be known as your disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35).
Kirsten Sonkyo Oh is professor of practical theology at Azusa Pacific University and ecclesiastical associate professor of United Methodist Studies at Fuller Seminary. She is an ordained elder in full connection in the California Pacific Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and represents the United Methodist Church at the National Council of Churches of Christ Faith and Order Commission. Dr. Oh has served as a pastor in several United Methodist Churches in Southern California and continues to speak and preach in various contexts.
Jerome Blanco (MDiv ’16) is editor in chief of FULLER magazine and FULLER studio.
Dave Gibbons, author and pastor, considers ways of reframing our understanding of church amidst the shifting realities of our present world.
