Personal discipleship is more than attending Sunday School and reading the Bible. The Rev. Stacey Harwell-Dye shares her thoughts on how following Jesus can move us into action in our churches and our communities.
Guest: The Rev. Stacey Harwell-Dye
- Harwell-Dye is an ordained deacon in the Tennessee-West Kentucky Conference of The United Methodist Church.
- She currently is minister of outreach and mission at West End United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennesee.
- Harwell-Dye shares that reading from "Common Prayer: A liturgy for ordinary radicals" is a part of her personal discipleship.
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This episode posted on October 6, 2023.
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Transcript
Crystal Caviness, host: Hi, my name is Crystal Caviness. Welcome to today's episode of "Get Your Spirit in Shape." We are coming to you live over the ResourceUMC Facebook page as part of the United Methodist Podcast-a-thon that's been going on all week. We're going to be here for a few more episodes today, and we thank you for joining us. Before we get started, I want to share some exciting news. Today is the 150th episode of "Get Your Spirit in Shape." Joe Iovino, the director of denominational content strategy at United Methodist Communications, launched "Get Your Spirit in Shape" as the host and producer on January 16th, 2016. That first episode was titled "When We're Good at Being Bad" and featured a conversation with author JJ. Brent Bill who calls himself a "bad Quaker" and he offered tips for those of us who feel like we fail in our spiritual lives.
Since that time, we've interviewed clergy, authors, fellow United Methodists, bishops, and even a yoga instructor to share conversations with the goal to encourage and inspire each of us in our faith. And we thank you for being a part of the journey with us. The theme of the podcast-a-thon is discipleship-making and to have the conversation with us today, . I'm so excited to welcome Stacey Harwell Dye. Stacey, thank you for being with us.
Stacey Harwell-Dye: Thanks for having me.
Crystal: Before we get started, tell us a little bit about what you do and what your work is in The United Methodist Church.
Stacey: I am currently the pastor of Missions and Outreach at West End United Methodist Church, and I'm really excited because my committee has just decided through some discernment to change our committee's name to the Mercy and Justice Committee, and I have submitted to my SPRC committee, my HR committee, for a title change for myself.
So soon I may be introducing myself as the pastor of Mercy and Justice. And that's a really important distinction to make from missions and outreach towards mercy and justice. It reflects a biblical understanding of what God would have the disciples of Christ to do, the work of both mercy and justice, which appears several times in Scripture and Old Testament in the New Testament. And under that is really two branches. One is thinking about how we can be charitable because the needs of folks are always in front of us and how can we be meet immediate needs of people in the same way that Jesus met those immediate needs and then the work of justice. So what is the long-term advocacy work that needs to be done to prevent some of the injustice that happens in our world, particularly in the state of Tennessee, particularly in Nashville?
How do we work on that as well as mercy so that we're not just feeding folks, but we're addressing why folks aren't able to get the food that they need. Right now, I've heard somebody say recently that WIC is on the table for consideration as something to be stripped of funding. Well, feeding children and mothers is a biblical command, right? I am a deacon in the United Methodist Church. Part of the reason why I'm a deacon is because of when I read the book of Discipline, believe it or not, there was something really amazing inspiring in the Book of discipline and I read the description of the deacon as somebody whose desire was to be with the poor, the oppressed and marginalized, and to represent their hurts and hopes and dreams to the church and to get the church out into the world and to blend those. So that is the work that I do at West End on on a daily basis. When we think about, when we hear about on the news, somebody saying, we're thinking about stripping WIC, I can then come in and say, "Church, our Bible tells us that we are supposed to be taking care of the children and the mothers. How can we be in an advocacy role in that way? And how can we be about the work actually feeding folks that are in front of us? And so we get to do that through a lot of different ways. At my church, the main thing that West End does, and West End does this really well, is to work with partner organizations because Nashville is rich in resources? So Nashville has several great food organizations. Nashville has a lot of organizations that are working to house folks. And so in that particular example, if we're not able to feed people on our site, how do we give money to the sites that are doing some of the most work on that? So I get to do the work of bringing the church out to the world and then bringing the world into the church and saying, this is what the world needs from us. And to say to the world, this is what a relationship with God can bring, and this is what a relationship and a loving community could look like.
Crystal: I've had enough conversations with you before today to know that that's just really core, that work is just core to who you are and who God made you to be. So this is wonderful and thank you for that important work. And it is part of the conversation that we're going to have today.
This week during the podcast, we’ve heard a lot about discipleship. On this episode, I'd like for us to talk about personal discipleship and what that looks like. But I want to back up for just a minute. Let's define the word discipleship. I think it's a word that's out there a lot. And sometimes in the church we use words that could be a little inside baseball. So let's talk about just what's discipleship?
Stacey: In school, they warned you against defining a word with a word. So I can't just say it's being a disciple of Jesus, but that's where the word occurs is discipleship is it's, it's a uniquely Christian term in some ways, but the disciple concept of being a disciple is following and patterning. It's almost like an apprenticeship. And so I think of disciple of Christ or discipleship being the act of following Jesus. And for me it's something a little different than just Christian education. I think when people think of the word discipleship, they think that they are in a discipleship learning mode if they're simply going to a Sunday school class and being a passive recipient of information. And my colleague Reverend Wil McLean, who is at West End said that there is a real difference between this notion of discipleship, the act of following Jesus and Christian education.
And he said that and I went, oh my gosh, you are so right. It is so much bigger than just the learning. The learning is really important. And I think Sunday school and spaces where we can hear lectures, I absolutely adore a good conference and speaker series. I'm there if you tell me that some of my favorite speakers are going to be there. I'm working to bring a pretty big one in Nashville, and I think that there's a time and place for that. But if you think that just the learning of or hearing of or just reading scripture is all that discipleship calls you to, I really feel like you're missing out on the journey. You're missing out, in my opinion, you're missing out on some of the best parts. If all we do is passively read scripture and don't do the things that scripture tells us to do, if all we do is read scripture and not actually follow Jesus to the places where Jesus was in scripture, then we're really missing out.
I'm doing this sermon right now on Mark and I'm doing it for the prison. I got to Riverbend (Maximum Security Institution) on the second Sunday of the month, and that act of preparing sermons for people in prison has been a beautiful exercise for me and I love it. And part of what I'm preaching on from the gospel of Mark is where Jesus found himself. And it wasn't just in the synagogue. Jesus spends so little time being a passive receiver of information in the synagogue. Jesus spends so little time in that community at all. Most of scripture and Mark, which is one of the shortest gospels, is the shortest gospel, Jesus is out in the community and acting. And so I think to be a disciple, this is a long answer, but to be a disciple isn't just passive Christian education. For me, it is about an active following of Jesus into those places where he would have us to go.
Crystal: Well, the mission of the United Methodist Church is to, for the transformation of the world, to be there to share. I'm messing up the whole mission statement right now, but it's to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Stacey: You got it.
Crystal: Okay. And so that feels like one thing. But personal discipleship feels like something else.
So let's talk about that distinction.
Stacey: Yes. For me, I think personal discipleship is about the molding of myself rather than the molding of others. And so for me, that looks like what might be kind of a daily examine, what did I do right today? Where did I do well in my love of God and my love of neighbor personally and not just what I expect of others, it's also about reading scripture and reflecting on it. But it's also about just doing the right thing yourself and going to those places yourself. So not just for the transformation of the world, but I think transformational of the world starts with the transformation of our own hearts and our own ways of thinking. I don't love the apostle Paul and everything Paul has to say because I think a lot of Paul and scripture has been used really badly by people to put women in a place.
But Paul has a lot to say in this emphasis on personal refinement and personal holiness. For him, fixing your mind and your heart and your thoughts on what is good and pure and holy is one way to kind of refine who you are in your relationship with God and with the other. And I think John Wesley had a lot to say about that too. It's part of what I love about Wesley and about the Methodist church that we don't just go out and do that is such a big part of who we are and it's definitely a reason why I'm in ministry, but that we work on ourselves and our own personal discipleship, loving God ourselves and loving ourselves so that we can then love our neighbor. And it's that continual kind of refinement of who we are and what we believe. Not in some sort of systematic theology way.
We talked about church jargon can actually just weigh us down, but in just the every day, how am I being a better follower of Christ today than I was yesterday? Where did I screw up? And being honest about that. And when we're honest about that with ourselves, I think we can then take the next step and do that work as a church. So how is my church doing a really good job of loving neighbor as itself? And then where are those areas where we could do better or where we've sinned, where we've not loved our neighbor, not loved God and not loved ourselves.
Crystal: As I was preparing for today's episode, I Googled discipleship and there were a lot of different
articles and one was like “Four steps for discipleship” and “seven steps for Discipleship.” It almost feels like there's an infinite number of ways to be in this personal discipleship rhythm or pattern. What does it look like for you personally?
Stacey: I think to know what it looks like for me now I have to talk a little bit about what it used to look like for me. Is that okay?
Crystal: Of course.
Stacey: So when I was younger, I think I'll start by saying we moved almost every three to four years. My dad was in the Air Force and every time we moved, my dad put a big emphasis on finding a faith community. And it was less about what type of faith community it was as far as nomination identity and more about is this a church where you can serve and be served? So is this a church where we're going to get good teaching and we're going to have age-based classes For us, when we were growing up, did they have a good youth group? Are they having fun, but also learning scriptures and is it a place where we can plug in and serve and do service, either volunteer work at the church or outside of the church? And some churches we went to were really good about exploring all of what that could mean.
And then other churches, and particularly the one I went to as a teenager, faith was black and white. It was a checklist of what to do or what not to do. And there was this real emphasis on purity culture. When I was in high school, “I kissed dating goodbye” was a really big book study that people were doing and everything. It was a very rigid morality. And so discipleship then when I was in high school, was about a life that reflected a sold out heart for Christ where we were in our actions like proclaiming Christ. And I remember going to a Christian bookstore and there was a sheet on the wall of, oh, you like these secular artists? Well, these are the Christian artists you should be listening to instead. My friends in high school and in my early college days heard a lot of that music because I wanted them to know that there was a different way and the Christian way, and it was about salvation and it was about salvation from hell, not necessarily to anything.
And so discipleship then was about learning how to be a better person, a better human in a very black and white checklist, faith kind of way. And I remember really being evangelical in a bad sense of the term, in a sense of the term that probably a lot of the folks that knew me then wouldn't recognize me now because I would think about, I would be so invested in them not going to hell. And that was what discipleship was. It was about a one-time conversion for this person or for myself so that they weren't going to end up in hell. And what I have found as I've gotten older and as I found the United Methodist Church was that discipleship and my personal journey of discipleship is a whole lot less about a checklist of what to do and what not to do and more of an abiding in Christ and an abiding in the spirit. And that's hard for me. I actually like checklists. I like to do lists. This is my daily notebook and you can see my to-do lists and all of it. And so for me it's about moving away from that to-do list and moving towards abiding in Christ.
Crystal: We’re going to stop for just a minute, but I want to pick that back up because I am a checklist to-do list person too, and I have some questions about that. But we are going to stop for just a moment because we have a sponsor for today's episode and that is the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation.
I want to just take a few seconds to tell you about the work that the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation does. Paying for college gets harder every year. We know those things. And The United Methodist Higher Education Foundation invites United Methodist churches to help us send your students to receive a quality education at United Methodist related colleges, universities, and seminaries. When the church sponsors a $1,000 scholarship for a student, the foundation matches that and additional matches from participating schools and United Methodist Conference foundations may bring that grand total up to a $4,000 scholarship per student. This popular scholarship program not only benefits students and families, but also supports our United Methodist schools. You can learn more about the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation's, Dollars for Scholars program, as well as other scholarship opportunities at UMHEF.org.
We will link to this on our podcast episode landing page. And just one last thing, the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation really wants us all to educate future leaders in our communities, churches and world by working together. Alright, great. And thank you.
So back to to-do lists.Oh my goodness. I am truly that person that adds it back on the list so I can check it off.
Stacey: You just put a lot of things you already did? I walked the dog. Last week I did this, so I'm putting it down and checking it off.
Crystal: Yeah, that's, I'm not sure what that says about me, but anyway, so how does discipleship not look like being just a rule follower or a checklist to do whatever? And I wanted to put another word. How does it not look like being a Pharisee?
Stacey: That's really good. Yeah. The Pharisees were like, first off, I think Pharisees get a bad name because I think a lot of us are pharisaical at times, myself included. And I'm pharisaical in a different way than I was when I was younger. When I was younger, it was about making sure that I followed purity guidelines and that I was evangelizing in a way of sharing the gospel with this many people in this many places. And that I think back to mission trips I took in my early part of my college days and how they were about handing a certain number of magazines out to folks so that they would be invited to a new church plant. And that was discipleship or discipleship making. I think a word in defensive Pharisees is that they kept the tradition alive for a very long time. And by the time we get to Jesus, the traditions and the Torah and the study of scripture and the way that folks took care of one another were maintained by the Pharisaical tradition, right?
But they took it too far. And you see Jesus in scripture several times showing where the rules actually got in the way of healing and wholeness. So some of my favorite scriptures are when Jesus heals on the Sabbath or does something on the Sabbath and they just freak out about it, what are you doing? And Jesus again and again tells them and tells us through scripture, remember, it's not about these rules. If the rules aren't serving love of God and love of neighbor, the rules are great. In fact, Jesus says, I did not come to abolish the law on the prophets. I came to fulfill them. And if you think that healing somebody on the Sabbath is a sin, then you don't understand why that rule existed or why that was there. Modern day folks would say, well, Stacy, we're not healing people on the Sabbath. Well, we are because hospitals are open on Sunday, and if I was to have a heart attack on a Sunday, that's literal healing right in the hospital.
Crystal: And you would want them to help you.
Stacey: 100%. And I think that there are ways that some of these things happen. Now, you can't do that in a church. You can't have those people sitting in a pew at the church. You can't invite that person smells. They didn't take a shower, they're not welcome in church. So those rules are actually hurting people and it's hurting us. It's hurting us as disciples and as the body of Christ. So if we follow those rules in a pharisaical sense, then I think we're losing out on what the rules we're there for to begin with, which is it's to help provide fence or rails to help us, guide us towards love of God and love of neighbor better. And once again, I love checklists and I love thinking through how the things of my day lead towards this, but if that's getting in the way or if that's preventing a barrier from somebody else encountering God, I think this about some of the rules and the discipline all the time. Specifically, how can laypeople our relationship with communion, this is a good example for me. I love when people want communion and I want to figure out how can we have less barriers to people celebrating the sacrament of communion and how can we make that something that everybody has access to in a unique way? But yeah, so not fair say.
Crystal: How do we build.. One of the things that I love about being in a church family, in a church, in a congregation is the sense of community. And I do think that we are built for community
Stacey: Definitely.
Crystal: So how do we build a community of discipleships with other people? How can we do our personal discipleship, but in this way together?
Stacey: So not to be like a John Wesley freak today on the podcast, but John Wesley,
Crystal: We love John Wesley.
Stacey: Good. I'm glad. I'm a fan too of a lot of what John Wesley did, and I honestly think one of the best things that John Wesley did was the small group and this accountability structure because John Wesley realized that while there were things you needed to do on your own, read scripture, pray, reflect. John Wesley also really had this value of doing this in a community. And one of the first communities that John Wesley kind of practiced this in was his college, and he was a campus minister and really believed in campus ministry. So great tie in to our sponsor for today. And so to think about the ways that the small group on the campus that he was at could hold each other accountable to the things that they were doing and do things together. So they did some risky things that weren't really done a whole lot. Then one of the things that they did was they visited prisons together.
And to have your small group read in scripture that you're supposed to visit the prison and then to have people, okay, so are we going to go? Are you going to go? Will you go with me? That's huge. So I think small groups aren't just great for accountability. Like Crystal, did you read your bible today? Yes. Okay. Crystal, did you read your Bible today and are we going to do what it says today and are we going to do what it says together? I think it gives us folks that we can kind of enter the battle with, and I feel like it is a safe space and a comfortable space for us to share with one another. Both the joys and concerns. One of my favorite small groups that I've ever been a part of was at the first church that I served. It was at Centenary United Methodist in Macon, Georgia, shout out.
And the woman that led that was a woman named Flo Martin, we did several content pieces of content. One of the pieces of content we did was living the questions and it was about living the questions. And the group got together once a week on Monday nights and we sat around the table and shared joys and concerns. And it was such a beautiful mixed group from the community of folks that I wouldn't have encountered normally on my regular walk on a regular day. And that became really important to me to have folks who were older. So I had some grandmas and grandpas in the faith that could help me reflect on my own discipleship and my own journey. It was important for me to have people who were in homelessness be part of that group from time to time. They helped me understand scriptures in a different way, people who had a different orientation than I did that helped me. All of those people helped for me as a disciple. And that conversation was more rich because of the diversity of people who are at that table. And I think that's really important for discipleship.
Crystal: We're getting ready to finish up the episode, but I want to make sure that I ask you two questions. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about today that we didn't yet get a chance to talk about?
Stacey: Yes. I really feel like if your discipleship is not leading you out into the community for works of mercy and justice, I don't know that you're really listening. I really don't. I feel like over and over and over again, scripture continually tells us to be out to be in the community doing God's work. Jesus in the Book of Mark is out feeding, healing, teaching. And I think to be a disciple, to literally be a follower of Jesus, we are called to do those things as well. And hopefully with a small group that you've had around you that's willing to go out and do that with you. And hopefully that small group has found a church community to worship God amidst all of this too. But I honestly think that we lose our edge, but not just edginess for the sake of edginess, but we also lose our validity or our authenticity if we are reading these things in scripture that says over and over again, love the stranger as yourself, be kind to widows, orphans and strangers and not doing those things.
I think it's the biggest hypocrisy in the world to claim discipleship of Jesus and not do the things that scripture tells us to do. So it's a both end. It's reading scripture being personally holy, going back to John Wesley. Also have the social holiness to go out to the prisons, to go out into the community and be with, not out of a sense of charity, but out of a sense of I need you for my discipleship from my walk with God. And I need our community to be whole and I need us to all flourish together because God has called us to flourishing. And so I'm hopeful that through discipleship and through study of scripture and through this personal accountability that we'll have more united Methodists out in the community. I don't want to go to another protest and hope for healthcare and not see United Methodist there because that's what God has called us to be and where God has called us to be.
Crystal: Yes. The last question we ask all of our guests on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” is how do you keep your own spirit in shape? I think we've heard some of the ways through the episode, but I want you to be able to share that.
Stacey: I think one practice that's helped me is through a reading of a liturgy called “Common Prayer, a Liturgy for ordinary radicals.” Shane Clayborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro wrote that resource. And it's a pattern of daily prayer scripture. There's usually a song in there. It's meant to be done with community. And at times I've had communities that have prayed this with me and times I have not. And it's just much more fun with community. It always has a little story of either a saint or a desert mother or father or a modern saint. And I love that practice and I'm not always good at that. I'm in a season of life right now that's incredibly busy. We just got a new dog. We have a one year old in our house right now. And so discipleship looks a little different for me.
And keeping my spirit in shape looks a little different for me. So I have to, instead of once again checking off of a checklist that I read this, I have to focus on where I'm seeing God at work in my day through this child and through this dog and through my family, but also through the work that the church does. So all of those things help keep my spirit in shape. And I've got a really great group of colleagues and great group of lay people at West End that help me keep my spirit in shape, making times for rest and reflection, as well as action and regular practice of work-life balance that I really appreciate that I haven't had in every church. So I appreciate that.
Crystal: Stacey, thank you for being a guest on Get Your Spirit in Shape today and for the 150th episode for this live episode.
Stacey: Congratulations.
Crystal: Thank you. We thank United Methodist Communications for producing the United Methodist Podcast-a-thon and inviting “Get Your Spirit in Shape” to be a participant. I want to thank Ryan Dunn, my colleague, who's behind the camera here doing the production, keeping us going all week.
Epilogue
To learn more about Stacey and her ministry, I invite you to go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode page where you're going to find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. We'll also link to the book you just mentioned. I think that our audience would enjoy that. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address, especially for “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners: [email protected]. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the podcast platform where you listen. Stay tuned on ResearchUMC’s Facebook page for more podcasts today. And I thank you so much for joining us. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
