Bishop Julius C. Trimble is the Resident Bishop of the Indiana Area of the United Methodist Church.

Bishop Trimble has the personal mission to encourage all people with the love of Jesus Christ to rise to their highest potential. It is his commitment to his personal mission that led Bishop Trimble to create the “To Be Encouraged” Podcast along with co-host Rev.Dr. Brad Miller.

Bishop Trimble says, “I am compelled by Jesus to share with you an encouraging word or two about Jesus, theology, the Bible, the pandemic, the environment, racism, voting rights, human sexuality, and the state of the United Methodist Church.”

To Be Encouraged with Bishop Julius C. Trimble is to be published weekly and is available at www.tobeencouraged.com and all the podcast directories.

https://www.inumc.org/bishop/office-of-the-bishop/

On episode 062 of To Be Encouraged, Bishop Julius C. Trimble and Rev. Dr. Brad Miller continued a conversation with Bishop Kenneth Carter that was begun on Episode 061. https://tobeencouraged.com/episode/061

Kenneth H. Carter, Jr. is the resident bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Along with the Cabinet, he gives pastoral and administrative leadership to over 1000 congregations, fresh expressions of church, campus ministries, and outreach initiatives

Bishop Carter’s great hope for the church is that she will rediscover an orthodox Christian faith that offers the radically inclusive grace of God to all people, and at the same time calls every follower of Jesus to inner holiness, missional compassion, justice rooted in the gospel and a hopeful story of transformation.

This Episode 062 covered different topics such as grace, connection, humility, antiracism, holiness, and forgiveness.

Below are five key takeaways from the conversation:

1. Grace, Connection, and Holiness Lead to Healing

The Bishops emphasized that grace, connection, and holiness are pathways to healing. The church community can experience healing by exhibiting these three virtues. Grace, for example, can help people to forgive and heal from past hurts. Connection, on the other hand, can help people to feel supported and loved by others. Lastly, holiness can help people to live in a way that pleases God and improves their well-being. These concepts are intertwined and complement each other, such that practicing one leads to multiple benefits.

2. Humility is Essential for the Church

They also discussed the importance of humility in the church community. They acknowledged that it can be easy to exhibit religious arrogance, especially when one feels that they have attained a certain degree of knowledge about faith. However, they emphasized the need for cultural and theological humility, which can be learned by following the example of Jesus Christ. According to them, humility in the church can help to create a more inclusive community that welcomes everyone.

3. Responding to Racism and Working Towards Inclusion of LGBTQ Persons

Bishop Trimble and Bishop Carter also acknowledged that the church community has a long way to go in terms of responding to racism and working towards the inclusion of LGBTQ persons. They recognized that it can be easy to avoid these difficult conversations in favor of more comfortable topics. However, they emphasized the importance of taking on the work that has been avoided for a long time, namely, responding to racism and working towards inclusion of LGBTQ persons. They believe that this work is necessary for a healthy church, and everyone should be committed to it.

4. Justice, Love, and Mercy

The speakers emphasized that justice, love, and mercy go together. They believe that mercy and justice are necessary for each other and cannot exist in isolation. According to them, Christians should strive to promote justice and love as they work towards the transformation of the world. The concept of love should guide our actions towards others, while the concept of justice should address those who suffer from oppression and injustice.

5. Encouragement Through Transformation

The To Be Encouraged podcast aims to offer encouragement to a discouraging world. All three of the speakers believe that transformation is the blueprint to achieve this aim. Christians should work towards transforming the world by being countercultural, breaking decorum and committing to social justice. Wesley’s example was mentioned as a good role model to follow. Social holiness through preaching and teaching social principles was identified as another strong means to achieve transformation.

Conclusion

The conversation between Bishop Julius C. Trimble and Bishop Kenneth Carter was informative and enlightening. The conversation reflected on different aspects of faith and shared their views on how Christians can become better people. Grace, connection, humility, social justice, and inclusion of others were emphasized, all as key elements through which Christians can transform the world towards better social outcomes. This podcast aims to offer encouragement and hope to people in a discouraged world, and it did just that by shedding light on the importance of faith, healing, and transformation. Overall, the episode sought to remind listeners that we all need healing in some way and that God wants us to heal, connect, and become holier in the process.

This Episode (062) was Part 2 of a two part episode with Bishop Kenneth Carter regarding his book "Unrelenting Grace." Part 1 is available at this link: https://tobeencouraged.com/episode/061

Bishop Kenneth Carter https://www.wnccumc.org/bishop-carter

Get the book "Unrelenting Grace: A United Methodist Way of Life" from Cokesbury.com

Thank you. Well, I appreciate the conversation. I've been

thinking a lot recently,

bishop Carter alluded to it, but around our

commitment, our strong commitment to

transforming the world. We talk about making disciples for Jesus

Christ, but it's to what end? And to

that end is actually people are talking a lot about

canceled culture, where, as Christians, we're supposed to be

countercultural, actually.

What happened in Tennessee when the two elected officials

were kicked out of the state house

for breaking decorum, that was the charge. I

think that's really a Wesleyan way of life. Maybe

this is a season where we should be breaking more decorum,

and Bishop Carter would know this better than me, but I think

Wesley was outlawed from preaching in some pulpits when he

started preaching, started preaching out in the field,

and the charge was he was breaking decorum, in

essence. So Wesley broke decorum, and the Methodist

movement movement grew. I'm really concerned in

this season that we're not just episodic

about our commitment to really social justice as a

piece of social holiness. I know that's not the total meaning of social

holiness. Social holiness also has to do with caring for

one another. But

we're episodic. And when George Floyd was killed,

it's been some time now. And if you really notice how

our commitment kind of dims over a period of time when it comes

to social justice and literally

transforming the world more towards the direction of beloved

community. And I think this is a season for

United Methodists and others, christians and others,

who really want to see the world in a better place for our

grandchildren, that we really can't press the

mute button on our prophetic witness

or our commitment to social holiness

from the standpoint of I'm United Methodist. I grew up in a

Methodist church that was very Methodist in its worship,

but it also was very committed

to transforming the world. My pastor, who mentored me

at March with Martin Luther King, Jr. I was 13 when Martin Luther King,

Jr. Came and spoke at our church. So

while the message was, Brad, get ready for

heaven, it also was, we need to interrupt some of

the hell that people are experiencing right here on earth.

I grew up on South Side of Chicago, right down the street from my

house. I wanted Bishop

Carter to say something about that in terms of the United Methodist way of

life. Some of our pastors just have had a difficult time. And they said,

Bishop, I met with them recently, a group of pastors, saying,

it's not as easy as you think. Bishop, from your chair, yes,

maybe to speak prophetic, but when I'm speaking at a congregation in rural

Indiana, around welcoming

the neighbor, and they say, well, everybody here kind of looks like us,

it's not quite easy. And my response is that that's why we preach

from the Bible, and that's why we

relate to our social principles and who we are as

Methodists, but it's easier said than done,

right? Well, thank you, Bishop Trimble.

I would say a part of the genesis of this

book was a talk I gave as I was leaving

Florida. And it was

about the idea that we're on the way to a better

church. And during my ten and a half years

in Florida, we experienced the murder of Trayvon Martin.

We had a church which had

Anglos and African Americans in Sanford. We had

the Pulse murders. We had Parkland.

We tried to work on this. And one of our cabinet members was a

brilliant woman named Dr. Candace

Lewis, who would go on to be the president now of

Gammon Theological Seminary. And she said to me

one time, and I would say she was kind of my teacher

along the way, she said, if we don't do this,

we leave it for someone else later to have

to do. And then Bishop

Palmer said along the way, he said, we

do not need a crisis followed by a catharsis,

followed by the status quo, my God.

And so we really tried to keep are

trying to keep this before people. And my language has

been antiracism as

discipleship and sanctification. Hallelujah.

It's a part of being a disciple. It's not that I've

arrived. I haven't. It's not that I'm sanctified here. I'm not.

But it is a part of that. It's also a part of being a healthy

church, that we cannot be a healthy church or a healthy

people if we are racist. And so the

challenge is that we are asking people

to do more when they're

exhausted, when they're saying to us, I

can't do as much as I've been doing, I'm exhausted, et cetera. But

we're asking them to do more. We're asking them to take on a work

that we've avoided for a long time.

And I do talk about this in the book. The two

unfinished pieces of work on the way to a

better church are the

response to racism and not singling out

one group of people for discrimination, LGBTQ

persons. And again, on the latter one, I come at

that very much as a pastor. These were people who were part of my

churches, less as an ideology.

And I believe the three

ways we can do this are, first, grace

that every person, if we are saved, we are saved

by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. God shows

no partiality. Peter says in Acts ten. And

second, that we are part of a connection

and we need a connection to do this work together.

I worked a lot in Florida with the AME church

and with the bishop of the AME church, bishop Adam Richardson, later

Bishop Frank Reed, on matters that were important

to our two churches. And then third is holiness.

And holiness is on the journey to loving

God, loving our neighbor. And you mentioned justice. I love the phrase

could have been Cornell west who said this, that justice is what

love looks like in public, and

mercy and justice go together. I

love the verse Micah 68, god

has showed you what is good, what does the Lord require of you? Do

justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.

And I remember an Old Testament professor saying about

that verse Micah 68. He said, what

if. That is what he called a Hebrew Hebrew parallelism.

So think about the 23rd Psalm. He

leaves me beside still waters, he restoreth my

soul. And in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew,

often the same thing is said twice.

It has the same meaning, but it's said twice for

emphasis. And what if to do justice and to love

mercy is one thing. What if

there is no mercy without justice,

if we can't be merciful people, we want to separate those things,

but what if there's no mercy without

justice? And I'm kidding

myself if I think I can be merciful to people

without having an interest in justice.

And what if there's no real justice without

it being merciful? And I think that for me, that

means trying to walk with

people to a better place and bring them along with

me. And so I would say to that pastor,

I also heard someone else say this a long time ago. As a

pastor, we build up capital.

That's the priestly part of being a pastor. We build up

capital. And the thing is, we

don't use that for ourselves.

We use it for someone who needs us to use it for

them. And so I realize

it makes people uncomfortable or we lose some of

that capital, but we're called to spend it for people

who don't have the voice that we have. That's why we have a voice in

a pulpit. That's the

tension of being a priest and being a prophet,

and I think we've avoided a lot of that

in the past. And now that's our work to

do.

One of the things you address towards the end of your book, and that's the

whole thing of the whole process of healing,

healing in the body and body as the body of

Christ. And we've got a lot of hurt. We got a lot of

pain in our church. And what you've described, the grace

can lead to healing. But can you say a word about that in particular, maybe

where you've witnessed churches or clergy

or situations? Give us another example

of where some healing of the body has taken place in the midst of

all this angst that we're under.

Yeah, well, again, I'll

remember an experience from when I was a boy,

this is not in the book, but I actually wrote an upper room

devotional about this, which someone told me

that upper room devotional would be read by a lot more

people than it would ever read my books. There

was a man named Bob who was a member of our church, and we

had Sunday morning and Sunday evening services. So this would have been about

1967. So you remember

Bishop Trimble, what that time was in the Deep South

and 1967, I was about ten,

and we had Sunday morning service, sunday school, we

had Sunday afternoon youth, and then a Sunday evening service.

And at the end of the Sunday evening service, there were

about 75 of us there. And

the pastor asked at the end of the service, does

anyone have anything they would like to say

for the good of the church?

And as a boy, I was always

praying that nobody would say anything, because we'd been

there a long time that Sunday. We'd been there Sunday morning, sunday

evening. His

name was Bob Jeffords, and Bob said, I've got

something to say. He looked around at everybody and

he was a mild mannered guy, he was a Keebler cookie

salesman. And he said, I've

got something to say. He said, I just want you all

to know that I recognize I have been all wrong

about grace.

And he said, I have been all wrong about it.

And he said, I have asked God to forgive me.

And then he looked around at everybody and he said, if God

is speaking to you about this, I would

encourage you to ask God to forgive

you. That was all he

said. Now, this was in South

Georgia in 1967.

Now, why do I share that narrative?

That's been a long time ago, that's been

50 years ago. But

I remember it. And we forget a lot of

things. But I would say he was healing

that body that evening. I've had

broken bones, I've had a broken shoulder, I've had a ruptured

tendon in my leg. Healing is about

setting something right. There's no

healing until things are set right. Then

we can heal. That's what he

was doing, I realized, with our

church. He was setting things

right, and that's a part of the healing.

I do believe that grace, connection and holiness are

our pathways to healing. And we all need

healing. We've all been broken in some way, some more than

others. And so that's really where the book leads

to. People are in churches and some of their friends have

left or they cannot go back to the church. That

was their church, and they're somewhat lost.

People retired and they didn't have celebrations to

honor them. There were deaths in families. We didn't have

memorial service, we didn't have a service for people in my own family, a

couple of them, all these losses,

and I think how we are healing these losses. And

Jesus was a healer, that was the main thing he

did. And people were interested in his teaching,

usually because he healed people, like in John

Nine, he heals the man who was born blind and then he

teaches I'm the light of the world. And so

healing is really critical right now.

That's an encouraging word there of grace, connection, and holiness. It's an encouraging

word. And Bishop Trimble, I'm sure that you've been encouraged by our

conversation here today and you have a word to share with us, maybe

a word of thanks for Bishop Carter, but any of those you are encouraged

about today, about our. Conversation, I

want to thank Bishop Carter. I like this book a

lot. And at the end of the book, he talks about how we can sustain

our basic practices and really

live a life of holiness with God's help.

And I hope maybe we can do another episode,

because there's a lot more I want to talk about that I think would be

worthwhile talking about. For example, centric to the Lord's Prayer is

forgiveness. And I know I've been wrestling with the whole notion.

My anger has been probably at its highest peak

because of misinformation. Maybe it's just in

Indiana, maybe it's central to Indiana. It might not be happening the

rest of the world, but through this whole disaffiliation

process early on and in kind of midway

through, I just discovered I didn't realize there was so much

misinformation that people were

consumed and were consuming.

And I feel like I was losing my

capacity for humility and I was being

robbed of something in terms of my own spiritual discipline. So

I know that central to the Lord's Prayer is forgiveness. And you talk

about this as well, but I just want to say thank you to

Ken and extend an invitation maybe for another

conversation. I would be honored thank you. That

we can explore. I think someone in a

conversation recently, Brad talked about what does the church need?

And I said, well, one of the things I think we really need

and Richard Rohr talks about this as well

christians really need to find a way to

re embrace humility. And I know sometimes

I I can be guilty of maybe a religious

arrogance, if you will. And I think we really need to find

humility, cultural humility,

theological humility. And I think we

can do that by following the example of Jesus

Christ. Amen. Brad, let me close with the reading

from first, thessalonians the fifth chapter.

For God has destined us not for wrath, but for

obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, the

one who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may

live with Him, therefore encourage one

another, build up each other, as indeed

you are doing. My brother and friend, Bishop

Ken Carter. You have encouraged us not just with unrelenting

grace, but with your witness over these many years as a pastor

and as a leader in the United Methodist Church and

in ecumenical circles. And we just want to

encourage you as you continue in your witness.

Somebody might listen to this podcast, Bread, as they've done in the

past, and be looking for a sign.

And we just want to say that Jesus loves you. That won't be

voted on at our general conference or any grace else

that's unrefutable can be overturned by the supreme

Court or the judicial counsel. Jesus loves you. This I

know, for the Bible tells us so.

Amen. What a great way for us to conclude together that Jesus

loves us. This has been the to be

encouraged podcast with Bishop Julius C. Trimble. Our

special guest today has been Bishop Ken Carter from western

North Carolina. I'm Reverend Dr. Brad Miller. We thank you for joining us on

the podcast which offers an encouraged word to an often