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/

In episode 060 of To Be Encouraged, the podcast explores the challenges and opportunities faced by new ordinands in the current socio-political and technological climate. The guests are incoming Deacon Rev. Matt Sherrill who serves on the Pastoral Staff of The Carmel UMC in Carmel, Indiana and Rev. Denise Robinson the Lead Pastor of the Irvington UMC in Indianapolis IN.

This episode is part two of a two part episode with part one available here. https://tobeencouraged.com/episode/059

In this episode the ordinands discuss the importance of staying focused on the mission of loving God and loving others, despite differences in opinion and theological beliefs.

Rev. Matt Sherrill expresses his passion for rethinking the way confirmation is done to better disciple young people and is encouraged by the open-mindedness and willingness to learn and grow exhibited by students. He believes that students are the church now and sees hope in the powerful things they are doing, despite the disaffiliation of numerous churches.

Bishop Julius C. Trimble emphasizes that God loves all people and that most of our limitations are self-imposed. He encourages congregations to embrace the Breakthrough Prayer movement and focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Rev. Denise Robinson shares her experience at Irvington UMC, an inner-city church committed to engaging with and helping the community. Despite challenges related to an older congregation and the dangers of the surrounding neighborhood, the church has established connections with the community through various programs and events.

Rev. Dr. Brad Miller asks Denise about her approach to dealing with challenges, particularly in the context of differing theological beliefs or hot button issues that arise within the church. She emphasizes the importance of not being diverted from the mission of loving God and loving others and finding different ways to share the love of Christ with the community.

Rev. Matt Sherrill explores the challenges faced by youth ministries in the current technological climate, as well as the importance of building relationships with people who are different than ourselves to change perspectives and break down stereotypes.

Takeaway points include the importance of staying focused on the mission of loving God and loving others, embracing Breakthrough Prayer, being church in profound ways in the world, and working to bring about social change. The podcast encourages church leaders to have conversations with colleagues from different places to learn from each other, create new opportunities, and celebrate the diversity of the United Methodist Church.

Time Stamps:

[00:02:32] "IUMC faces challenges in serving inner-city community"

[00:05:28] "Overcoming Limitations and Embracing Breakthrough Prayer"

[00:12:20] "Bishop Urges Focus on Gospel Mission"

[00:14:37] "Students embrace awareness and take breaks"

[00:17:55] "Pastor urges young people to hear message of God's unconditional love"

[00:23:18] "Prayer and Humility: God's Promise of Healing"

[00:25:03] "Special Guests Offer Encouragement on Podcast"

This episode is part two of a two part episode with part one available here. https://tobeencouraged.com/episode/059

With Denise and Matt and Bishop, you are being

commissioned and committed to ministry. You're already in ministry. You're going to continue to serve

in your places here in

Carmel, Indiana, and Indianapolis, Indiana. In your ministry

settings. What are you looking

forward to moving forward, as in your ordination, in serving

maybe? What is something you kind of are hesitant about or maybe dread a little

bit? Matt, start with you. What are you looking forward to? What do you kind

of worry about?

I've just enjoyed the whole process. I mean, getting to know other pastors.

So to me, just continuing to connect with them in the conference

is really exciting. I'm always just looking forward

to kind of what's next in ministry with

students, the things we're doing to disciple them,

and particularly with confirmation, that's kind of a passion of

mine is to kind of rethink how we do that.

So just excited to see these young people continue

to grow, to be mentored and then eventually to become

mentors and disciple people themselves.

I'm excited for the church and just what the

future holds. I think that we have a great opportunity here just

to establish ourselves, to have a clear identity

in who we are as disciples and to have an impact

on the world. Our job is pretty clear,

and that's just to continue to preach Jesus. And what

I'm worried about is just all

the stuff kind of going on in our world, in our society.

It is a challenge, a struggle, and how

the church responds to that.

Are we going to continue just to do what we've always done or are we

going to be able to adapt and to meet the needs of

people? Maybe they don't want to be at the church or in the church,

so hopefully we can find ways

to move forward and to reach people where they are

and not always expecting them to come to us.

But that's a huge challenge and it's going to take

a lot of work. Pastor Denise,

are your thoughts about what are you looking forward to? What excites you? What's jazzed

you about moving forward and maybe some hesitancy you might

have about some things? I'm looking forward to

another year here at IUMC.

I guess when I thought about going into ministry, I never thought that I'd

be appointed to an inner city, kind of inner city Indianapolis

church. Irvington is inside the beltway. It's a very diverse

community, and being on the

East Irvington Street corridor, there's a lot of need around

our church, and it has presented its challenges,

but at the same time, a lot of joy in the

church. We've worked hard to make connections with

a community where we've been lacking. We've got

a food pantry now or a food closet. We've got a clothing closet.

This evening we have an exercise class and a

free community dinner, kind of a dinner church concept.

And so I'll be getting ready for that at about 05:00 tonight.

We've started a couple of Bible studies and we also

have worked the next big thing is we've worked on

the basement area of our church and we're opening it up to the community,

calling it the commons. And we're looking at some

open mic nights and some other forums for community events

and ultimately another form of worship service

down in the basement of the church too. We're on what's called an island.

We're on the North Circle here. North of Washington Street.

And so people just know us as the church on the

North Circle. They don't really know us by name, but we're getting

the reputation that when you need prayer, when you need help, when you

need somebody to listen, go to that big church on the North Circle.

And that's the reputation that we want to have,

that we reach out to the community. But there's also where do we

go from here, Irvington?

We look at the news, and when you look at the east side of Indianapolis

in the news, it's not always a safe

neighborhood. And there are challenges,

especially with an older congregation. How do we reach out and engage

with our community when the

community sometimes can present a danger?

And those are things that we're constantly looking at because

of the issues of alcoholism and drug abuse and

mental health issues, poverty and so forth

that exist around our church.

So that's the challenge. Sure.

Bishop, what do you see as the opportunities I guess

I would have put it this way, Bishop. You see the

little bit of the broader picture, the bigger picture, not only in the United Methodist

Church in Indiana, but beyond that, even. What do you see as the opportunities

for a new elder and a new deacon moving

forward in their ministry context and beyond?

What opportunities are before them? What can God do through

these folks? I think most of

our limitations are self imposed.

I think one of the things God can do is this

is picking up across the conference right now,

is Breakthrough Prayer. I would invite both

Matt and Denise to, if your congregations have

not embraced the whole Breakthrough Prayer movement,

to think about how do we pray our way to what God wants us to

do next. I did my d men project.

Brad, I was just thinking I'm looking at Matt and Denise.

Years ago, her D Men project was on creating

partnerships between city and suburban churches for

missional outreach. And I served at

the time, I was serving an inner city church,

and we had a partnership with three there were three congregations,

all United Methodists, in different parts of Cleveland,

Ohio, where one was outside of the city.

In a suburb, but we all had similar demographics

in terms of the

base of our congregations were older, but we had vibrant youth

ministries and other activities, but we lived in different kind of

different worlds in the same city. So the three

pastors got together and decided what are the ways in which we

can have both conversation and experience community

together? Because a lot of times what we do, we would

do mission projects, we would leave the city and go

out somewhere else or go

to the kind of known mission to the campsites and

do things. And we decided there are conversations and

opportunities for doing things together. So I'm just looking at Matt and

Denise. I'm not suggesting that you need to do this, you may already be doing

something. But sometimes we can have conversations with

our colleagues who are in different places and say, hey, is there a time

that we might be able to come together and learn from each other? We're in

the same denomination, we're basically in the same

district or same geographical

area. You're in two different districts. But Carmel

is just an extension of Indianapolis in one sense.

There are a lot of opportunities, I think, that we can take advantage of

and some of the work. I happen to know both that Pastor

Denise and Pastor Matt in their locals, they're already doing great

things. So I celebrate that. One of

the things I do say is that currently right now

there is in our denomination a shifting or a

sifting and shifting because there's significant

number of churches that are disaffiliating,

which leaves still majority

of our congregations that are remaining. United method

is focusing on making disciples of Jesus Christ for

the transformation of the world. And I think this is an opportunity

to lean into what God has for us next. Matt kind of mentioned

it as well. What does it mean for us not to just

go to church and try to get people to church, but what does it mean

for us in this season to be the church for people who

maybe they've been experiencing us online, but they're not going

to be coming to our church and we can do

ministry, feed them, have meals. They may never join

our church. So how might we redefine

ourselves or ask God to use us in a way in

which we can be church more in more profound ways

in the world?

We need not become formed to the world, but we do need to

we need to be sufficiently in the world.

I'm thinking of this book, John Wesley for the 21st Century,

where it says we have to recognize that Wesley

was both a social and political and ecclesiastical conservative.

He encouraged Methodists to embrace the general rules

and he called them to resist evil and do good.

Those are open ended statements. There are no limits on

resisting evil and doing good.

Therefore here's something. Therefore, when we notice

that we are providing food for larger numbers of people each week

at Food Bank, we can rejoice that we are feeding the

hungry. But sometimes we need to do more than that.

We need to ask why are there so many more people who

are hungry? What's happening that they cannot earn a living

and feed their families? Is there a fatal flaw

in the current economic system that works against these people being

able to make enough money to buy food? Wesley may not

have raised the question in exactly that way, but he

did set out to both provide immediate relief and

work to bring about social change so that the relief

would not be necessary. So when we think about

scriptural and social holiness,

wesley was very much committed

to prayer and to piety, but also for

Methodists being people who actually did something about the

pain that people experience on a regular basis. And I praise God

for these two pastors and their ministry

and their leadership as we move forward in the United

Methodist Church with all of our diversity, with all

of our flaws and foibles,

god is still using us in mighty ways.

Indeed, God is using us in mighty ways. We look forward to Denise and Matt

doing just that. And yet, as has been mentioned a couple of times here,

we live in anxious times in our world,

politically, social, economically. There's wars,

there's famine, there's bad stuff happening, there's crime,

as we've mentioned here. And yet

we also have our challenges in our United Methodist Church and disaffiliation

and other things like that. Denise, I'd be interested in how you

approach these challenges, both within the

church. Maybe you have to deal with folks sometimes who have different feelings

or different thoughts about theology or about racial matters

or about human sexuality, any number of things that become

hot buttons, and that sometimes some people say,

hey, why is our church still in UMC? Or things like

that. How are you approaching some of these anxious times as

you move forward, the next step of your ministry? Denise well,

obviously, questions about what is happening

not just in society, but in the United Methodist Church.

Those questions come up in the church, of course.

And I think that my focus has been to simply

remind people that we cannot afford to get diverted from our mission.

We have a mission to love God and love others,

and we can have different

opinions when it comes to theological issues as long

as the heart of our message is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so my message to my people here

at my church, and to those that ask me that

question, is we have enough to focus on.

It will take all of our time, all of our effort,

if we focus on living into the gospel of Christ,

if we allow ourselves to be diverted, we allow the message to be

diluted. And that's something that we can't afford to do.

It doesn't matter what church we're in as a faithful follower of Christ,

that's what we're called to do. And so, in our context,

we are going to find different ways to love our community. We are going

to find different ways to share the love of Christ with our community and

the theological issues that where we may have

disagreements, will allow that disagreement. And we'll remember

that in essentials we maintain our unity,

but in all things, we maintain our love. Awesome.

Thank you for sharing that. Matt, you have a specific focus in your ministry

on youth ministry and of course, youth are

when I was in youth ministry, I used to say some people say youth of

the future of the church. I would say, no, they're at the church right now.

So we are engaged right now with their lives and so on and so forth.

But we do live in this world of a lot of distractions and a lot

of input, lots of data points coming in,

including some of the ones we've mentioned about distractions in the church and

society and so on. What you're feeling moving forward,

particularly in youth ministry, about how

the church can focus on, as Denise said,

what is true and what is real. But what are some feelings about this as

all these distractions come in?

Well, I think these students, particularly what we're seeing right now,

is that they're starting to recognize that their phones,

especially all these different things, are distractions. And so they're

very aware of that. And they're more

open maybe than even several years ago, the students.

So we're seeing the impact that that has on them.

We encourage the kids to take a break and just to stop and

notice their surroundings, notice people, spend time

with them. They're doing it. And they

love to serve, they love to love on

people. They are very open minded, very open

to all people. And so I'm just encouraged and

the ways they listen, the ways they learn, the ways that they want to grow.

And you're right, like they are the church now. And that

gives me great hope because I see the powerful

things that they're doing. So I

continue to learn from them in lots of ways.

I can't keep up with the social media stuff. It's just constantly

changing. But are any of the youth wrapped up at all? And in

some of the adult issues regarding disaffiliation or theology

or human sexuality or any of that kind of stuff,

is this impacting youth ministry? Tell me about that.

Yeah, I would say the disaffiliation that

I don't think has ever come up with our students.

They have so much going on in their lives as it is right now.

And as far as human sexuality and

all the stuff going on in our society,

they see people and they love people and

they embrace people for who they are and they meet them for who

they are. And so I think that's, again, another model that

Jesus did that we try to encourage is to

see them people first, to have that relationship.

It's easy for us to make broad stereotypes

or generalizations about groups of people,

but when you're in relationship with someone,

maybe that's different than you, that changes everything.

They're exposed to a lot of more

diverse kind of experiences than I ever was at

their age. And again, they just encouraged

me and how they just love people. I love

what you're saying, but they see people for people.

I love that. And I think that's a good message that

we can learn from those folks, from the young people.

For us, as the church see people as people instead of labels of whatever

it would be, where it's a socioeconomic thing or a theology thing or

a gender or race or whatever.

Bishop I think you've got something else you wanted to mention or ask about

to these folks. As we kind of wind down our conversation in the next few

minutes, here. What's on your heart that you wanted to share with Madden,

with Denise? Well, I think I'd like to ask them

to continue to push out the message that

God loves all the people that we serve. Man and when you're talking

to the young people, if I can't make it to your confirmation class,

maybe you'll make sure they get to hear this podcast.

But I want young people and all people to know

that God loves you, and that's not subject

to debate or vote or can't be overturned by the

Supreme Court, the judicial Council, the church board,

or the school council, for that matter. That's a subtle issue where

there's a pastor, retired pastor, retired bishop from the

Philippines, Bishop Knoxville, who's written several books about the resurrection.

And he got up a few weeks ago at our meeting, we were talking about

something I forget about, and he got up, he said,

friends, he said, it's been settled. And I

was thinking, what is he talking about? It's been settled. He said,

you know, we just a few weeks ago, we celebrated Easter.

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

Death has been defeated. Sin has been defeated. We have the

victory. So it's settled. Many of the things that we are squabbling

about or we may feel bad about, or people may

on social media say things about me or

you or whoever, they're simply not true because

some things have already been settled. So, for example,

our sacred worth. And I think young people get this

in many cases better than we do, because my experience

was maybe a little bit more how

can I say? My experience was not nearly as broad or

deep as some of the things that young people are experiencing today, particularly with social

media. But also there's a lot of negativity that

is messaged so quickly that we really need to

offset that with the message that God

sees us. And I think everybody wants to

know this, that it doesn't matter what age you are. People want to know that

we care before they care how much we know as

pastor Denise said, it's not about our theology,

in fact. And if I stumble when I'm doing my Episcopal address,

pastor Denise, you go to the microphone and you said something.

You said, if our mission is diverted,

then the gospel is diluted. Brad, you need to write that down.

That sounds like that one might preach that one might preacher that might make.

It into the Episcopal address, that might. Make it into your next book,

even. I don't know. Well,

anyway, I just think that it's important for us to push

out the positive. That's the whole purpose of this podcast,

because sometimes somebody may need a sign. And Brad's heard

me say, this podcast message might be the sign you've been

waiting to hear from.

God loves you. And Jesus Christ died for our

sin. And Jesus said, I've come not to condemn the world, but that the

world might be saved through Jesus Christ. Awesome. We use mentioned

about being a positive note. The theme of our podcast is

to be encouraged with Bishop Julius C. Trimble. So we always like to

kind of bring things around to an encouraging word. So,

Denise, I would just like to ask you to kind of synopsize

a bit of what you are about right now and what is encouraged

you right now as we look forward

in ministry.

Brian, I think what encourages me the most is to see

the love of people played out, the grace,

the message of grace that the United Methodist Church has to

offer. Where I hear us the loudest and where

I hear us speak the strongest is when we let people

know that God loves them. But more

than that, that there's a grace for them and a place for them

in our church. And whatever their voice, whatever their

gift, that we will embrace that. And to me,

that message of inclusivity that

we have here in the church is one to be celebrated,

that I celebrate. I love that the primacy of grace is

not much better than that. Man, I ask you the same thing. What is

an encouraging word that you have to share as you enter this

next phase of your ministry?

Well, like we tell our students, jesus was with

his disciples every day for three years,

and they still didn't get it, and he was Jesus.

And so I just want to encouraged everyone to stay true to

the path, to continue to be faithful as

Jesus calls us, to be faithful and know that God is with

us. And as Bishop says, so often,

God loves us and there's nothing we can do about it. So just

want to encourage everyone just to share that same love that we've received with

all people. Yeah. So grace and faith, those are pretty good encouraging

words. Bishop, what kind of encouraging words would you wrap

up our conversation with? And then could you have a prayer for us, please?

Absolutely. So two Chronicles 714

from the New Revised Standard Version if my people who are

called by My name will humble themselves and pray, seek my

face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven

and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

God has promised to hear our earnest prayers.

If we turn our face away from

the world and from our own self grandizement

and our own self interest, and turn our face towards God

and towards the love of God and the love of neighbor, then God

will certainly use us and bless us and prepare us

for that which is before us. Let us pray. Loving God, we give

you thanks and praise for the church, for the

Christian church, for the body of Christ,

for the United Methodist Church, and for all people who are seeking a sign

of forgiveness, a sign of acceptance,

a sign of love. May you be that sign through

others and use us if you will. O God,

take us as we are and make us as you would have us to be,

that we might be instruments of your grace,

your mercy, your peace, your justice, and most of all,

your love, your never ending love. We thank

you, God, for these to our friends today,

pastor Denise and Pastor Matt and Pastor Brad

that we might continue to push out the message of

encouragement and that we might be prepared to wake

up tomorrow morning and serve the fresh bread of hope to a

hungry world. In Jesus name,

amen. Amen. Amen. And we thank you for

joining us today on the To Be Encouraged

podcast. Our special guest today had been Reverend Matt Cheryl,

the pastor of youth and discipleship at Carmel United Methodist Church

in Carmel, Indiana, an incoming deacon in the United Method

Church of Indiana, and Reverend Denise Robinson, the lead pastor

at the Irvington United Methodist Church in Indianapolis and

incoming elder. This is the To Be Encouraged Podcast,

a podcast where we look to offer an encouraging word to an