“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” (John 17:20-21a)
Over the past half year or more, many (if not most) of you reading this have read or heard about various conflict and division facing contemporary Methodist Christianity in today’s American culture. While the current controversies are rooted in debate and challenges that have been around since the early 1970s, various events have caused them to come to a head over the last four years, and to make an even greater “splash” over the past 12 months.
Unfortunately, much of what is making the rounds on the internet, social media, interpersonal gossip networks, and in secular media is based on a lot of misinformation (and even, unfortunately, some intentional DIS-information). This means that much of what you may hear or read is either blatantly untrue, or at the very least, grossly distorted.
While our primary focus at Cornerstone United Methodist Church is intentionally not on the details of these challenges, but on creating and being a community which reflects and shares the love of Jesus with others, we nevertheless need to be aware of the reality of this misinformation out in the public, and how it can negatively affect our witness and focus on being Jesus to the world.
In an attempt to provide you with a resource for discerning truth from fiction regarding the current challenges facing contemporary Methodism, I want to encourage and invite you to read the following set of articles from our denomination’s UMC.org website, which seek to address the most common questions being asked by people today (perhaps even by many of you). A reasonable person doesn’t even have to agree (or trust) the veracity of all of these “official” responses to be able still to recognize and acknowledge that not all things reported as “true” are always the one and only “truth” – that there are always more ways to interpret and understand an issue than merely the sensational aspects which are popularly reported and passed around as “truth.”
So, with that in mind, below the following list is the website where you will find responses to many various iterations of the question “Is the United Methodist Church really…”
● Changing the Bible or altering our core doctrine?
● Splitting at this time?
● Asking biblical “traditionalists” to leave the denomination?
● Asking all local churches to vote on whether to remain in The United Methodist Church or join the newly formed Global Methodist Church?
● Ignoring or refusing to implement our own church’s statements, restrictions, and requirements regarding practicing homosexuals and same sex weddings?
● Dropping (or going to drop at General Conference in 2024) all current prohibitions related to human sexuality?
● Forcing (or going to force) congregations that don’t want a self-avowed practicing homosexual as a pastor or deacon to accept one?
● Going to require local churches and/or their pastor to host same-sex weddings?
● Going to renew the legal allowance for disaffiliation (Book of Discipline, Paragraph 2553) at the next General Conference in 2024?
● …and responses to many other questions.
While I do want to encourage you to read the complete article responses, the short answer to each of these questions is “NO!” Given this reality, it is disturbing and unnerving that so many people in our culture (and many members of the United Methodist Church) have fallen under the spell of this misleading misinformation, leading to two major consequences:
(#1) using a paragraph (2553) in our latest Book of Discipline that is open through December 2023, many United Methodist Churches around America have chosen to undergo a process of discernment about whether or not to “disaffiliate” (i.e., exit/leave) the U.M.C. denomination entirely; and
(#2) the unilateral formation (not mutual “split”) in 2022 of the Global Methodist Church (or GMC, a more conservative branch of Methodist Christianity). As a clergy colleague of mine commented in a recent email about these phenomenon, "I find it ironic that so many are jumping off a ship [meaning the United Methodist Church] that isn’t sinking." How sad but true are his words!
What about the current Disaffiliation Lawsuit
against the NGA UM Conference?
Doubtless some of you are also aware that late last year, our then-Bishop announced that she was pausing the ability of UMCs in the North Georgia Conference to continue their “disaffiliation discernment” process due to the “misleading, defamatory, and false statements and materials shared with local church members by certain organizations as well as clergy and lay members of various churches and outside groups” leading to a lack of “confidence in the validity of upcoming church conference disaffiliation votes.” You can read the entire rationale for pausing the disaffiliation process HERE. As a result of this pause, nearly 200 North Georgia U.M.C.s filed a lawsuit in late March against the North Georgia Conference, feeling that their “rights” had been abridged. Read about this lawsuit HERE.
While I understand the concern and feelings of these churches (some which I have served as Pastor or on staff), I must nevertheless respectfully disagree both with their lawsuit and the purported motives behind it. For one, most of these seem to be based on a faulty assumption: the disaffiliation provisions of Paragraph 2553 were graciously provided specifically to allow those churches who felt the 2019 General Conference decisions were too harsh (i.e., generally progressive churches) to be able to leave the denomination. Yet, most every church that has applied to use this paragraph to exit has done so claiming their fear of a change in the Book of Discipline that has not yet happened. In other words, their argument of why they want to leave the denomination seems to be based NOT on the faith-reality of what now IS, but their fear of a potential “WHAT IF” of the future. What they are failing to acknowledge is that if the denomination were to change our current Book of Discipline LGBTQ prohibitions in the future (i.e., at General Conference 2024 or 2028), I have no doubt that those who are fearful of such things would most assuredly be given an opportunity to exit the denomination graciously with their property and honor intact (as was given to progressive Methodists in the 2019 adoption of Paragraph 2553). However, the current provisions were not designed for a conservative exit based on “what ifs” (which is what most of those filing the lawsuit are advocating for).
Not only that, but despite the pretense that the lawsuit is aimed at protecting the “right” of churches who want to make their own choice based on their view of the high authority of scripture, they are seemingly overlooking the fact that lawsuits against fellow Christians are blatantly and clearly unbiblical (read 1 Corinthians 6:1-11, where Paul makes it clear – especially in verse 9 -- that those who do this put themselves in the same company as the “wrongdoers who will not inherit the kingdom of God”). As such, in my humble opinion, the current fear and panic of so many churches in pushing to engage in a “disaffiliation process” – to the point of disregarding the clear imperatives of scripture by suing their fellow Christians -- is not only ungracious and unnecessary, but also unbiblical.
What Does This Mean for United
Methodism of the Future?
All that I’ve discussed here begs the question, “What does all of this mean for United Methodist Christianity of the future? And what does and will it mean to be and to live as a UNITED Methodist Christian, both today and in that future?”
As a United Methodist Christian for all my life, and as a United Methodist Pastor now for 34 years, I shared a number of answers to these questions in a sermon series (“Christianity the Wesleyan Way”) that I preached at Cornerstone UMC January 8-February 12, 2023 (view these sermons on YouTube HERE). You can also read more about these themes in my 2020 book of the same title found on Amazon.com HERE.
But in addition to what I’ve shared personally and professionally, the following link on our NGA Conference website has many articles, blogs and videos to help interpret these questions and also to share thoughts about the future of our UMC denomination that I invite you to read for yourself…
The bottom line: through all the divisions, disruptions, and challenges we have been facing recently, God is in the process of birthing new forms of Methodist Christianity: some forms will be more conservative/traditional in view and practice (like the G.M.C.); some forms will be more liberal/progressive in view and practice (there have been discussions of a more progressive branch of Methodism breaking away from the U.M.C. in the future); and still other forms will hold both conservative and liberal qualities in tensional balance through what is currently referred to as “centrist” views and practices (such as will likely be found in the future U.M.C.). The tensions we experienced as a denomination over the past 10-20 years were but the labor-pains; but now we are experiencing the birth process itself. Yet, if that is true, then let’s not forget that all births are uncomfortable, messy, and painful. And unfortunately, to some people birth feels so much like death that they have a hard time seeing beyond the pain and mess to the more beautiful and lovely thing that’s created as a result of it. All of this is certainly what we’re experiencing now.
Another biblical metaphor for what we’re experiencing is the “pruning” parable that Jesus describes in John 15:1-2, where God “prunes” that which is not bearing fruit, so that what is left can actually begin to bear fruit again. For many years, there have been parts of the (old) United Methodist Church which (truthfully, I agree) have not borne spiritual fruit. Yet, in the recent creation of newer forms of Methodist Christianity now found in the U.M.C. and G.M.C., each “pruned” branch has a better opportunity to produce genuine spiritual fruit in their future.
Consequently, I do not live in a state of “doom and gloom” or “panic-mode” (as some people appear to be doing) about either the present or the future of Methodist Christianity. It (actually Christianity, in general), has undergone numerous divisions and reunifications throughout its history (1792, 1830, 1844, 1870, 1939, and 1968!), making the divisions of 2020 and 2022 neither the first such things in our Methodist history, nor the last. God’s church is “bigger” than any division, and tends to be more resilient and durable than we humans think that it is because it is GOD’S church and not OURS! As a result, God’s work and power in the world has and will continue through the differing expressions of Methodism.
My heart breaks for the hurt and wounded feelings that these contemporary challenges and parting-of-ways are causing. I have many laity friends and clergy colleagues who are choosing to go a different way than myself and my family. But I still love them and pray that God will use them in their own way(s) to reach and touch people with the gospel of Jesus. In the meantime, despite its flaws (and each branch has these) my family and I choose to remain part of the branch of Methodist Christianity called the United Methodist Church, not only because it has fed and nurtured us in our Christian walk thus far, but also because, for us, it has both the greatest power and possibility to continue to do so into the future.
I understand and accept the fact that not all who read this article will agree with this assessment, or of all that I’ve written. Nevertheless, regardless of one’s personal views on the individual topics discussed herein, if we follow Jesus, then we can hopefully at least agree that we all have a common responsibility to respect one another in Christian love, and when we do disagree, to do so in way that honors Jesus, who we both love and serve (1 Corinthians 13:1-13).
My prayer, then, is that whatever you believe or wherever you stand on the issues, we can still work together as partners in faith to share the love of Jesus with the community and world around us, to the end that the kingdom of God may come upon the earth. Only then can the unity of the Church that Jesus prays about in John 17:21 come to pass. Always remember -- no matter who you are (or whether or not you agree with me) – that God loves you and I do, too!
