Confidence, Optimism, and Gratitude
I don't know why, but I am always amazed by the creativity that God uses to teach me life lessons.
Last week at the thrift store, on a busy afternoon, while I was doing a spectacular job of unsuccessfully managing 3 crises at the same time, a volunteer alerted me to a situation in the front of the store. I went to investigate. A young couple had been experiencing car trouble on their way to a prospective job in southern Florida. They were stranded with no money to purchase the auto part needed to fix their car and continue on their trip.
I assigned the man the job of modeling a recliner that we had for sale in the store, and took the lady with me to go and purchase the auto part. It was not far away, and traffic was unusually light. And this is how my lesson began.
I am always impressed at the amount of information one will divulge given very little prompting. I soon learned of their financial struggles, family relationships, chronic medical conditions, failed marriages, times of drug use, and now years of sobriety. What impressed me the most was how she told me that God had been with her through every bit of this. The level of confidence in her relationship with God was awesome. God was with her always, through thick and thin. And she had a level of optimism about her future life events that was amazing. She said that she and God had come through all this together, and she was excited about where they would go next. God had great things in store for her just around the corner.
After purchasing the part, we returned to the store to pick up her partner, and then go to their car, which had been left in a local parking lot. They both were very appreciative of the help. After leaving them to fix their car, I returned back to the store to see what trouble could cause there. That I am good at doing. Later in the afternoon, the lady came back into the store. They had driven their car back to say thank you. She had tears in her eyes, as she thanked me for doing something that I did not need to do. She then gave me a gift, which she stated had sentimental value to her. I told her that was not necessary. She corrected me, saying that she accepted my gift, and now had this gift from her to me. I said thank you. And for a brief moment was speechless.
I had spent a small amount of time with this person, and yet I felt that I had learned volumes. I learned about having confidence in a relationship with God who never leaves me, about being optimistic about my future life events with God, and about being grateful for what God provides me along the way.
And all this from a very unassuming lady who had car trouble. Awsome.
The Body Of Christ
I have to confess that I am historically bad at not asking for help or delegating and trying to do things myself. For fear of inconveniencing others, or maybe insecurities about getting things done “right,” I have always tried to just do things myself. I’ve tended to lean towards the old adage the bad guy from Fifth Element said, “If you want something done, do it yourself” (actually I think Napoleon Bonaparte said it first, but I heard it first from a space movie).
I think that does a disservice, however, to how the church should function. In fact, that type of thinking goes against how Scripture discusses the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul makes it clear that the body of Christ should function as that… a body. One part cannot hide what it’s doing from the other, nor can it function without the other body parts. Everything has to work together for the body to function. This is true of the church. Paul presses the point that God is the one that has put the body together, therefore there should be no division on the body, and all parts should have equal concern for the other.
We do a disservice to what God has ordained as the body of Christ when we are only concerned with the little parts that we are responsible for. Certainly, we should all do our part with diligence, grace, and hard work; however, it is done for the purpose so that the entire part is honored.
I look back at the busy summer our children and youth ministries had. I can’t help but think how much time and effort it took from so many volunteers/workers to organize and put together our Youth Camp in June and our VBS in July. Through our hard work and efforts, we saw over 20 young lives surrender themselves to Christ this summer. The misconception would be that this is somehow “my” victory, but that would be incredibly pious and a severe disservice to how the body of Christ worked together to pull off these initiatives. I am but one piece to the puzzle. It took an entire body working together to achieve this victory. Drivers to Orange Beach, cooks that organized meals, folks praying during service and at home, donations to camp, those that bought VBS supplies, VBS group leaders, VBS rotation leaders, those that prepared snacks, our VBS director… - this victory belongs to all of us; it belongs to the body of Christ.
All of us have strengths and weaknesses, and I that’s done on purpose. Our strengths, and the gifts God has given us, are there to help us build up the body of Christ and further advance the purpose of the church. Our weaknesses, and the gifts we lack, teach us a lesson that is just as valuable. Our weaknesses remind us to rely on other parts of the body. They remind us to be humble and vulnerable. To allow others to pick up where we cannot take the body of Christ alone. That is the beauty of the church; to remind us that we all have a part to play and a responsibility to rely on one another.
That’s something that can be hard for someone like me to swallow. That means I have to get out of my comfort zone and ask for help when I need it. It means I must remember that any ministry that wants to be “successful” in God’s eyes has to be done in the context of Christ’s body, not by some “super minister” that does so many wonderful things. If I all into that trap, then I would end up being the one that is glorified, not God.
I pray that all of us take these words of Paul’s to heart and remember,
“…there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” – 1 Corinthians 12:25-26
1. How Did It Come To This?
Every United Methodist church is having to make a decision in the next few years. That decision is whether or not to remain a United Methodist church. In general terms, the current split is over the church’s stance on homosexuality. There is a long and complicated history surrounding this issue, and so over the next several blog posts I will attempt to cover as many issues as I can. For now I will just talk about how we got to this particular point.
In 1968 two denominations joined together, the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church, creating a new denomination known as the United Methodist Church. One of the practices set in place was to have a General Conference every four years. In the United Methodist Church, a General Conference is a gathering of elected leaders, both clergy and lay leaders (regular church leaders who are not pastors) who act as the legislative branch of the church. It might help to think of it almost like a session of congress. At the 1972 General Conference, the first official stance on homosexuality made its way into the Book Of Disciple, the rules and regulations that every United Methodist church is supposed to follow. The words have changed a little over the past 50 years, but here is the official language as it stands now.
Human Sexuality
We affirm that sexuality is God's good gift to all persons. We call everyone to responsible stewardship of this sacred gift.
Although all persons are sexual beings whether or not they are married, sexual relations are affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage.
We deplore all forms of the commercialization, abuse, and exploitation of sex. We call for strict global enforcement of laws prohibiting the sexual exploitation of children and for adequate protection, guidance, and counseling for abused children. All persons, regardless of age, gender, marital status, or sexual orientation, are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured and to be protected against violence. The Church should support the family in providing age-appropriate education regarding sexuality to children, youth, and adults.
We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God. All persons need the ministry of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching. We affirm that God's grace is available to all. We will seek to live together in Christian community, welcoming, forgiving, and loving one another, as Christ has loved and accepted us. We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons.
There is a bit of extra history to this statement then I’ll get into at the moment, but if you want further reading, click here. Almost all of the talks about splitting the UMC is about one particular statement, “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” This statement seems fairly benign on its own. But just to be abundantly clear, what this statement means in practice is that the United Methodist Church currently does not allow the ordination of practicing homosexuals, ordained pastors are not allowed to perform homosexual weddings, and homosexual couples can not get married in United Methodist churches. This has never been a completely accepted stance. What I mean is, this issue has been debated at nearly every single General Conference since the first. However, at every single General Conference there haven’t been enough votes to change the statement.
In 2019, there was a special Conference to discuss just this issue. It was called the Commission on a Way Forward. They presented three options to vote on: The One Church plan, The Traditionalist plan, and the Connectional Conference plan. The connectional conference plan was too complicated and never had a serious backing. The Traditionalist plan was designed to leave the language in the discipline the same. The One Church plan would essentially remove that one phrase and allow, but not require, conferences to ordain homosexual pastors, and allow, but not require, local pastors and churches to perform or host same sex weddings.
The Traditional plan won by a slim majority vote of those delegates (438 yes to 384 no). It was scheduled to be sent to the Judicial Council (the UMC’s equivalent of the Supreme Court of the United States) and then other parts pertaining to it voted on during the General Conference in 2020. One thing that was officially approved and put into action was paragraph 2553 of the Book of Discipline. This lays out the process for disaffiliation. I believe the original assumption was that this would provide a way for progressive churches to disaffiliate. However, progressive church leaders have clearly stated that they won’t be going anywhere. As a result, Traditional churches are now the ones leaving the UMC.
This seems to be a counterintuitive response. If the Traditional plan, which has been in place for 50 years, is still the official plan, why are the churches who are the most supportive of it leaving? There are a few different reasons. Because progressive churches have stated they aren’t leaving, this means that the UMC will likely continue to see debates and calls for change at every General Conference. There is definitely a weariness factor where Traditional churches are just tired of the debates and would love to spend time and energy on other matters. There is a concern that, as the American Church becomes more and more affirming, eventually the traditional view will be overturned, or that there will be a split between the American church and the more traditional churches around the rest of the world. Another factor is that there is no guarantee that the current guidelines for disaffiliation will continue to be offered. Paragraph 2553.2 (also referred to as the “sunset clause”) only lasts until Dec. 31 of 2023. This doesn’t mean that churches will no longer be able to disaffiliate, just that the terms and conditions that currently apply will likely change. The prevailing assumption is that they will be harsher, or more costly, and so there is a sense of urgency to disaffiliate before that deadline. Perhaps the most stated reason Traditionalists are leaving the UMC is due to the disciplinary actions for those churches and pastors who do not abide by the current book of Discipline. The disciplinary action prescribed as of the 2019 Commission on a Way Forward conference for performing a same sex wedding is a year suspension without pay for the first offense and being defrocked on the second offense. There have been several instances where this action has not taken place, which is seen as a way of circumventing the official stance of the UMC.
A plan was proposed and signed in December of 2019 to have the Traditionalist side of the UMC create its own denomination. It was going to the General Conference in 2020 to be voted on. Unfortunately, COVID not only caused that Conference to be delayed, but essentially that conference has been delayed until 2024 (which also happens to be when the next scheduled conference would have been anyway). This means that the guidelines in Paragraph 2553 expire before this plan can be voted on.
Instead of waiting for the next General Conference, a group of United Methodist churches, largely collaborating with the Wesleyan Covenant Association, created a new denomination called the Global Methodist Church. This new denomination started May 1 of this year and its launch has caused some to start talking more seriously about disaffiliation. There are more things to be said about the GMC, but that will be saved for a later time.
All of this leads to our current situation. There are many unknowns and few certainties. Yet, it is a hotly debated topic and one that many feel needs to be addressed immediately. First, I want to caution against giving into a sense of panic. From the time of this writing, we have over 500 days before the the deadline of the “sunset clause”. We have plenty of time to assess our current situation, explore options, and prayerfully discern what we believe God is calling us to do. Over the next couple of blogs I will start to explore what options are before us, but what you find below are the basic options.
Continue to be a United Methodist Church
Join another existing denomination
Partner with a group of non-denominational churches
Create our own non-denominational church.
2. Joining Another Denomination
Last time I laid out my understanding of how our church has gotten to the point where we need to make a decision about whether or not we continue to be a United Methodist Church. Today I am going to explore in a bit more depth the options before us.
Our first option is to continue to be a United Methodist Church. We would continue to abide by the Book of Discipline, pay our apportionments to our Annual Conference, and stay within the organizational structure of leadership and accountability. The following is just speculation, but here is what I foresee happening in the UMC over the next few decades.
The UMC in America will continue to lean progressive and push for the removal of the statement “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” However, there will continue to be contention, because while the American church will lean progressive, the rest of the world, particularly the UMC in Africa, will continue to lean traditional. The reason this makes such a difference is that, in broad terms, the total UMC membership in the USA is declining, while the UMC membership around the world is increasing. What this ultimately means for the UMC stance on human sexuality I can’t say. One of the major factors will be how many Traditional churches leave the UMC before the next General Conference. For every traditional church that leaves the UMC, the likelihood that the language is removed in the next few years increases. If that happens, I foresee a larger portion of our overseas churches disaffiliating leaving the change permanent. If the language isn’t changed and the overseas churches stay with us, I think it will progressively be harder and harder to change the language, meaning that our current statement would be the position of the church for a long time.
I’m assuming that most people’s concerns are what happens if we stay UMC and the language is changed. Of course, this is more speculation since the language hasn’t been changed and neither have the procedures surrounding it, but this is assuming that it will be similar to the One Church plan language. The first thing to note is that pastors, churches, and even conferences will not be forced to perform weddings, host weddings, or ordain homosexuals. The proposed language has been “allow, but not require”. Therefore, a local church would have the freedom to allow a homosexual couple to be married in their church or to deny them that opportunity. A pastor could choose to perform or abstain from performing any wedding they want. A Traditionalists biggest fear is probably that they will be assigned a homosexual pastor. All I can say about this is that I have faith that the Bishop and District Superintendents are smart enough and conscious enough to avoid situations where they would knowingly assign a pastor to a church that would immediately reject them.
I said last time that staying a UMC is the simplest choice. It may not seem like it after all of that, but we mostly know the challenges that lie before us if we choose this option. If we decide to disaffiliate, we have multiple options before us. The simplest to say is that we would join with another denomination. However, that decision is anything but simple.
For starters, there are currently over 200 Christian denominations in the United States. Obviously, the list of denominations we would likely consider is substantially smaller than that. As a thought experiment, I’ve selected 4 denominations that I think are likely to be at least briefly considered: the Global Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church.
The Global Methodist Church (GMC) is newly formed as a result of the plan that I mentioned last time that was signed in December of 2019. The GMC officially launched May 1, 2022 and is working off a transitional book of doctrines and discipline. Here are a few things to note. There is no fee to join this denomination. They do not have a trust clause for church property, which means that the property “owned” by our church would continue to be owned by our church. (Under the UMC Book of Discipline, the church’s property is held in a trust by the denomination. So while our congregation has built and paid for the building and property, it is officially owned by the denomination, not our local church.)
In addition to the view on Human Sexuality, the GMC will differ from the UMC in educational requirements for clergy (less education is required in the GMC), the range of theological beliefs (UMC is “big Tent” in that there is a wide range of acceptable views from traditional to progressive. GMC has a stricter view of doctrines and will remove any clergy who stray from their congregational fidelity.) There are some other minor differences concerning retirement age, ordination process, and apportionments, but for the average church leader these things won’t make a difference in if they want to join the GMC or not. A particularly divisive change to its human sexuality statement is the addition of “gender is defined at birth”.
The Church of the Nazarene is included in this short list for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am very familiar with this denomination. It is also larger than the next two denominations and is more conservative than the UMC. Theologically, the COTN focuses more on holiness and entire sanctification. They do not believe in infant baptism (they will do baby dedications). The biggest issue I see is that the COTN has a statement against the consumption of alcohol. They completely abstain from alcohol, and I have even known COTN pastors who have lost their ordination because of alcohol. It is an extremely mission minded denomination. On the practical side, there is no itineracy system. Each church is free to hire or fire any pastor they want (who has a current minister license in the COTN). I am currently unsure of what requirements would be necessary to become a Nazarene church.
The Wesleyan Church is a much smaller denomination (around 220,000 members in the US and Canada compared to UMC 7.5 million). It shares all of its roots with Methodism and was one of many splits that happened in the mid 1800’s due to slavery. It is a more conservative denomination than the UMC and theologically teaches a second work of grace (similar to entire sanctification in the COTN) and also that the Bible is inerrant in it’s original manuscripts (a more conservative view of scripture than the UMC). I have not seen an official process for becoming a WC but they have a very simple process for a new church listed here.
The final denomination that I assume we will consider is the Free Methodist church. Much like the Wesleyan church is was formed in the middle 1800’s over the issue of slavery (they were for freeing the slaves, hence the name). It is even smaller than the WC at 77,000 members in the US. Theologically, the FMC is more conservative that the UMC, also emphasizing entire sanctification/holiness, but it is less liturgical and ceremonial than traditional Methodism. There is a process for affiliation outlined here, which includes a statement about the choice for entering into a trust clause for church property.
The other possibility for joining an existing denomination is to join an already established non-denominational church. In our area, we have a few great examples of these churches in Liberty, Momentum, and Destiny Worship Center. Each of these churches have demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach our community for Christ. I won’t spend much time on them because each one has a unique set of beliefs (part of why they are non denom), varying reaches, and various structures. I also don’t know if any of these churches would accept us as one of their own, and if they did, what those requirements would be. Even if we found one of these churches to affiliate with, because of the nature of non-denoms, there is no guarantee that in ten years they would hold the same beliefs.
This leaves one last option, creating our own nondenominational church. This is by far the most complicated option and it deserves its own separate discussion.
3. Becoming a Non-Denominational Church
If we chose to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church, we could potentially join another denomination or create our own sets of beliefs and practices, also known as becoming non-denominational. None of them are easy or perfect solutions, and some of them have a cost or loss of freedom. This has led many to consider becoming a non-denominational church. This has some very attractive qualities to it, however it is also the most complicated option available to us.
We’ll start out with some of the good parts about being our own nondenominational church. The first is that we will no longer have apportionments to pay to a larger governing body. As a United Methodist church, we give a portion of our tithes and offerings to our annual conference. This money covers administrative costs, helps developing churches, and goes towards various missions and ministries that are not part of any single local church. After doing some calculations based on attendance, giving, etc. Navarre UMC pays roughly $45,000 in apportionments. Along similar lines, the property that is owned by the church would be completely owned by us, meaning we could buy, sell, or otherwise manage our property without having to get approval from a larger governing body.
There are a few marked negatives of not being part of a larger denomination. Most of these come in times of crisis or emergencies. There is a layer of protection from the conference when it comes to legal issues. They have lawyers and legal advisors who have created certain policies and will step in if needed. There are also organizations such as UMCOR that would help if our church was seriously damaged in a natural disaster. We also lose connections with other like-minded churches and it can create isolated clergy.
One of the first things we would have to do as a nondenom is create our own doctrines and discipline (to borrow the phrase from the GMC). This is going to be an enormous undertaking. We would either have to start from scratch on entire systems and beliefs or take an existing document (such as the Book of Discipline) and edit it for our own needs. Just for a reference on the scale of his task, the Book of Discipline is almost 1,000 pages and there’s a companion book called the Book of Resolutions that is another 900 pages.
This presents us with the first dilemma. How and when will we decide what goes into the first edition of this document? Do we create this document before we disaffiliate so that our congregation knows what they are getting into or do we disaffiliate first and create this document afterwards? There is no set process for how this is supposed to work, and whatever method we choose will have a major impact on the type of church we become. I’m assuming there would be a small group of people who would have to do the brute force work of going through the discipline and selecting which bits they would like to keep, which bits they would like to change, and which bits would no longer apply to an autonomous church. Even this initial sorting process will be heavily influenced by people’s current personal convictions. Furthermore, the selection process for who is in this group is influenced by personal opinions because they lean towards selecting people who they think will behave a certain way.
After these portions are identified, who will be responsible for the rewriting of these paragraphs? In the UMC, there’s typically a lawyer of some sort who crafts the initial language, and even then there are entire sessions spent on word-smithing individual words or sentences. We would be asking a dozen or so people to do all of that in a very short amount of time, none of whom have that type of training. Eventually, we would need to actually adopt this document. Would this be the sole decision of the pastor, of a church council type group, or would we take it to the entire congregation (which could also be restricted or not to the members of our church, depending on if we’ve already decided how membership would work). Furthermore, we would have to decide if it was an all or nothing adoption of the entire document or if individual clauses would be up for discussion (and if so what the revision process would be). Would we require a majority vote or a two-thirds vote? At this point, I’m bringing up a little too many issues intentionally, but it’s because each of these will actually need to be discussed and it’s just the surface of the scope this will entail. We also have to determine how often and who will have the authority to change the wording of this document. In the UMC, it’s every four years and by the majority vote of delegates sent to General Conference (some issues require a two thirds majority).
One issue that will immediately come to the forefront is how our church will fill the role of lead pastor. As a non-denom, there will be no itineracy. If Pastor Alan leaves the UMC, we would have to decide if we ask him to stay as our pastor (and if it requires a vote of some kind). He would then have to also decide if he wants to stay at our church, because at this point he has the ability to leave if he wants regardless of what a bishop or DS says. Even if he is the first pastor of our new church, eventually the position will need to be filled. Who offers the oversight of the pastor, do we attempt to do year contracts similar to the appointment system, and other issues are all things that have to be decided. Yet in the search for the eventual new pastor, non denominational churches have a big disadvantage. First, there is no pool of automatic candidates who are of the same denomination. There is no overseeing group who gives us a pastor or even recommends one. We’d have to find our own pastor. Not only would we not likely be able to pull from a known denomination (those pastors would have to give up their own pensions and benefits) but we would have to have extremely theologically competent people on the search committee who knew our beliefs in and out since there is no guarantee that there is another nondenominational pastor who would share our beliefs. (This is also the reason why we would have to have the procedure for changing doctrines and beliefs firmly established, because any new pastor with a different theology could potentially try to change them to match their own).
My largest concern with a nondenominational church is that it is far too common for these churches to develop dangerous and heretical believes, or to cover up scandals. Far too much is decided by a small group of people, and without proper oversight there is the ability to get “yes men” in all the right places to lead to a corrupt environment. Of course, the most ironic part of choosing a nondenominational church is that it takes far less to change doctrines and policies than it does in a larger denomination. So even though we have complete control over the creation of our denomination, a few bad nominations could completely derail the best laid plans.