"Untied" Methodist Church
Now for true confessions. I frequently, when typing out "United Methodist Church," actually type "Untied Methodist Church." In light of our most recent General Conference, this silly typo must surely be considered Freudian in some way. Those ten days in Tampa showed that the denomination I love may at times be more untied than united. With the exception of altering guaranteed appointments, when it was all said and done this General Conference actually made very few lasting changes. Sometimes it's not entirely bad when a governing body makes no changes, since potential changes may actually be worse than the status quo.
The trouble for us as a church is that the status quo isn't looking so good. Our membership rolls and worship attendance have shrunk steeply in the 44 years since the merger that created the United Methodist Church. A large percentage of our churches fail to take in a single new member by profession of faith in a year's time. On the whole debts are up, expenditures on buildings is up, but giving is down. Our membership is literally graying creating widespread fear in our denomination of a coming tsunami of church closures as older membership churches quite literally die off. Furthermore, the United States is now more of a mission field than a sender of United Methodist Missionaries. Methodism in Africa and Asia is alive, vibrant, and spreading, while the U.S. church is trapped in fear and lethargy.
A renewal plan called "Call to Action" had proposed a sweeping series of changes to the denominational hierarchical structure. The streamlining it envisioned gave way to another plan at General Conference, Plan UMC, for restructuring the regular alphabet soup of boards and agencies within the denomination's structure. Plan UMC passed General Conference but just hours before Conference adjourned the Judicial Council declared it unconstitutional. The result is that we go forward another quadrennium with the same bureaucratic structures the merger created in 1968. I'm not well-versed about either the Call to Action or Plan UMC to know if either would have brought about positive change, but standing still isn't an option.
My fumble-fingered typing of "Untied Methodist Church" truly does seem Freudian. I was not a delegate but was glued to the live streaming of the sessions on the internet, and to the facebook and twitter discussions accompanying it. From my comfortable "virtual ringside seat" several hundred miles away, it seemed that a profound sense of mistrust has gripped our church. The very progressive Northeastern and California/Pacific conferences were profoundly mistrusting of the more conservative Southeastern Jurisdiction and vice versa. It seemed to me that the burgeoning African church seemed mistrustful of both at times. Everybody mistrusted the bishops, everyone seemed to mistrust the clergy, everyone mistrusted the process by which people were nominated to fill slots on all the various agencies- and we are a "United" church? I was torn between wishing I was there as a delegate, and being very glad that I wasn't there. Watching this I couldn't help but think we are like a large ship heading for the rocks, but because the people at the helm are too busy fighting over whether to go port or starboard they do neither with the inevitable results.
When the conference adjourned late on May 4, there were still many calendar items left to address, including most of the resolutions dealing with the always hot-button sexuality issue. It seems to me that there was a conscious decision simply to play stall ball to avoided addressing it. I've read others who've commented that this was another of the conference's great failings. I'm not sure I agree with that assessment though. In the one sexuality-related resolution that came up, the debate was extremely emotional with very little room for any real common ground. In my opinion though, the failure to address this issue may have been a blessing in disguise. In the results of the one resolution that did come to the floor, it was clear that this General Conference was not going to alter the denomination's stance. Essentially, the debate on all these resolutions would have accomplished nothing except exposing our church's deep division for all the world, and causing further pain to the sizable minority who want to change it's position on the sexuality.
I wish I could be optimistic about the coming years for our denominational structure, but I can't. On the other hand, the church is ultimately of Jesus Christ, and the church universal will not fail because of that. For that matter, there's no guarantee about any particular denominational structure or expression of the faith, be it ours, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Roman Catholic Church or any other. For my own little part in this United Methodist Church that seems to be more "Untied" than "United" right now there's too much work to be done to worry too much. In my church which is one tiny part of the whole, we will work as hard as we can to preach the Word purely, administer the sacraments rightly, order the life of the church, spread the Good News, and love our neighbors. Finally, call me naive if you will, but I still think that there will always be a place in Christendom for that remarkable blend of grace and holiness that is our Wesleyan heritage.
The trouble for us as a church is that the status quo isn't looking so good. Our membership rolls and worship attendance have shrunk steeply in the 44 years since the merger that created the United Methodist Church. A large percentage of our churches fail to take in a single new member by profession of faith in a year's time. On the whole debts are up, expenditures on buildings is up, but giving is down. Our membership is literally graying creating widespread fear in our denomination of a coming tsunami of church closures as older membership churches quite literally die off. Furthermore, the United States is now more of a mission field than a sender of United Methodist Missionaries. Methodism in Africa and Asia is alive, vibrant, and spreading, while the U.S. church is trapped in fear and lethargy.
A renewal plan called "Call to Action" had proposed a sweeping series of changes to the denominational hierarchical structure. The streamlining it envisioned gave way to another plan at General Conference, Plan UMC, for restructuring the regular alphabet soup of boards and agencies within the denomination's structure. Plan UMC passed General Conference but just hours before Conference adjourned the Judicial Council declared it unconstitutional. The result is that we go forward another quadrennium with the same bureaucratic structures the merger created in 1968. I'm not well-versed about either the Call to Action or Plan UMC to know if either would have brought about positive change, but standing still isn't an option.
My fumble-fingered typing of "Untied Methodist Church" truly does seem Freudian. I was not a delegate but was glued to the live streaming of the sessions on the internet, and to the facebook and twitter discussions accompanying it. From my comfortable "virtual ringside seat" several hundred miles away, it seemed that a profound sense of mistrust has gripped our church. The very progressive Northeastern and California/Pacific conferences were profoundly mistrusting of the more conservative Southeastern Jurisdiction and vice versa. It seemed to me that the burgeoning African church seemed mistrustful of both at times. Everybody mistrusted the bishops, everyone seemed to mistrust the clergy, everyone mistrusted the process by which people were nominated to fill slots on all the various agencies- and we are a "United" church? I was torn between wishing I was there as a delegate, and being very glad that I wasn't there. Watching this I couldn't help but think we are like a large ship heading for the rocks, but because the people at the helm are too busy fighting over whether to go port or starboard they do neither with the inevitable results.
When the conference adjourned late on May 4, there were still many calendar items left to address, including most of the resolutions dealing with the always hot-button sexuality issue. It seems to me that there was a conscious decision simply to play stall ball to avoided addressing it. I've read others who've commented that this was another of the conference's great failings. I'm not sure I agree with that assessment though. In the one sexuality-related resolution that came up, the debate was extremely emotional with very little room for any real common ground. In my opinion though, the failure to address this issue may have been a blessing in disguise. In the results of the one resolution that did come to the floor, it was clear that this General Conference was not going to alter the denomination's stance. Essentially, the debate on all these resolutions would have accomplished nothing except exposing our church's deep division for all the world, and causing further pain to the sizable minority who want to change it's position on the sexuality.
I wish I could be optimistic about the coming years for our denominational structure, but I can't. On the other hand, the church is ultimately of Jesus Christ, and the church universal will not fail because of that. For that matter, there's no guarantee about any particular denominational structure or expression of the faith, be it ours, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Roman Catholic Church or any other. For my own little part in this United Methodist Church that seems to be more "Untied" than "United" right now there's too much work to be done to worry too much. In my church which is one tiny part of the whole, we will work as hard as we can to preach the Word purely, administer the sacraments rightly, order the life of the church, spread the Good News, and love our neighbors. Finally, call me naive if you will, but I still think that there will always be a place in Christendom for that remarkable blend of grace and holiness that is our Wesleyan heritage.
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