Conference Updates

As some of you have probably already heard, General Conference, which is the world-wide gathering of The United Methodist Church, which was supposed to have happened in 2020, has now been postponed until 2022. There were simply too many unknowns and obstacles, including potential travel restrictions for people coming from all around the globe, for delegates to be able to gather this year. It is now scheduled to take place in Aug. 29-Sept. 6, 2022.

But, there will be a special one-day online gathering of General Conference in May to deal with 12 specific pieces of legislation that will be voted on by paper ballot. These legislative issues are specific changes to the Book of Discipline that allow the church to do specific things, like appoint bishops and other leadership, that are called to take place after a general conference session. It also makes changes that allow for more flexibility for holding General Conference, Jurisdictional Conference and Annual Conference in the event of things that don’t allow for these normal gatherings to happen. Something like a global pandemic. (Here are the 12 items)

What this postponement also means is that there is going to be no resolution around a new protocol of potentially dividing the church into two, or more, different denominations. The traditional plan, passed at the General Conference in 2016, around issues regarding the LGBTQ community remains church policy. Although the moratorium on the penalties as part of that plan called for by both sides still seem to be in place.

Regardless of this postponement, the Jurisdictional Conference is scheduled to take place this July online. The main task here is the retirement and election of new bishops, which will directly impact us. Our bishop will retire this year and we will be appointed a new bishop. In the past we have shared our bishop with the North West Texas Annual Conference, but the indications at the moment are that this will change and we will instead share with the Rio Texas Conference. It has also been recommended that these appointments be made on an interim basis so they could be changed after the 2022 General Conference if needed.

Our Annual Conference, which is the gathering of churches of New Mexico, is still scheduled for June 16-18, although the location has not yet been announced, or at least I haven’t seen any given. It’s still possible we might not be able to meet in person at that time, and if not, there are dates in October that are also selected. If we still can’t meet in person we will again hold annual conference online.

I know that this is disappointing to many people as it leaves everything in limbo for longer, but the church often does not operate on a time frame that works for us. Keep your faith. And if you have no idea what any of this means, and would like to know, of if you have more questions, please let me know.

Proposed Future for the UMC

This is the letter I sent to my congregation on the recent proposal that has come out about splitting the church:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

In November I wrote about the fact that the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA) had released a draft of a new Book of Discipline which was the next immediate step for WCA churches to break away from the United Methodist Church to form a new denomination. This was to go along with some of the proposed legislation for the upcoming General Conference, which is the worldwide gathering of the UMC where official decisions for the church are made.

While there are thousands of petitions that will come before General Conference this year, the ones most people are concerned about are those relating to how the church will deal with the LGBTQ community and how we can live together (or not). I had been intending to write a summary of the major proposals that had been put forward, but then last week came news that has sort of changed all the dynamics of what could happen.

Sixteen leaders representing the spread of opinions from traditional, centrist to progressive, as well as Africa, Asia and the United States, had spent months in conversation, under the guidance of a professional mediator who donated his time. The purpose was to come up with a proposal that all sides could agree to and be presented to the General Conference. That proposal, called the "Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace ThroughSeparation" was released last week.

So a couple of caveats before we cover the details. The first is that these 16 people were not elected or appointed to this group, they came together of their own accord. Second, even though the Council of Bishops released the information, and there were several bishops in the group, this is not being endorsed or supported by the Council of Bishops, or at least not at the moment. The third is that this is just a proposal at this point, and it will need to be written as legislation to be presented to the General Conference.

So with that information as background, what this Protocol calls for is for allowing conservative churches to break off from the United Methodist Church to form a new denomination, and to be allowed to take their property and other assets with them without any penalty. As part of this separation, the United Methodist Church would provide this new denomination with $25 million paid out over four years, and the new denomination would then relinquish any other claims to UMC assets, including the general boards and agencies. Another $2 million would be set into escrow that could be requested by other churches seeking to form another denomination(s).

Additionally, $39 million would be set aside over 8 years to help assist and strengthen Asian, Black, Hispanic-Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander ministries and churches, which have faced historic discrimination from the Methodist church. $13 million of this will come from the new “traditionalist” denomination, although how this happens is not clear to me.

The money issue has been one of the areas that has received the most conversation in what I have seen and people wondering where this money will come from as well as the amount. But, as someone who has studied schismatic movements in the Methodist Church, we could, and probably would, easily spend $25 million in attorney and court fees if we were to start fighting over who controls assets. This proposal takes away most of those arguments.

After the separation, the United Methodist Church would then remove the restrictive language in the Book of Discipline around homosexuality, and the United States would become a central, or regional, conference like the rest of the world. This would allow the US church to make decisions that apply only to the US, which the rest of the world has already been able to do. This would actually probably make the church more “united” then it has ever been in the past.

Now there are lots of logistics for how this would happen at the General Conference level, which I am going to ignore for the moment rather than bog you down in details.  But, if this proposal was to pass at the General Conference, every Annual Conference could then decide if they wanted to remain in the UMC or to go with the new denomination. It would require 20% of the delegates to any annual conference to support taking a vote for potential separation, and then a majority of more than 57% would be required for the annual conference to actually separate. Annual Conferences would have to take this vote by July 31, 2021, and many of them may take that vote at the next annual conferences in June.

Local churches would only be required to vote if they disagreed with what had happened at the annual conference level. And the vote needed to decide to stay or separate would be either simple majority or 2/3 as decided upon by the local church. But, most local churches probably will not be required to vote on this issue. If a vote is needed, it must be done by December 31, 2024.

As I said, the protocol still needs to be drafted into legislation and there is some argument about whether it can be even proposed as the deadline for legislation has already passed. But, the signatories have agreed to only support this legislation, and to withdraw any legislation they have proposed. So, that would remove most of the other major proposals. And if the groups these leaders represent also agree to support only this legislation, it would almost certainly pass, without most of the continued acrimony we have experienced for the past 47 years. Additionally, the signers have pledged not to challenge the constitutionality of the protocol or its implementation, and to stand as one in defending any challenges before the Judicial Council.

There are obviously lots of things that have to happen before General Conference begins to even get this proposal to the floor of the conference, but, if those pieces fall into place, in my opinion it has the greatest opportunity for passing with a large majority of support. And if it does pass, it has the greatest opportunity for a gracious exit with the smallest amount of fighting of any of the proposals that have been presented, and there is much to be said for that.

The UMC has been operating from a win/lose perspective, as well as the idea that a simple majority gets to “win”, for far too long. You don’t run a church on a 50%+1 vote, unless you want to have constant argument and dissension, which is certainly what the UMC has been experiencing.

This has also not represented the “holy conferencing” to which John Wesley called us to participate. But, from what I have heard from this group, they did indeed have holy conferencing in truly listening and learning to compromise so that everyone gets something and loses something.  In addition, I know some of the people who participated, including one of the bishops who was my TA in a preaching class, and I trust them and their ideas and their decisions.

I have not felt that separation has been the right decision in the past, but as I said in my last letter on this topic, a friend who is a member of the WCA told me he was done and just wanted out, and that has been the WCA’s direction and desire all along. You can’t keep someone in a relationship they don’t want to be in, or at least not if you want health and wholeness to be possible. So I am at the point where I am in agreement that an amicable separation is probably the best way to go.

Now, if I had to make a guess, if this was to pass the General Conference, the New Mexico Annual Conference would vote to stay a part of the United Methodist Church. It would be close, and some churches would definitely leave, but most churches just want to stop fighting and keep doing ministry. That would also mean that we would never have to take a vote here, or at least I don’t think we would. But, if we did, it would require a decision by 2/3rds of the congregation.

There is lots more information available, and I will try to keep you up-to-date on what is happening as we get closer to General Conference. But, in the meantime, if you have questions or concerns, please come and speak with me.

Blessings,

John

General Conference Response

Here is the letter I sent to my congregation in response to the actions of the called General Conference. We are the only reconciling congregation in the New Mexico Annual Conference.

When I recognized the 100th birthday of Jackie Robinson a few weeks ago in worship, I mentioned that while he and Branch Rickey, the owner of the Dodgers who brought him to the majors, were both Methodists that they could not worship together because of our own church’s history of racial animosity and division. That division line of having separate churches for blacks and whites, and not allowing black pastors to serve in white congregations or to have authority over white pastors, which was argued from a scriptural basis, existed until 1972. That also happens to be the year that the General Conference added what came to be known as the restrictive language to our Book of Discipline which said that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”

As some of you are probably now aware, the special called General Conference ended yesterday. The Traditional Plan passed with 53% of the vote, while the One Church Plan, which is what I had been advocating for, was rejected. There were many different amendments being offered to the plan, and I have not yet seen a final copy of the approved plan, but here is what I know at the moment: The plan retains the restrictive language and continues to forbid “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained, clergy from performing same-gendered marriages, or allowing them on United Methodist property, and puts more “teeth” into enforcement of these rules, including penalties for Bishops who refuse to enforce these rules.

The original plan called for clergy and churches to be forced to take an oath of allegiance to follow the Book of Discipline in all its parts including teaching and saying that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”  If clergy or churches would not take that oath, they would be (kindly) asked to leave the denomination. I don’t know if that language was retained, but as I said before, that is not an oath I am willing to take because it is not one I believe in. It is not who I believe that God is, and my allegiance is not to the church but to God. Because of our statement of reconciliation, I am also assuming that Mesa View would not be willing to take that oath.

So, where does that leave us? The answer is no one really knows.

The original Traditional Plan had 17 parts, of which the judicial council, which works as the Supreme Court for the church, ruled that 9 of those parts were unconstitutional. The Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA), which is a fundamentalist caucus in the church, reworked portions of those which was then presented to the General Conference in 15 different parts. The Judicial Council ruled this weekend that 9 of the 15 parts were unconstitutional, but that did not stop the conference from passing that plan. There were amendments made, but no one knows if they will pass constitutional muster.

Additionally, while there was a motion made to hold votes on each of the separate parts of the plan, that motion was rejected, and the plan was voted on in its entirety. That is important because the plan has now been referred to the Judicial Council, which will meet at the end of April, and most people believe most of the plan will still be found unconstitutional. If that is the case, there are some bishops who are saying that if some parts are unconstitutional the whole plan has to be thrown out since it was voted on as one piece of legislation. No one knows for sure how the judicial counsel will rule on that, so we will have to wait. If the plan is found constitutional, it will go into effect January 1, 2020.

There was also one plan for allowing churches to “graciously exit” the denomination that was passed, but it too had been found unconstitutional, so we don’t know the status of that either. Again, there were amendments made so I don’t know what the final language of that proposal is now.

The WCA had already said before the General Conference that not only would they leave if the Traditional Plan was not passed, but, even if it was passed, many of their churches would leave anyways. They are meeting this week to discuss their next steps, and I suspect, although I could be wrong, that many of those churches will seek to leave the denomination even though the Traditional Plan passed.

There had been no talk amongst centrist and progressive churches of leaving the denomination, because the vast majority believed that being in a connectional relationship was important, and that we could have unity without uniformity, which is what the One Church Plan was. But, now that the church has swung even farther to the right, and with every indication that it will continue to move in that direction in the future, we are not sure what that means. But, as Adam Hamilton said on the floor yesterday, the centrist and progressive churches have been united in a way that they were not before. He also announced today that there will be a meeting at the Church of the Resurrection, which is the largest United Methodist Church, after Easter to discuss where Methodism goes from here.

So, does that mean we will leave the United Methodist Church, or that we will be kicked out? I don’t know and don’t even want to speculate. But here is where I find hope.

According to the WCA’s own estimates, 2/3 of the delegates from the United States supported the One Church Plan. At a gathering of the youth of the church from around the world earlier this year, the One Church Plan was supported by more than 60% of the youth. More than 15,000 young adults signed a petition from the end of the conference on Monday evening to the beginning of conference on Tuesday in support of the one church model.

One other person and I have been very vocal on this issue in the annual conference, but we were supported by many clergy who were silent allies. Many of them are not silent anymore and have now publicly stated their support of changing the church’s position. I wish they had spoken out earlier, but I’ll take their support now. All those things give me enormous hope for the future.

What I also know is that this action has done and will continue to do significant damage and hurt to those who are LGBTQ. There were many organizations last night posting the number for the suicide prevention hotline to help those who were being told again that they are not worthy, that they are less than, and that they are not loved by God.

Now, more than ever, we need to be advocates on their behalf. This is where we must move beyond mere words on paper that we are welcoming of all, and actually live it out. We have posted a message of welcome on our Facebook page and I would encourage you to share that and reach out to friends and family who are lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered, queer or questioning, whether they are in the church or not, to let them know that they are loved and beloved. That they are children of God and they are worthy. If you are lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered, queer or questioning, please know that you are loved and beloved. That you are worthy. You are not less than. You are welcome here.

We cannot know the pain this is causing to many people, but we hurt with them, and I hurt. I hurt deeply and have shed many, many tears over the past few days about what is happening to my church. But, because it is my church, I also know that I still have a say and I can claim with integrity that what 53% of the church said on Tuesday is not who I am, it is not what I believe, and it is not who Mesa View is either. We can be the proverbial light on the hill proclaiming the good news, because if the good news is not for the least, the last and the lost, then we have missed the point entirely.

Let us remember that God is not the church and the church is not God. Sometimes the church and God are in alignment, and sometimes we are not, and we see plenty of examples of that in scripture, many of which we will hear in Lent.

I have to be honest and admit that I am struggling mightily with people I considered friends who have said that I cannot be in their church. I want to be like Diotrephes as we heard about in 3 John last week and not extend hospitality. I don’t want to be in prayer for them. I don’t want to even talk with them or associate with them. I know that many of you are probably there as well. But God is love and we are to love our neighbors, all of them, because God first loved us. As Edwin Markham once wrote about those who want to draw narrow circles: “But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took [them] in!

We are an Easter people, but to get to Easter we have to go through the darkness of the cross and the tomb. That is where I believe we are now. I don’t know what the resurrection will look like yet, but I have hope, and so do millions of others, because God is not through with us yet, and in the end love wins. God wins.