Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 16:12-15:

For the past five weeks we’ve been talking about what it is that we as Methodist’s believe, of some things that are unique to Methodism or to a Wesleyan perspective, coming from the founder of the Methodist movement John Wesley. We’ve talked about a Wesleyan understanding of grace, about person and social holiness, about our understanding of the sacraments, and last week about evangelism, and today we move onto how we read and interpret and understand scripture. Now there are many ways that we can approach scripture, and many different reasons for reading scripture, but if we are to take scripture seriously, then we have to be serious about how we take scripture, which has a definitely unique perspective when it comes to the tradition we have inherited from Wesley.

Now some people will often argue that they don’t interpret scripture, they just read it and understand what it has to say, or as the simplistic saying is “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” Except it doesn’t really settle anything, because first of all the Bible is not like the Apple user’s agreement that we just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree.” And second is it’s impossible to read scripture without interpreting it, and that’s not even to deal with the reality that an interpretation itself is already being given to us because it’s being translated, which involves and enormous amount of decisions that have to be made that can convey one idea over another. But, we do the same. I will read scripture differently than you. I read it differently as a married man with children, then I would if I was single without children. I read it differently as a middle-class white American, then if I was poor in the developing world. I also read it differently than I did 20 years ago, and know that in 20 years it will also be different. It’s just natural to do these things, and we have to be cognizant of that so that we can know our default understandings and where we might be blind to some things. And we can also see different things depending on what it is that we are thinking and doing., and let me give you just one example.

Evangelical

Here is my message from Sunday. The passages were Acts 2:1-21 and Matthew 28:16-20. It was Pentecost Sunday:

In 1910 a series of pamphlets began to be published, focused out of the Presbyterian Church and Princeton Theological Seminary, it was entitled The Fundamentals, and sought, in their words to state “the fundamentals of Christianity.” Those who subscribed to the ideas being presented in these pamphlets began to be referred to as fundamentalists, which is where that term comes from. But, fairly recently, as these things go, as the term fundamentalist began to be applied to other groups, like fundamentalist Muslims, or those who subscribed to a very strict idea of a religion, with little to no wiggle room to believe other things, and the desire to blow things up to prove their rightness, Christian fundamentalists began to change how they referred to themselves, rejecting that term, and instead calling themselves evangelicals, which, in my opinion, has sort of corrupted that word, and the rest of the church really needs to try and reclaim it from simply meaning fundamentalist. Now it’s not that fundamentalists didn’t also have overlaps with evangelicalism, because they did, but evangelical had meant much more than what it tends to mean now.

And so when I say that the Methodist movement was part of the evangelical movement that doesn’t mean what we tend to think it means currently, instead it was about, much as we’ve talked about already when it comes to Methodist beliefs, about a lived religion that not only sought to make the believer’s life better, to bring about personal transformation, and then from a Methodist perspective to bring about a transformation of the world, but that also sought to spread that message to the world. Or as John Wesley would say, “to spread scriptural holiness across the whole land.” And so, as we already heard, Wesley said that there was no think as private religion, or only personal religion, that it had to be social, and that also entailed spreading and offering the good news to others, and that gets back to an original understanding of being evangelical.

Sacramental

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22:

In 1736, John Wesley and his brother Charles came to the colony of Georgia, having been invited by James Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony, to preach to the English and native populations. When they arrived, they found things to be different than they had expected, and Charles returned to London after just a few months. But John decided to stay and began to fall in love with a member of his congregation by the name of Sophia Hopkey. Although most people expected them to get married, through a series of miscommunications, Sophy ended up marrying someone else, whom she had apparently also been seeing. As you might imagine, John was a little less than pleased, and when she showed up to church John took the opportunity to publicly rebuke her and then refused to serve her communion. This caused quite a stir, and her husband brought charges against Wesley for defamation. And then it gets even worse because not only was the judge of the colony known to be an ill-tempered despot, but he also happened to be Sophy’s uncle and allegedly bribed the grand jury to make sure that charges were brought. Wesley rightly reading the tea leaves decided to leave Georgia soon thereafter. And that story becomes important because later Wesley himself will also be denied communion, although then it will be because he was not considered to be a true Christian, which will impact Methodist theology on the sacraments.

We continue in our series on what Methodists believe. And while I said last week that we were only going to look at stuff that was unique to Methodism, rather than all our beliefs, that’s not really true for today, or not fully true, because there are some things that we believe as part of the sacraments that are broader than just Methodism. When it comes to the sacraments, we, along with most Protestant churches practice two, communion and baptism. That stands in contrast mainly against the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches which have seven sacraments. Protestants practice just two because during the protestant reformation Luther said he sought to follow only those sacraments in which Jesus participated and also commanded us to do. And while a lot more could be said about that, I’m not going to, so we can get into beliefs about baptism, which could be its own message as well.

Amazing Grace Times Three

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 3:14-21:

Today we begin a new series looking at what we as Methodists believe. And more specifically things that we believe that are unique to Methodism. This series is really based on the fact that one of the questions I get asked the most by people from outside the church is what is it that Methodists believe that make us different from other denominations. After all, if we believed the same thing as others there would be no reason for us to be separate. And I know that some of you have gotten the same question, and so this is to help all of us be able to articulate who we are. Now one caveat is that we are not going to be talking about everything, especially where there is overlap, say about the trinity or the resurrection, more orthodox positions, because even if there are slight differences, they aren’t big enough to answer that question what makes Methodists different. And we begin today with the thing that is definitely unique to methodism and that is our understanding of grace. I know many people who have become Methodists specifically because of our idea and practice of grace, and that includes several ministers who have converted as adults. But before we get into the weeds of what that means, a little bit of background and context.

Grace is a word we use a lot, but we never really define it. We just sang about god’s grace being greater than all our sin, so is grace then about forgiveness, or is something more. At the end of this message we’ll sing Amazing Grace, and the grace that that saved John Newton, and so is grace then about salvation? Is it about healing? Is it about relationship? And then there’s the fact that we call the prayer before a meal grace, and is that something entirely different? What is this grace thing all about? Great questions. There are several meanings of grace in scripture, although both the Hebrew and Greek words have a connotation of favor. In the Hebrew scriptures it’s about a sense of graciousness or goodwill. Think of Psalm 145 which says that God is gracious and full of compassion, so mercy is a part of this understand of grace.

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

What's The Purpose?

In a few hours I will be leaving to attend Annual Conference.  For the non-Methodists, this is the annual gathering of clergy and laity (equal representation of each) from each of the churches in the conference, which in this case is New Mexico and southern west Texas.

In the past, annual conference had several main reasons for its existence.  The first was that this was when appointments were announced.  United Methodist clergy serve on perpetual one-year appointments, and so you would find out at annual conference if you were moving or not, and where you would be going.  The second reason was to conduct the business of the annual conference, such as passing budgets, and voting on legislation, ordaining new clergy, etc.  The third reason was that it was the only time of the year that most clergy ever got together, and so it was a time of fellowship and catching up and remembering those who had left the ministry in the past year either by leaving or dying.

The problem with annual conference now is that none of those reasons really exist anymore. Appointments are announced well in advance of annual conference.  Except for ordination, all of the legislative work is either done differently than in the past, or could honestly be done online or in other forums.  And because of social media and other technology, those clergy who want to be in touch with each other outside of annual conference can be.  It's still nice to get together, but it does not serve the same purpose as it did in the past.

So that really leaves us going to gathering whose purpose has been eliminated with no new purpose having been put into place.  We keep doing things the same because "it's how we have always done it" and the result is it's just a three-to-four-day committee meeting.  I know of few people who actually look forward to attending Annual Conference, and the biggest reason is because it doesn't serve a purpose.  It's rare that people actually take something home, or learn something, which they can use or apply in the local church.

It's time for the UMC to totally rethink annual conference (and general conference and jurisdictional conference for that matter) and to begin that conversation we have to start with answering the question, "what is the purpose of annual conference"?  Once we answer that, then we can restructure everything and make it be something that is not only useful for churches, but that people would actually look forward to attending.