Text: Mark 9: 33-37, 42-43, 10:13-16
For twenty-seven years, faith communities across the United States have been observing the “Children’s Sabbath,” lifting a united voice of concern for the children in our midst.
Marian Wright Edleman has been instrumental in this work throughout her life. She recalls in a letter of introduction to this year’s observation that fifty years from Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign, we are still in the midst of the struggle to end racism, materialism, poverty, and war.
“Many are driven to despair,” she writes, “by assaults on children and family well-being – including rampant and resurgent racism; the devastations of poverty…; the daily, deadly toll of gun violence…; and the heartless ripping of children from the arms of parents seeking refuge in our country. But this time demands that we persist in hope, not despair, and fight with all our nonviolent might until justice is won.”
“All children deserve lives of hope, not despair,” Edleman proclaims.
All children.
So this morning, we are joining together with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and other Christians to remember that all children are precious in God’s sight and to answer the call to make a positive impact on their lives.
Our faith, after all, demands that we think about the children.
In the gospel of Mark, which we have been following during this fall series, includes not one, not two, but three different instances in which Jesus prioritizes ministry to and with children… that that’s just in two chapters.
We are called to welcome children, to build them up rather than tear them down, and to even become like them.
The children around us… our children… teach us about what it means to be faithful.
And deciding to follow Jesus means being willing to say that YES!, we are able to set aside our desires and plans and limited vision and open our hearts and our lives to the needs and the gifts of the children around us.
There is another key part of these passages that might be difficult, but it is important to highlight. Our responsibility to care for these children… to set aside our agendas… to prioritize their needs… and to not impair them from abundant life… it isn’t an option.
It is a central part of our faith.
And Jesus even says that if we get in the way of these little ones – well, our own souls are at risk.
It’s that important.
So, I want to take some time this morning to talk about how we, through both the larger United Methodist Church and right here in our local community, how we can say YES! to Jesus by being in ministry with all of God’s children. I want to lift up ways we can “persist in hope, not despair.”
This past week, I was in Atlanta for our fall board meeting of Global Ministries and I want to begin by telling you about signs of hope and good news I saw through our connectional ministries.
Our Global Health Unit has a strong focus on maternal and child health and many health systems are being strengthened because of the funds that we have raised through Imagine No Malaria and other initiatives.
In Mozambique, midwives and community health workers are focusing on not only pre-natal, but ante-natal visits to help monitor health and provide education about diseases that threaten pregnant women and children. The efforts are paying off with a dramatic increase in healthy births.
Among all of the data that is collected through these visits there was one in particular that caught my attention. Last year, nearly 187 of these individuals were treated for malaria at these ante-natal visits. This year, because of our efforts to reduce transmission – only 13 individuals had to be treated. That is a 93% reduction! And a cause for great hope for children who might grow up and thrive.
We also heard a report from National Justice For Our Neighbors on our work along the border in these past months. This organization is a United Methodist ministry that provides legal help for immigrants and refugees. Their work has focused on the border with providing accompaniment for those who are seeking asylum.
In one such instance, a mother and her child from Guatemala presented themselves at the border and were separated and placed in detention until their Credible Fear Interview to verify their need for asylum. After 38 days, her interview finally came, and a JFON attorney named Virginia, helped the mother, Delia, present her case to the officer and was granted asylum. Having been found to have credible fear, Delia then had to post a $1,500 bond – which was raised by JFON.
But then, they had to raise funds to travel to where her child was being held two hours away.
One of the conditions of asylum is that individuals must be able to stay with family and so funds also had to be raised in order to get this mother and child to their relatives in another part of the United States. In the weeks for it took to complete this process, the JFON lawyer actually opened up their home for this family to stay with her.
Both of those programs and ministries are possible because we as United Methodists have said that YES we are able to care for the most vulnerable around us. We have combined our apportionment resources and special giving to be the hands and feet of Jesus all across this world.
But we also see the impact of these struggles right here in Des Moines. The neighborhood all around us is changing and part of the reason is that immigrant and refugee families are making a home in our midst. They have found here a safe place to start over, raise their children, and build a new life for themselves.
It’s the reason why Hoover High School is the most diverse school in our state.
But we also see this represented in the lives of children who attend the schools closest to our church.
We wanted to take some time today to hear about the needs right here in our local community, from one our elementary schools – Monroe.
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A Way Forward? Which Way?
Text: Acts 15
The book of the Acts of the Apostles is the story of how the good news of Jesus spread from Jerusalem, through Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth. Along the way, the culture and traditions and scriptures of our spiritual ancestors encountered a variety of peoples and backgrounds.
When should the gospel be adapted? What was essential to maintain? Which traditions and practices should be enforced and which were merely contextual?
These were all questions being asked by the disciples and the communities they encountered along their evangelistic journeys.
Peter, in Acts 10, has a vision of the clean and unclean together and then is brought to the home of a Gentile centurion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, he baptizes the entire household… even though it was forbidden for a Jew to visit with outsiders.
In Antioch (Acts 11), Barnabas goes to minister to the Gentiles who were being converted. He is joined by Paul and together they not only convert many, but there is prediction of a famine and together the people there gather money to take to Jerusalem in response. This is not only a church of new believers, but ones who understand their connection to a larger community.
Gentiles were converted in Iconium and Lystra, but tension grew between Jews who followed Christ and those who did not. Those who rejected this new message stirred up conflict between new Gentile converts and Jewish Christians (Acts 14).
To complicate matters, other missionaries began to visit some of these places and the messages being shared about which practices must be followed as a part of the faith were different.
In particular was a very important question: Did you have to be circumcised in order to be saved by Jesus?
Now, circumcision had been an important identity marker for what it meant to be the people of God since the time of Abraham.
Jews who followed Christ did not see themselves as entering a new religion, but merely living into a new expression of that faith. Circumcision was still an important part of who they were.
Gentiles, however, were making a much larger change. Some, like the Roman centurion, were God-fearers… Gentiles who worshipped the God of the Jews but who had restrictions on what they could participate in because of their status as Gentiles. Others were pagans and were converting to a totally new faith. Circumcision would have been a significant cultural departure.
Last week, I shared with you a spectrum of theological stands that shape our church today ranging from progressive to traditional.
Imagine for a moment that this conversation was instead about circumcision.
Those on the progressive incompatibilist side might make the claim that since God is revealing a new way – no one anywhere has to be circumcised. Those on the traditional imcompatibilist side might claim – this is the same God we have always followed and everyone who wants to be saved must be circumcised. And surely there were people in the middle, who thought that Jews who wanted to be could, but Gentiles didn’t have to and so on.
Someone had to make an official decision about this so that the conflict among communities might cease. Local churches in these far flung places were confused about what was required and what wasn’t and it was hurting their ability to convert new followers to the way of Jesus.
And so the apostles and elders of the faith gathered together in Jerusalem in the year 48 to consider this question.
They heard testimony from people like Paul and Barnabas, and disciples like Peter and James made pleas. And together, the Jerusalem Council made a decision for the whole church.
In many ways, our General Conference functions every four years like the Jerusalem Council. We gather to listen and to share our stories and our witness and to make decisions that will guide the future of our entire denomination.
In February, when a special session of General Conference gathers, the decisions we make will impact not only our larger cultural witness, but also the practices and the people of local congregations like Immanuel.
As we hear this text from Acts 15, it is easy to focus on the Jerusalem Council itself… the leaders of the faith who have gathered together to make this decision.
But I admit, that in these past few weeks I’ve been thinking a whole lot more about all of the communities back in Antioch and Iconium who were waiting for a decision.
They sent off their representatives, but it would be some time before they heard a final answer. They knew that there were a variety of different directions the Council could take and so I imagine they began to prepare their hearts for a range of possibilities. Would they have to be circumcised? Would they be free to practice how they had been? Would there be other ways the Council might ask them to come into compliance with the faith?
Friends, we are those local communities waiting for a decision to be made. That decision will impact us in one way or another and so now is the time for us to begin praying and preparing ourselves for whatever might come.
Last week, I asked all of those who were here to identify where they personally fall along this spectrum of theological responses to scripture regarding LGBT+ persons. Because the impact of decisions upon OUR local community might look different from that of our neighbors.
This is simply a snapshot, but these are the responses from 110 of you who were in worship last Sunday morning. Nearly 60% of you identified yourselves on the progressive end, 27% of you on the traditionalist end, with about 13% of you not responding to that particular question. So I’m going to use your responses to help frame how Immanuel might be impacted by any of the particular plans in front of us. One thing I want to highlight is that in the answers for all of the questions, no matter whether you agreed or disagreed, nearly the vast majority of you continued to say that you would stay at Immanuel.
The first thing I want to explore are a couple of options based on this theological spectrum of perspectives. The first one is our current reality… the status quo. If nothing passes at the special General Conference, this is the default to which we revert.
Our Book of Discipline currently prohibits both the ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals and same-sex marriage, which is a traditionalist perspective. However, there are places and people who are not following those prohibitions. In more progressive areas of our denomination, sometimes this happens with no enforcement of the rules at all. In more traditionalist areas, there are often charges filed and sometimes clergy are suspended or their credentials are removed. But there is vast inconsistency.
Currently, Immanuel’s response to this has been to largely to ignore the question. If we agree or disagree with the larger denominational stance, we don’t bring it up. Within our congregation are individuals and families who are impacted by this question, but they don’t push it within the larger church. Unlike other congregations within the greater Des Moines area that have strongly identified with a progressive or traditionalist perspective and have made outreach efforts around that perspective, we don’t talk about it.
And I think this is largely because identify ourselves as a family church. And families disagree about things, but still want to gather together around the Thanksgiving table. We might have private side conversations over pie, but it isn’t going to be the thing that we focus on. So we follow the rules of the denomination, whether we agree or not.
One of the plans included in the Commission on a Way Forward Report, although not recommended by our Bishops, is the Traditionalist Plan (begins on page 67). This plan would end the confusion and inconsistency by determining once and for all that we will not ordain or marry LGBT persons within the United Methodist Church.
There are two ways that accountability and enforcement are increased.
First, all bishops, annual conferences, and members of the Board or Ordained Ministry must certify that they will uphold, enforce, and maintain The Book of Discipline related to self-avowed practicing homosexuals. Those who disagree with the Book of Discipline and cannot make such a statement have three options.
1) Not certify the statement. This will result in all funds from the UMC being withdrawn and the annual conference will no longer be allowed to use the cross and the flame.
2) Certify the statement and break the rules – automatic penalties.
3) Leave the denomination to form/join a self-governing Methodist church, aka a new denomination that might be affiliated with the UMC.
What would be the impact of this on a local church like Immanuel?
Well, first of all, nearly 85% of you replied that if the current stance in our Book of Disciple remains unchanged [status quo] or strengthened [increased enforcement] you would stay as a part of Immanuel. We’d have a disagreement within our church, but again, I think largely we are focused on our community together and not on the larger denominational dynamics.
One of the complicating factors of this particular plan is that as a local church, we don’t have a lot of say of what happens at the levels just above us.
The Iowa Annual Conference, for example, might decide that it either will not certify the required statement or it might form or join a self-governing Methodist church that is more progressive. If that were the case, then this local church would have the opportunity to decide if we wanted to go with the Iowa Annual Conference, or if we wanted to stay with the United Methodist Church.
Another plan that has been presented along this same theological spectrum is the Simple Plan. This plan was not part of the Commission on a Way Forward report but was submitted by the United Methodist Queer Clergy Caucus. This particular plan seeks to remove all discriminatory language around homosexuality within the Book of Discipline.
It does so by striking statements like “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches.” However, it does not add any additional affirming language, nor does it add language that would increase enforcement towards those who are traditionalist. No clergy or church would be required to perform a same-gender wedding. If and when a congregation wanted to allow such weddings, they could have that conversation and make that decision.
Based on your responses to our survey, that would be a possibility. Nearly 70% of you said that you would agree if same-sex marriages would be allowed in our sanctuary. However, I also imagine that since this congregation deeply values relationship, we wouldn’t jump into any decisions without first having some family conversations and make sure it was the appropriate choice for our church.
Very similar dynamics are at play in the question about the appointment of queer clergy to Immanuel.
So far, we have been working along this spectrum of theological perspectives. The Commission on a Way Forward wanted to break us out of those dynamics a little bit and so the next two plans I’m going to present fall within a sort of compatibilist realm, but are trying to do something a little different.
The One Church Plan (begins on page 19) is a proposal of the Commission on a Way Forward that was supported by a strong majority of our Council of Bishops. The fundamental theological statement within this plan is that our position on homosexuality, whatever it might be, is not an essential of our faith. It is not something that we should divide our church over.
Like the Simple Plan that I just shared with you, it removes all language that is restrictive towards LGBT persons. However, it adds in every one of those locations statements that ensures freedom of conscience for those who think differently. For example, in the section about the ministry of an elder it states:
“In conferences where civil law permits a pastor to perform same-sex marriage services, no elder shall at any time be required or compelled to perform, or prohibited from performing, any marriage, union, or blessing of same-sex couples, or of any couples. Each elder shall have the right to exercise his or her conscience to refuse or agree when requested…”
What would be the impact of such a plan on Immanuel? This particular plan allows us the freedom of conscious, much like the Simple Plan. This plan does specify, however, that same-sex weddings are not allowed in local congregations unless the congregation chooses to approve them by a simple majority vote.
Any congregation that felt like it could no longer remain a part of the United Methodist Church, potentially non-compatibilist congregations, this plan points to already existing mechanisms within the Book of Discipline for them to leave.
The other primary plan presented by the Commission on a Way Forward is the Connectional Conference Model (begins on page 37). This model also affirms that this question is not an essential of our faith and maintains the unity of the United Methodist Church by creating three branches within the denomination based upon our perspectives on human sexuality.
The difficulty with this plan is that it requires changes to the constitution of our church which would have to be approved by 2/3 vote of all of the annual conferences combined. If this happened, there is a plan of implementation with decisions filtering down.
First, each United States Jurisdiction would vote in 2020 which connectional conference it would want to join. After that decision, any annual conference within that jurisdiction could vote to join a different connectional conference if it so chooses. Then, beginning in 2021, any local church that disagrees with where the annual conference has affiliated can choose to join a different connectional conference.
As a result, different churches within our city might belong to various connectional conferences, but we would all still be a part of the larger United Methodist Church.
As a local church, we could decide to just go with the flow and follow the decisions made by the entities above us, or if we disagreed with their direction, we could vote to join another. Whichever conference we ended up affiliating with would determine our policies on ordination and weddings.
The final plan that has already been published and is available for conversation is not a plan of the Commission on a Way Forward. It is simply named, a Plan of Dissolution, and the purpose of this particular plan is to claim that this actually is an essential of our faith and for that reason, we must divide the church.
Rather than any one perspective claiming victory over the denomination, however, the goal of this plan is to dissolve the UMC in its entirety. Then at the 2020 General Conference, delegates will be elected to help form 2 or more new denominations that likely would fall into the same spectrum we have been discussing. As those new denominations are formed, local churches would have the opportunity to affiliate with and join whichever they felt called to join.
In the year 48, the church was at a crossroads. Would they embrace the Gentiles who were following the way of Christ? Would the Gentiles shape the church, or would the Jewish faith shape the Gentiles? Leaders of the faith gathered together in Jerusalem to allow scripture, the Holy Spirit, tradition, testimony, and reason guide them in making the best decision for the church.
I imagine as those local communities of faith sent their delegates, they joined together in fervent prayer.
And so that is what I hope you might do with and for us.
Pray. Pray hard. Pray every day.
Pray for God to guide us as we make these decisions, hard decisions, that will impact our church at every single level, from our local church here in Des Moines to the hospital we have built in Sierra Leone, to our seminary in Russia, to our publishing house in Nashville. Pray.
A Way Forward? To Each Their Own Convictions
Text: Romans 14:4-12
“How do we know we are following the way of Christ?… How do we navigate the culture around us? What happens when Christians disagree profoundly with each other?”
There are just a few of the questions that Rev. Christine Chakoian believes Paul is trying to answer in his letter to the Romans. (CEB Women’s Study Bible Introduction)
And they are questions that we are wrestling with today.
What should we do when United Methodists, faithful followers of Jesus Christ profoundly disagree? How do we find our way forward?
In Paul’s time, the conflict he saw in the Roman community was a clash between Jews and Gentiles – people who followed the laws of the Old Testament and those who had never lived under that law but who were accepting Jesus Christ.
At this point in time, Christianity was not really a separate thing from the Jewish faith… It was a movement that had begun within the Jewish community, but it was also quickly taking root in Gentile communities who had no knowledge of or cultural connection with the Jewish faith
This created all sorts of problems:
Should someone be circumcised into the Jewish faith before being able to follow Jesus?
Did the Jewish dietary laws have to be followed?
What are the holy days that must be honored?
When you got to a cosmopolitan, diverse place like Rome, you had folks in the same community who held vastly different opinions about how the faith should be practiced.
People who ate meat and people who didn’t.
People who were circumcised and those who weren’t.
“One group, “Jeanette Good writes, “believes that the ‘right way’ is to rely solely on texts of old interpreted literally, and the other group is adamant that the ‘right way’ is to believe that God is being revealed in new ways to each generation. Both groups are ‘in their camps’ and are sure their positions are the right ones.” [1]
Sound familiar?
It would be impossible for us to talk about what comes next and how the various proposals to lead us forward might play out without getting a sense of the current landscape of the United Methodist Church today and the camps that people have fallen into.
We have them represented here by these four vessels of water.
The way I describe these camps is going to use terminology initially coined by Tom Lambrecht, the vice-president of Good News, a more conservative coalition within the UMC and then adopted by Tom Berlin. Tom Berlin not only wrote the stewardship book that we shared together this summer, but he serves a theologically diverse church on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Both were members of the Commission on a Way Forward and both are noted as authors of two very different plans that have been proposed that we will discuss next week.
If you were here last week, we talked about six scriptures that have historically been understood to condemn homosexuality within the bible. If you missed this message or the one from the week before, you can pick up a copy on the back table.
We also discussed how our task as people of faith is to think theologically: to ask and reflect upon how God is working in the world today. We begin with scriptures like these and we interpret and translate and make sense of them in light of other scripture, the tradition that has been passed down to us, and our own human reason and experience.
These four sources, what we call the Wesleyan quadrilateral, helps the church translate the gospel to the world, but also helps the church make sense of the world around us. Last week, I asked some theological questions that we are called to wrestle with as a result of reading these passages:
- Does the description of people in this passage reflect our experience of LGBT+ persons today?
- What do scripture, tradition, reason, and experience lead us to claim are taboo sexual acts today, framed by our understanding of Christian community?
- What is natural for LGBT persons? What are the fruits we see in the lives of LGBT persons?
- How do we talk about sex, sexuality, and identity that rejects the way people use and abuse one another and helps all people to honor their bodies?
Those who would find themselves in the progressive camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that they do not condemn LGBT+ persons.
They believe that some these passages refer to culturally bound understandings of holiness that no longer apply in Christian community.
These passages are not talking about loving, mutual, relationships between two persons, but instead about exploitive violent actions and abuse or cultic sexual practices.
Members of this camp would also point to scriptures that they believe affirm LGBT+ persons within the scriptures.
For example, King David and Saul’s son Jonathan had a close relationship. After Jonathan’s death, David laments: “I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan! You were so dear to me! Your love was more amazing to me than the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)
They might also point to the time when Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurian in Matthew 8 and Luke 7. Here, the Greek word for servant or slave – doulos – is not used, but instead, the word, pais, is used to describe the unwell person. A pais in this time was either a child – a son, or a close personal attendant, or was sometimes used to refer to a younger male lover. Progressives see this as a possible example of Jesus encountering an LGBT+ person and not hesitating to heal… in fact, even affirming the strength of this person’s faith.
Progressives would call us to look for the fruit in the lives of all persons who claim the Christian faith – do they love God and their neighbor? And for those who have experienced the call of God in their lives to serve, it wouldn’t matter if they were gay or straight. Progressives believe that the same standards for holiness should apply to all relationships, whether gay or straight. Is anyone being harmed through this sexual act? Does this relationship demonstrate mutual love and respect? How are chastity and fidelity expressed through this person’s life?
Progressives also would point to the marginalization of LGBT+ persons, not only in history but all around us today as well. They see current prohibitions in church law as harmful not only to our witness, but to the actual lives of LGBT+ persons. They would point towards statistics that show that LGBT youth are at a much higher risk for both homelessness and suicide than their peers and that LGBT youth for whom faith is important to them had a 5x higher rate of suicidal thoughts than their straight peers. [2]
As Jesus calls us to reach out to the sick, the oppressed, the hungry in order to offer life and life abundant, progressive United Methodists believe that a church that is not actively in ministry with LGBT+ persons and fully inclusive is being unfaithful to the gospel.
Those who would find them in the traditionalist camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that scripture is clear about the prohibition of homosexual acts.
While justice might be a key word to describe progressives, covenant might be a key term for traditionalists.
They believe that these passages, along with others, describe what personal holiness looks like within the Christian community and that if we interpret the meaning away from these scriptures, than all of our understandings of personal holiness might be compromised. God has created us in a particular way, man and woman were designed for one another, and only within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman are sexual acts pleasing to God.
When we choose to follow Christ, traditionalists would argue, we reject the ways of this world and allow ourselves to be conformed instead to Christ. That is the covenant under which we now live.
Traditionalists believe are called, in community, to hold one another accountable to this covenant. That means there must be a clear, shared understandings of what is right and what is not. To be faithful to the gospel, one must call out sin and invite repentance and transformation. If we fail to do so, then we are allowing that person to remain on a path that might permanently separate them from God’s love.
So these are the camps in which we find ourselves today. Progressives and Traditionalists, who each love the church, love Jesus, and love scripture.
When we turn back to the Apostle Paul and his description of conflict within the early Christian community in Rome, he appears to have solid advice for us to rely upon today.
“One person considers some days to be more sacred than others, while another person considers all days to the be same. Each person must have their own convictions. Someone who thinks that a day is sacred, thinks that way for the Lord. Those who eat, eat for the Lord, because they thank God. And those who don’t eat, don’t eat for the Lord, and they thank the Lord too.”
To each their own, Paul appears to be saying.
These practices, these convictions, they are not essential to what it means to follow Jesus.
If you are celebrating particular holy days in the Lord’s name – great!
If you choose to refrain from participating in the Lord’s name – great!
Because you are doing it all in the name of Jesus.
Whether or not you keep kosher laws or are circumcised or whether you prefer pew chairs or pews – as long as you are focused on your Lord – that’s all that really matters.
Paul goes on to say that we should not judge one another for our various convictions. Each person will stand before the Lord in their own time. We are not to force our own convictions about practices upon one another, nor are we to be a stumbling block to another person’s faith by allowing our practices to interfere with those of others.
Within these progressive and traditionalist camps in the United Methodist Church today are those who take Paul’s words to heart. Tom Berlin uses sugar packets instead of vessels of water to demonstrate these various positions.
As you can see there are progressives and traditionalists represented here who have their own deeply held convictions about how we should relate to LGBT+ persons – justice and full inclusion or covenant faithfulness.
But there are those within each of these camps that understand people who have been wrestling with these questions arrive in different places. These folks also don’t believe that the answer to this particular question is essential to our faith.
Lambrecht and Berlin would refer to these folks as compatibilists.
Compatibilists are willing to remain in community with those who disagree with them. They know and understand that our very church is full of a diversity of perspectives on this topic, but that what unifies us as United Methodists – what IS essential is our understanding of grace, our focus on personal and social holiness, and the connection that allows us to be in ministry across this globe.
Compatibilists might best be described as those who firmly hold their own particular theological convictions, but also respect the theological convictions of others. As we live together within the church, what is important is that there is freedom of conviction and no one is forced to act against their own beliefs.
As long as you love God and love your neighbor and seek to live and die for the Lord, the non-essentials of our faith should not divide us.
There are those within each of the progressive and traditionalist camps, however, who would reject the idea that this is a non-essential of our faith.
They would argue that Paul is talking here are about practices like what we eat and wear – truly non-essential things. But values like justice and covenant are not something you can compromise.
Traditional non-compatibilists believe that our call to covenantal holiness requires us to maintain these standards across the church. They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are obvious prohibitions within scripture. We are not called to be blown to and fro by the winds of culture, but must hold firm to the tradition that has been passed down to us.
Progressive non-compatibilists believe that our call to justice for all people requires us to see anew who Jesus is standing with in the margins. They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are the obvious cries for inclusion within scripture. We are not called to a legalistic faith, but must allow the Holy Spirit to lead us and recognize the presence of God in LGBT+ persons.
Within the United Methodist Church today, this division has created our current conflict.
Progressives are dissatisfied with the current language within our Book of Discipline and by and believes that it harms our witness for Jesus Christ in the world today. They believe that they are being faithful to the gospel by disobeying the Book of Discipline in order to celebrate same-gender weddings and welcome LGBT+ folks into ministry of the church.
Those who are Traditional Non-Compatibilists see these actions and feel like the covenant we have made with one another has been broken. They feel personally harmed by this betrayal and some are leaving these churches as a result.
Traditionalists who are frustrated that the covenant has not been honored are seeking to maintain the discipline of the church by naming and formalizing consequences of these actions. We have a process for accountability within our Book of Discipline that begins with the filing of a complaint, and you may have heard in the past few years of such complaints being filed here in Iowa against pastors who have officiated same-gender weddings or who have publicly come out as queer.
Those who are Progressives see these actions and feel like it not only personally harms people who are LGBT+ but has also harmed their congregations as people have left their churches because we are not fully inclusive.
Within the United States, there are regional differences that are apparent. The Western Jurisdiction is more progressive than other areas and in 2016 consecrated Karen Oliveto as a bishop, a woman who is married to another woman.
Annual conferences across the North Central and Northeastern Jurisdictions have committed to ordaining clergy based on their fruit, not their sexual orientation.
Southern Jurisdictions and Annual Conferences throughout the connection are advocating for a church that maintains its faithfulness to scripture and traditional understandings of marriage.
And there are global factors.
The conversation we have had today is largely U.S. based, but the United Methodist Church is a global denomination. While assumptions should not be made about any particular area of the global church, it is thought that the majority of our African and Filipino brothers and sisters would describe themselves as traditionalists. In many of their own cultural realities, homosexuality is rejected and in some places even an illegal practice. Others, in parts of our connection like Western Europe, would align more with the progressives. The goal of the Commission on a Way Forward was this: To design a way for being church that maximizes the presence of a United Methodist witness in as many places in the world as possible, that allows for as much contextual differentiation as possible, and that balances an approach to different theological understandings of human sexuality with a desire for as much unity as possible.
Is the question of human sexuality an essential of our faith? Will our response divide the church?
Or is it a non-essential? Is it a place where we can respectfully disagree and create space for one another?
The plans that we will explore together next week will answer those questions differently. The impact of these plans on our particular congregation can only be known if we have a sense of where this church itself stands.
For that reason, I want to invite you each to take and fill out one of these yellow surveys. We will compile these anonymous responses in order to have a sense of the impact any of these plans might have on this church.
I’m going to give you a few minutes to do so right now. There are four simple questions to answer.
First, based on what we have described today, where would you place yourself on this spectrum of progressive/traditional and compatible/non-compatible?
Next, three questions about how you personally might respond if there were or were not changes to our Book of Discipline.
As a reminder, here is a general description of the Book of Discipline’s current language:
The Book of Discipline affirms that we should be in ministry with all persons and reject homophobia. It also states that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. Self-avowed practicing homosexuals may not be ordained as clergy.
What I want to leave us with today is a phrase that John Wesley clung to in his own ministry – a phrase that exemplifies the spirit of our passage in Romans today:
In essentials, unity.
In non-essentials, liberty.
In all things love.
May God continue to lead us as hold fast to the essentials of our faith, respect differences in non-essentials, and may love been the source of all that we do.
Let’s stand together as we are able and affirm some of those essentials that form the core of our faith.
[1] Jeanette Good. Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, p 65
[2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/queer-youth-religion-suicide-study_us_5ad4f7b3e4b077c89ceb9774
Abiding in Love
Loneliness is a growing epidemic in our society.
Yes, I said epidemic.
Studies have now shown that loneliness and social isolation raises our stress hormones, causes inflammation, and can lead to heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, dementia, and more. In fact, some claim that it could even be a bigger health risk than smoking or obesity.
Being a part of community is good for your health.
In a world-wide study of “Blue Zones” or communities that are known to have residents that live 100 years or longer, they found that belonging played a role in three of the nine factors they identified.
They lived close to their families – often in multi-generational homes. And they had a tribe, a close circle of friends, that supported them in healthy behaviors. The vast majority of the centenarians belonged to a faith-based community.
Right here, in this faith community, we have been asking what it might mean to abide in God, to make our home in God, and to welcome others into that community of love. In these weeks since Easter, we’ve talked about what it means to be family, what it means to gather around God’s table, and what it means to return home to our faith.
If you haven’t noticed, one of the themes that keeps coming over and over again is that we need one another! We were created by God to be in community. And the fabric that holds us together is love. God’s love. Flowing through us.
This morning’s scriptures are no different.
In the first epistle of John, we are reminded that if you love a parent, you automatically love the children that come from that parent.
Those of us who love God have to keep God’s commandments – and that means that we show love to all of the children of God in this world.
This is how we overcome the forces of this world that would lead to death. This is how we combat loneliness and social isolation. This is how we help people live long abundant lives. God’s victory is known through love.
In John’s gospel, we are again urged to abide in God’s love and to love one another as Christ has loved us.
We have been chosen, appointed, sent forth, to share that love with the world.
I must admit that my faith in the ability of the church to truly love and accept all people has been tried a bit lately.
First, there is the ongoing tension of difference in the United Methodist Church when it comes to if and how we will accept LGBTQ+ people into the fullness of the life of our church. As more details come out about our bishop’s plan for providing a path forward as the church, we will have more indepth conversation here at Immanuel about what it could mean for us as a congregation.
But this week, we also released the results of five constitutional amendments that were passed at the 2016 General Conference. These amendments must be voted on by all of the annual conferences worldwide and be approved by a 2/3 margin. Three of them passed, but two did not.
The first amendment that failed will be up for a revote this year, because of an error that was discovered only after the results were released. But it dismayed me and others across the globe to learn that after 28 years of trying, we have again failed to constitutionally declare that men and women are equal before God and equal in the church.
The second amendment that failed, likewise, would have extended protections to more people in the church, eliminating discrimination on the basis of age, gender, ability, or marital status.
The rationale for why these amendments failed is complicated. In some cases, people thought they didn’t go far enough. In others, there were concerns about the potential ramifications for mandatory retirement or concerns about someone with intellectual disabilities being the chair of Finance or SPRC. In still other cases, the language about men and women was caught up with language about God being neither male or female in a way that troubled them.
What I see, however, is that we have failed to make love our primary motivation.
We have allowed fears to keep us from fully and without condition creating space in the body of Christ for every child of God to share their gifts.
Part of me didn’t want to share these results with you.
I wish that we were blissfully ignorant to the ways in which the church is a human institution and makes mistakes.
I know that many in this room aren’t even aware that the United Methodist Church has a constitution, much less what is in it.
But I also realized this week that one of the reasons that these two amendments failed is that as pastors, as leaders, as teachers, we don’t do a good enough job reminding one another that love is the source of our victory over fear, cynicism, and the ways of this world.
If I were to stand before you today and only talk about love, without also talking about how far we have yet to come, I would not being doing my job.
In the statement from our General Board of Church and Society, General Secretary Susan Henry-Crowe reminds us that “Mother’s Day was born out of appreciation for the tireless advocacy of women.” Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her mother’s life-long activism and in May of 1907, a Mother’s Day service was organized at the Methodist Church in Grafton West Virginia where her mother Ann had been a Sunday school teacher.
Could you imagine a church, could you imagine the body of Christ where women were not present or not contributing? Where women were cut off from the community? What would our church look like without women preaching or giving financially or taking care of the children in the nursery or preparing Wednesday night meals or leading the music.
The same question could be asked about if we had no older adults. Or children. Or divorced persons. Or single adults. Or folks with ADD or autism. Or men.
The community God intends for us is far greater than the one we would choose for ourselves. Perhaps that is why in the gospel of John, Jesus reminds us that we didn’t choose God… but instead we were chosen.
We were called into this community of faith to be in relationship with all of these people.
And our task is to love, honor, and celebrate the gifts of each person in this room.
When we combine our efforts and our talents and allow each person to fully commit to God’s work in this world – then that victory of love over the division and pain of this world will be complete.
When we close our service today, we are singing a good old hymn about when we all get to heaven.
But as we started our service, in the last line of Wesley’s famous hymn, we sang that we should own that love is heaven.
Heaven is not some far off place that awaits us when we die.
It is a reality that we make through our love of one another right here and right now.
And as we abide in God, we are reminded that we are also called to create room for others in this community of faith.
When every person knows the love of God and is valued and respected and honored… then we can sing and shout in victory… because heaven has been made real among us.
Amen.
The Heart of the Matter
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had this strange sensation in my neck. To me, it feels like my pulse is a bit off of rhythm, like occasionally it skips a few beats, or does a few too many in a row. It isn’t a constant thing, and it was pretty random until Thursday. On Thursday afternoon, this thing, whatever it was, happened multiple times all afternoon long. It doesn’t hurt, but it was kind of freaking me out so I got in to my doctor later that day.
They took my blood pressure, we did an EKG, and ran some blood tests. Everything came back perfectly normal and my physician isn’t concerned… aside that I need to exercise more.
While on the one hand, I’m comforted by the knowledge of what it isn’t, I also don’t necessarily have an answer either. I found myself yesterday second guessing the way I even described the problem. Maybe it’s not my pulse I’m feeling, but a twitch in my neck. Maybe it’s all in my head and I’ve just had too much caffeine.
As we enter this season of Lent, we are going to be exploring some of the ways that both the United Methodist Church and our congregation have found ourselves searching for explanations and diagnosis. And we are going to be honest about some of the symptoms that we see, the realities of our lives together.
In the larger denomination, we are in the midst of a time of disunity that really reflects the culture we find ourselves in. And the UMC is also numerically declining… we have lost a million members since 2006! But simply looking at those symptoms, like the strange feeling in my neck, doesn’t automatically tell us what the problem is. Is it that our older generations are dying out? Are we having less children? Is there too much competition? Are we irrelevant? Theologians and church leaders keep offering their explanations and no one seems to be able to put their finger on “the answer” to the problem.
Bishop Thomas Bickerton wrote the book that is the backbone of not only our worship series this Lent, but also our life group conversations we’ll be having. (Quick plug: if you haven’t signed up for one yet, you can join this morning’s classes at 9:45, go to Java Joes on Monday nights, or join the one here at the church on Wednesday evenings!) He thinks in many ways that we are like the church in Ephesus who had forgotten who they were called to be.
Our scripture this morning comes from a letter Paul wrote to this church and at this time, the church was just on fire for God. They had started as a small group of committed people and when Paul showed up and ministered among them, the Holy Spirit started working. God did amazing things through them… impacting the entire city. Temple prostitution, idolatry, magic, all of these things ended because people instead turned to Jesus. When the Ephesians experienced the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, God accomplished abundantly more than what those first twelve disciples in Ephesus could have asked or imagined!
Kind of like the United Methodist Church. We started with a small group of people at Oxford University who wanted to know God better. They were committed to the gospel and to Jesus and their faith took them across an ocean to start a church. John and Charles Wesley could never had imagined the way that God would use them, but their little bands started healing the sick, taking care of the poor, preaching to those who would never have set foot inside the church, and before you know it, the UMC was a world-wide denomination!
You would think that kind of energy can be sustained forever, but it takes work. We can get ourselves in ruts and we forget the power that got us started in the first place. In the letters to the churches of Revelation, one of them is written to the people of Ephesus and God praises the work and the labor and endurance of the people, but God also says that they have let go of the love they had at first. They are urged to remember the high point from which they had fallen.
Maybe the United Methodist Church, maybe our church, has let go of the love we had at first. Maybe, like the Ephesians, we have a spiritual problem.
Bishop Bickerton points to what he calls the “Five I’s” to help us discern a bit about our spiritual reality and where we might be lacking the love of God.
He notes that the church is a bit low on our INSPIRATION – that we tend to grumble and complain more than we focus on hope. We need to remember where God is leading us and get excited about it again!
He sense a lack of INTEGRATION between what we say and what we do. I actually have been fairly proud of Immanuel in this sense, because not only are we willing to talk about things that are happening in the world, but so many of you are out there caring for the homeless, visiting the sick, and living your faith.
Bickerton also points to the dangers of ISOLATION. Once you disconnect from a community, it is hard to find ways to become part of the group again. On the back table as you leave, you’ll notice some names and some cards. We want to reach out to folks whom we haven’t seen for a little while with a phone call or a card… and if you recognize a name out there and are willing to make a connection, take a card and put your name down!
The fourth I is INDEPENENCE. This world tells us that we have to do it ourselves, but the church reminds us that we are better together. We don’t have to do it alone because we all can do our part.
Finally, INVITATON. This is actually one of the goals of our church today. When we are excited and transformed by the work of God happening here, then we are going to want to pass it on, to reach out and bring people along with us.
At Immanuel, we have had a vision that has sustained us for the last four or five years. Say it with me: In Christ, live a life of love, service and prayer.
But one thing our leadership has realized is that we are called to not just be and exist and look to our past, but to continue actively working towards our future. What are we fighting for? also means What are we fighting to accomplish? What will be different because we have loved, served, and prayed? What is inspiring us to move forward? What is going to challenge us in a way that we simply can’t do it alone and need to invite others to join us?
As our leadership has discerned, we are feeling God pull is in a new direction and we are excited to share it with you over the coming weeks and months.
But the heart of the matter, the deep question that faces not just us, but the UMC, and the Ephesians, is whether or not we really want to tap in to the power of God. The love so strong, so wide, so long, so high, so deep, that God is going to do abundantly more than what we believe in our hearts is possible… if we know where we are going. If we know what we are fighting to accomplish.
Claiming Our Inheritance
When I came home from our United Methodist General Conference in May, I shared with you these words:
Over these last two weeks, we very nearly split our denomination into pieces. Our differences are stark. Our life together is marred by conflict as much as collaboration. And I’m going to be honest… I’m not quite sure yet what comes after General Conference.
I went on talk about why that was: how the source of dilemma lies in being a global church, in the way we make decisions, and the reality that we can’t agree on some fundamental basics of what it means to be church together, like what we mean by covenant or how we interpret scriptures.
This month, our bishops have not only announced the members of a special commission who will help us find a way forward, but they have also announced their intent to call a special session of General Conference in 2019… one year earlier than we would typically meet. The purpose will be to allow this commission to do their work and then the delegates of our last general conference will gather back together solely for the purpose of discussing and voting on their recommendations. Many imagine that if we cannot agree to a way to hold our differences in creative tension that our church will split at that time.
For the last few months, there has been a tension in my shoulders that I can’t quite shake.
I’m worried.
I’m worried for my country.
I’m worried for the United Methodist Church.
I’m worried for this church.
And the root of that worry is less about who wins on Tuesday or what kind of church we will be on the other side of 2019 or how many people stayed home from worship last weekend…
I worry about how we treat one another and whether or not we see the person sitting across from us as a person of inherent worth and dignity… and that we seem unable to set aside our thoughts and opinions for long enough to actually listen to the truth of another person.
I think the antidote to the worry we collectively are bearing might be found in our scripture this morning.
One of the radical messages of Ephesians that is lost to modern readers of the scriptures is the fact that Paul reaches out and give thanks for people who are outside of his faith.
Historically, the early church experienced great tensions between Jewish and Gentile followers of Christ. They had different backgrounds, different traditions and practices, and yet all claimed to have accepted the good news of God. There was infighting and arguments about who had to give up what part of their heritage in order to be part of the community.
And so when Paul, a Jewish scholar and leader of the church, writes to this Gentile community at Ephesus, it is remarkable that one of the first things he does is emphasize unity.
“We have obtained an inheritance”, Paul writes.
And then he goes a step farther… “I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”
Paul specifically reaches out to people who are very different from him… people he has never even met before… and tells them that he is grateful for them.
This letter to the Ephesians is fundamentally about unity.
That is our glorious inheritance.
Unity with God in Jesus Christ.
Unity with the saints who have gone before us.
And unity with one another in this present moment.
And as Paul teaches us in these first few verses that you can’t have unity without gratitude.
As we light candles to remember the saints, we are reminded that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we remain connected and unified with all of those saints who have gone before us… and with all who will come after us.
As we break bread, we sing and feast with the saints. This meal is an act of unity. This meal and the hope it instills in our souls is our inheritance.
And as we remember, we give thanks for eight people from our congregation who died this past year: for Lois. Becky. Viola. Ruth. Gary. Mildred. Sharon. Marcia. Thank you, God.
But we also give thanks for the many people, friends and family, who have gone before us.
We give thanks for all of the saints who shaped our lives.
And we give thanks for the multitudes of saints and the historic church that is our foundation. When it feels like the weight of the world is upon our shoulders and that the church will live or die based upon our decisions, it is good to remember that God’s church has been around for two thousand years. It is built upon the prophets and the apostles. The church is far bigger than this congregation or even this denomination. And for that I give thanks…
And I also pray that we might claim this inheritance and that somehow we might be part of passing along this faith to generations yet to come.
Sarah Birmingham Drummond reminds us that the unity we experience is not only across time and generations, but also for this present moment. “Paul’s message of unity was radical in its day, as it suggest unity across divisions that were woven into the fabric of daily life. This suggests that the early church understood overcoming divisions to be part of its mandate.”
Let me repeat that.
The early church understood overcoming divisions to be part of its mandate.
After all, Paul was reaching out to people he didn’t have a whole lot in common with to give thanks. His letter reminded not only them, but also himself, of the unity of Christ that brings all of us together.
That is our inheritance, too.
Today, we will break bread not only with the saints, but also with people who will vote differently than us on Tuesday.
We worship every Sunday morning with people of different ages.
We worship with people who prefer different types of music.
We worship with early risers and people who long to sleep in on Sundays.
Yet overcoming division is part of our mandate as people of faith.
Being a people who overcome difference in order to be in community… that is our inheritance.
That is the faith that has been passed down from generation to generation.
No matter what happens on Tuesday.
No matter what happens in 2019 with our denomination.
No matter what tension we feel as a result of our worship times or classes or studies.
Our responsibility is to look around this room and to give thanks for each soul and get busy making a difference in this world.
That is the inheritance we can claim, right here and right now.
And we do so… we claim the inheritance of Jesus Christ across generations and across divisions because we believe that God’s mission is built upon a church united to transform this world.
Because we believe that God needs all of us… past, present, and future, to bring healing and hope to a broken people.
Because our differences are small when compared to the call God has upon our lives to claim our inheritance.
Because we believe in the immeasurable greatness of God’s power to truly make a difference… right here and right now.
Reflections a week after General Conference… #umcgc
As Psalm 146 reminds us: human leaders and human institutions aren’t everything. They won’t save us.
We are finite and we make mistakes.
Only God is forever faithful.
Yet, any denomination or tradition comes from God’s followers attempting to live out their faith and their discipleship together.
Fully knowing that we are not perfect, we nevertheless seek to do the best we can to respond to God’s movement and calling in the world in a given place and time… based on where our forefathers and mothers have led us and based on where the Holy Spirit is calling us anew.
That is what we tried to do at General Conference. Over 10 days, we attempted to be faithful to God’s leading and yet we are not God and our plans are just that… ours.
Over these last two weeks, we very nearly split our denomination into pieces. Our differences are stark. Our life together is marred by conflict as much as collaboration. And I’m going to be honest… I’m not quite sure yet what comes after General Conference.
We asked our Bishops to help us find a way forward out of our predicament and that way forward is still vague.
So rather than making predictions, maybe it would be better to share who we are and how we got to this place. I think fundamentally, there are three key things to keep in mind as we wrestle with what it means to be the United Methodist Church.
First, I think it is helpful to understand that the United Methodist Church is a global church.
We are the only protestant denomination that is worldwide. Our churches span from Manila to Legos to Moscow. And, while the church in the U.S. has been declining, the global church is growing exponentially.
In the last ten years, the U.S. has declined in membership by 11%, while the church in the Africa Central Conference grew by 329%!
42% of United Methodists now live outside of the United States.
One of the most important things we do at General Conference is listen to one another, try to understand more about our contexts, and find ways to help ministry flourish all across the world. And that is not an easy task.
But because of our global partnerships, we can do amazing things like Imagine No Malaria and our United Methodist Committee on Relief is the first to arrive on the scene of disaster and the last to leave.
And we can learn from one another.
I remember listening to a committee four years ago debate the process for closing a church. A woman from Liberia stood and said that she was extremely confused as to what we were talking about… not because of a language barrier, but because she simply couldn’t comprehend why we would close a church. The church in the United States needs that passion for the gospel that is growing so fast we can’t build enough churches!
As we continue to debate the inclusion of LGBTQI people in the life of our church, I also heard clearly from our African delegates, like my new friend Pastor Adilson, that their contextual struggle is not with homosexuality, but with polygamy. Rather than asking if same-gender marriages are allowed in their churches, they are struggling with how to welcome and include a man who has four or five wives. Does the church ask him to divorce all but one? What happens to the other wives? Or the children? How is the entire family welcomed?
We are also learning to reframe our conversations to be more global than United States centric. One of our debates this year was about a resolution for health care that referenced the Affordable Care Act. When 42% of United Methodists live outside the United States, these kinds of statements need to be broader in scope. It was hard to be talking about a system that only applies to some of us, when so many people in that room had little to no access to care, much less health insurance.
One of the realities of being a global church is that multiple languages play a role in all of our meetings. While we have four official languages as the UMC: French, English, Portuguese and Kiswahili, we had simultaneous interpretation in Russian, German, Spanish, and many others.
An ever present reality is also that in many of these global areas Christianity arrived along with colonialism. “Most Africans teach their children that Jesus and other biblical characters are muzungu (Kiswahili, “white”) notwithstanding the fact that Jesus would likely have been dark complexioned because he was born in the Middle East.” (http://unitedmethodistreporter.com/2016/05/11/are-africans-grown-a-response-to-bishop-minerva-carcano-dealing-with-wounded-united-methodist-church/)
We, as a church, have tried to combat colonial impulses by allowing the conferences outside of the United States to adapt our Book of Discipline to their local contexts. However, that means that 42% of the church doesn’t have to abide by all of what we vote on… and that we need their votes in order to make changes to the rules only we follow.
Second, it is helpful to know how we make decisions.
The roots of our church lie in England, but we were born during the American Revolution. And our polity, our government is modeled upon our national government.
Just like the government, we have a judicial branch and a Judicial Council.
Our Bishops function as the executive branch.
And the General Conference itself is the legislative branch… just like Congress.
864 of us were elected as voting delegates to represent the worldwide church and we were half clergy and half laity.
The General Conference is the only body that can speak for the United Methodist Church and everyday people like you and me are the ones who make the decisions.
So those of us gathered there had the responsibility of pouring over legislation and making changes to our structure, rules, and positions… four years worth of work condensed into two weeks.
I believe that to discern the Holy Spirit, one has to be humble, empty yourself, and allow other voices to influence you.
The first week of conference is largely spent in legislative committees and in those smaller groups some of that discernment could happen. I had truly transformative experiences in my committee and the work felt good and holy.
But all of those relationships and trust falls apart when an item comes to the floor of the plenary session. There, the decision making process moves away from consensus building and instead creates winners and losers.
On the FIRST DAY of conference… we spent hours debating the rules that we would use in order to debate. We used and we abused Robert’s Rules of Order.
And when we were presented with an alternative decision making process (what you might have heard as Rule 44) to use for particularly contentious issues, we debated it for two days and then voted not to use it.
But we did accomplish some things. We approved the creation of a new hymnal for our church. We strengthened our process for the affirmation of clergy. We created new pathways for licensed local pastors. And we added gender, age, ability, and marital status to the protected classes in our constitution.
Third, it is helpful to understand that while it appears that our conflict as a church is centered around the inclusion of LGBTQI people, our division is deeper.
Our church is a very broad tent and the likes of both Dick Cheney and Hilary Clinton call our church home. This is one of the things that I love about the United Methodist Church.
But I think what came into focus for many of us at this General Conference is that our disagreements may no longer be sustainable.
Perhaps fundamental to our conflict is how we interpret scripture. For some, scripture is absolutely central and the only tradition, reason, or experience that matters is that which scripture can confirm. For others, scripture is absolutely central and yet we have to interpret scripture through the lenses of our tradition, reason, and experience. That shift might seem subtle, but it can make the difference between allowing women to be ordained or not in our church.
We also fundamentally disagree about whether we are a church of personal piety or social holiness. Of course, John Wesley thought it had to be both… but where we place our emphasis determines how we engage with the world and the moral stances we choose to take.
All of this difference is floating beneath the surface of any conversation about how LGBTQI people are included or not in the life of our church.
If you asked me a month ago what was going to happen at General Conference I would have been full of optimism. You see, I’m a bridge builder.
And so I went to General Conference with all kinds of hopes about how we would make decisions to benefit the church all over the world and how in spite of our differences we would find a way forward together.
I don’t think it was naïve to believe this going in.
But in the midst of our gathering in Portland, something shifted. Something shifted in my own life and in the hearts and minds of countless other delegates.
We realized that we could no longer keep doing what we have been doing together as a denomination.
We realized that our differences were tearing us apart.
And in Portland, we made a very conscious choice to avoid the end of our denomination through our votes. We voted to seek unity, to try to find a way to remain together for the sake of God’s mission in the world. But there is a phrase we kept using that I think is important. Unity does not mean unanimity.
As we look at our differences, particularly in the three areas I named, for many, we avoided the end, but are only delaying the inevitable.
Maybe our global structure is unsustainable.
Maybe our decision making process has to change.
Maybe our fundamental disagreements will only continue to allow conflict to rule our work together and we would be better to split amicably and allow each part of our church to be the most faithful it can be to God’s will.
The next four years as United Methodists will not be easy. We have asked the Bishops of our church to lead us in discerning a way forward and that might mean that in the next two or three years we will call a special gathering to decide how to move forward… on what it means to be a global church, on our structure, on our polity, and on our stances regarding human sexuality.
I have about 45 more minutes of things I could share with you and I’m happy to continue to have conversations about our work. But I want to leave you with this one request.
Pray for our church.
Pray for God’s will to be done.
Pray that we might follow the one who is faithful forever, who as Psalm 146 reminds us…
defends the wronged, and feeds the hungry. God frees prisoners— God gives sight to the blind, and lifts up the fallen. God loves good people, protects strangers, takes the side of orphans and widows, but makes short work of the wicked.
In spite of all the good and all of the mistakes that we made at this past General Conference, I take comfort in the knowledge that God’s in charge—always.
Open. #umcgc
I haven’t posted much of substance the past few days. Mostly because there simply isn’t energy to do so.
Two mornings ago, the Council of Bishops presented us with a report we asked them to make.
We took a break and came back to discuss it and one word expressed how it is with my soul: open.
I think emptiness has a lot to do with openness. When you pour yourself out, there is a lot of space left to be filled.
For most of the remainder of the day, we found ourselves lost in parliamentary procedure, mistrust, debate, misunderstanding, chaos, and clamor.
In the end, we adopted the Bishops’ report by 23 votes.
Some of the stages of grief include denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance.
Is openness acceptance?
Am I, are we, collectively grieving the end of The United Methodist Church?
I’m tired and not fully prepared to reflect, but here are some initial asides to explore later:
1) it feels like we both avoided catastrophe.. and like we simply put off the inevitable.
2) Unity in Christ is bigger than unity in a denomination.
3) in spite of our differences, we do incredible discipling and world transforming work!