Disaffiliation Musings (8/24/22)

Here we go

Talk, not sermon…so while I don’t refer to Scripture, Scripture runs through all of this talk.

This is NOT the time to argue, shout, or be disruptive (well, there’s no time for that). While we may disagree on this or that, we disagree with out being disagreeable. In Love. Speak the truth in LOVE, Paul says. And, a personal request…PLEASE, NEVER argue this stuff, or politics, or much of anything else on social media. It’s a terribly destructive way to argue. Would you openly argue politics or theology with your spouse on social media? I hope not. Neither should you with your Christian brothers and sisters. If you want to argue with me, or with anyone, the best is face to face. Over coffee, or ice cream, or whatever you prefer.

I am recording this and will make it available as best I see fit soon, stay tuned.

Reference Sheet

Brief History of Methodism and UMC

Methodism didn’t start as a denomination at all, but as a movement within the Church of England. John & Charles Wesley, primarily, took church outside and, while not particularly popular at first, created a fast growing movement that some credit with saving England from a civil war. The movement focused on grace, but also holiness, and the transforming power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The term Methodist was originally intended to be derogatory but John adopted it. You can read a great deal about the early movement in, “A Plain Account of the People Called Methodist.” I’ve included a link in the resource list. It’s quite remarkable!

John Wesley actually never left the Church of England, but once Methodism moved to America, he ordained two bishops to oversee America and it became a denomination separate from the Church of England with his blessing. Those two men were Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury. Back to Francis in a minute. Since then, Methodism has gone through numerous form changes, or structures, or wineskins you might say. Some, but certainly not all, of the denominations that have been, or joined, Methodism include The Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Evangelical United Brethren, the Wesleyan Church, the Methodist Church, and of course, the United Methodist Church. St. Luke was simply the Methodist Church (as you can see on one of our outside signs) before becoming part of the United Methodist Church as part of the merger with the Evangelical United Brethren in 1968.

I have deep Methodist roots I wasn’t even really aware of until a few years ago. Francis Asbury, I mentioned, was British but moved to America and was one of the first two bishops of The Methodist Church in America. He was quite a remarkable man. He rode, like Wesley, countless miles on horseback founding churches and spreading the gospel. I just learned something cool the other day about Asbury. He met a freedman in 1780 named Henry Hosier. Henry became Asbury’s right hand man and memorized long passages of Scripture as Asbury read them while they traveled. Hosier eventually became a famous African American preacher and the FIRST African American preacher to preach directly to a white congregation in the United States. Amazing...

Someone else Francis Asbury met and knew, probably even converted, was my 6x great grandfather, Daniel Sherwood. They knew one another in Maryland and then Francis even visited North Carolina and stayed at Daniel’s home a time or two on his travels. Here is a picture of Francis Asbury’s Journal from November 16, 1798, where he records staying with Daniel. Daniel, his family, and some other Methodists founded Pleasant Grove Methodist Church in North Carolina…a church that still stands today. It blows my mind that my 6x great grandfather not only knew Francis and hosted him but that he almost certainly knew Henry Hosier!

I am Methodist. Deeply Methodist. I can’t imagine ever NOT being Methodist. I believe Methodism is the greatest hope for our world! But, I also believe UNITED Methodism is broken.

The Book of Discipline and Years of Debates

Remember, now, that the United Methodist Church has only existed since 1968. St. Luke was formed 16 years prior…first church, long before that. I don’t know about Sierra Vista. The organizing document, or set of rules, for United Methodism is known as our Book of Discipline. Ironic, for reasons you’ll likely see soon. Here is the 2016 version. You’re welcome to look at it after this meeting. It contains all sorts of information about being a UM church, clergy, lay person, leader, etc. It contains our constitution, doctrinal statements, general rules, and much more.

Ever since the UMC was formed in ‘68, its members, particularly clergy and professors, have held a wide variety of beliefs. Terms are very imperfect but it’s hard not to use them. Some have been more progressive, you might say, some more creedal or doctrinal. Also since the UMC was formed, different factions have been fighting over provisions and penalties in the book of discipline, often particularly focused on human sexuality. Much of our collective attention has been focused on…what changes can be made in the BOD? Can our side, whatever it is, gain ground? Every four years, we have a worldwide general conference where legislation is debated and voted upon and then later ratified by annual and central conferences. Well, except we haven’t had a full general conference since 2016 even though we’re mandated by church law to have one every four years. COVID delayed 2020, understandably I suppose. Then it was supposed to be ‘21, then this year. When they postponed ‘22 to ‘24 for, in my opinion, no real reason, many of us saw the brokenness of our structure afresh, or perhaps for the first time. It seems all sides of the arguments had a hand in this delay, playing politics.

But what I’ve come to realize, friends, is how much time I’ve wasted, and really we’ve wasted, because it really doesn’t matter what the BOD says. No matter what the BOD says, our structure has always been lacking in a key, necessary, function. And that is compliance or enforcement. There is SOME attempt at it in the BOD but, in reality, it really has no teeth.

Now, you’ll hear Adam Hamilton and others say, even our conference website says, that our doctrinal statements haven’t changed. True. I even saw the other day that a fellow clergy person went back through all the BOD’s way back to Methusela or whatever and confirmed, YEP, our doctrinal statements haven’t changed! Yippee! Doesn’t matter. Because with no real compliance or enforcement, what we have is doctrinal chaos and confusion. BILLY ABRAHAM STUFF.

Some will try and deny and pretend that we’re all pastors, professors, and the like are aligned on key doctrines (deity of Christ, identity and power of God, virgin birth, RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, SUPREMACY OF GOD/CHRIST OVER ALL OTHER gods, etc.) That’s just nonsense. I suspect they know it because if they don’t, they’ve had their heads buried in the sand.

I could tell numerous stories FROM OUR CONFERENCE, but am hesitant to use names due to the risks involved. Suffice it to say, we have doctrinal confusion and sometimes chaos in our boards, processes, pulpits, and seminaries. But I’ll share some examples that are publicly reported. Links to some or all of these will be in the resource document.

In perhaps the most mind blowing example, we have a bishop. She presides over Colorado (where Kathy N’s son-in-law, Audra’s brother-in-law Jason is ordained clergy) and several other territories. According to our BOD, she was ineligible to be a bishop. Yet, the western jurisdiction elected her bishop. So, someone (I don’t know who) filed charges (one of our feeble enforcement mechanisms) arguing that, she’s ineligible to be a bishop. It seems those in the WesFFFtern Jurisdiction or in her episcopal area effectively said, yeah, we’re not going to do anything with those charges. So, then, and I don’t recall all the mechanisms behind this, the issue came before the UMC Judicial Council. The Judicial council is kind of akin to a UMC Supreme Court. As I recall, they ruled that, yes, indeed, she’s ineligible to be a bishop. There’s more to this story, but you might be thinking, she’s not a bishop anymore, right? Wrong. She is and has been a bishop since 2016. By all indications, she’ll be active until she retires at or near age 72. And, she’ll still hold the title for life.

Now, you might think, she’s a bishop…surely she agrees and speaks in accordance with our doctrinal beliefs. Well, you be the judge. In one picture you can find on the internet, she’s holding a sign that says, “We are all Muslim.” I’m not! In 2005, she preached a closing sermon at a conference based on Acts 16:16-18, and criticized St. Paul for casting a demon out of the slave girl. She challenged the audience to question the centuries old interFpretation of this text, and question that the exorcism was an “act of liberation” for this girl. She went on to defend the demon’s possession of the slave, as this demon helped enrich her owners by giving her fortune-telling capabilities. She declared that by casting the demon out of the girl, Paul did nothing to make the girl’s life better and “probably made it worse” as she was NOW damaged goods. Still a bishop!

Jason, who many of you know, shared with me just last night the following: I would just affirm that the doctrinal chaos is not limited to a few cases. The doctrinal statements in the BOD are virtually meaningless because clergy final alternative was to interpret those statements that are not in line with historic, orthodox Christianity. My suspicion is that if you brought St. Luke to an Annual Conference event in the Mountain Sky Conference, they would be flabbergasted. Last thing, to poke at me, another clergy invited me to a drag event that they were hosting at their church in Denver. I told her I’d be happy to come if she’d attend our new member class where we covered the basics of Methodism and the Christian faith. She didn’t take me up on it, so I didn’t attend their event.

In another rare, but flagrant example, from Christianity Today: A United Methodist Church candidate for ordination published a shocking video this week on his website. Isaac Simmons is an associate pastor at Hope UMC in Bloomington, Illinois, who describes himself as a "drag-evangelist" that goes by the stage name of Ms. Penny Cost. In the video posted to his website this week, Simmons repeatedly declared that "God is nothing," "the Bible is nothing," and "religion is nothing." Simmons also claimed that the God of historic Christianity is a farce. "God is nothing, but if she were, she would be yes, queen-ing her way down the runways of Paris and Montreal...According to Simmons, God is "nothing but a drag queen with a microphone of biblical proportions who came from a "closet of darkness."" The pastor and drag queen also claimed that humanity was designed "in the gender-bending, identity-breaking, system-shaking image of God." Has anything happened to Isaac? As of today, as far as I know, no. He’s still an associate PASTOR in a UM church.

The confusion isn’t limited to the progressive side, either. We have a multitude (I’ve met some of them) of Methodist pastors and churches preaching and believing dispensationalist theology. I realize I may be stepping on some toes here, but dispensationalism as taught by Dallas Theological Seminary, John Hagee, or others is RADICALLY unbiblical. Looking to discern the return of Jesus based on blood moons, Israel, Russia, the weather on Tuesday, the cheeseburger I ate, or anything else is just nonsense. A robust compliance function would root this junk out also. We also have some Methodists who still oppose women in leadership or certainly women clergy. Nonsense. Again, radically unbiblical in my interpretation. Women belong 100% right alongside men in leadership, in the pulpit, teaching, and preaching. Period. Our doctrinal confusion has allowed ridiculous views to carry on far too long in Methodism.

Those are just a few of hundreds or thousands of examples…but the problem is pervasive. Maybe not that extreme often, but pervasive. And it isn’t getting better. There are links on the resource page to some of the issues with seminaries/colleges. We have confirmed that in the local pastor licensing school of Central Texas, just this summer, an elder in good standing told the local pastors being trained not to use the call and response after Scripture is read.. “This is the Word of God, Thanks be to God.” They said it elevated Scripture too much. And, again, I can give examples privately to you of events in OUR conference of very troublesome teachings on long-held positions on theology and Scripture. One of my colleagues, who many of you know, attended Austin Presbyterian Seminary, which trains a significant number of our Rio Texas Clergy. This is probably 30 years ago or so. He was given the nickname “resurrection boy” by his classmates (not all UM) because he was the only one in his class who believed Jesus Christ was actually resurrected.

How do the stay UM folks respond to all this? They’ll point to the BOD, look, our doctrines haven’t changed! And we wont’ let it! They’ll say these instances are rare and that the vast majority of our clergy and professors still hold to the creedal faith. They’ll also say, look, we ask questions at ordination (and perhaps at hiring in seminaries, I’m not sure) where they affirm they hold to our doctrine! Do you think an agent of destruction is willing to lie in their vows? I do. And even if truthful in vows, there’s no real continuing compliance assurance. Maybe their right, maybe it won’t. But it doesn’ matter if there’s no enforcement, no compliance. This brings me to an illustration…now, no illustration or metaphor is perfect, but follow me. This dawned on me in bed one night and thanks to Donna Rogers, I have refined it even more.

There’s a cool show on The History Channel (thanks Donna) called The Food that Built America. They cover the origin stories of some of our favorite foods and chains. One of the episodes, “Food Best served Cold,” I think, follows the story of two men/families, Carvel and McCollough. Both discovered, around the same time, that slightly melted ice cream tasted probably even better than the hard frozen (~7 degrees) stuff that was the only form to that point. They both began working on ways to reliably mass produce what we now know as soft-serve. I’ll focus more on McCollough, who founded what we know as Dairy Queen, aka the Texas Stop Sign. They figured out the engineering and could reliably produce soft-serve to meet demand. They began to expand and were really the first ones to use a franchise model, even before McDonald’s. Yet, even with their expansion, they were struggling. The younger McCullough and a business partner argued over strategy and the partner left. McCullough rightly assessed that the problem was his franchises. There was little compliance amongst all his franchises on what food was being offered, how it was being served, and the like. He cracked down. He standardized the menu, beefed up training and compliance, and guess what? DQ took off! Ray Kroc used a similar strategy a few years later with McDonald’s. He was infamous for random inspections and tough no-nonsense interventions to ensure compliance. At one point, he realized that across all his franchises, because they were sourcing potatoes from different farms all over the country, the french fry experience varied widely. So, he took in a handful of the best sellers and chose one potato, the Idaho Russett, to source the fries for ALL his McDonald’s, revolutionizing the potato industry in one decision. That’s what’s behind the McDonald’s fries I love so much.

What we have in the UM church, friends, is doctrinal chaos and confusion and no real compliance function. Any attempts at compliance are often seen as mean-spirited or hateful. Ray Kroc had a reputation of being mean. Probably McCollough sometimes too…I can imagine many of the franchisees after Ray or Alex McCullough left saying, “gosh they’re mean, I’m just trying to serve my customers here!” I wonder if they eventually realized the genius of compliance that led to them all thriving. I’ve also come to realize that the compliance function is simply never going to happen in the UMC. People can point to our BOD all day and say, look at our menu, it hasn’t changed! It isn’t going to change! Irrelevant. Our franchises, if you will, are providing all kinds of experiences inline or out of line with the BOD. If I go to any of the 7K DQ’s today, I’m going to expect that if I order a banana split, I’m going to get a banana split…and that it’s going to taste reasonably the same no matter where the location is. Or a cheeseburger, ice cream cake, whatever. If I go to 100 different DQ’s, order a banana split, and I get one 50 times, but I also get 20 veggie tacos, 10 taco salads, 10 sub sandwiches, 9 orders of steak and lobster (if you find that DQ, let me know), and in one location I get a glass of water and a lecture on how their anti-food in that location and that food is nothing. Do you think a compliance strategy for DQ or McDonalds or whoever that consisted of a few questions when the franchise first started would suffice? “Do you promise to follow our menu and stay faithful to our brand.” Do you think that’d hold 1 year, 2 years, 20 years down the line? No…continuing compliance enforcement is essential. Now, some people like DQ, some don’t. Some people like McDonald’s, some don’t. Some prefer Coke over Pepsi, or vice-versa. You can go on forever, but THEY HAVE PREDICTABLE EXPERIENCES AND COMPLIANCE TO ENSURE IT! If they don’t, they’re going to decline and decline and decline.

In the UMC, you might look at the menu online and go to 100 different UMC’s to order a sermon on the resurrection and get the resurrection in some locations, the resurrection didn’t happen in some locations, Jesus was just a man in some locations, he didn’t really even exist in some locations, or God is nothing in at least one location. Lord, help us. Again, doctrinal chaos and confusion. This is most acutely experienced when UM’s move. Or when our kids go off to college or what have you. They visit another franchise of the UM and are astounded that, “this isn’t the Methodism I grew up in, or this isn’t the Methodism from our last town.” Happens ALL the time. Just in our conference, if you move from San Angelo to Austin and from First Church to First Church, your experience is going to be VASTLY different. Confusion.

Now, friends, compliance can be overdone. I’m not asking for brownshirts with weapons like Hitler had or some such. I’m not asking for an abomination of a church like Fred Phelps in Topeka or something. But compliance that says, lovingly, if you’re going to preach/teach that, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. COMPLIANCE CAN BE OVERDONE, BUT THE END IS CERTAIN WHEN YOU HAVE NONE.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Francis Asbury, Thomas Coke, and other early Methodists were masters of franchising long before McDonald’s or DQ. You can read about a lot of it in the Plain Account of the People Called Methodist on the resource sheet. He trained his pastors and new faith communities. They had standard sermons, standard books to be read, he visited and corresponded with them regularly, met with them as often as he could, assigned them to small, medium, and large accountability groups, and he stepped in when compliance enforcement was needed. And his movement experienced explosive growth.

Now I want to do a little thought experiment with you. Go back to a time when you were confused. Really confused. Think for a moment. Maybe when you lost a job unexpectedly, when you got dumped unexpectedly, when you overheard the conversation of a friend who you trusted or you thought really loved you…I can tell you a quick story when I remember being really confused. I had applied for an open internal audit position at a subsidiary of General Electric. At that time, this subsidiary was the darling of GE. They were raking money in so fast they couldn’t count it. I went through 7 interviews. After the last interview, the hiring manager said, “You’ve got the job. We love you. We’ll be talking about when you can start and such…but before it’s final, final, there’s one more step. You have to have a brief meeting with our CFO, an officer of GE. He just likes to kind of rubber stamp our hiring for internal audit.” Ok, sure. Couple of days later, I meet said CFO. He was having a bad day, and apparently so was I. The call comes…I can’t believe this, my potential boss says, but he said no. I’m crushed…I’ll bet you are too. UH, YEAH. It actually ended up being a blessing, thank you God, but in that moment I was CONFUSED. Now, think to your moment. Did you think to yourself in that moment, I FEEL SO STRONG! I FEEL SO CONFIDENT! I CAN TAKE ON THE WORLD! Of course not. I heard Adam Hamilton say, “I’ve always thought our (theological) diversity was a strength. No, Adam, it’s just confusion. Diversity in race, background, socio-economic level, life experience, family structure, age, etc, those are strengths. But doctrinal confusion in a theological organization, a church of Jesus Christ? It’s just confusion..I’d even say chaos.

Another huge seemingly very difficult issue to solve, if not impossible, in the UMC is our cost structure. We’re expensive. It’s HARD to change costs, especially at the denominational level and especially when you haven’t had a general conference in six years. I remember in 2012, a great effort was made to streamline cost and structure at the denominational level. The legislation passed! I had great hope and was so happy it did. Then, the judicial council ruled the legislation unconstitutional. You could’ve heard a pin drop, I’d imagine, at GC at that moment. The air gushed out of the room. Even when we want to change, it’s hard to change! The monolithic structure of the UMC formed in 1968 is expensive and crazy difficult to change. New wineskins can be made much more efficient. I will say I give great credit to Kendall Waller, our conference treasurer, who has streamlined our conference expenses about as much as you can. Still, it’s expensive. BREAKDOWN OF APPORTIONMENTS SLIDE. The GMC, one of the options of another Methodist Denomination that has been created, HALF AT MOST OF THIS, LIKELY LESS…TBD.

Now, some personal thoughts. I hope all of you realize that this breakup isn’t something I envisioned or wanted. I didn’t sit in Methodist Churches in Kansas and Texas, I didn’t go to seminary, take Disciple, become a candidate, get commissioned, go through Residency, get ordained, move my family four times, thinking....YES, EVERYTHING IS UNFOLDING AS I HAVE FORESEEN AND SOMEDAY I’LL GET TO BE PRESENT FOR THE FRACTURING OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH! Of course I didn’t. But it’s here. We’ve kicked the same can down the road 50 years. One person said we’ve had a boil festering for 50 years…it’s time to pickup the can, to lance the boil. A more progressive colleague I talked to a week or two ago called the UMC a dumpster fire. I’m not sure I’d say that, but he did. Something around 50 churches in our conference have started disaffiliation discussions, others are seriously considering it. The Global Methodist Church estimates that by the end of January, 600-800 texas churches will be fully disaffiliated and in the GMC. I’d say by the end of 2023, that number will skyrocket. I’ve included links to their website on the resource document.

There’s still a lot of good in the UMC, but doctrinal chaos/confusion is HARMFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE. I don’t want ANYONE to not be Methodist…but United Methodism is not the only option. I don’t want St. Luke or any of our churches to lose people to other churches, or to no church at all. I want all to orient themselves to the resurrected, reigning, eternal Lord Jesus as their Lord and savior! He’s THE answer, friends! I want us all, and many more, to be Methodist…but with the essential compliance function and a streamlined structure, improved itinerancy, and other improvements. The Holy Spirit led me to something just this week. At first, it was just words from, as best as I can describe it, outside of myself. Turn into the storm. Hmm, what does that mean? Ships? What…Some searching led me to what I believe God had in mind...I found a talk given by Rory Varden (the link is on the resource list) that I think helps perhaps clarify my vision of leadership in all of this. Western Kansas, my home state, and Eastern Colorado have vast rolling plains…one of the few places where both buffalo and cattle roam. Of course the great Bing Cosby rendition of Home on the Range, the state song of Kansas, enters my mind…Where the Buffalo Roam! Anyway, Rory, a native of Colorado, says that as a storm approaches, cattle and buffalo take two different approaches. Cattle run away from the storm. And, as you likely know, they aren’t very fast. So, inevitably, the storm catches them. As it does, they continue to run away from (really then with) the storm. In doing so, they maximize their time in the storm! They maximize their exposure to wind, rain, hail, and chaos. I told someone…cows aren’t very smart, or very fast, but they are very tasty at your local DQ, McDonald’s, or at Cheddars where I enjoyed a small steak today at lunch. Buffalo, on the other hand, once they see the storm approach and get close, take a different approach. They actually CHARGE the storm. The run into it, and ultimately through it, and thereby minimize their exposure to the wind, the rain, the hail, the chaos. I’m trying to be a Buffalo in all this. We’ve been running in the storm for 50 years, lots of others have exited to this side or that side and are no longer Methodist. We’ve lost a lot of our herd and our herd is much smaller than it once was! But those of us who remain UM have been maximizing our exposure to pain…I’ve realized, the storm is here, it’s not going anywhere, and it’s time to face it and plow through it to clarity on the other side.

Where do we go? We at St. Luke have entered a process to discern and then decide, to run into the storm if you will. Whatever St. Luke or any other church decides, at least by facing it, and facing the reality of the situation, we will have clarity on the other side sooner. Every day we’re one day closer. And, no matter what manifestations of Methodism emerge, we can still share some common goals, and bless one another in Christian love. I’ve talked in this meeting, we’ll have other meetings where you can talk and face this storm with me. Leah Hidde-Gregory will be here September 13th at 7pm to talk about the vision of the GMC. Kendall Waller, our Rio Texas Conference (300 and something churches) treasurer, will be at Sierra Vista on Wednesday, August 31st at 5:30pm. Scott is also having a town hall at First UMC, September 25 @ 5:30 in Celebration Hall, though probably different in format than tonight. As for our next meetings, I need to work with our District Superintendent and I’ll share news as soon as I have it.

I’m going to close with a prayer from Scripture that I think is fitting for those of us charging into the storm. King David knew about storms. Hear now most of Psalm 23: (My paraphrase) The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. He gives me rest and He restores my soul. He leads me on the right path because that’s who he is. Though I walk through dark and dangerous storms that bring death to my front porch; I will not fear evil in any form; For God is with me; His faithfulness comforts me. I’m certain that beauty and love will be with me all my life, and God will accept me into his home forever.