by Steve | Aug 23, 2023 | Front Page News, Sept-Oct 2023
New Life for Fractured Churches —
By Walter Fenton —
According to the latest figures, more than 6,100 local churches have disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church since 2019. According to a recent Christianity Today article, many more would as well, save for the often costly and complicated process required to do so. The bar for disaffiliations has been set so high in some annual conferences that local churches have joined together to petition civil courts to mandate that annual conferences allow them to exit the denomination. In some states judges have ruled against them, while others have ruled in their favor.
However, some congregations, which do have the freedom to hold disaffiliation votes, come to discover a minority of their members can block the majority’s will to exit the UM Church. The high bar of 67 percent of a congregation’s membership must vote in favor of disaffiliation.
What happens when local churches come up just short?
“Many of our people were just heartbroken,” said the Rev. David Lindwall, the former pastor of Montgomery United Methodist Church, in Montgomery, Texas, a community about an hour north of Houston. In early September 2022, Lindwall explained, “Fifty-eight percent of the congregation’s members voted to disaffiliate from the denomination, and of course, many of them attended the church for years. They had poured their time, talent, and resources into its missions and ministries, and lovingly cared for its facilities; they were very faithful members.”
Lindwall – who served Montgomery UM Church for 12 years and whose family had formed strong bonds in the congregation and community – acknowledged his disappointment with the outcome. And as the Rev. Cabe Matthews, his associate pastor wryly put it, “We had a bad week at the office.”
Layman John David Peeples of Collierville United Methodist in Collierville, Tennessee – a suburb on the eastside of Memphis – could commiserate with Lindwall and Matthews. Earlier this year, on a Sunday in late February, 495 members (64 percent) of the Collierville congregation voted to disaffiliate from the UM Church, but 278 (36 percent) voted to remain. The majority fell 12 votes short of the 67 percent required for disaffiliation.
Peeples, who co-led a committee that helped the church move through a long discernment process regarding disaffiliation, was deeply disappointed and exhausted. “Frankly, it was good that the very next morning I needed to leave town to attend to family matters for several days; I needed to be away. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got back home; I guess I figured I would just start looking for a new church to attend.”
In Montgomery, Lindwall, Matthews, and leading laity decided they wanted to make sure members who had voted to disaffiliate did not have to go looking elsewhere. They immediately started making plans to plant a new church, and two months later, in early November 2022, Christ the King Global Methodist Church held its first worship service in a local junior high school.
“It’s as if we traded a building for a mission, and for a much deeper faith,” said Matthews. “While we have an immense amount of work to do, there is an easiness to it, a lightness I have never known before in my life in ministry. In a way, we are just having fun! When we gather, there is a deep joy that we all feel. We know who we are and what we are about, and we know the Lord is with us!”
For the members who decided to leave Collierville UM Church, the pathway to something new was different, but the results are remarkably similar. The majority of the members of the church’s largest Sunday school class had voted for disaffiliation, and they decided they still wanted to meet together on Sundays. Its leaders started searching for a location the day after the vote; they found space at a funeral home. The idea was to meet for Sunday school, and then dismiss people so they could go looking for new churches to attend for worship.
As other Collierville UM Church members learned about the class gathering and where it planned to meet, they asked if they could join them. The requests kept coming all week, so by Sunday, instead of a class meeting, 350 people crammed into a space for 150, and held a worship service.
“People stood against the walls, stood in aisles, and in the foyers,” said Peeples. “There was no plan to hold a worship service or start a new church, but apparently the Holy Spirit did have a plan. We’ve been worshipping at the funeral home ever since, and given the interest and enthusiasm, we decided to plant a church. We are now known as First Methodist Church Collierville.”
The fledgling congregation eventually hired the Rev. Eddie Bromley to serve as its pastor. Bromley, a former associate pastor at the Collierville UM Church, felt called to lead the new church plant.
“My wife and I planted a church 20 years ago; it was in a small rural community,” said Bromley. “We had 40 people, and we all had about 18 months to plan, train and launch. Over almost a decade the church almost got to the size of 200 people, which was fantastic. But this time, rather than 40 people and a pastor starting a church, the Holy Spirit started a church, welcomed 350 people, and then a few weeks later invited a pastor to come and be a part of it. So, I get the joy of pretending to be the leader of this, as if I were smart enough to make any of this happen.”
While Bromley is a Global Methodist Church pastor, the new congregation has not made an affiliation decision. He is currently in the midst of a sermon series exploring Wesleyan distinctives, and notes that the people forming the new church appreciate their Methodist heritage and do not want to lose it.
“We’re trying to lay some good groundwork so when we do begin talking about denominational alignment, or at least the possibility of it, we’re not just sharing ignorance,” said Bromley. “We don’t want to make an alignment decision for just pragmatic reasons. I mean, there are some pragmatic reasons for being aligned with a denomination, including where do they get their next pastor when I’m gone, but I think there are deeper, more important reasons for alignment, and we want to carefully consider them.”
For the people who planted Christ the King in Montgomery, they decided fairly quickly to affiliate with the Global Methodist Church. And both Lindwall and Matthews, who were named the co-pastors of the new church, are GM Church clergy. The congregation has the distinction of being the first GM Church plant in the Eastern Texas Provisional Annual Conference.
“The lay people who stepped up to plant the church are highly committed, very generous, and very, very faithful,” said Lindwall. “They realize they’re on board a mission that is bigger than themselves. They’re interested in building a legacy church that will be in this community for years to come. It’s a challenging and exciting venture!”
Recently, the congregation unanimously voted to merge with The Woodlands Methodist Church, just 25 miles southeast of Montgomery. The Woodlands, also a Global Methodist Church, already has other local church sites in the area. The congregation’s new name will be The Church at Montgomery.
“We’re just honored that The Woodlands approached us,” said Lindwall. “We, of course, are theologically aligned and share the same passion for reaching people for Jesus, discipling them in faith, and helping people in need. This merger propels our mission forward, and will make it possible to accomplish some of our goals much sooner than we anticipated.”
The majority of the nearly 3,000 local churches that have joined the Global Methodist Church did so through successful disaffiliation votes, and so they came with their property and assets intact. But, like the Church at Montgomery, others are the result of people and pastors who have walked away from cherished sanctuaries and chapels, and in faith did something they never imagined doing – planting a church.
“We’re so busy just helping local churches and pastors transition into the GM Church that we’ve not had the time to determine how many of them are church plants, or how many of those planted churches are the result of people who lost a disaffiliation vote, and then boldly decided to plant a new church,” said the Rev. Keith Boyette, the denomination’s chief connectional officer. “But whatever the case, so many of the stories are an inspiration and testament to people’s fidelity to God’s call on their lives. And we’re confident a number of church plants that are still considering an alignment decision will ultimately join the GM Church.”
For the past year the Global Methodist Church has been partnering with the River Network to assist laity and clergy who would like to plant a church. Just recently the GM Church’s Transitional Leadership Council approved an additional 13 church planters and authorized them to plant churches from Concord, North Carolina to Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California, and places in between.
Walter Fenton is the Global Methodist Church’s Deputy Connectional Officer. A graduate of Yale Divinity School and Vanderbilt University, he is an ordained clergyperson and former colleague at Good News.
by Steve | Aug 23, 2023 | Features, Sept-Oct 2023
Taking Stock of Methodism’s Shift —
By Thomas Lambrecht —
At the end of July, we reached the climax of church disaffiliations for the year. The flurry of spring annual conferences approved several thousand church disaffiliations, meaning most of the churches that wanted to disaffiliate this year have been allowed to do so. Several hundred more churches are in line for disaffiliation at special annual conference sessions later this year, with the expiration of the disaffiliation process set for December 31, 2023.
At this point, we have a clearer picture of how The United Methodist Church has been affected by disaffiliation.
As of the end of July by my count, 6,191 churches have disaffiliated since 2019. That represents 21 percent of the total number of congregations present in the UM Church in 2020.
By any interpretation, that represents a significant number of churches. At the time The Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation was proposed in early 2020, many bishops and other church leaders were expecting about 5 percent of the churches to disaffiliate. The fact that 21 percent have done so, especially given the barriers imposed by some annual conferences, is a significant indicator of the dissatisfaction many local churches have with how the denomination has handled its theological conflict.
A substantial number of United Methodists are not convinced the UM Church can be or should be a “big tent” that accommodates both traditional and progressive understandings of theology and sexuality. The ridicule and animosity that many traditionalists have experienced because of their views made such a “big tent” seem unrealistic. Many expressed through disaffiliation their inability to live in a denomination that has de facto changed its definition of marriage and its understanding of human sexuality in contradiction to biblical teaching and seems poised to change its on-paper doctrines on these issues at the 2024 General Conference.
Where have churches disaffiliated? A disproportionate share of churches has disaffiliated in the Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions. When one compares the proportion of total UM congregations with the proportion of the churches that have disaffiliated, that imbalance becomes apparent (see chart above).
For example, although 35 percent of all U.S. churches are located in the Southeastern Jurisdiction, 46 percent of the churches that disaffiliated are located in the Southeast. By contrast, 21 percent of all U.S. churches are located in the Northeastern Jurisdiction, but only 11 percent of the churches that disaffiliated are in the Northeast.
Another way of looking at this is to see what percentage of the churches in a given jurisdiction have disaffiliated. The average for the whole denomination is 21 percent. Both the Southeast and South Central experienced 28 percent of their churches disaffiliating. The North Central had 18 percent of its churches disaffiliate, the Northeast 11 percent, and the West 5 percent (see the chart on next page).
Why would this be the case? One reason is that the South has remained a traditionalist bastion within the UM Church. Annual conferences in the South have generally upheld the provisions of the Book of Discipline and abided by church teaching. Traditionalists have remained in these churches because they saw no reason to leave, despite the progressive advocacy and occasional disobedience in other parts of the denomination.
Annual conferences in the West and in parts of the Northeast and North Central have for many years agitated to change the church’s teaching on marriage. A number of those conferences have ordained or appointed self-avowed practicing homosexuals as clergy, mostly without any consequences. The progressive voice has been much more outspoken in these areas and is even the controlling voice of the dialog in many of them. As a result, many traditionalists have left UM churches in these areas well before 2019, seeking out churches that were more congruent with their theological understanding. Often, these turned out to be non-denominational churches.
With fewer traditionalists remaining in the United Methodist population of the North and West, proportionally fewer churches would seek to disaffiliate.
A second reason for the preponderance of disaffiliations in the South is that most southern annual conferences followed a straight Par. 2553 disaffiliation process with no added fees or costs. In some cases, annual conferences used reserve funds to pay down pension liabilities and even apportionments to reduce the cost of disaffiliation. Only two of the 26 southern conferences (South Carolina and Florida) imposed high barriers to disaffiliation. (Alabama-West Florida just made it number three going forward with their ruling that no additional churches have a valid reason to disaffiliate.)
While none of the North Central conferences imposed high barriers, several made it more difficult than it had to be. That is why the 18 percent disaffiliation rate in the North Central is close to the 21 percent denominational average and close to the 21 percent of all churches found in the North Central.
In contrast, half the Western annual conferences imposed high barriers, including charging 50 percent of property value in the California-Pacific Conference. This is part of the reason why only 5 percent of Western churches have disaffiliated. In the Northeast, half of the annual conferences have imposed high barriers to disaffiliation, which has resulted in a disaffiliation rate that is 10 points lower than the denominational average.
How is the Global Methodist Church progressing? As of the end of June, around 3,000 congregations have been formally recognized by the Global Methodist Church. With the huge wave of disaffiliations taking place in May and June, many more are in the pipeline to be approved. Well more than 3,000 clergy have also been recognized, although some of them are retired.
As of mid-July, ten provisional annual conferences have been formed in the U.S. GM Church. Outside the U.S., three provisional annual conferences and two provisional districts have been formed. Six additional U.S. annual conferences are in the process of formation and should be up and running by the end of the year. Groundwork is being laid for additional annual conferences outside the U.S., as well.
Work is being done to plan the convening General Conference of the GM Church. Local churches that want to be represented at that General Conference should move now to join the GM Church, so that they will be able to help elect delegates to serve at that conference.
GM annual conferences are meeting and holding ordination services. For example, the Eastern Texas Conference ordained 92 clergy in February and another 73 in July. Other conferences are doing the same, although in lesser numbers.
Future Prospects. In many U.S. annual conferences, the process of disaffiliation is over. About a dozen annual conferences project to have additional disaffiliations this fall. The largest group of those is nearly 200 churches in North Georgia, where the conference recently removed the “pause” that had been in place, thanks to two favorable rulings for disaffiliation in state courts.
Once Par. 2553 expires at the end of 2023, over 90 percent of annual conferences in the U.S. have made no provision for any continued disaffiliations. A few have said they will allow disaffiliation under a provision that enables an annual conference to close a church and then sell it to the congregation. These conferences have said they will sell the building to the congregation for the same cost they would have paid under Par. 2553.
Outside the U.S., the disaffiliation situation is much different. Bishops are not allowing local churches outside the U.S. to use the process in Par. 2553, even though it was meant to be operative for all churches, not just in the U.S. There is currently no process for annual conferences outside the U.S. to disaffiliate easily. A few have done so by taking an end run around the Discipline. A few more are going through the arduous process of becoming autonomous Methodist Churches, which requires the approval of General Conference, as well as the central conference.
In light of the U.S. conferences that have imposed high barriers to disaffiliation, and in light of the fact that conferences and local churches outside the U.S. have not had an equal opportunity to disaffiliate, Good News and the Renewal and Reform Coalition will be proposing the 2024 General Conference adopt a new Par. 2553 for local church disaffiliation and a new paragraph for annual conferences outside the U.S. to disaffiliate. A significant number of U.S. churches, as well as nearly all churches outside the U.S., have been denied a fair and reasonable opportunity to disaffiliate due to conflicts in conscience. This inequity must be addressed.
Again, the tragedy of this whole situation is that it did not have to be an adversarial process. The Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation envisioned a fair and reasonable opportunity for churches and annual conferences to learn the facts of the situation and make an informed, prayerful decision on their future alignment. It would have avoided lawsuits that have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would have minimized animosity and conflict, making it possible to envision future cooperation between the UM and GM Churches. But many leaders of the UM Church determined to block the Protocol, even though some of them signed on to it in agreement. They created a power vacuum through postponing the General Conference, and then stepped into that vacuum to run the church themselves in the way they saw fit.
Despite the adversity, the fact that 21 percent of UM congregations have been able to exercise their conscience is a testament to their perseverance and conviction. Those qualities will come in good stead for the future of those congregations.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Aug 23, 2023 | Features, Sept-Oct 2023
When Life Doesn’t Go According to Script —
By Elizabeth Glass-Turner —
What do you do when you do what you’re supposed to do and it doesn’t go right? What are you supposed to think when your best preparations, intentions, and actions seem to go to waste or lead to loss instead of fruit?
A multitude of critics and coaches will tell you what the problem is and how to fix it. You sow again; nothing sprouts, or if it does, you suspect it’s a harvest of weeds. What do you do when this continues for a stretch of months – years, even? What if the more closely you follow Christ, the worse things go?
It’s not reducible to the usual learning curves: the normal process of gaining wisdom in the practice of Christian faith or vocational ministry. It’s not just about practical tools developed through growth. Sometimes, it’s not even necessarily tied to real and related dynamics: injustice, and spiritual warfare and the call to anointed intercession.
Every Christian needs community; every Christian needs prayer and needs to pray for others. And there are times when your prayer life deepens, only to see your professional traction spinning in the mud.
There are times when you follow Jesus Christ into the center of a mob to put your presence next to someone shielding their head from hands holding stones, only to see your calendar gradually empty.
But there are also times when stakes are unclear; when you’re sailing along fairly predictably. You’re not harboring or fostering known sin, you’re tending to self-management and due diligence, you’re growing in self-awareness and wisdom, you’re continuing to follow Christ to the best of your anointed, sanctified ability, and yet – you sow all your seed and little sprouts. What do you do when you do what you’re supposed to do and it doesn’t go right?
It doesn’t mean you must’ve done something wrong. It doesn’t mean you’ve been unwise. It doesn’t mean a particular method is faulty. If you’re not sure what’s going on and whether or not it’s a tool of the Holy Spirit’s conviction, run that sense of conviction by a few mature, trusted friends in your close circle, local or scattered.
When difficult seasons arrive, you won’t be short on critics or well-platformed gurus advertising solutions. But a sense of condemnation does not come from the Holy Spirit. The enemy of your soul would love for you to look around at a seeming lack of fruit, assume it’s your fault, and grow discouraged.
This is the poverty of the “prosperity gospel” Dr. Kate Bowler has written on so incisively in her book Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. Even sound Christians and experienced ministers may inadvertently assume that input leads to output, that best practices lead to multiplication, that expertise raises the likelihood of achieved goals or success.
When a veneer of piety is applied – that God will bless the faithful with a particular set of outcomes – the stage is set for believers in the pew or pulpit to encounter a crisis of faith if their lives or ministries go sideways.
“But I did everything right!” “But I didn’t do anything wrong!”
This sense runs deeply: that we control a “blessing” lever. Pastors pursuing ministerial fruit may unknowingly pursue the reassuring salve of concrete outcomes. “Bearing fruit” slyly shifts to tallying up the numbers associated with people sitting in pews, pulling out their wallets. It’s uncomfortable waiting for invisible, long-term, hard-to-quantify fruits, like those of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
If you sense condemnation when you face inexplicable hurdles that continually pop up, ask yourself what metrics you’re using, and whether or not they’re the metrics of Jesus, who saw many disciples walk away: “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66, NIV).
Ask if your unconscious metrics can withstand a visit to a pediatric oncology unit: a ward where kids with cancer receive treatment. If we live in a world where children get cancer, how can we say God always blesses the faithful with specific outcomes? If we live in a world where children get cancer, we have to sit with suffering, with the “unfairness” of it. If anyone “deserves” cancer, it’s certainly not a child. Sometimes, there are miracles. Sometimes, there are not. Neither case proves faithfulness, piety, or belovedness, or denies them.
Deep down, if you know this about the hardest examples of suffering, you also know you can take less credit than you’d like for any part of your ministry that seems “fruitful.”
But you also can’t wilt under a sense of condemnation when things don’t go right despite your best efforts. It can be true both that your actions have real meaning and consequence and also that you’re able to direct less than you think.
St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) is famously quoted growling her irritation with this reality. Slipping in mud, falling in a ditch, or being swept off her horse in high water (depending on the account), she burst out to God, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few.”
It may be one of the most honest prayers in church history.
On days when it’s all manure, no harvest, we face a simple fact. We all want to be fruitful; few want to live the line from John Wesley’s covenant prayer: “let me be laid aside for Thee.”
What if God asks you to trust the Holy Spirit’s calling and empowerment, whether or not you ever see any fruit? Any impact? Any positive results?
What if the Holy Spirit asks you to trust the sound of God’s voice through hurdle after hurdle, as your own goals keep getting obstructed? If God asks you to till hard soil with little yield, what will you say? Would you say, “of course, yes, I’ll do it,” like the son who said yes, then went away? Would you say, “oh–no, I’m not sure I can handle that,” only to be softened by the Holy Spirit, like the son who said no but came back?
When things don’t go right, it doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong; it also doesn’t mean you’ve done something right, a hero or martyr. Sometimes, God is weaning you off the approval of your peers. Sometimes, God is showing you that you put your confidence in metrics or methods or even theology instead of Christ alone.
Sometimes, God is entrusting you with the companionable silence of his presence, not disavowing you with the punitive withdrawal of his presence.
Sometimes, as Pete Grieg points out in God on Mute, in a physical universe governed by the laws of physics, you just slip in the mud.
When so many of Jesus’ disciples walked away, what did he say? “‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God’” (John 6:67-69).
Fruitful seasons are nice, but they have their pitfalls too. In reality, some fruitful seasons are overinflated bubbles ready to burst, like the disciples who turned back. The desire to maximize our time can tempt us to declare a harvest prematurely or hurry our discernment.
You don’t need a bumper crop of obvious fruit in ministry. You never did. It won’t prove you’re faithful; it’s not a reliable indicator of the state of your soul, either. It’s kind of an old lie, after all – that possessing a certain fruit can ensure you are like God.
Silly, really – trading the quiet companionship of God in the cool of the evening for the illusion of validation that external fruit tempts us with.
“‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’”
Jesus has always been enough.
by Steve | Aug 23, 2023 | Features, Sept-Oct 2023
Maxie Dunnam: Revival on the Horizon —
Several years ago, the Good News Board of Directors met in Memphis, Tennessee, and bestowed the United Methodist Renewal Award on the Rev. Dr. Maxie Dunnam. In the previous issue of Good News, we published the first part of our conversation with him and touched upon his spiritual journey as local pastor, social activist, influential author, seminary president, and former world editor of The Upper Room.
Good News’ award is presented to a person that has demonstrated dedication to the renewal of Methodism. It was named after the late Rev. Edmund W. Robb Jr., an unforgettable evangelist and author who served as chairman of the Good News board of directors.
For the occasion of the award presentation in 2016, friends gathered at a Good News dinner at Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis. At the ceremony, the Rev. Rob Renfroe, president and publisher of Good News, accentuated Dunnam’s focus on a Christ-centered ministry, as well as his commitment to civil rights and education for underprivileged children. My colleague also touched upon Dunnam’s winsome disposition.
“When he steps up to a pulpit, within a few words people think to themselves, ‘I like that man. I’d like to be his friend. Or I wish he were my uncle.’ And when people like you, they listen to you and you have a real opportunity to influence them for Christ,” said Renfroe.
“And the reason people like Maxie is because you immediately get the impression that he likes you,” observed Renfroe, a long-time friend. “The reason you love Maxie is because you sense that he loves you.”
Maxie has had a great impact on Methodism because “people know that he cares,” said Renfroe. “So they have listened when he spoke, they have followed when he led, and they have given their time and their talents and their treasure when he has challenged them to a worthy cause.”
The award presentation also celebrated his influence as a faithful delegate to numerous United Methodist General Conferences, as well as his pivotal roles in helping create both the Confessing Movement and the Wesleyan Covenant Association.
“Maxie, by nature, is a lover with a heart of grace. But, there is a commitment to the truth of the gospel that has propelled him into the fray, at times reluctantly,” concluded Renfroe. “And for who he is and for all he has done, we honor him.”
In the previous issue of Good News, we spoke with Maxie about his childhood, call to ministry, his signature on the “Born of Conviction” statement, Bishop Gerald Kennedy, Brother E. Stanley Jones, and the mystery of prayer. What follows is the second-half of our colorful conversation.
– Steve Beard, editor of Good News
########
Because of the [previously discussed] “Born of Conviction” statement, you moved from Mississippi to California in the 1960s. That was a shift for your family.
I was excited about going to something new and fresh. One of our friends – who was not a signer of the “Born of Conviction” statement – was out in California. He had nurtured me in the ministry. We visited him six months before we went. We saw San Clemente and I said, Wouldn’t it be would it be wonderful to live in a place like this? That’s where I planted the church.
What did you learn spiritually on that journey?
I didn’t know anything about anything. That was another confirmation of God’s guidance in a way that you don’t even recognize it until it’s over.
The district superintendent had given us the name of two couples in San Clemente. That’s all we knew and those two couples just took us in and welcomed us. They were happy because they knew they were getting an evangelical pastor.
What that taught us at a deep level is that it really doesn’t matter where you go, God’s people are there – it’s a matter of getting connected with them. Not all of them are on the same level of the relationship, but they know themselves to be God’s people and that was confirmed.
After 10 years of ministry in Southern California, you moved your family to Nashville to work at The Upper Room. Big shift.
The Upper Room was a huge chapter in my life. That’s really when I became what I call a “world Christian.” How I got there is really a mystery. I had begun to lead some retreats and speaking at conferences.
I received a letter from Wilson O. Weldon, the world editor of The Upper Room, saying that they were starting a new ministry that was going to try to resource and engage the readership of The Upper Room – 4 million back then – as a prayer fellowship and get their energy directed.
I just felt, my Lord, I don’t know anything about that.
What year was this?
That would have been 1974. About the same time, I had been involved with some people in Mississippi who were friends and lay people committed on the racial issue – which was a rare kind of thing – and they had become involved with people in Maryland who had a retreat center. We had been in an interview to become the head of that retreat center. It was so attractive because my wife Jerry and I have had a faint, and sometimes passionate, desire to live in a deliberate Christian community. That’s been a thing that has stirred in me through the years and that would have been it.
That ends up being the most exciting thing that you never ended up doing. [laughter]
We got on the plane headed back to California. We hadn’t been in the air 30 minutes before we looked at each other and said, We can’t do that. We both had the same feeling.
It wasn’t but a couple of months later before we got this word from Wilson Weldon at The Upper Room. I think that I’m honest emotionally – and I always try to be honest with other people if I’m involved relationally – when they began to talk about me leading a prayer movement I just said to him, “Look I am not an expert in prayer and I think you’re talking to the wrong person.”
You felt like this was a mistake?
I still have a letter that I wrote them on the plane going back to California telling them that I just didn’t think I was the person for that job because of my weakness in prayer.
The long and the short of it is that they called me and offered me the job. It’s one of the two or three times in my life when I accepted a position that I knew I was incapable of really performing. That’s also what I felt about becoming the president of Asbury Theological Seminary.
Every reader can relate to feeling inadequate. All you have to do is see the phrase “Prayer Specialist” and we all feel inadequate. We’re all amateurs, right?
That’s right. Absolutely.
There’s nothing that we are asked to do “spiritually” – and I put that in quotation marks – that we are capable of doing. We are equipped as we move along and as we are obedient. If we are obedient, we are equipped supernaturally.
That’s really what happened at The Upper Room. We need to be humble enough to recognize our deficiency, to confess it to those who are part of the responsible bodies, and trust that God has other instruments that he’s using to accomplish his will. When they invited me, I had to say, Well, they know what they need better than I do. Both Jerry and I felt that we should do it.
How did your name emerge at The Upper Room?
I tried to find out how in the world they had ever chosen to interview me for that job. Ira Galloway had become the General Secretary of the Board of Evangelism. Ira didn’t know me. And I knew Wilson at The Upper Room didn’t know me.
The General Board of Evangelism had a program where it sent young ministers to Mexico to preach revivals. I was one of the ten they sent to Monterrey, Mexico. The visiting preachers and our hosts would get together every morning for prayer and sharing before we started teaching and preaching at 10 o’clock in the morning. One of the guys on the team was from Texas. He is the one who told Ira, “Maxie is the guy you need to look at.”
Earlier, you used the phrase “world Christian.” What do you mean by that term?
Being in that position at The Upper Room, there is lots of travel involved because we had all these editions all over the globe. That was a tough part of the job, but it was a great part of the job. We visited the different editors all over the world and began to share life with them. For a country boy from Mississippi, California was an eye opener, but this was even beyond that.
I also began to see the expression of the gospel and the church in different ways – and how it was effective and not effective.
I met dynamic Christians – some of them world-class. I met Christians who were laboring in very difficult situations but were radiant and faithful. Some of that became clear when I traveled with Dr. Tom Carruth and Brother E. Stanley Jones at Ashram meetings.
[Editor’s note: Carruth taught on prayer at Asbury Theological Seminary and authored 15 books on the subject. He died in 1991. E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973), of course, was a historic international Christian leader who developed the Christian Ashram movement.]
I am who I am and I’ve done what I’ve done because there’s been three or four big occasions when I was called and I knew I was incapable – but I thought it was a genuine call and that I would be enabled to do the job. We’re enabled as we move out. The Upper Room was a big example of that.
You began at The Upper Room as the director of Prayer Life and Fellowship. You then became the world editor of The Upper Room daily devotional guide. It had a worldwide circulation in the millions at the time and was printed in 38 different languages.
When I went to The Upper Room I was responsible for the area of work that was related to the fellowship of prayer and developing resources. I wasn’t proficient in prayer or spiritual direction. I began to read everything I could read and talk to everybody I could talk to. As a result, I came in touch with the saints of the ages. I saw people in East Germany that were oppressed, but faithful. I saw the prophetic witness of Dr. Peter Storey and Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa. We saw the humble saints that were without fame – as well as those with well-known names. Both had deep commitments. I had a chance to be exposed to all kinds of people.
You once had a meeting with a very consequential man: Pope John Paul II.
I met Pope John Paul while I was the editor of The Upper Room and on the board of the World Methodist Council.
What struck you about him?
His humility. Pope John Paul knew he was under a heavy burden and a heavy responsibility but there was nothing haughty about him. Nothing. In fact, quite the opposite. The only reason my picture was taken with him was really accidental. Wherever the Pope goes, there are photographers. I didn’t even know that picture was taken. These photographers post those pictures on bulletin boards all over the place.
I’ve been thinking about Pope Francis, the current pontiff. He’s rare. I’m not sure he’s going to be as popular as others but sometimes he tickles me. I don’t see how a man could even function there – but they have to know that they’re the spiritual head of millions and millions of people.
Agreed. Switching to a different lane of leadership, let’s talk about how you became president of Asbury Theological Seminary.
Again, it was Tom Carruth. I had been invited to serve on the Asbury Seminary board after having been given an honorary degree. I was at Christ Methodist Church in Memphis and I got to know the Asbury community a little bit after being on the board. I discovered Asbury was a place I wish I had gone to for my own seminary education.
Jerry and I went to a meeting with the World Methodist Evangelism to England with Eddie Fox [longtime leader of World Methodist Evangelism] to dedicate the statue of John Wesley feeling his heart “strangely warmed.” We knelt at that statue and prayed. Three months later the Asbury presidency opened up. Six months later I was offered the job.
How did that come about?
I had resigned as chair of the presidential search committee. It was a time of obedience because we could not have been happier at Christ Church. It was dynamic. It was growing. Two of the greatest missional expressions that are going on in Memphis were birthed at Christ Church. It was just a great church and it was growing. The person that teetered me in the direction of being interested in the presidency was Jimmy Buskirk.
Dr. Jimmy Buskirk was a precious soul. He was the long time pastor of First United Methodist Church in Tulsa. He served on the Asbury Seminary board with you. He had also been the founding dean of the School of Theology at Oral Roberts University.
I was happy at Christ Church but Jimmy came to see me and said, “Your ministry, Maxie, at Christ Church is a ministry of addition. If you become the president of Asbury, it’ll be a ministry of multiplication.”
He was right. Pivoting in a different direction, I am going to list some names. Give me your thoughts.
Bishop William R. Cannon (1916-1997).
I have a real love and attraction for people who are themselves – and don’t try to be anything else – but have some uniqueness that just sets them apart. Bishop Cannon was one of those people. When I went to Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, he was the Dean.
He would preach in chapel now and then and I remember two or three occasions when everybody would just remain, just linger – not talking to each other. Our relationship was very loving – it wasn’t formal. When I went to The Upper Room, we had dinner and he said, “Maxie, don’t stay there too long. You need to be preaching.”
Wise advice.
Yeah, beautiful. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. But he did emphasize his eccentricities. He was the chair of the General Board of Evangelism. He gave a speech at the Confessing Movement. He was as orthodox as you can get. He was an evangelical – not in the popular sense of the word – but he really wanted people to be won to Christ. There’s a sense in which he really was a lot like Bishop Gerald Kennedy from California. Very different personalities. You never knew how they were going to express their passion.
Dr. William J. Abraham (1947-2021). Our dear Irish friend, Billy, who taught for ages at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas.
First, I felt he died too early. He was one of the best theological leaders we had – as smart as any of the theologians I knew, but he did not let that smartness keep him from communicating the gospel in an understandable way. Our friendship was really growing. We had been friends a long time, but I didn’t see him a lot. I’m sure he knew that I had become the president of Asbury Seminary when he was a primary candidate, but we never talked about it. I get the feeling that Billy would have loved to have been the president of Asbury Seminary. I think he was that kind of leader.
One more mutual friend: Dr. Thomas C. Oden (1931-2016) from Drew Theological School.
There’s a sense in which Tom was a little bit more of a churchman. Tom would have never been the communicator that Billy was – I don’t think he ever was – but their theology is very much the same. They’re both brilliant. Both of them loved the academy – and championed the academy. I don’t think Tom ever wanted to be anything other than what he was.
Tom and Billy rarely faced a battle they weren’t willing to fight.
That’s right. Both of them were fighters but Billy was a feisty fighter. Tom was a conservative fighter.
Let’s talk about the launch of the Global Methodist Church.
I really have come to believe that the Global Methodist Church is an answer to prayer. It isn’t that we’ve been praying for a new denomination – we’ve been praying for revival. I’ve been a Methodist preacher longer than there’s been a United Methodist Church and I have been totally – maybe more than I should have been – committed to the United Methodist Church.
I’ve poured my life into that denomination and the World Methodist Council. I’ve been a part of Methodism and have fought the battles to conserve what the UM Church has always said she was in terms of how we define ourselves. I could have lived basically with the Book of Discipline of the UM Church the rest of my life, except I’d want to change some things about the bishops.
The obvious pattern of the church, it seems to me, developed a strong vocal, very influential liberal presence. That’s not just theological. There was a another group – not evangelical, really – we would really label as “centrist.” I really have been a part of that.
You would consider yourself a centrist?
I have, through the years.
These categories can be confusing, sometimes overlapping.
I’m clearly traditionalist now, but I think it’s because of my pastoral inclination of wanting people to be together. And then I saw the glaring violation of the Book of Discipline with one of our retired bishops performing a same-sex wedding ten years ago in Alabama, and the effort to liberalize the UM Church.
In the southeast, we always seemingly elected bishops that were different than that – we thought. I decided that something needed to happen. I didn’t think about it in terms of division, but I knew it had to be some sort of division and that happened to me at the 2019 special General Conference when the bishops brought the four ways forward.
The bishops themselves didn’t want to consider the traditional one – being what the UM church has said she is, but with more accountability for the episcopacy.
That’s the way I saw it. I left that General Conference just really down.
I had a small group of people scheduled to go to Cuba. There’s been a revival going on in Cuba for a long time. I really needed that and it was terrific. I’d been to Cuba before, but I’d never really experienced the depth of spirituality there.
The 2019 General Conference reaffirmed what we had affirmed the four years preceding but it turned into a shouting match. As you know, the Western Jurisdiction publicly announced that it was not going to abide by what we had decided. The bishops had come to the General Conference divided themselves.
Are you optimistic about the future?
I’m excited about the Global Methodist Church because I believe it is a great expression of revival. I think the structures are too great and the interest groups are too firmly established in the United Methodist Church. It could be a fresh start for everybody. It will give us an opportunity to really be serious about how we, as a body, are going to preach and teach and experience the Holy Spirit.
I believe we’re going to have a demonstrable revival.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News. All of us at Good News are grateful for the Christian witness of our friend Maxie Dunnam. Photo: Anthony Thaxton. Used by permission.Maxie Du
by Steve | Aug 23, 2023 | Features, Sept-Oct 2023
Finding Life Between Law & Grace —
By Carolyn Moore —
Not long ago, I got a text from someone who was a part of our local congregation until she moved to another state. She’d seen something in her devotional guide that sparked memories of things we talked about when she was part of our fellowship.
“Today’s devo reminded me of our time together in healing prayer when you said to me, ‘You’ve prayed … now WALK IN IT.’ Those three words (‘walk in it’) have resonated with me, over and over, when my mind and emotions overtake my faith. Healing prayer. Imagine! Actual healing. Daily healing. Sanctification. Remember when I thought sanctification was ‘Heyull’?”
That’s how she spelled it: h-e-y-u-l-l. Heyull.
She was a new Christian (we will call her Janet), or at least, a renewed one. She’d come home to Jesus after years away. It had been a great joy to see Janet find her place in the body of Christ and watching Jesus do some significant healing in her life. I had prayed with her and listened to her complicated story and we’d shed tears together.
Janet was right, of course: sanctification is hard work. By the time someone gets serious about the process of changing spiritually, they’ve usually tried all the other options and have discovered there is no short cut. If change is going to happen, something has to die, and deaths are not easy! Ask anybody who has had to quit smoking or drinking or drugging or who has had to quit any unhealthy habit. The quitting itself is hard work.
Somewhere in the death of that thing, we get a glimpse – if not of where we are, then – of where we’ve been. So sanctification happens while we are doing it, and we feel it when we walk from death to life or from darkness to light. We know from the contrast that hell has been in the equation, and it is only for the promise of what is on the other side that we bother. Or because our hell got bad enough to move us on. All of this is to say, holiness is not for wimps.
Passed on from Wesley. Methodism’s founder John Wesley and his brother Charles lived in the 1700s. They were pastor’s kids, but their mom is the one who really discipled them. John especially seemed to have a strong hunger for a deeper life of faith. His understanding of salvation was broader and deeper than “getting saved.” When he talked about it, he used terms like “Christian perfection” and distinguished between personal and social holiness – think journey inward and journey outward – and over time he developed his understanding of what we call “entire sanctification.”
A few months before he died, Wesley wrote this in a letter to Robert Carr Blackberry: “This doctrine [entire sanctification] is the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists; and for the sake of propagating this chiefly He appeared to have raised us up” (September 15, 1790).
In his book Perfect Love, Dr. Kevin Watson defines it theologically this way: “Entire sanctification is the doctrine that defines Methodism’s audacious optimism that the grace of God saves us entirely, to the uttermost.”
I love that phrase: audacious optimism. I love thinking of us as the people who carry that kind of spirit, truly the spirit of Jesus. It is the glorious trust in God’s ability to make us better than what we are and then, better and better still. It is the belief that God actually has the capacity to heal me and make me whole and holy.
It goes against the typical narrative surrounding the idea of holiness. The Puritans ruined it for all of us. They made it sound like a list of dry and joyless rules we had to follow in order to keep God happy. As a consequence, we still tend to hear that word and get very serious and wonder what we’ve done wrong. We forget that freedom and lightness and joy are the hallmarks of a holy life.
Holiness is meant to release us into the joys of the Kingdom of God. To operate in holy love – loving God with all my heart and loving my neighbor as myself. That’s how we advance the Kingdom of God. It is not meant to be an unbearable burden. Instead, it is the ultimate form of freedom.
I’ve discovered that you don’t have to understand it to pursue it. You just have to want it – to desire your motives to be more pure, your desires to be more Christ-honoring, your heart to be more open to loving like Jesus.
Far from being restrictive and fun-sapping, holiness calls out the best in us and causes us to glorify God. It is art, not engineering. It is the good life.
“This is Methodism’s big idea: salvation brings not only forgiveness and pardon but also empowerment and freedom to live a faithful and holy life entirely and right now,” writes Watson. “This is our grand deposit – the treasure that God has entrusted to the particular people called Methodists.”
Big questions. Before they were ordained, Wesley would ask Methodist pastors if they intended to be saved entirely – to the uttermost. He had a list of nineteen questions that he asked every pastor. Methodists to this day still use those questions. Three of the first four deal with entire sanctification.
• Have you faith in Christ? In other words, what would it take for you to engage your faith?
• Are you going on to perfection? This question is not about whether we have reached it or even if we can. The question is: are our lives pointed in that direction? Are you heading in the direction of spiritual perfection?
• Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Seriously, are you going someplace spiritually? Do you actually expect to get there? Is your intention to be perfect in love? To be so ruthlessly opposed to stagnation in our life with Christ that we continually press on toward the prize of perfect love? Because holiness or Christian Perfection or entire sanctification is ultimately about love.
• Are you earnestly striving after it? Sounds a little intimidating and pushy, doesn’t it? And not very fun. “Earnestly striving” sounds a lot like legalism or self-effort – everything we are trying to get away from – right?
When discussing holiness, it is easy to get off track. It can be tempting to become more interested in the laws than in the Law-giver. So from our earliest history, our people have mishandled this gift of holiness. We made it more interesting for engineers than artists, carefully carving it into hundreds (or countless) rules to memorize and master. We turned an abstract work of immeasurable beauty into a blueprint.
Hard work. Entire sanctification is hard work. The writer of Hebrews says, “For the joy set before him (Christ) endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
So not even Jesus got a pass on that walk through pain to get to the other side where the joy is. The hard work of sanctification is the part of solid, orthodox Christianity we don’t often talk about. It is really about understanding what God wants to do to our lives.
The woman who texted me, Janet, got her first taste of sanctification. “Now I accept the power and pain of it only because I’ve learned I cannot handle the burn of sanctification without Jesus’ constant presence,” she wrote. “Not my actions or feelings but his presence and power.”
I can feel how much she has learned as she has walked out this journey. Sometimes our talk about sanctification can seem a bit abstract. But nothing is more real than this spiritual work of “growing in every way more and more like Christ” (Ephesians 4:15, NLT). That’s how the Apostle Paul put it. Nothing is more real than the power and pain that comes with seeking and developing a tolerance for Jesus’ constant presence. But don’t you want it?
At the same time that I was interacting with Janet about sanctification, I spent the day in a courtroom. I had two recurring thoughts in my mind. One was, I can’t believe we are here. I can’t believe it has come to this. I can’t believe we had to ask a secular court to decide for Christian people what is right. This is exactly why Paul didn’t recommend it. Court and the law causes us to focus on what is wrong, rather than being free to focus on what is right and good and pure and holy. The law will never get us the distance of grace.
Sometimes circumstances will draw us to that legal option when it seems like the only one we have left. But, can the Law ultimately get you where you want to go?
The other thought in that courtroom was, This Sunday, I’m talking about the difference between law and grace and how law and grace interact with the process of sanctification. Yet, here I sit in a courtroom, leaning on the law and wishing for grace.
That was a moment for me. I recognized that no human system can generate grace, because grace is incubated in relationship with God. This is one of the meta-stories of the Bible. We begin in the Old Testament with God bringing his people out of exile into the desert, then handing them the Law as a first primer – think of it like a first coat of paint – on their way to understanding God’s true colors and the vibrant color of sanctification.
In Exodus, we get the Ten Commandments. In Leviticus, God begins to drill down into each of those major themes to teach us that a thousand times a day we are confronted by pockets of death. However, inside this fallen state there is a choice and an invitation to go looking for life.
Leviticus is a hard book. It is where Bible reading plans go to die. Why? Because it is hard to hear the bigger point, which is that holiness really is all about life.
So, ridding your house of yeast, ridding your clothes of mold, ridding your life of sexual activity you weren’t designed for – all those rituals and laws for the Israelite – were little practice sessions on how to go looking for life. At the center of this whole conversation in Leviticus – all of it about what it means to be holy, about what it means to live the good life – sits what they call the Holiness Code. And like a heading over this section, God tells Moses to tell the people: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).
The Hebrew word for holy is qodesh. We find that word more than 100 times in the book of Leviticus. Seventeen times in Leviticus chapters 21 and 22, we find either that we are holy or that God is, or that we are to be holy because God is. All the way through the Holiness Code – Leviticus chapters 17 to 26 – God makes it clear that the point is to know God as he is. We do these things so we can identify with God, so we can know him, so we can recognize his voice when we hear it.
We are holy by proximity to God. It is his character and his voice that make us holy.
The writer of Leviticus gives us this whole section of very specific laws about all kinds of things: mold, not putting a curse on someone, not seeking revenge, sexual relationships. It reminds me of those warning labels made by lawyers: “This coffee is hot” or “This plastic bag is not a toy.”
We have to be told because on our own, we are drawn toward death. So the author talks very directly about behavior but he comes back to this refrain over and over again: Be holy because I am. In other words, get close enough to God to hear his voice.
These laws are highly relational. In fact, it is also in the Holiness Code in Leviticus that we find the second greatest commandment: to love your neighbor as yourself.
Stop and think about this for a minute. This is the line Jesus plucked from all those laws in the Holiness Code. The one line he pulled into his teaching was this: Love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, take care of each other because this is the filter that every other law has to run through.
Observe the Sabbath … and take care of each other.
Don’t make or worship idols … and take care of each other.
Take care of your body … and take care of each other.
Don’t leave the weak ones behind … take care of each other.
Respect foreigners and elders. Take care of each other.
All of this is to say that we are holy not only by proximity to God, but in proximity to each other. How we live impacts the people around us. This is why Jesus got so frustrated with the Pharisees. Over and over, he watched them become experts in the law while they cared nothing for people.
The law can only take you so far. It can tell you that your actions are right or wrong, but it can’t fix your motives, nor can it repair your heart.
So can we ever be entirely sanctified? Only by the love of God, manifested in the person of Jesus Christ, taking us by the hand and walking us that final stretch from the best we can do into the holiness of God.
Flying in the clouds. Not long ago, I had a prophetic vision in a time of prayer where I saw myself in the cockpit of a plane flying through the clouds. Eventually my plane would break through and I’d be able to see what I was flying toward. My fear while I was in the bank of clouds was that I would fly directly into a building.
That’s a pretty anxious feeling. When the clouds are thick or the weather is particularly bad, they tell me it can be disorienting for your eyes to go back and forth between what you see in the window and the panel in front of you. That’s because the messages aren’t the same. What is out the window tells you that you may be out of control, but the panel tells you the truth. The panel can tell you what true north is and it can show you altitude and terrain. It can communicate directly with air traffic controllers and it even has systems in place to fix itself.
The control panel actually can tell you what is true. And this, maybe, is a little bit like the Law. It can tell us what is true. When things get confusing it is wiser to keep our eyes on the control panel – on the Law – rather than looking out the window on a world that wants to turn it all upside-down.
When an airplane flies into a high-traffic area, there is something better and more accurate than a control panel: the control tower. Those in the control tower see the big picture. They see the buildings, the traffic patterns, the weather – they see it all. The control tower knows where all the other planes are. To find the runway, the pilot has to depend on the voice in the tower.
Perhaps that is what grace is. The Law is rules on a page, but Grace is a voice. If we want to land safely, we need to become intensely interested in that voice – not just to hear it but to trust it, to believe in it. Faith is trusting the Voice, even in the clouds.
“I had to learn my first lesson of the Christian life: how to obey before I understood. My whole life had taught me to master a concept before I could assent to it,” wrote Rachel Gilson in Christianity Today. “How could I possibly agree to something so costly without grasping the reason?”
Gilson was relating how God navigated her through some thick clouds. “In the end, it came down to trust. I knew Jesus was worthy of trust, because he had made a greater sacrifice,” she wrote. “He had left the bliss, the comfort, the joy of loving and being perfectly loved, to live a sorrowful life on earth. He took the pain and shame of a criminal’s death and suffered the Father’s rejection, all so I could be welcomed. Who could be more deserving of trust?”
She passes on a very important truth: “The obedience of faith only works when it’s rooted in a person, not a rule. Imposed on its own, a rule invites us to sit in judgment, weighing its reasonableness. But a rule flowing from relationship smoothes the way for faithful obedience.”
As Rachel makes clear, the difference between law and grace is the difference between rules and relationship. It is the difference between following the panel and following the Voice. It isn’t that one is wrong and the other is right. It is that one can only take you so far.
And that, I believe, is Paul’s point when he talks about law and grace in his letter to the Romans. He teaches that the Law has done its job when it tells us that what we are doing when we sin is wrong. When the Law does that, it is doing its job. It is telling us while we’re in the clouds that we are heading toward a brick wall. Paul even says that we make it worse on ourselves when we trust our own brain by watching out the window instead of looking at the panel.
“I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:22-25).
That’s it! We cannot be perfected outside of an intimate and growing relationship – friendship – with Jesus, until we learn not only his Law but his voice. We cannot be perfected in love until we surrender to him when we can’t see two feet in front of us in the clouds. That’s where the real perfecting happens because that’s where faith clicks in. To be made perfect in love, to be perfected in love toward our neighbor, to land on that runway – we have to learn how to listen for the tiniest, thinnest whisper of God even in the thickest cloud.
Carolyn Moore is the founding pastor of Mosaic Church in Augusta, Georgia. She is the author of several books, including, most recently, When Women Lead (Seedbed). Photo: Shutterstock.
