Finding Effective Leaders

by Steve | Aug 30, 2024 | In the News, Perspective / News

Finding Effective Leaders

By Rob Renfroe

Recently I had a conversation with a friend who is grateful for the Global Methodist Church but who is concerned for its future. Not because of anything that is presently occurring but because “we’re all human and we all have a tendency to drift from our good intentions and commitments.” He wondered how we can ensure that the GMC will remain committed to the Bible, to making disciples and to refusing to conform to the world. He is wise enough to understand the GMC may not be in danger of losing its way anytime soon, but now is the time to put in place policies and structures which will encourage, if not guarantee, that future generations are true to the vision of the church’s founders.

After a good conversation about structures that will make bishops and pastors accountable to the church unlike what we’ve seen in my lifetime, I told my friend what may be an overstatement, but I believe it. “Just about any system can work if you have the right people in place. No system will work if the wrong people are in charge.”

That’s a clumsy way of stating what I know to be true, as leadership expert John Maxwell says: “Everything rises and falls with leadership.” Great corporations, great schools, great governments, great churches have great leaders. They have leaders who cast vision, inspire people, equip others to be effective, raise up and empower additional leaders, keep the organization faithful to its purpose and remove those who would subvert its mission.

The role of bishops within the GMC is still being determined. There are differing ideas concerning how much authority they should possess and whether they will serve primarily as teachers and exhorters or whether they will also be deeply involved in the administrative affairs of an annual conference. I have my preference, but this is one where good people can differ.

Either way, it is critical that we elect people who are right for the role of leadership. In my past denomination, persons were often chosen for the episcopacy because he or she had been a district superintendent, the bishop’s executive officer, or had served the church on a national board. Others were elected because they were genuinely likeable and could work with all kinds of people. Some rose to the top because they represented a faction within a conference that wanted to promote a particular agenda. In other words – position, personality, politics. An organization that chooses its leadership using those criteria will over time drift from its mission, decline in numbers and likely implode because of competing visions.

At the upcoming General Conference in San Jose the GMC may for the first time elect six interim bishops who will serve for two years and who may be re-elected for a longer term at the following General Conference in 2026. If we should not elect our episcopal leaders based on past positions, personality or politics, what then should we use as criteria? Competence, compassion and character.

Competence: Has the person been effective in ministry? Ministry is a broad term. It encompasses everything from hospital visits to setting budgets to delivering a sermon. Are we looking for persons who capable jacks-of-all-trades? No. We are looking for people who have a proven track record of making disciples of Jesus Christ. We need men and women who have inspired and equipped others to live holy, godly lives; who know what it takes and can teach others how “to grow a church;” and who have led congregations that have impacted their communities through ministries of caring for the poor and the dispossessed.

I once served under a bishop I admired in many ways, though our theologies differed a bit. She loved Jesus and wanted the church to grow. To her credit she brought a respected church growth expert to our conference who spoke about the need to plant new churches. She followed his presentation with her vision of starting many new congregations and stated her commitment to support the pastors who were willing to answer the call. Many did. It was exciting to witness. At the next meeting she presented these pastors to us so we might pray for them. Then she asked those who would be mentoring and leading these mainly young pastors in their new ministries to stand. They were the twelve district superintendents of our conference. One of the twelve had started a church. Practically none had ever grown a church. They were expected to teach what they had never done and what they had shown no capacity to be able to do. Sad to say, we heard very little about this new initiative in the following months and years. Why? Because the wrong persons had been chosen to lead.

The GMC needs bishops who are more than good guys and nice gals with fine intentions and a desire to serve. We need leaders who have done the work and who can teach the rest of us how to do our work in a better, more effective way.

Compassion. We need leaders who are committed to the truth of the Gospel and the authority of the Scriptures. Here there can be no compromise. At the same time, I believe the philosopher-theologian Francis Schaeffer was correct when he wrote: “There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.” Jesus was effective because he came with “grace and truth.” Not one without the other. Not one more than the other but both together.

One reason those referred to as “the sinners” in Jesus’ day listened to him when he told them to “repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand” was because they believed he cared for them. Unlike the Pharisees who also told them to repent, when “sinners” heard Jesus say those words, they felt his love for them. They understood that his intention was to lift them up to an abundant life not put them down because of the life they had lived.

We need bishops who love people – lost people, hurting people, sinful people, angry people, people who are difficult to love. Why? Because that’s our mission. The GMC was not brought into existence to create a church where you and I are comfortable, or where there’s no liberal influence, or where the doctrine is just right. The GMC exists to change the world. Our mission is to “make disciples” – that means reaching people who are lost and hurting and sinful and being used by God to transform their lives. We do not reach people if we do not love them. They will not care what we know until they know we care for them. We need bishops who know that we exist for others, not for ourselves, and who will compel us to be in mission because he or she loves people the way Jesus did.

Character. For a person to lead, he or she must have followers. For people to follow you, they must trust you. To trust you, people must believe you will do what’s right – not what’s easy, not what’s popular, not what’s best for you, not what creates the least disruption or controversy – but what’s right for the mission.

Leadership is never easy. Leaders must do difficult things, and they often must act when they are uncertain what is best. People will forgive mistakes in judgment. But they will never trust or follow a person who is lacking in integrity. Our bishops must be persons who have no personal agendas, no desire to be praised, no reticence to do what is difficult even if it is unpopular. People do not expect perfection. But they must be able to say to themselves, “I don’t know why he did that. But I know who he is, so I will trust him. I don’t understand her decision. But I am certain she believed it was best for achieving our mission together.” Little inspires people more than a person of character who is strong and true under pressure. And nothing destroys leadership as quickly as a lack of integrity. So, our bishops must not simply be good people. They must be persons who are strong and courageous and who live for an audience of One.

How can we guarantee the future of the GMC? Good policies and structures, along with real accountability, will certainly help. But ultimately, it will come down to leadership. Leadership that is characterized by competence, compassion, and character.

Please be in prayer for the delegates to the upcoming General Conference this September. They have important work to accomplish. But nothing will be more important than choosing who will  lead us into the new future that God has graciously provided for us.

Rob Renfroe is a Global Methodist clergyperson and president and publisher of Good News. Photo: United Methodist church leaders confer during a business session of their 2024 General Conference in Charlotte, N.C. From left are the Rev. Gary Graves, secretary of the conference, and Bishops Bruce Ough and Carlo A. Rapanut. Photo by Mike DuBose, UM News.

A Parting Thank You

by Steve | Aug 19, 2024 | In the News, Perspective / News

A Parting Thank You

By Rob Renfroe and Thomas Lambrecht

Good News was founded in 1967 to be a voice for scriptural Christianity within what would in 1968 become The United Methodist Church. Now, fifty-seven years later, our board of directors and our executive leadership team have determined it is time for Good News to conclude its work.

So, over the next few months we will be in the process of closing our office and one final edition of the magazine will be published after the first General Conference of the Global Methodist Church this September. We will continue to publish the weekly Perspective into the fall, and our website will continue to be available as an archive of Good News’ ministry and history.

By God’s grace, Good News played an instrumental role in forming the Global Methodist Church and in helping over 7,000 churches leave The UM Church. We need to thank God for how he has used our efforts in the past and now step into the future he has for Wesleyan Christians who are committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible.

I became president of Good News in 2009. Tom Lambrecht, after many years as a board member, board secretary, and board chair, moved from Wisconsin to Texas and took on the role of vice president in 2011. We are writing this editorial together primarily to say, “thank you.”

Earlier this summer, each of us transferred our ministerial credentials from the UM Church to the Global Methodist Church. We had remained within the UM Church so we might attend one final General Conference and work on behalf of our African and other international friends who wanted the same opportunity to disaffiliate that we in the U.S. had been given.

But each of us has now said good-bye to The United Methodist Church. Given all we have said and written, much of it critical of The UM Church, it may be surprising that what fills our hearts at this time is gratitude. We are immensely thankful for the lives and ministries God has given us and for the opportunities provided to us by the UM Church.

There is no higher calling on a human life than preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and shepherding his people. For some reason that is difficult to fathom, God in his grace gave us the immense privilege of proclaiming his word and serving his church as pastors. For his calling on our lives and the opportunity to minister to his people, we shall be forever grateful.

We were pastors within The United Methodist Church, each of us for over 40 years – Rob in East Texas and Tom in Wisconsin. It was the UM Church that recognized our gifts, affirmed our calling, and allowed us to serve its congregations. Welcoming us with open arms over forty years ago may be a decision some within the UM Church have come to lament. But we are grateful for a church that made a place for us to be in ministry, to do the work of God, and to fulfill his calling on our lives.

Even more, we are grateful for The United Methodist Church because it was there we came to faith in Jesus Christ. For Rob, it was a summer youth director hired by the First United Methodist Church of Texas City, Texas, in the summer of 1972. His name was Eddie Wills. It was the beauty of his relationship with Jesus that showed me there was more to Christianity than going to church and being a good kid – and that caused me late one night to kneel by my bed and ask Jesus to come into my life.

For Tom, it was a confirmation class led by a student pastor serving as an intern in 1968 at Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin, where I grew up. His name was Jerry Cline, who worked at our church one year while studying at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. That confirmation class helped me understand the Bible, the message of God’s love, and God’s desire that I become a disciple. When we sang “O Jesus, I have promised” on confirmation Sunday, I gave my commitment to follow Jesus for a lifetime, and he has never let me down.

There’s a well-known line that a year from now you will be the same person you are today except for the books you read and the people with whom you spend time. What’s true of a year is also true of a lifetime. And we have known the best people. The best – because of The United Methodist Church. Through our work to renew and reform the church we were blessed to spend time with, learn from, be inspired and formed by many of “the greats” – Maxie Dunnam, Bill Hinson, Eddie Fox, John Ed Mathison, Jimmy Buskirk, Ira Gallaway, Ed Robb, Jr., Ed Robb III, Jim Heidinger, Billy Abraham, Kenneth Kinghorn, Gary Moore, Ben Witherington III, John Grenfell Jr., Riley Case, Pat Miller, and a host of others. There was a time when we were in awe to be in the same room as these giants of the faith, sitting in a corner, listening closely to what they said, hoping not to say anything foolish in their presence if called upon to speak. And later as they passed the torch to us, we continued their work, so desperately wanting to make them proud. Many of them have gone to be with the Lord, while others have retired from active ministry, but none are gone from our hearts. For this blessing we will be forever grateful.

How would the story of The United Methodist Church have played out if Good News had never existed? If Charles Keysor had not written that first article “Methodism’s Silent Minority” that gave so many Bible-believing Methodists a reason to stay in the church instead of giving up and walking away nearly five decades ago? If the original board members had not held national conferences that brought UM evangelicals together – in fact, created a movement? If they had not done the hard work for decades at General Conference after General Conference? If they had not been willing to suffer the slings and arrows, the false accusations and the demeaning attacks of liberal and institutionalist church leaders back when the fight was truly difficult and often mean-spirited? If Jim Heidinger, a prince of the church with a gracious spirit and a backbone of steel, had not taken up the work after Keysor? How the story would have gone, we don’t know. But we are sure of this – there would be no Global Methodist Church. The vast majority of traditionalists would have left years ago, the UM Church would have gone radically progressive long before now, and whatever evangelical movement might have come out of it would, at best, be a mere shell of the GMC.

So, we are grateful for Good News. Grateful for its work, its influence, and its successes. And we are beyond grateful that God was gracious enough to allow us to help lead its efforts for the past fifteen years. Following Chuck Keysor and Jim Heidinger – what an honor and a privilege God has given us.

As we leave The United Methodist Church and as we conclude the work of Good News, we look at our lives and we are reminded of the words of the psalmist: “Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely, I have a delightful inheritance” (Psalm 16.5-6).

The lines have fallen in pleasant places for us. We could not imagine better lives than the ones God has given us. Nor could we be more grateful. Grateful to The United Methodist Church that provided us the opportunity to be in ministry, to those who led us to faith in Christ, to our wives and children who upheld us in ministry, to the congregations that blessed us, to the men and women who inspired us, and to all of you who have supported us and the work of Good News. Please know you are dear to us, and we will forever be thankful for you.

Rob Renfroe is a Global Methodist clergyperson and was president and publisher of Good News. 

Thomas Lambrecht is a ​​​​​​​Global Methodist clergyperson and was vice president of Good News.

Nigerian Conflict and Chaos

by Steve | Aug 12, 2024 | In the News, Perspective / News

Nigerian Conflict and Chaos

By Thomas Lambrecht

This has been a difficult summer for the Good News office. Hurricane Beryl caused two weeks of power outages, preventing us from working in the office or accomplishing much of anything. Technical issues caused our website to go down, leaving some people to believe we had gone out of business (we have not!). Then our email failed to work for several days. Everything is in the process of being fixed, and we are back up and running again. We are resuming our regular schedule of Perspective e-newsletters.

As some would say, this chaos is a “first-world problem,” in that most of the world is not so dependent upon electricity or technology as we are in the U.S. The United Methodist Church of Nigeria (UMCN) has experienced a fair amount of chaos this summer, as well, and its chaos is much more damaging.

As reported by the Global Methodist Church, the four annual conferences of UMCN have voted unanimously to withdraw from The United Methodist Church and join the Global Methodist Church. In the wake of that decision, Bishop John Wesley Yohanna resigned from the UM Church and was received as a bishop of the GM Church. Presidents pro tempore were appointed for the four annual conferences, and they have begun to operate as annual conferences of the GM Church.

That paragraph makes this transition sound simple and easy, but it was anything but.

As we and others have reported in the past, the Nigerian church has been riven with conflict since 2012, when Bishop Yohanna was elected bishop. One faction of the church refused to accept him as their bishop and withdrew from the UM Church to establish their own independent Methodist church. Repeated attempts at reconciliation over the years have been unsuccessful.

Several years ago, a key leader in the UMCN, Ande Emmanuel, began to resist the authority of Bishop Yohanna. He, too, has gathered a faction of supporters within the church and attempts to portray his group as the true UM Church in Nigeria. According to sources in Nigeria, there are allegations that Emmanuel has fomented violence against fellow church members by hiring “thugs” to attack and beat persons belonging to the mainstream Yohanna part of the church, disrupting worship services and other church activities. Emmanuel filed lawsuits in court attempting to take over the property of the UMCN.

Emmanuel filed complaints against Yohanna through the church accountability process, and Yohanna filed complaints against Emmanuel and his group. Those complaints were supposedly resolved by a Just Resolution last year agreed to by all parties. However, the terms of the agreement appear not to have been fully implemented. Each side accuses the other of failing to live up to the terms of the agreement.

The conflict came to a head around the time of the 2024 General Conference, when Emmanuel became a frequent speaker on the floor of the conference advocating for regionalization, which the bulk of the Nigerian church opposes. When Emmanuel and other delegates returned to Nigeria, they were greeted by protesters opposing regionalization and what they characterized as the LGBTQ+ agenda. Emmanuel’s group engaged in counter protests, and the threat of violence caused the local government in one city to close all United Methodist churches for a month to allow things to cool off.

Meanwhile, the court ruled that Emmanuel’s lawsuit was without merit, dismissed the lawsuit, and fined Emmanuel for bringing the suit. Many Nigerian members unhappy with the General Conference actions agitated for the UMCN to show its opposition to those actions.

Bishop John Schol (Greater New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania) was sent to Nigeria in June to attempt to negotiate a resolution of the conflict between Emmanuel and Yohanna and their groups. Instead, Schol reportedly got an earful from the annual conference cabinets voicing their displeasure at the General Conference actions. He was unable to fulfill his mission of reconciliation and was apparently escorted to the airport for his own security.

Bishop Yohanna had called special sessions of the four Nigerian annual conferences. The four conferences voted unanimously to exit The United Methodist Church with all their properties to join the Global Methodist Church. Bishop Yohanna and nearly all the district superintendents of the four conferences then resigned from the UM Church to become Global Methodist.

The UM Council of Bishops then appointed Bishops Schol, Nhiwatiwa (Zimbabwe), and Streiff (Southern Europe, retired) to serve as a team of interim bishops in Nigeria. In their communication, the bishops allege the special annual conference sessions were not held according to the Discipline. “There are reports that Annual Conferences were held, and Conferences voted to leave The United Methodist Church. This is not true. There were no Conference Sessions convened according to our Book of Discipline, and most delegates/conference members were not invited to these gatherings.”

Reports on the ground and official communications from UMCN leaders, including a press conference held by Bishop Yohanna, state that the conference sessions were held and that they did take action to withdraw. It is probable that annual conference members belonging to Emmanuel’s group may not have been included in the conferences, since they had renounced the authority of Bishop Yohanna. But reports on the ground indicate at least two of the conferences had over 80 percent attendance.

The bishops’ letter also alleges that “a group of United Methodists were [sic] imprisoned due to complaints by the former cabinet and leaders because they are committed to staying with The United Methodist Church.” However, a church leader identified with the GM Church reported on Tuesday, “Four members of Sunkani District are in detention yesterday morning. Two of them are GMC members while two are UMCN members. They were in detention due to what happened in Sunkani District on Sunday, August 4, that led to the closure of our Church. [This alludes to the threat of violence I mentioned above that caused the government to close the churches for a time.] The DS and the Church secretary of Sunkani District are our GMC members who were in detention along with two members of the UMCN.”

Information received on Wednesday indicated that the members were released from detention. Based on this report, the detention was due to the threat of violent altercation, rather than because some members wanted to remain in the UM Church. Indeed, two of the four detainees were GM Church leaders, not those wanting to remain in the UM Church.

In the midst of this chaotic situation, the bulk of the Nigerian church is moving to the GM Church. Some individual congregations and pastors have yet to decide which way they want to move. Out of a church that most recently reported 600,000 members, several hundred thousand of them are moving to the GM Church. It will be a number of months until the dust settles and we know for sure what proportion of the UMCN is now GMC.

This move of Nigeria is significant. It was done according to the laws of Nigeria, rather than by any process that is in the Discipline. While the General Conference closed the door on any official disaffiliation pathways in the UM Church, legal realities in many countries could still allow disaffiliation by annual conferences.

The members of Nigeria join a rapidly growing GM Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Tanzania, Kenya-Ethiopia (which is also growing dramatically), and South Africa. A number of other countries are poised to inaugurate the GM Church, as well, with other countries moving toward that goal. It appears that only a handful of the African countries that have a United Methodist presence do not already have a movement to establish the GM Church in their country. That means 20 or more African countries may have GM conferences in the next year or so.

The Global Methodist Church is truly growing as a global movement of the Holy Spirit. Many are looking forward to the convening General Conference September 20-26 in Costa Rica as a seminal moment in reinforcing the solid foundations for this new denomination.

Thomas Lambrecht is a ​​​​​​​Global Methodist clergyperson and vice president of Good News. Photo: Nigeria Area Bishop John Wesley Yohanna says a prayer alongside members of his cabinet during a gathering of United Methodists from the North East and Southern Nigeria annual conferences on July 24 at McBride United Methodist Church in Jalingo. Yohanna announced July 29 that he has left The United Methodist Church. Photo by Ramson Danjuma, communications director for the North East Nigeria Conference (via United Methodist News).