by Steve | Jun 4, 2018 | In the News, Uncategorized
Message by the Rev. Rob Renfroe, president of Good News, at the Confessing Movement luncheon of the Texas Annual Conference taking on the bishops who put forth the “One Church” Plan. “It has to be very frustrating for centrists and progressives to come up with an approach that they believe to be very reasonable and allows everyone to do what they desire only for us to find it unacceptable,” said Renfroe. “After all, what can be more American that allowing everyone to have it their way.” Watch the video HERE.
by Steve | Jun 1, 2018 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Thomas Lambrecht-
Every Sunday, all around the world, faithful United Methodists give their tithes and gifts to the church. But apparently it’s not enough to secure them a seat to observe the proceedings of one of the most important General Conferences in the church’s history.
Just a few months ago the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) was boasting that giving to the general church was setting new records, but now they’re pleading poverty. Apparently, funds are so tight the church must take the unprecedented step of charging United Methodists who want to observe their church at work $200 to $300 for the privilege. Previous General Conferences have charged less than one-tenth that amount for a conference three times longer.
A twenty minute review of the financial statements from the UM Church’s general boards and agencies (including GCFA’s) makes it amply clear there are plenty of reserves on hand to cover the $700,000 GCFA says it needs to help defray the expenses for the special General Conference scheduled for February 23-26, 2019, in St. Louis, Missouri.
But of course more than money is at play here. Since the 2000 General Conference demonstrators have either disrupted or attempted to disrupt the quadrennial gatherings. Our bishops, who preside at the conferences and so are charged with maintaining order, have frequently failed to do so. So some people think the bishops, or those planning the General Conference, may have hit on a strategy for stemming the disruptions: charge people to attend. That approach would absolve them of doing what they are supposed to do, and would have the added benefit of protecting the millions of dollars in reserves held by the general church’s boards and agencies.
This might be clever, but it sets a bad precedent and is harmful to reputations of church leaders who are already running a significant trust deficit. People all across the UM connection have critiqued the discernment process the Council of Bishops (COB) has been presiding over during the past two years as lacking transparency. Our episcopal leaders are not even willing to share the results of the critical balloting they took at their last meeting. Their poorly worded press release and follow-up “clarification” created confusion and competing reports of what actually transpired. Closing General Conference to everyone except those United Methodists who can afford to attend will only erode their credibility.
Ironically, the exorbitant registration fee for observers will not keep protesters away, since their commitment to their cause will easily enable them to raise the necessary funds. But it will deny United Methodists of modest means, who give sacrificially to the church, the opportunity to observe in person this historic conference precisely because they give sacrificially to the church.
An interesting side question involves the potential scenario where demonstrators are so disruptive that, in order to continue, the General Conference has to be closed to all observers. (Such a strategy was considered in Tampa in 2012.) In that case, even those innocent of causing problems could be excluded. Will their registration fee be refunded? I doubt it.
Even worse, the fee structure demonstrates a measure of unfairness. Spouses of delegates, for example, have to pay a fee, but bishops’ spouses do not. Persons who serve the church at General Conference, including members of the Judicial Council (who are required to attend) and the Commission on a Way Forward, are being charged a fee. Most egregious of all is that those covering General Conference for the press are being charged a fee. Will the New York Times, Washington Post, or Christianity Today be willing to pay to cover this historic meeting? What about United Methodist News Service? If not, how will our church ensure that the story of what happens be told accurately and with context and balance? And how does limiting press coverage increase transparency and trust?
When the proposal for a special called General Conference was put forward at the 2016 General Conference, delegates raised questions about whether adequate funding was available for the proposed Commission on a Way Forward and the special General Conference. Delegates were assured that adequate funds could be found to cover the anticipated costs. Now, it appears that is not the case. This is just another example of unkept promises generating further mistrust and even cynicism. Why should delegates (or the church at large) believe anything they are told when assurances prove to be unfounded?
The bishops should develop the political will to solve this problem and strongly encourage the GCFA to find the funds necessary to keep General Conference open to all United Methodists. If you agree, contact Bishop Ken Carter, president of the COB (bishop@flumc.org), and Mr. Moses Kumar, general secretary of the GCFA (gcfa@gcfa.org), politely appealing to them to make sure all United Methodists have the opportunity to observe all the General Conference proceedings in person and be part of this momentous event in the life of our church.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | May 25, 2018 | In the News
By Chappell Temple –
I feel for the guy. For he certainly wasn’t the first fellow ever to go rather begrudgingly–or as he put it, “very unwillingly”– to church. After all, in terms of his pastoral career trajectory, it hadn’t gone exactly as he might have hoped it would so far.
The missionary gig, for instance, was pretty much a bust. For his inability to commit to the girl he loved led her to give up and marry someone else, leading him not only to a broken heart but to a singularly stupid misjudgment when he then tried to deny her communion. He got out of town, in fact, just before being arrested by the uncle of that girl who just happened to be the constable in that community.
Likewise, on the way back home, those same kinds of doubts that most of us have had at one time or another began to rise to the forefront of his thinking again as well. “I went to America to convert the Indians,” he wrote, “but oh, who will convert me?” For in his own estimation, he had nothing more than a “fair summer religion…I can talk well; indeed and believe myself, while no danger is near,” he said. “But let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled.”
When he arrived back in his own land, thus, it was fairly evident that he was in a pretty dark place of despondency indeed. For despite his background and education, even his ordination and pastoral service, he still didn’t quite have the personal faith he wanted, which was a “sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven and I reconciled to the favour of God.”
And then, as so very often happens, that same God sent along someone as an answer to his prayers, a young German by the name of Peter Bohler, who was on his way to serve as a missionary to slaves in South Carolina. And though John disputed Peter’s words at first, arguing that forgiveness and peace could only be earned by continual effort, Bohler pushed back, telling him, “my brother, my brother, that philosophy of yours must be purged away!”
Still, the idea of salvation by faith alone, to say nothing of “instantaneous conversions,” was a rather strange notion indeed to that preacher’s kid turned Anglican priest. Confused and convicted, he considered “leaving off preaching,” in fact, but then his new friend Peter told him not to hide the talent God had given him, but simply to “preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”
It was in such a state of uncertainty, thus, that he went that night to a Moravian meeting in the City of London at Alders Gate, just a few feet from Charterhouse where he had gone to boarding school as a boy. But there, at about a quarter till nine, while listening to someone read from the preface of Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans, John Wesley finally figured out the change which God can work in a person’s life through faith in Christ.
“I felt my heart strangely warmed,” he wrote. “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given to me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
And from that moment on, both the faith and mission of John Wesley found a new impetus and energy indeed. To be sure, temptations and trials still buffeted him, and from time to time, he continued to struggle with despair and doubts, even decades afterwards. But after experiencing his own personal Pentecost, John Wesley knew that ultimately he would never be the same again. For he now understood that it is faith, not fear, that should lead us to salvation, and armed with that newfound belief, John and his brother Charles quite literally changed the world.
On this Aldersgate Day May 24, exactly two hundred and eighty years after that night, it’s good to be reminded that whatever it takes, God will never give up on getting us to a place of genuine faith in our lives either. We just have to go wherever He may lead us.
“Very unwillingly” or not.
Chappell Temple is lead pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Sugar Land, Texas, a southwestern suburb of Houston. He blogs at Chappelltemple.com. This article is reprinted by permission.
by Steve | May 25, 2018 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Thomas Lambrecht –
In a decision released today, the Judicial Council ruled by an 8-1 margin that “Petitions to the special session of the General Conference 2019 may be filed by any organization, clergy member and lay member of the United Methodist Church as long as the business proposed to be transacted in such petition is in harmony with the purpose stated in the call.”
This means that any member or organization in the church may file a petition with a proposal for resolving the church’s impasse over the definition of marriage and the practice of homosexuality. Such petitions will need to be received by the petitions secretary in the proper format by July 8, 2018. They will then be translated and published in the Advance edition of the Daily Christian Advocate for the delegates to use at General Conference.
The Judicial Council further ruled that “It is the obligation of the General Conference to determine, in the first instance, through its committees, officers and presiders, acting in accordance with The Discipline and the rules and procedures of the General Conference, whether any such petition is ‘in harmony.’” The Council did not tell the General Conference how to make that decision, leaving it up to the General Conference and its committee structure to determine the process for deciding which petitions are in harmony with the purpose of the called special General Conference.
The significance of this ruling is that the petition process is open to all, and alternative proposals for resolving our impasse over the definition of marriage and the practice of homosexuality will be allowed. If a Traditionalist Plan with legislation is not included in the bishops’ report, it can still be submitted separately through this process. This ensures that a plan that evangelicals can support will be considered by the delegates at General Conference.
We applaud the Judicial Council for a well-reasoned decision that will allow the full participation of all the church through its legislative process to arrive at a faithful way forward. Please continue in prayer for the delegates, bishops, and all those involved in submitting petitions.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News. He is also a member of the Commission on a Way Forward.
by Steve | May 24, 2018 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
Methodism’s Christmas Conference December 24, 1784.
By Jason Vickers –
In his 1989 landmark work, The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch, Professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, examined the spread of Christianity in early America, arguing that the groups that flourished were the ones that were able to fuse Christianity with America’s emerging democratic form of government. Among the many early groups, no group surpassed the Methodists when it came to absorbing American style democracy. Indeed, by the mid-nineteenth century, Methodism would emerge as a religion of the people and by the people, the quintessential form of American Christianity.
To be sure, it would take decades for Methodists to perfect their democratic sensibilities. African-American Methodist and Wesleyan-holiness denominations exist today in part because the Methodist Church was not always hospitable to blacks, to women, and to the poor. Nevertheless, if we take the Methodist tradition as a whole, which is to say, if we include these other Wesleyan churches, then American Methodism is a deeply democratic form of religion. It doesn’t simply insist that all people are welcome at the table. Rather, American Methodism insists that all members’ voices be heard, whether from the pulpit, through direct vote, or by representation, and we live with the results.
As represented by Bishop Bruce Ough, the United Methodist Council of Bishops’ decision to recommend only one proposal to the upcoming special called General Conference is deeply anti-American Methodist in spirit. Granted, Bishop Ough and the Council of Bishops did not suggest that those elected to represent the people not be allowed to vote. But the decision to allow only one of three proposals stemming from the work of the Commission on a Way Forward coupled with the decision not to allow any proposals to be brought by the delegates themselves is no less stifling with respect to the voices and concerns of the people.
As an advocate for democracy, I would personally like to see the delegates of the upcoming called General Conference be allowed
Dr. Jason Vickers
to consider multiple proposals, ranging from proposals regarded as “far right,” to centrist and “far left” or progressive proposals. Moreover, I will respect the outcome of the conference, regardless of which proposal triumphs. That comes with democracy. By contrast, Bishop Ough’s proposal on behalf of the Council of Bishops preempts all of this. It implies that we the people (through our duly elected representatives) cannot be trusted to think for ourselves; that we are not capable of considering three clear and distinct proposals or of bringing intelligent proposals of our own. It is condescending and offensive in the extreme, and it violates the spirit of American Methodism.
Jason Vickers is Professor of Theology at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including The Cambridge Companion to American Methodism.
by Steve | May 24, 2018 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
Bishop Bruce R. Ough (left) speaks during a May 22, 2018, oral hearing before the United Methodist Judicial Council, meeting in Evanston, Ill. At right is Bishop Scott Jones. Photo by Kathleen Barry, UMNS
By Thomas Lambrecht –
The bishops have been asked to lead. Apparently, to some bishops that means strong-arming a progressive agenda that has already been rejected by a previous General Conference.
In its recent gathering, the Council of Bishops – behind closed doors – affirmed by a clear majority that it will recommend the One Church Plan to the 2019 General Conference. This plan changes the definition of marriage to “two adults” and removes all prohibitions against same-sex weddings and the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” It also contains allowances and conscience protections for those who want to continue to live by the current biblical standards of the Book of Discipline.
We are grateful that there is a contingent of bishops who do respect the traditional view of marriage and sexuality and who recognize the truly global nature of the United Methodist Church. We regret that they – even including those bishops from outside the United States – are in the minority.
The North American contingent of the Council of Bishops has put forward a proposal that is riddled with problems, and we will be examining it in more detail in the months to come. But I want to point out the direction that many bishops have taken to promote the One Church Plan as the only viable option for the church.
First, the majority of North American bishops have approved a plan that they knew evangelicals and traditionalists could not support. Good News, the Confessing Movement, and the Wesleyan Covenant Association have all made public statements that any type of “local option” plan is unacceptable to us. Over 1,800 attendees at the Chicago inaugural event of the WCA affirmed that “A plan that requires traditionalists to compromise their principles and understanding of Scripture, including any form of the ‘local option’ around ordination and marriage, will not be acceptable to the members of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, stands little chance of passing General Conference, would not definitively resolve our conflict, and would, in fact, lead to the fracturing of the church.”
Yet the majority of these bishops adopted the plan anyway.
Second, from the beginning of its work, the Commission on a Way Forward stated that a “gracious exit” for churches with their property would be part of any plan they put forward. The Commission recognized that the denomination is so polarized that no proposal is likely to be acceptable to all. Rather than spend millions of church offering dollars fighting over the buildings and property (like other mainline churches have done), the Commission believed that it should provide churches and clergy that could not continue in The United Methodist Church after the decision of the 2019 General Conference with a gracious way to exit with their property and pension.
Yet the majority of the Council of Bishops has inexcusably removed the gracious exit from its One Church Plan. Apparently, some progressive bishops believe that they can coerce United Methodist members to stay in the church by holding their church buildings hostage to the denomination. Some annual conferences are starting to use hardball tactics to punish congregations that want to leave. (More about that in a future blog.)
Third, the majority of the Council of Bishops is attempting to prevent other proposals from being submitted in advance to the 2019 General Conference. The Council president, Bishop Bruce Ough, argued this week before the Judicial Council that it should rule out the possibility of any other petitions being submitted to General Conference besides the bishops’ proposal. In his oral argument, Ough maintained that the only piece of legislation that the General Conference could act on is the One Church Plan. He admitted that the General Conference could amend or substitute for that plan, but he believes that none of those amendments or substitutes can be submitted in advance for the General Conference delegates to prayerfully consider. A press release purportedly on behalf of the whole Council of Bishops reflects this position.
Bishop Scott Jones, who submitted his own opposing brief and also participated in oral arguments before the Judicial Council, charged that Bishop Ough was misrepresenting himself. “The Council of Bishops has at no time discussed a recommended answer to the question posed to the Judicial Council nor taken a position authorizing any one or all of its officers to represent it in any particular way,” Jones wrote in his reply brief. “He is misrepresenting the Council which has never taken that position and never discussed how the question should be answered.”
Yet the powers that be on the Council of Bishops felt free to try to restrict the access of grassroots United Methodists in the pews to be able to contribute to a solution to the way forward for our church. I am hopeful that the Judicial Council will rule that other petitions are allowed as part of the official process.
It is the role of leaders to identify a vision or direction and advocate for it. But closing off other options and restricting the choices that followers can make is not leadership, but dictatorship. When bishops advocate for the One Church Plan as the only possible solution to our church’s conflict (despite the fact that a significant number of bishops opposes that plan) they are going beyond what healthy leadership involves. Controlling and manipulating the outcome is not healthy leadership.
Those bishops taking this approach are exhibiting contempt for their evangelical members and clergy – as well as disrespecting their non-North American colleagues who do not share their progressive vision. They are promoting a plan that we have said we cannot accept. They are advocating for the exclusion of other options or choices for the 2019 General Conference. And they are attempting to coerce churches to stay in the denomination in violation of our consciences (should the One Church Plan pass) or else be prepared to lose our property.
The Commission on a Way Forward and the Council of Bishops are advocating that we adopt a “heart of peace” in working together to resolve the impasse that divides and stifles the vitality of our church. But the bishops must lead with a heart of peace in their actions, not just in their words. Disrespect and contempt are attitudes that destroy relationship and increase mistrust. The recent string of decisions by a majority of the Council of Bishops betrays not a respectful attempt to work together to resolve our differences, but an attempt to dictate a solution and force everyone to accept it. Such an approach is more likely to provoke a “heart of war” and set up the 2019 General Conference as a contentious conflict zone. So far, the “heart of peace” seem to be just empty words.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News. He is also a member of the Commission on a Way Forward.
Message by the Rev. Rob Renfroe, president of Good News, at the Confessing Movement luncheon of the Texas Annual Conference taking on the bishops who put forth the “One Church” Plan. “It has to be very frustrating for centrists and progressives to come up with an approach that they believe to be very reasonable and allows everyone to do what they desire only for us to find it unacceptable,” said Renfroe. “After all, what can be more American that allowing everyone to have it their way.” Watch the video HERE.
