by Steve | Nov 15, 2017 | In the News
Dr. David Watson, academic dean at United Theological Seminary, has provided thorough analysis of the interim report sent to the Council of Bishops from the Commission on the Way Forward. He offers an assessment of each of the three plans given to the bishops for consideration at the special called 2019 General Conference in St. Louis.
“The problem is that we lack not only a common vision for the church, but a common vision of the church,” writes Watson. “Put differently, it’s not just that we disagree over what the church should do. Rather, we disagree over what it means to be a church. I have insisted in the past, and will continue to do so, that the church is, among other things, a moral community. We have to make decisions—as a community—over our standards of right and wrong. Disagreement among our ranks doesn’t change this. When there is disagreement, we have methods of resolution. In fact, every church has methods of resolving disagreement because, without these, unity is impossible. Our decision-making processes in the church, our ways of resolving disagreement,are instruments of unity. Once we abandon these instruments unity becomes impossible. Our recent denominational history bespeaks as much.”
To read his full article, click HERE.
by Steve | Nov 14, 2017 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Garry Ingraham-
In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Jesus was spelling out his earthly purpose in contrast to the work of the spiritual darkness of “the thief” who comes to kill, steal, and destroy. Unfortunately, every morning we are subtly – and not so subtly – reminded of the work of “the thief” as we watch the news.
As Christians, we need to keep the abundant life that Jesus spoke about at the forefront of our thinking and ministry. This abundant life depends on an inward spiritual transformation that reaches every aspect of who we are as men and women. We are all in need of this new life.
Though I grew up in a Christian home, I was in need of that spiritual transformation. Around puberty I discovered that I was same-sex attracted. Despite years of prayer and enrolling in a Bible College, I felt as though I was struggling alone. At this stage in my life, I was addicted to porn and hated God and the Church. It seemed as though there were no answers or help for me.
I eventually became a bartender at a gay club and felt like I’d finally found my people. Still, in all my sin and rebellion, God never stopped pursuing me. When I crashed, He was there to catch me and draw me to Himself.
To hear my story of healing from homosexuality, click here. You can hear my wife Melissa’s story here.
The one organization entrusted by God with real answers for healthy sexuality and confident gender identity is the Church. Unfortunately, it has been embroiled in controversy and mired in politics rather than ministry devoted to transformation. The Church, through Christ and the inspired word of God as well as the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, has been given everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).
Every single Sunday we have men and women and youth in our pews who are seeking the abundant life Jesus spoke of and are looking for deliverance from sexual bondage — whether it is heterosexual or homosexual — to temptations such as adultery or porn. Because of our fear, or our own struggles, or simply out of ignorance, the Church has not been active in offering healing for those who struggle with their sexuality.
Through community and confession, we can find redemption. We can discover His image in us and His incredible design for sexuality – a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman.
There is a desperate need for churches to stand in the gap of 
our confused, empty, and sex-saturated society.
“Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed,” writes the Apostle James. “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (5:16). If Christians would learn to become transparent with one another in this way, we would see a deep and profound healing in the Church. That healing would position us as “wounded healers” to reach out to our troubled world.
Our church would receive a jolt of Holy Spirit-infused new life if believers shared scriptural truth in love and offered friendship and a healthy emotional connection with those who are struggling with sexual brokenness.
Within the church, for example, the pervasiveness of porn is overwhelming.
The talons of porn have latched on to Christian men, Christian women, Christian young people, pastors and leaders. To be effective witnesses within the world, we need the Holy Spirit to first set us free.
For the last 40 years, The United Methodist Church has battled internally over its moral teachings about marriage and human sexuality. That is what draws controversial headlines. But beneath the public skirmish is a conflict over the abundant life that Jesus spoke of and the promise of transformation through the lordship of Jesus Christ. Some United Methodist leaders say this is all simply a disagreement about the interpretation of a few passages of Scripture. For me, however, it comes down to a decisive difference over St. Paul’s declaration: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (II Corinthians 5:17). In this time of theological confusion and disagreement, what gospel is the church promoting and what Jesus is the church proclaiming?
Coming out of homosexuality was the hardest thing I have faced in my life. My wife and I know of many transformed men and women who have chosen to surrender their sexuality and LGBT identities to the Lordship of Jesus. They find in Christ and his authentic, loving community more than enough to meet their deepest needs.
Transforming Congregations (a program of Good News) has been a renewal ministry and witness within The United Methodist Church for nearly 30 years. We focus our work on equipping United Methodist pastors and leaders on how to develop environments that foster transparency throughout the church.
Transforming Congregations provides ministry through:
1) preaching and teaching
2) conferences and retreats
3) leadership team meetings
4) personal mentoring for Christian leaders struggling with sexual sin
5) coaching men’s and women’s groups to get beneath the surface
6) helping develop friends and family groups for people with LGBTQ loved-ones
7) coordinating an inner-healing program called Living Waters
Through these primary methods, Transforming Congregations works with leaders to develop positive growth in transparency and a corporate life-style of confession and repentance, ultimately impacting the DNA of the congregation. We help churches to shift the emphasis away from a spectator/consumer mindset to become more of a teaching hospital or M.A.S.H. (mobile army spiritual hospital) unit for the sexually broken. We want to be involved in developing churches that a lost community comes to value and depend on for support, compassion, gospel truth, and a way out of their empty lives, to discover the true Jesus.
If our values, purpose, and methods resonate with your heart we would love to connect with you regularly. Would you sign up to receive our email updates (fill in your name and email address and check the box marked Transforming Congregations on the right side of the web page) and consider partnering with us by providing prayer-covering and financial support? You can also find additional details and resources on our website. In so many ways, we are standing in the gap, offering unpopular but essential truths, communicated in love, that God calls out for this generation.
Garry Ingraham, wife Melissa, and their two sons
Garry Ingraham is a layman who has been the executive director of Transforming Congregations since 2016.
by Steve | Nov 14, 2017 | In the News
Bishops pray with their episcopal colleagues who serve on the Commission on a Way Forward during a meeting of the Council of Bishops at Lake Junaluska, N.C., on Nov. 8, 2017. Photo by Heather Hahn, UMNS.
By Heather Hahn, United Methodist News Service
United Methodist bishops are exploring three possible models for how the church should handle LGBTQ inclusion.
The models come to the bishops from the Commission on a Way Forward, which has the task of trying to find a way for the church to stay together despite deep divides over homosexuality.
The bishops have been meeting in closed session Nov. 6-9 to discern whether the commission is heading in the right direction. The bishop-appointed commission has three more meetings planned early next year, and the bishops do not plan to develop any final recommendations until May 2018.
The possibilities under consideration:
- Affirm the current Book of Discipline language and place a high value on accountability. The church policy book says the practice of homosexuality “is incompatible with Christian teaching” and lists officiating at a same-gender union or being a “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy member as chargeable offenses under church law.
- Remove restrictive language and place a high value on contextualization. This sketch also specifically protects the rights of those whose conscience will not allow them to perform same-gender weddings or ordain LGBTQ persons.
- Create multiple branches that have clearly defined values such as accountability, contextualization and justice. This model would maintain shared doctrine and services and one Council of Bishops.
Each possibility includes a way to exit for those church entities that feel called to leave the denomination.
To read Heather Hahn’s entire report, click HERE.
by Steve | Nov 14, 2017 | Front Page News, In the News
Bishop Karen OIiveto during opening service of Council of Bishops. Photo: Council of Bishops.
According to reporting from Heather Hahn (UMNS), United Methodist bishops find themselves “off the map” as they try to navigate a way forward through the church’s impasse over homosexuality, said Bishop Bruce R. Ough of the Dakotas-Minnesota area. “There is currently no larger or intractable barrier to the mission, unity and vitality of The United Methodist Church than the matter of homosexuality,” the Council of Bishops president said November 6, in his fall address to 127 of his episcopal colleagues.
From our vantage point, it is noteworthy, but not surprising, that the Council of Bishops addressed this “intractable barrier” by inviting Bishop Karen Oliveto, the controversial episcopal leader of the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area, to preach one of the opening sermons before their gathering. Oliveto, of course, is married to another woman and has been publicly forthcoming about performing more than 50 same-sex weddings prior to becoming a bishop last year. It remains a mystery how this preaching invitation helps create unity or strengthen the mission, unity and vitality of the denomination.
To read Heather Hahn’s news story about the challenge before the Council of Bishops, click HERE.
by Steve | Nov 6, 2017 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
The Judicial Council. Photo by Kathleen Barry, United Methodist Communications.
By Thomas Lambrecht-
The latest rulings by the Judicial Council illustrate that the impasse in our denomination over theological disagreements and the question of LGBTQ inclusion cannot be resolved by the church legal process.
Church’s Teaching Still Constitutional
In the most blatant challenge to The United Methodist Church’s teaching that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” the Judicial Council declined to rule. That leaves the church’s teaching intact.
Both the Denmark and California-Pacific Annual Conferences had requested declaratory decisions on whether the church’s teaching violates the First Restrictive Rule in our church constitution. That rule states that “The General Conference shall not revoke, alter, or change our Articles of Religion or establish any new standards or rules of doctrine contrary to our present existing and established standards of doctrine” (Discipline ¶ 17). The conferences argued that the church’s teaching on the incompatibility of homosexual practice is a new doctrinal standard, and that it needed a two-thirds vote of the General Conference and a three-fourths majority vote of all the members of the annual conferences in order to adopt such a new standard.
Good News argued in a brief submitted to the Judicial Council that the church’s teaching was not a doctrinal standard on par with the Articles of Religion or Confession of Faith, but simply a moral teaching of the church. Further, we argued that, even if it were a new doctrinal standard, it was not “contrary to our present and existing standards of doctrine” and therefore permissible.
The Judicial Council, however, did not even rule on the issue. It decided that there was no direct connection between the question of the constitutionality of the church’s teaching and the work of the annual conferences. According to ¶ 2610.2j, a request for a declaratory decision coming from an annual conference “must relate to annual conferences or the work therein.” “Our longstanding jurisprudence has interpreted ¶ 2610 to mean that a request for a declaratory decision that comes from an annual conference must be germane to the regular business, consideration, or discussion of the annual conference and must have a direct and tangible effect on the work of the annual conference session.” There was also confusion in the California-Pacific Annual Conference minutes that did not show the motion for declaratory decision received a majority vote.
The bottom line is that the church’s teaching that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” is still valid under our church constitution. Using the legal process to challenge its constitutionality will not work. The issue can only be settled by action of General Conference.
Complaint Against Lesbian Pastor Cannot Be Reactivated
The Book of Discipline. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
In June 2016, the Rev. Anna Blaedel announced during a plenary session of the Iowa Annual Conference that she is a self-avowed practicing homosexual. Such a statement brought her standing into question, since a self-avowed practicing homosexual may not be ordained or appointed as clergy (Discipline ¶ 304.3). A complaint was filed against Blaedel and there was no just resolution of that complaint, but Bishop Julius Trimble (who was the bishop of Iowa at the time) dismissed the complaint without putting Blaedel on trial.
At the 2017 session of the Iowa Annual Conference, a question of law was asked as to whether the dismissal of the complaint by Bishop Trimble was proper under the Discipline and whether the complaint could be reopened in order to start a trial process.
The Judicial Council ruled that, once a complaint has been resolved, whether by a trial, a just resolution, or by being dismissed, it cannot be reopened. A new complaint would have to be filed if the violation were repeated. In this case, the Judicial Council said, there would have to be evidence that Blaedel once again publicly claimed to be a self-avowed practicing homosexual after the dismissal of the previous complaint on September 1, 2016.
In a little-noted passage in the decision, the Judicial Council said, “Clearly if the record in this case alleged a self-avowing statement since that date, the current bishop would have a duty to initiate proceedings under Discipline ¶362 in accordance with JCD 920 and 1341.” In an article posted by Reconciling Ministries Network in response to the decision last week, “Rev. Anna Blaedel reflected on the ruling by saying, ‘I am relieved to have this dehumanizing, disempowering process resolved, for now. However, I proudly remain a ‘self-avowed, practicing homosexual.’ I delight in my queerness, and my relationship with my beloved. I lament the use of loopholes to hide any aspect of queer life and love.'”
Thus, Blaedel is renewing her self-avowal, making her once again subject to a complaint. According to the Judicial Council decision, new Iowa Bishop Laurie Haller “would have a duty to initiate proceedings.” At the very least, someone could file a new complaint against Blaedel for her ongoing violation of the standards for ordained ministry.
Lesbian Candidate for Ministry May Not Be Approved
The Judicial Council ruled that an annual conference board of ordained ministry was not obligated to recommend for commissioning as a provisional member a person that they believed did not meet the qualifications for ordained ministry. The case involved Tara Morrow, who had been turned down for commissioning in 2016 in the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference due to the fact that she disclosed to the board that she is a lesbian married to another woman.
When the board declined to recommend her for commissioning in 2017, even though she initially received the required three-fourths vote of approval by the board, their failure to do so was challenged by a question of law. Heightening the controversy, the Rev. J. Phillip Wogaman surrendered his clergy credentials in protest on the eve of celebrating 60 years of ordained ministry service.
The Judicial Council asserted that the board was within its rights to rescind its recommendation of Morrow in light of Judicial Council decisions issued in May. “Decisions 1341, 1343 and 1344 prevent a Board of Ordained Ministry from ignoring statements of self-disclosure about any action that violates any portion of church law as is the case of the candidate who acknowledged that she is a lesbian and married to another woman. In JCD 1344 the Judicial Council stated that it is the duty of the Board to conduct a careful and thorough examination and investigation, not only in terms of depth but also breadth of scope to ensure that disciplinary standards are met.”
Again, the attempted exploitation of presumed legal loopholes cannot overturn the settled will of the General Conference in establishing qualifications for ministry.
How to Deal with Parliamentary Rulings
Two other decisions related to resolutions that were declared “out of order” by a bishop. In Western Pennsylvania, a resolution requiring the annual conference to conform to the Book of Discipline on matters of ordination and same-sex marriage was declared out of order by Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi and thus not able to be voted on. In South Carolina, a petition to form a task force to study the possibility of the annual conference disaffiliating from The United Methodist Church was also declared out of order by Bishop L. Jonathan Holston.
The Judicial Council ruled correctly in both cases that it has no jurisdiction to rule on parliamentary questions. A decision by a bishop to declare a particular proposal out of order is a parliamentary decision, and therefore not subject to Judicial Council review.
It is important that annual conference members understand how to handle a parliamentary ruling with which they disagree. The proper response is to appeal the ruling of “out of order” to the “house.” That means that the whole annual conference gets to vote on whether they agree with the bishop’s decision to call something out of order. The annual conference can vote to overrule the bishop, which enables the conference to consider the matter that was ruled out of order. Or the annual conference can vote to sustain the bishop’s ruling that the item is out of order, which ends consideration of that item. Either way, the bishop’s rationale for ruling it out of order would be placed on the record.
If the annual conference votes to sustain the bishop’s ruling of “out of order,” the matter could then be the subject of a question of law that would eventually go to the Judicial Council. Because the annual conference took an action (to sustain the bishop’s ruling), the question of law is no longer about a parliamentary decision, but about the action of the annual conference. A question of law must be about an action taken or proposed to be taken by the annual conference. Thus, this is the way to get that issue before the Judicial Council.
The Way Forward
All of the above cases illustrate that the legal processes of The United Methodist Church cannot resolve the impasse in our church over theology and the moral teachings of the church regarding the extent of LGBTQ inclusion. We are currently in a state of schism, where some parts of the church are following the Book of Discipline and other parts are not conforming. The General Conference is the only body that can resolve the dispute. Our prayer is that the proposals of the Commission on a Way Forward, as submitted by the Council of Bishops, will enable the special session of the General Conference in 2019 to take definitive action to resolve this crisis. The future of our church depends upon it.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Oct 30, 2017 | Front Page News, In the News
– By Donald W. Haynes
The 21st century infighting about marriage, sexuality, and the Christian faith are obviating the relatively unrelated mistakes of the 20th century. That is the century when we lost membership and attendance inside the institutional church, and muscle at the “table of the public square.” Either cobbling together some modicum of ecclesiastical unity or separating into two denominations will be a sheer travesty. We have been down both roads before — division and unification. Neither option made us stronger in the past nor will it in the future.
Because some spoke German and some spoke English, we divided over language at the inception of “the people called Methodist” in America. We voted to divide over polity in 1792 and 1828, resulting in The Christian Church and The Methodist Protestant Church. We voted to divide over racial issues in 1816, 1820, 1843, and 1867, resulting in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal, Zion Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and the Colored Methodist Church (re-named “Christian” in 1954). We split over doctrine in 1894, and around 1900 resulting in the Nazarene Church, the Assemblies of God, and the Church of God of Anderson, Indiana.
The Price of Ecumenism
The magnificent obsession of the 20th century for Methodist was ecumenism. The “evil” of that Christian generation was denominationalism. The mood was “unification or bust”! This tunnel vision either caused or allowed Methodism to ignore the infamous “Fundamentalist-Modernist” controversy that raged in the 1920s. We ignored the rise of the Bible College movement. We had a condescending posture toward Fundamentalism that come home to haunt us when they took the campuses by storm in the late 20th century with the result that we lost thousands of “our children” who went to college and never came “home again.”
Seminary homiletics prior to 1968 taught topical preaching rather than biblical sermons. So much of their content was what Dr. William Abraham has called “doctrinal pablum or moralistic platitudes.” He also coined the term “doctrinal amnesia” which made the Methodist delegation embarrassed at the negotiations for EUB-Methodist merger. We had long ignored Wesley’s sermons and the “consensus Fidelium” of early Methodism. The holiness doctrine and perfecting grace were virtually embarrassing to denominational leadership after the “come out” and “put out” controversies of the late 19th century that resulted in the formation of the Nazarene Church. The Article on “Sanctification” was salvaged only by the Methodist Protestant Church in the unification of 1939. Article XI of the EUB “Confession of Faith” also articulated the “experimental divinity” of sanctification. We even neglected our social justice obligation in the Great Depressions because most of Methodist passion was for unifying three churches to form, in 1939, The Methodist Church.
In late 18th century Pennsylvania an evangelical and Arminian revival was taking place. When Martin Boehm, a Mennonite, heard Philip Otterbein’s testimony, he ran to him, embraced him and said, “Wir sind brudert” (We are brethren). That was 1767. By 1800 they had become The United Brethren in Christ. Meanwhile, by 1816 in central Pennsylvania, Jacob Albright, Lutheran heritage, was starting another church of the German Pietist movement called the Evangelical Association. They were all “one in the Spirit” with the Methodists. In 1884, the United Brethren split over polity. In 1946, the United Brethren and Evangelical Association became the Evangelical United Brethren church (EUB) and had 738,000 members.
In the 1950’s and especially in the turbulent 1960’s the Evangelical United Brethren and The Methodist Church engaged little in the social revolution occurring in United States society. They were deeply involved in merging their churches. This was accomplished in 1968, but with the EUB conferences, the merger was approved with only a 3 percent margin over the required 2/3rds. The Methodists had 10.2 million members, fourteen times more than the EUB’s. With the new name, The United Methodist Church, some towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana had two churches of the same denomination across the street from one another. Some sociological studies have revealed that the driving force behind both religious bodies was the conviction among their leaders that denominationalism was a sin!
There was no discussion of theology in the EUB-Methodist merger! They were obsessed with ecumenism. The EUB people lost the most sense of “brand.” The United Methodist Church has lost members every year of its existence. Some wag has written, rather accurately, that The United Methodist Church is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” The new church has been “vanilla.” By the 21st century, almost no United Methodist could engender in their children what they believed! Therefore history will record that the price of ecumenism was high — the loss of identity.
The Loss of Churches of Small Membership
The genius of Methodism was its following of English speaking people movements. The United Brethren and Evangelicals did much the same as Germans moved west. Rural churches became the center of communities as people named their roads, and often their “one room schoolhouses” or post offices. Many were served by clergy who pastored several churches in different communities, linked only by their denominational names.
Historically, Methodist, United Brethren and Evangelical preachers were appointed to a “territory” to be evangelized rather than a congregation to be belittled. The rural parishes were seen in most seminary classrooms as cultural “back eddys.” By the pre-World War II years, the “Town and Country Movement” recognized the chasm between the seminary classroom and the rural parish. Unfortunately, the result of their prodigious effort was the seminary appointments of faculty whose doctorates were in Rural Sociology. They had keen insights about the plight of rural America, but offered little help in effective evangelism, education, missions, and worship! Rather than identifying with their communities, seminary graduates saw the rural church as a stepping stone to a more theologically sophisticated “city church.”
In 1961, Gibson Winters wrote an important book that suffered benign neglect, The Suburban Captivity of the Church. Not only did we lose our influence in the “country,” but also in the blue collar mill and coal mine villages, but also in the inner cities near the behemoths of industries such as automobiles and steel. Once these were the seedbed communities in the legacy of Wesleyanism, but with every passing decade, our presence and witness dwindled. Our pastors did not stay long enough to effect social justice systemic change.
The Religious Education Curriculum
A book that should be re-read in every generation is Faith and Nurture, written in 1941 by Dr. H. Shelton Smith, Professor of American Protestant Thought at Duke Divinity School. He traces the history of Christian Education as the emergent priority of liberal Christianity, replacing both evangelism per se and missions with any modicum of evangelical content. Smith wrote, “From the standpoint of popular interest, religious education eclipsed every other project of the churches.”
Then, as a voice crying in the wilderness, Smith dismantles the theological premises of what was pointedly called “religious education,” not “Christian education.” A quote from the prestigious and widely read periodical, Religious Education, in a 1928 article was only one of many documentations Smith provided regarding the “takeover” of religious education from previous mainstream Protestant agendas: “Perhaps nowhere else than in religious education can we see more clearly the direction in which religious thinking is moving.”
George A Coe, a Methodist, was a disciple of John Dewey, the father of philosophical progressivism, and the “godfather” of public school education. The emerging professional on large church staffs was not a “D.C.E.” (Director of Christian Education) but a “D.R.E.” (Director of Religious Education). The shapers of the church’s nurturing ministries deliberately removed the word “Christian” from staff titles. All too few people noted the difference as important, but it was! Indeed he, and several generations after him, chucked the term “Sunday School” and created the term, “Church School.” This meant that “Vacation Bible School” became “Vacation Church School” and the “Sunday School Superintendent” became the “Church School Superintendent” and finally, in 1968, was relegated to an optional position and called “Superintendent of Study.” The person who had been the “backbone” of small membership churches on circuits was moved from the “sidlelines to offline.”
Reflecting on the quote, “We are making religion anew … as Jesus made it,” Smith opined, “In this view, the value of the Bible lies chiefly in its power to stimulate a religious quest that will result in the creation of spiritual norms that transcend those embodied in the Bible.” Coe was vehemently opposed to the concept of sudden conversion, the gateway to discipleship that characterized the Second Great Awakening and the phenomenal growth of the United Brethren, the Evangelical Association, and the several branches of Methodism. Dewey made no claim to being a Christian, but Coe, reflecting Dewey’s philosophy, “sharply dissented from traditional theologies of sin and evil” (The Religion of A Mature Mind, by George A. Coe, 1902). He successfully influence editors of Church School literature to deleted any references to the doctrine of original sin, any references to the atonement, and any references, in Sunday School literature, to these basic premises of historic Christian thought.
We cannot devote more space here to the negative effect that “religious education” concepts had on the rise and fall of the Sunday school. George Coe’s philosophy of religion influenced all students majoring in religious education for well over half a century. It was the 1960s before the term “DRE” finally was archived and the term “DCE” came into vogue. As Shailer Matthews put it though, “a faith on the defensive is confessedly senile.” Shelton Smith said it this way: “There is little hope that liberal nurture in its present form can keep religion prophetically alive in our culture.” Using the term “Christian Education,” churches built elaborate and spacious “Educational Buildings” when Sunday school attendance as double that of worship in almost every Protestant Church in America. Culture was a friend of the Sunday school in that most people married young and had three or four children, all of whom were brought to Sunday school every Lord’s Day. As the revival was quietly laid to rest and before confirmation became the norm for joining the church, most churches received most or all sixth or seventh graders into membership. In 1955, seven of eight new members in The Methodist Church came through the Sunday school. Again to quote Smith: “Liberal nurture is feeble because it is rooted in a sub-Christian gospel. Educational evangelism has no adequate evangel.”
A cover story of LOOK magazine in 1957 exposed the faultline of liberal religious nurture in a long story entitled, “Sunday School — most wasted hour of the week?” The Church School editorial boards, literature writers, and most clergy went ballistic! The article, however, was based on the raw data from hundreds of interviews in several mainline denominations. To a simple battery of questions about biblical content or doctrinal beliefs, people who had been to Sunday school for decades were found to be biblically and doctrinally illiterate. Conversations were already underway to merge The Evangelical United Brethren and The Methodist Churches, but the bombshell of the LOOK cover story and its aftermath apparently set off no alarm bells in the merger talks! By 1968, when The United Methodist Church was “born,” the Sunday school decline had become an irreversible trend — a trend that evolved into a virtual stampede. Now thousands of churches have less that 20 percent of the Sunday school attendance they had in the 1950s.
The once popular comic strip “Pogo” had a line whose wisdom could not, and cannot, be denied: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Or as Shakespeare had Caesar to say, “Men at some time are masters of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars.” God’s word is clear: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and the rest is small stuff.
Donald W. Haynes is a retired United Methodist clergyperson from the Western North Carolina Annual Conference, author, and adjunct professor of United Methodist Studies at Hood Theological Seminary.
