by Steve | Jan 6, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
Photo: Shutterstock
By Heather Hahn, UM News –
What does a predicted denominational split and an unpredictable pandemic mean for The United Methodist Church’s bottom line? The General Council on Finance and Administration board grappled with that question as members revisited the denomination-wide budget that will go before the coming General Conference.
The finance agency board already was preparing to send the lawmaking assembly the lowest budget in more than 30 years. On December 1, by an 18-1 vote, the board approved shrinking the proposed four-year budget even further to a total of about $407.3 million for the years 2023-2026.
That marks a cut of nearly 33 percent – a third – from the budget General Conference approved in 2016 to support denomination-wide ministries.
The current proposal also would be the lowest budget submitted to General Conference since 1988, according to the denomination’s Commission on Archives and History. At the time, the denomination had about 3 million fewer members than today and had yet to establish Africa University, now supported by denominational funds.
Still, board members stressed that the budget proposal remains very much a work in progress and could change further. They are trying to get a clear picture of what the denomination’s financial base will look like in the near future – and a fog of unknowns clouds their view.
After decades of intensifying debate over LGBTQ marriage and ordination, the coming General Conference faces multiple proposals for a denominational separation. But no person knows how many congregations will depart if a plan of separation passes. Similarly, no one can say when the deadly pandemic will stop upending lives.
“They are projections for things we’ve never done before,” said Christine Dodson, GCFA board vice president who serves on the denomination’s Budget Advisory Team. She also is the treasurer and business manager of the North Carolina Conference. “We don’t have data on how a pandemic and disaffiliation are going to impact our churches moving forward.”
The board does have the educated guesses by leaders of U.S. conferences, the regional bodies that provide the lion’s share of funding for denomination-wide ministries. Both in 2020 and this year, GCFA surveyed conference treasurers, bishops, district superintendents and others to get their best sense of the financial impact of congregational disaffiliations.
Based on this year’s survey, the finance agency now estimates the denomination stands to lose about 25.5 percent of U.S. local church net expenditures by 2025. That’s a bigger loss than projected in last year’s survey, which only asked for estimates through 2024.
The survey results do not mean that conferences expect more than a quarter of U.S. United Methodist churches to depart or close during the next four years. Net expenditures can vary widely by congregation and by circumstance.
What the results do mean is that conference leaders forecast that church departures and closures will result in a substantial decline in one of the key factors used in determining the denomination’s budget.
As it stands, some churches already are leaving without waiting for General Conference to act. GCFA reports that in 2020, 32 U.S. congregations disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church. But that represents only a tiny fraction of the denomination’s more than 31,000 United Methodist churches nationwide.
The Rev. Steve Court, GCFA board member and director of connectional ministries for the East Ohio Conference, told the board that he thought the net-expenditure estimates might be overly negative about what the future holds. “I just want to keep highlighting that because it has real ministry impacts about the level of cutting that we do at this point,” he said.
North Texas Conference Bishop Mike McKee, GCFA board president, agreed with Court that the estimates were far from definitive. McKee said conference leaders tend to answer the disaffiliation question very differently depending on their role. “This is going to be very difficult to forecast,” McKee said. “I’m of the opinion that people will walk more than churches will.” However, he added, that he does not know of any better way to make budget projections.
Heather Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Adapted from UM News.
by Steve | Jan 6, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
At a November 18 online meeting, the Commission on the General Conference and staff pressed forward with planning for the postponed legislative assembly. After the coronavirus has twice altered their plans, commission members expect to make a final decision in the first quarter of next year on whether General Conference can take place as scheduled August 29-September 6 in Minneapolis. UM News screenshot via Zoom.
By Heather Hahn, UM News-
Organizers are pressing forward with plans to hold what many expect to be a pivotal General Conference in 2022. At the same time, they acknowledge that the pandemic may once again thwart those plans. The Commission on the General Conference aims to decide in the first three months of 2022 whether The United Methodist Church’s top legislative assembly can go ahead as scheduled August 29-September 6 in Minneapolis.
In the meantime, the international elected body met online Nov. 18 to continue preparations. Commission members also unanimously approved a list of values that will guide their decision to go forward or delay once again.
The main obstacles to General Conference remain the availability of travel visas and vaccines. The coronavirus already has twice forced postponements of the assembly originally set for May 2020. The bishops also found it impossible to hold a special one-day virtual General Conference earlier this year.
Kim Simpson, the commission’s chair and a veteran delegate from the Central Texas Conference, urged fellow members to make clear that the event will be “as inclusive as possible.”
“It will not be just U.S. delegates,” she stressed. “We as a commission are the ones that make the decision, so we as a commission need to make sure that we allay the fears that are out there.”
General Conference is the only body that can officially speak for the church. The coming gathering has 862 voting delegates – 55.9 percent come from the U.S., 32 percent from Africa, 6 percent from the Philippines, 4.6 percent from Europe and the remainder from concordat churches that have close ties to The United Methodist Church. Half of those delegates are lay and half are clergy.
Bishops from around the globe as well as interpreters and other staff also play key roles in the proceedings. Bishops preside but do not have a vote.
It’s possible to have a quorum with just U.S. delegates, but commission members and General Conference staff agreed that is not good enough. “The fact that we are an inclusive church means that we should be working tirelessly for getting as many people there as is possible – and not being content with just receiving the quorum,” said the New York Conference’s Bishop Thomas Bickerton, the Council of Bishops representative on the commission.
While the timing of General Conference remains a question mark, no one questions that the coming assembly will likely mark some kind of turning point.
The coming General Conference faces multiple proposals to divide the global denomination along theological lines. All were drafted before COVID-19 became a household word.
The most endorsed of these proposals is the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation. If adopted, the protocol would allow traditionalist churches and conferences to leave with church property and $25 million to start a new denomination. The proposal also sets aside $2 million for other groups of churches that might leave.
With the importance of this General Conference in mind, the commission approved the following values for consideration: reasonable threshold for delegate participation (overall and by global region); health and safety of General Conference delegates, staff, volunteers and guests; inclusion; anti-racism; integrity; credibility; recognition of The United Methodist Church’s mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world; and owning the responsibility of the commission to set the time and place of General Conference.
Marie Kuch-Stanovsky of the Pacific Northwest Conference added to the value of inclusion that the commission should consider the participation of young-adult delegates. The Rev. Beth Ann Cook of the Indiana Conference also reemphasized the value of not using only U.S. delegates to reach a quorum.
Commission members briefly debated whether it’s possible to hold a hybrid General Conference where most delegates meet in person while others meet online. Last year, the commission named a technology study team to look into the possibilities of holding General Conference online. The team’s report outlined several obstacles in the way of such a conference.
Those hurdles include the multiple time zones between delegates who live in the Philippines and the U.S., the inequity of internet availability and the difficulty in safeguarding voting. After the special General Conference in 2019, the commission found evidence of four ineligible people casting votes using the credentials of delegates who were not present.
The Rev. Joe DiPaolo, a commission member from the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, urged the commission not to completely rule out the possibility of holding a hybrid General Conference. “Technology has been evolving,” he said. DiPaolo also pointed out that the African Methodist Episcopal Church held a hybrid General Conference earlier this year with most delegates meeting in Orlando, Florida, and African delegates joining online.
The Rev. Gary Graves, General Conference secretary, cautioned that the comparison between the two denominations’ General Conferences might not be “apples to apples.”
The AME meeting lasted four days compared to the United Methodist General Conference’s nine-day schedule. The AME gathering also did not have delegates from as many countries as elected to the United Methodist gathering, nor were the AME delegates considering a denominational separation. The AME gathering did agree to begin a discernment process on the status of LGBTQ people in the denomination.
Of particular concern to Graves and multiple commission members is how a hybrid United Methodist gathering would handle legislative committees – the first stop for most legislation at General Conference. During the coming assembly, there will be 14 legislative committees – each with delegates from multiple delegations and in need of interpreters working in multiple languages.
“I just think about the practical fact that legislative committees are already hard in person,” said the Rev. Laura Merrill, a commission member from the Rio Texas Conference. “It is really hard in person to make sure everyone is included in the conversation. … In this case, how does it work to have a delegation in one place when they’re on six different legislative committees?”
The Rev. Mujinga Kashala, the commission’s vice chair, said through an interpreter that internet connectivity remains a big challenge in her country of Congo. “For instance, I missed the executive committee because, again, I had connectivity problems,” she said. “Sometimes we can connect for a little while but then we are cut off again.”
Ultimately, DiPaolo agreed that the commission “is working to try to have as much full participation in an in-person conference as possible.”
Bickerton said that the values the group adopted set “a very high bar.”
“I think the embracing of these values signals to the whole church that this commission is taking this work very seriously.”
The group next plans to meet in January, but it may take more than one meeting to decide whether the 2022 General Conference is a go.
In other actions. The Commission on the General Conference approved a new schedule to take into account that the coming legislative assembly will be one day shorter than the typical 10-day meeting.
Sara Hotchkiss, the General Conference business manager, told the commission that the amount of plenary time will be the same but there will be one less day for legislative committees to meet. To give those committees more time, the commission has moved up General Conference’s opening worship to 8 a.m. Aug. 29 rather than the usual 2 p.m. start time. Other public addresses were moved to accommodate more legislative meeting time.
The Rev. Gary Graves, General Conference secretary, also told the commission that he is working to update the delegate listing for changes in delegations because of deaths or people opting to step away because of the postponement. The plan is for the updated listings to appear in the Daily Christian Advocate, the record of General Conference proceedings.
Heather Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Adapted from UM News.
by Steve | Jan 6, 2022 | January/February 2022, Magazine Articles
After the unexpected passing of Dr. William J. Abraham, the founding director of the newly launched Wesley House of Studies at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, the seminary announced a leadership transition and the establishment of the William J. Abraham Endowed Chair.
Dr. Kevin M. Watson has been named as Acting Director of the Wesley House. Well known among United Methodists, Watson is a sought-after speaker and author of numerous books including The Class Meeting, Pursuing Social Holiness, Old or New School Methodism?, and Perfect Love. Until recently, he served as Associate Professor of Wesley and Methodist Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.
“I am honored and humbled to step in as Acting Director of the Wesley House of Studies at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary,” Watson told Good News. “William (Billy) J. Abraham, who served as the founding Director of the Wesley House, brought tremendous leadership and vision to the Wesley House prior to his unexpected death. In its inaugural year, the Wesley House attracted gifted and Spirit-filled students. We also received extraordinary hospitality from the faculty, staff, and administration at Truett. We will continue our work to form and equip Christ-centered, Spirit-led students to serve churches and other institutions in the Wesleyan tradition.”
As a sign of deep respect for the late scholar, an anonymous gift of $1.5 million was given through a matching gift program to establish the Abraham endowment. An additional gift of $1 million was given by a Baylor alumni couple – Jeff and Debbie Wooley, members of the First Methodist Church in Waco – to financially support the program’s students.
“The establishment of the William J. Abraham Chair in Wesleyan Studies at Baylor’s Truett Seminary not only lavishly honors the life and legacy of our recently deceased friend and colleague, but it also further establishes our school’s Wesley House of Studies as a viable and desirable place to pursue ministerial training in the Wesleyan tradition,” said Truett Seminary Dean Todd D. Still.
“When I was called to ministry in Irish Methodism, I was already a student and I wanted to be a teacher,” Dr. Abraham said when first learning of the honor before his death. “With the call to preach, I thought I would have to give up teaching. In my mind and heart, I did so. And then God gave it all back without rescinding the call to preach. So here I am now, honored beyond words with the naming of this chair. I sense a deep assurance that I discerned correctly. I know the chair will uphold the deep connections between scholarship and preaching that has given me endless joy. What an amazing gift for the Gospel and the future of Methodism.”
The endowment was developed at a Wesley House Weekend in partnership with the Rev. Ryan Barnett and First Methodist Church of Waco, where Barnett serves as the lead pastor. The event’s purpose was to generate support from the Baylor and Methodist communities for scholarship and programmatic resourcing for the Wesley House of Studies.
“Our founding director, Billy Abraham, has left his indelible mark on this project. His legacy will flourish at Truett Seminary,” said Barnett. “Truett’s Wesley House, embedded at Baylor University, is well placed to become one of the most significant training centers for future Methodist ministers.”
–Good News. Photo of Dr. Watson is courtesy of Truett Seminary.
by Steve | Dec 29, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
Photo: Shutterstock.
By Shannon Vowell
I spent much of last week sitting with a beloved family member, watching as he struggled for the next breath. His ankles had swollen to four or five times their normal size, and were the color of eggplants. His belly was also distended; the bruising there was even more vividly hued. Needles and tubes protruded from his arms; a cluster of tubes with caps on them dangled from his neck; a catheter emptied the contents of his bladder into a plastic container that hung bedside. He woke occasionally for disconcertingly mundane conversation – asking for a sip of Ginger Ale, requesting that his foot be more elevated, wondering whether “The Price is Right” was coming on soon. The surreal horror of it overwhelmed me.
“ICU psychosis” is a thing. It refers to a variety of madness that sets in after days on end in a place where nothing changes – incessant light, noise, and urgency interwoven with long spells of acute boredom – ICU psychosis is the logical response to being held captive by a broken body in a physical place of suspended animation.
ICU psychosis is marked initially by the patient’s inability to identify the date, month, year. It progresses from there to the inability to identify family members. It eventually swallows up recall of even personal identity.
What do such nightmarish facts have to do with Advent? Absolutely everything.
The physical brokenness on display in the ICU – the mental brokenness on display in ICU psychosis – these are windows into the unfathomable wonder of the Incarnation.
How so?
Jesus chose to inhabit a body whose potential for brokenness was as complete as that of any ICU patient. The colors of his bruises, the necessity of oxygen in his lungs, the fragility of his heart – Jesus chose these conditions.
And Jesus, Co-Creator of all that is or ever has been, chose to inhabit the physical realm of Creation – where time and space put boundaries on his omnipotence and omnipresence – where he could be subjected to all the suffering specific to creatures who live in time and space. He chose that vulnerability, that limitation, that smallness. Jesus, the Lord of Lords, who existed before the Universe was made, deliberately put himself in position to experience the time-tethered human consciousness that can devolve into ICU psychosis.
We often forget, in the colored-lights-and-hot-cocoa routines of our secularized celebrations, that Advent is about God’s choice to take on flesh – to be born, to live, and to die. The ICU re-orients our eyes to the incomprehensibly lavish affection behind that choice.
Paul spells it out in Philippians 2:5-8 that Christ Jesus, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!”
That emptying – that “being made in human likeness” –ultimately found Jesus nailed to a wooden cross, enduring the same physical agonies as the criminals on either side of him even as he also endured the unimaginable and unrepeatable agonies of the cumulative burden of all human sin, conjoined with the unimaginable and unrepeatable agony of separation from his Father.
Jesus chose this.
Chose it for us, out of love for us, out of a love so infinite and holy and perfect that we can never come close to understanding it.
The Incarnation – Advent – Christmas – these are opportunities for remembering not just the beauties of angels in the night sky, but also the blood and sweat and risk of a teenage girl delivering a baby, and the impossible truth that her baby was God.
The Incarnation – Advent – Christmas – these are opportunities for remembering not just the Gift of the Christ-child in the manger, but the infinite costliness of that Gift – and the willingness of Christ-child, of Father, of Holy Spirit, to bear that cost for us.
The Incarnation – Advent – Christmas – these are opportunities for remembering not just the sweet traditions of family gatherings, favorite recipes, and sparkly presents under the tree, but also the Gift of Presence which Immanuel – God-with-us, Jesus! – gives in an ongoing way because of the Incarnation. Because of Christmas I pray that your Advent and Christmas unfold far, far away from the ICU.
But I also pray that your Advent and Christmas will be made richer and more truth-powered as you contemplate the truth about Jesus which the ICU makes clear: Jesus chose to be confined to human flesh. Jesus chose to be confined to time and space. Jesus chose vulnerability, poverty, betrayal, and pain – because He loves you.
Boundlessly.
Excruciatingly.
Eternally.
by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
By B.J. Funk –
Before leaving for a lengthy trip, I drove into the crowded gas station. All of the pumps were filled, so I pulled my car to be second in line. Our cars were facing, head-to-head, because my fuel tank was on the opposite side from hers. No problem. I’ll just wait a bit.
A bit turned into several minutes, and I watched as the young woman continued looking down at her lap. She never looked up.
She’s probably waiting for the one in the passenger seat to return from paying, I thought.
Or maybe she’s counting her change and will get out and go pay soon.
Neither. She continued looking down, and now I had waited a good five minutes. I decided to get out and go knock on her window.
“Hi. I’m wondering if you are finished getting gas if you could pull out so I could pull in,” I said. A smile adorned my face.
She looked up, mirroring my smiling face with her unhappy face. Uh oh.
“I will move as soon as I finish texting,” she said flippantly. “Besides, there are plenty of other gas pumps. Go to one of those.”
I believe she inherited that disgusted look from Adam when he looked at Eve and said, “See what you’ve done! See the price we now have to pay because you took that one piece of fruit?”
The fact that I needed gas seemed somehow my fault!
The other pumps were still full. I walked back to my car, and I have to be honest. I was not thinking sweet cookies, yummy ice cream, and peppermint candy thoughts about her. I was thinking frogs, snakes, alligators, bears, lions, and wolf thoughts. And, it would have been just fine with me if any of those animals had shown up right about now. In her car.
Questions popped in my mind. Should I go ask the store clerk to tell her to move? Should I start honking my horn? Should I…
At that time, grace began to stir inside. Oh no! I really wanted to handle this one without grace.
But grace said, “Pray for her. Think of what she may be going through personally. Understand that her life might be difficult, and she is barely holding on to the little confidence she has left. Perhaps she just had a fight with her husband. Maybe finances are low. Bottom line … she is too overwhelmed with life right now to be nice. Too burdened to be thoughtful.”
I wanted to disagree. “I’ve had a few hurtful things happen myself, Grace. You never saw me acting like that, have you?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
Humble Pie had never tasted so salty.
Grace said, “I’ve seen you be pretty selfish, B.J., especially when things didn’t turn out like you wanted. I’ve seen your ego swell when what I wanted to swell was Me in your life. I’ve actually heard your heart thinking thoughts similar to what this young woman is thinking.”
Once again, grace won. I started praying for my twin in the car ahead of me.
Grace, grace, marvelous grace. Thank you for once again coming through to teach me a lesson. Eventually, she pulled out, never acknowledging me. But, if grace is right … and she always is … she had too much on her heart to be nice.
I should know. Twins always think alike.
BJ. Funk is Good News’ long-time devotional columnist and author of It’s A Good Day for Grace, available on Amazon.
by Steve | Dec 28, 2021 | Magazine Articles, November/December 2021
By Luciano Pereira da Silva –
For the sake of context, allow me to describe my own transformation story. I was born in the interior of Brazil. My family was impoverished and dysfunctional, with problems such as violence, alcohol addiction, and illness. As a child I had no future hopes, only thoughts of death. But the Lord had plans for my life. By his grace, I was invited to participate in a Methodist Youth meeting and my life began to change.
I met Jesus and discovered his mission. I experienced a spiritual call to ministry in a meeting with foreign missionaries. They were part of a group connected to Rick Bonfim Ministries. Pastor Rick is a well known Brazilian Methodist evangelist. Upon meeting this group and experiencing my call to ministry, I wanted to connect my life story with missionaries from abroad.
This desire was not without its challenges, however. Protestant missionaries from the United States and Europe have had many religious and political obstacles in establishing and expanding their mission in South America. They brought much hope to me and many people like me. They helped to build churches, schools and Bible societies; to spread the principles of the gospel; and to introduce the Kingdom of God. That work, which began in the 19th century, continues today. We also know, however, that their approach to the mission has often been problematic.
The idea of empowering indigenous leaders within the mission has proven especially challenging for many missionaries, often due to a lack of confidence in delegating leadership positions to them. Even today, this missionary model has several problems that are still prevalent, especially in traditional Protestant churches. Because of a model that often fails to raise up and equip indigenous leaders, a culture of dependency has been created. The result has been a Latin American church culture that has failed to thrive, grow, and live into its potential.
There is a significant contrast between the historical approach of traditional Protestant denominations and that of more recent Pentecostal movements. Pentecostal churches have arisen and grown exponentially in Latin America during the last century. Much of this growth is because they have a soft system of training indigenous workers, both clergy and laity, and they have demonstrated the ability to respond to the needs of common people.
We know that Latin America and the Caribbean continue to have many economic and political problems. But even with the challenges we can change for the better with the help of fully trained and empowered indigenous leaders. Especially with support for the training and deployment of indigenous Latin American mission leaders, we can make a difference for the advancement of the mission.
The generosity of the New Testament church serves as a prime example. “Let me tell you, my dear family, about the grace which God has given to the Macedonian churches. They have been sorely tested by suffering. But the abundance of grace which was given to them, and the depths of poverty they have endured, have overflowed in a wealth of sincere generosity on their part,” writes Paul. “I bear them witness that of their own accord, up to their ability and even beyond their ability, they begged us eagerly to let them have the privilege of sharing in the work of service for God’s people. They didn’t just do what we had hoped; they gave themselves, first to the Lord, and then to us as God willed it” (2 Corinthians 8:1-5).
The CIEMAL (Council of Methodist Evangelical Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean) seeks to empower potential Kingdom leaders through various training programs. The vision is to mobilize, train, and connect laity, clergy, bishops, and local churches to join Jesus in His mission, with the intention of awakening people to help each other with the gifts and talents that the Holy Spirit has given them.
We desire and envision a relationship with agencies and missionaries abroad as follows: the relationship must be cultivated, but from a vision of interdependence, not dependency. The mission’s agenda should never be imposed by outsiders, but rather be contextualized and mutually shared.
Dozens of Brazilians responded to serve in cross-cultural missions during the Amazonas Missions Conference in Porto Velho, Brazil. Held in March 2019, the event brought together churches from the Amazon Conference of the Methodist Church of Brazil. Shown speaking: the Rev. Luciano Pereira Da Silva. Photo courtesy of the Methodist Church of Brazil.
I believe that this is the moment when we need to mobilize workers and awaken them to engage with God’s mission in the world. The mission belongs to God and he has given us the privilege of participating in it. All God’s people are needed, and not just those from traditional sending nations.
The good news is that there exist some special characteristics of Latinos that can make a difference in the mission: their ability to adapt to any circumstance, to learn other languages and cultures, their enthusiasm, and their passion. I believe with all my heart that God is blazing a new path for global mission and he wants to awaken the Latin people to this passion.
We must concentrate our efforts on mobilizing the people of Latin America and the Caribbean and making them aware of this very strong and fundamental call from God. I know that many young people in our countries can see their lives transformed (like mine was) by the power of the gospel and receive the power of the Holy Spirit to serve God in many ways. May God continue to bless us in this way.
Luciano Pereira da Silva is the Secretary-General for CIEMAL, the Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean. He has served as pastor in the Methodist Church of Brazil since 2002. In 2010 he and his family were sent as missionaries to Peru, where for four years he was the National Director of Discipleship. He currently lives in Panama, Central America, where he serves as a local church pastor and church planter. He has authored four books.
Since 2014, TMS Global has collaborated with CIEMAL in mobilizing Latin Americans in 19 countries for mission and ministry. This is the first of a series of articles provided by TMS Global to platform some important voices from the Global South.
