Rebuilding and Defending United Methodism Today – Part 5 of 9, Covenant Accountability: The Obligations of UMC Membership

The following is an excerpt from the text for a speech delivered by UMAction Director John Lomperis on Thursday, November 21 at historic Boehm’s Chapel.  The gathering near Lancaster, Pennsylvania was hosted by the Eastern Pennsylvania Evangelical Connection. That evening included lively discussion with the audience. For the convenience of online readers, the speech is divided into nine sections here.   

Part 5 of 9: Covenant Accountability: The Obligations of UMC Membership

But for people who are already committed Christians and have been coming to your church for a while, they do need to be pushed to see church membership as a duty.

It is sadly common nowadays, particularly among my generation, for churchgoers to kind of drift a little into one church, hang around for a while, never formally join, and then drift elsewhere when they feel like it.  This suggests a very self-centered individualism, treating churches like a consumer treats stores, wondering “what’s in it for me?” and certainly not wanting to subject myself to any sort of accountability.

If we are genuinely concerned about growing our people in discipleship and sanctification, then we need to challenge such very un-Christian behavior and underlying attitudes.

Because throughout the New Testament, it is so clear that being a Christian is an inherently community enterprise.

And when people come to the point of joining our congregations, they need to understand that they are joining a global denomination with a particular tradition and with our own set of problems.  Our members need to know that we have this paragraph in our Discipline called doctrinal standards.  And that when they make their membership vows, they will are committing themselves to working for Scriptural holiness and Christian accountability not just locally, but in our denomination as a whole.

One somewhat uniquely valuable thing that United Methodism has to offer is how our increasingly global nature has the potential for allowing Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Americans to all come together as members of the same church to lovingly help each other recognize our blind spots and become better, more countercultural, boldly biblical Christians in each of our respective contexts.

I realize a dilemma that many United Methodist pastors face is the question of whether or how to let their flocks know the dirty secret that we have some really messed up things in our denomination.

Obviously, when I was building a congregational ministry among marginally churched young adults, I didn’t rush to complain “Can you believe it? One of our United Methodist Bishops is out there rejecting biblical sexual morality!”  As a starting point, I was more concerned with building relationships and introducing people to Jesus.

But when people are at the point of being committed Christians and church members, they need to grow.  This growth includes understanding that as United Methodists, our people have a sacred duty to support, encourage, and participate in efforts to renew and reform our denomination.

I can certainly empathize with the sentiment of pastors who say things like, “I personally am involved in denominational renewal and reform efforts, but in order to build up my local church I need to protect my people from knowing about the problems because I don’t want them to get upset and leave.”  That is a very real concern.  And certainly it is not our intent at IRD/UMAction to hurt evangelical congregations by driving members away with bad news.

But keeping people in the dark is not sustainable in the long run.  Because if you take that approach, your people will still eventually come across some bad news about our denomination, and then there is a good chance that they will (1) read more into this than they should (such as that a heretical United Methodist bishop is somehow representative of the UMC as a whole), (2) feel betrayed by you, and (3) get upset and leave, after all, since you failed to provide them with the tools for understanding and responding to such news about the problems in our denomination.

So here are some very practical things that can be done at the congregational level:

Set aside some time in new-membership classes to explain that joining the church means joining a denomination that yes, has some serious problems, but that here is why one should not get upset and leave over these problems.

Explain that such messiness is part of being the church in the fallen world.  Remind people of how bad things were in the New Testament church with all sorts of false teachings and sinful practices the epistle writers had to confront.  Be graciously clear about how the tendency to drift from church to church, leaving one as soon as there are problems, often stems from sinfully selfish lack of concern for those a departing member leaves behind, and also gets people in a very bad habit of continually ceding ground to the devil rather than working to expand, not contract, the Kingdom of God.  John Wesley’s sermon, “On Schism” is a GREAT resource here.

Whenever you serve on a Board or District Committee on Ordained Ministry, you have a sacred duty to Christ and to the United Methodist Church to do everything you can to stop the candidacy of anyone who does not firmly believe in the very basic Christian teaching of our doctrinal standards.  We don’t need more clergy whose entire ministry is based on such a self-serving lie.  Being part of a covenant connection means you have no right to think that a heretical clergy candidate passing through is not your problem just because you may not see much of them afterwards.

Be proactive in equipping your people to protect your congregation from the potentially harmful effects of our denominational connection.  As much as possible, make sure that your nominating committee is filled only with solid, biblically grounded Christians who understand the need to fill other key committees, especially the SPRC, with similarly solid people.  We need to coach our SPRCs to ask the right questions of pastors who interview to be appointed.  We need to steel our SPRCs and finance committees to be prepared to stand firm and reject a liberal, church-killing pastor if we get sent one – even if that means getting the bishop to back down by telling him or her that since the announcement of who the new pastor would be, they have not been able to find room in the budget to pay a salary.  I’ve heard of that working!

Finally, part of building a culture of covenant accountability means challenging and exhorting your United Methodist evangelical friends who are pastors or lay leaders in other congregations, such as the others in this room, to promote all of the above reforms in their own churches.

This sort of rebuilding is a lot of work.  But just imagine a culture developing in your local church and mine and spreading throughout our denomination in which United Methodists are known as people who know the Bible well, read it regularly, and submit to its authority, in which we have clarity about how what nominal Christians need most is conversion, in which more and more United Methodists are experiencing the deeper discipleship God wants for them – even the second blessing of entire sanctification – at the ground level, and where we rebuild a culture in our local churches, and stretching up even to the Council of Bishops, in which United Methodist membership is valued as not an entitlement or an empty formality but rather a special and holy covenant of biblical Christians supporting each other in our respective adventures of discipleship.

I believe God can bring us closer to that day and in many places is already doing so.

We all have an obligation to leave this place and get to work on rebuilding the United Methodist Church into being a denomination that is more biblically grounded, evangelistically oriented, and serious about covenant accountability – and consequently, in the long run much better equipped to withstand the sorts of attacks we are facing today from radical advocates of a secularized theology.

(Note: the first half of the speech ended here.)

Part 1: The Need to Rebuild Our Church Cultures

Part 2 : Biblical Groundedness

Part 3: Oriented for Conversion

Part 4: Covenant Accountability, Counting the Cost of Church Membership

Part 5: Covenant Accountability: The Obligations of UMC Membership

Part 6: Why United Methodist Liberals are Now Focusing on “Biblical Disobedience”

Part 7: The “Biblical [Dis]obedience” Siege vs. the Basis for Unity in the UMC

Part 8: The Latest with Melvin Talbert

Part 9: Where Do We Go From Here?