10 Things Evangelical United Methodists Can Be Thankful For in 2014

Inspired by the recent piece by my colleague, Chelsen Vicari, on 10 Things Evangelicals Can Be Thankful For in 2014, I decided that we evangelical members of the United Methodist Church could use our own list.

There have certainly been a lot of major disappointments and challenges in our denomination in 2014, from the scourge of Ebola in much of our global church to ongoing U.S. membership decline to the any-means-necessary antics of the pastorally harmful “disobedience” movement to some high-profile betrayals by bishops and other denominational officials.

But as we approach a time of Thanksgiving, we should not lose sight of the many ways God is still at work in our denomination, with exciting long-term implications.  Such blessings United Methodists committed to biblical values and Wesleyan Methodist theology can celebrate this year include:

1.     Asbury’s Continued Dominance of UMC Seminary Education

While independent of any denominational control, Asbury Theological Seminary is a solidly evangelical Methodist school in its theology and is largely run by evangelical United Methodists.  According to the latest statistics, far more American United Methodists ordained last year graduated from Asbury’s Kentucky or Florida campuses than any other seminary, and more came from Asbury than seven of the UMC’s official seminaries combined.  This continues a longtime trend of Asbury contributing an outsized pipeline of new, evangelical clergy coming into United Methodism.

With its new Church-Planting Initiative, it will, Lord willing, play an increased role in training people to seed our denomination with new, evangelical congregations and make new disciples of Jesus Christ.

2.     United’s Ongoing Transformation

The dramatic reformation of one of the UMC’s official seminaries, United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, into a bulwark of theological orthodoxy is nothing short of miraculous.  God has been blessing this new direction of the school with dramatically increased enrollments, which will establish more and more positive influence on our denomination as a whole.

3.     Renewed Interest in Wesleyan Small-Group Accountability

It seems there is a holy movement afoot among United Methodists to reclaim early Methodist spirituality that was centered in highly accountable small groups, called classes and bands.  The Council of Bishops even invited the Rev. Dr. Kevin Watson to speak to them about his efforts to revive a new version of the early Methodist class meetings. Many Filipino United Methodist leaders are now in the process of establishing their own 21^st-century version of class meetings. This has tremendous potential to rebuild a culture of moral accountability and spiritual vitality at the grassroots level of our denomination.

4.     Good Statements by Individual Bishops

While we rightly press our bishops to offer stronger leadership in the face of our denomination’s present challenges, we must also take time to celebrate the good statements and actions some have taken.

On marriage, sexuality, and related disciplinary standards, United Methodism faces many difficulties.  But early in the year, Bishop Scott Jones confronted the disobedience movement head-on, declaring to a gathering of all the clergy in the he Great Plains Conference (Kansas and Nebraska) his commitment to upholding our standards, even if it meant putting as many as 100 of them on trial. Since then, I am not aware of any clergy in that conference daring to challenge him. In June, Bishop Young-Jin Cho of Virginia released his own response to the disobedience movement, publicly pledging to be a man of his word and uphold our biblical disciplinary standards and also becoming one of a very few bishops to ever warn congregations against illegally formally affiliating with the Reconciling Ministries Network. In response to recent legal definitions of marriage, Bishop Robert Hayes of Oklahoma joined Baptist and Catholic leaders to defend biblical values, declaring in February that he was bound “to uphold what the Scriptures say” and that they “do not change with the wind,” and then in October he spoke out again, denying that “the laws of society supersede the laws of God” or change the church’s values.

Bishop Pedro Torio offered strong leadership to his episcopal area in the northern Philippines in explicit response to the “Methodist Crossroads” statement. Bishop Eduard Khegay of Moscow has offered faithful leadership in a very difficult context, including producing the most extensive teaching statement on homosexuality by a United Methodist bishop in recent memory.

Even Bishop Peggy Johnson of Philadelphia, of all people, ultimately released a very strong warning that the nearly 1200 United Methodist clergy in her area had not better not do any future same-sex unions (credit for this goes to a determined group of local evangelicals who basically achieved this as a negotiated settlement).

Meanwhile, Bishop Ken Carter of Florida became the latest bishop to publicly defend the sanctity of unborn human life against abortion violence. With his 2005 Lifewatch sermon, Carter’s predecessor in Florida, Bishop Timothy Whitaker, became perhaps the first modern United Methodist bishop to give a major address opposing abortion. Since then three other bishops, including Carter, have preached at the annual worship service of Lifewatch (our denomination’s pro-life caucus).  Each time helps make it more respectable to be openly pro-life in the United Methodist Church.

5.     Young United Methodists Reject Redefining Marriage

As I have said, my generation is no monolith, and no one position or group speaks for all young people.  But given all the liberal rhetoric claiming we need to pander to the liberalism of “our young people” (rhetoric typically espoused by people with gray hair), and given the previous liberal dominance of the once-in-four-years UMC Global Young People’s Convocation and Legislative Assembly (GYPCLA), the rejection by this summer’s GYPCLA of redefining the church’s teaching on marriage was wonderful to see.

6.     Large, Growing Conferences Reject LGBTQ Agenda

Much of the talk about our denomination’s growing orthodox majority has centered on the explosive growth of United Methodism in Sub-Saharan Africa.  But as the most radicalized regions of American United Methodism wither away into increasing irrelevance, there remains plenty of biblically grounded United Methodism in this country.  Last spring, the Texas and North Georgia Conferences overwhelmingly rejected resolutions to embrace parts of the LGBTQ liberationist agenda. These two conferences were among the few posting any membership growth in the past year, and each of them has more people than several smaller, more liberal annual conferences combined.

In the Northeastern Jurisdiction, no conference reported any membership growth in this year’s official list. But even in this liberal-dominated region, the largest conference, Western Pennsylvania, defeated liberalizing petitions on sexual morality, I am told by a margin of roughly 80-20.

This demonstrates that the sexual liberalization of our church’s values in the United States neither is made inevitable by the changes in our surrounding culture nor offers a helpful way for filling our churches with more people.

May churches in these more orthodox regions lead the way forward in genuinely compassionate, biblical faithful ministry for ALL people, including experiencing same-sex-attraction or confusion about their gender identity.

7.     Good Moves at Global Ministries

The UMC’s General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) was long under the sway of Liberation Theology and radical politics. To be sure, not all problems with far-left political agendas have been fixed. But UMAction has observed political themes to be dramatically toned down or absent from much of GBGM’s recent work and gatherings.

GBGM is now embracing United Methodism’s increasingly global nature, planting churches around the world, and treating evangelicals as teachers and partners.

One of the most dramatic moves is GBGM’s newly announced literal move out of its longtime headquarters in the notorious Manhattan “God Box” of liberal Protestantism to a new headquarters in Atlanta and regional field offices in Asia, Latin America, and Francophone Africa. It was not good for our denomination’s largest agency to be in the middle of the radicalized New York Annual Conference, with such a dearth of nearby biblically faithful United Methodist congregations for staffers to attend. GBGM’s new North Georgia home will be a much healthier spiritual environment.

8.     How Our Global Connection is Helping Fight Killer Diseases Like Ebola

When we hear about awful killer diseases devastating other parts of the world, it is exciting to be a part of a global denomination whose vast size and resources. United Methodist News Service has extensive reporting on our denomination’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. Evangelical United Methodists should not forget to celebrate how God is using our denomination to save precious human lives.

9.     Continuing Faithful Local Ministry

In so many United Methodist congregations around the United States, the true Gospel is still being preached, lives are being transformed, people are getting saved, Christians are deepening and their discipleship, and the church is faithfully reaching out in love to its neighbors. May we never lose sight of that.

10.     The Ongoing Ministry of UMAction

God continues to sustain UMAction’s very special ministry, through faithful donors of all levels across the nation, of reforming, renewing, equipping, and serving as a watchdog for our beloved United Methodist Church.

All of this indicates that God is not done with our church!