Rebuilding and Defending United Methodism Today – Part 9 of 9: Where Do We Go From Here?

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 9 of 9: Where Do We Go From Here?

Going forward, here are what need to be some structural priorities if United Methodism is to be a loving community of biblically faithful Christians submitted to Christ’s Lordship and honoring of our covenant connection to each other:

First of all, we need to have better mechanisms for holding bishops accountable beyond just their respective regions.  That would be far more consistent than our Wesleyan theology of covenant accountability than our current structure.  The fact of the matter is that the leadership of the UMC’s Western Jurisdiction is increasingly acting like an independent denomination, with a clear “I have no need of you” attitude towards the rest of the UMC, let alone the 2,000-year-old global, ecumenical body of Christ from whom they seem sadly eager to divorce themselves.

Secondly, we need to challenge the inexcusable waste of money spent to give the radicalized Western Jurisdiction far more bishops than their numbers deserve.  The Western Jurisdiction is the only one of the five U.S. jurisdictions which is privileged to be given more bishops than the region itself pays for.  Which means the Western Jurisdiction takes money away from our United Methodist churches in the rest of the country to give themselves more bishops than their tiny numbers merit.  There are now two annual conferences, North Georgia in the U.S. and North Katanga in central Africa, with more members than the entire Western Jurisdiction.

If the Western Jurisdiction had the same ratio of lay members to bishops as United Methodism in Sub-Saharan Africa, it would only have one bishop.  If the Western Jurisdiction had the same ratio as the much more orthodox Southeastern Jurisdiction, the West would have no more than two bishops.  Yet the Western Jurisdiction has five bishops.  This translates into very powerful, formative influence throughout our whole church, especially when Western Jurisdiction bishops are very disproportionately singled out for positions of denominational leadership.

The Western Jurisdiction seems to be rather enjoying taking the rest of us for a ride.  Collectively, they have long paid far less of even their own assigned share of apportionments into the Episcopal Fund, knowing that this will leave the rest of us to cover even more of the cost of their bishops.

Yet when declining income is forcing our church to cut valuable ministries left and right, why should we continue paying far more than necessary to privilege and prop up the leadership of the one region of the church whose dominant faction has repeatedly made clear its commitment to causing all sorts of disruptive, divisive, costly headaches for the rest of the UMC with their angry protests against biblical, United Methodist teaching?

Thirdly, we need to have clear minimal penalties for clergy who choose to bless same-sex unions in open defiance of our biblical church covenant.  Why single out this one offense amidst the list of offenses for which United Methodist clergy can be brought up on charges?  Because it is the only one which is being targeted in a massive, nationwide, well-funded campaign, with support from powerful secular forces outside the church, to be undermined with attempts to allow publicity-seeking clergy to break it with effective impunity or no more than meaningless slaps on the wrist.

At the last General Conference, there was a good petition that would have required clear, meaningful, minimum penalties for any clergy who chose to insist on being charged for blessing same-sex union ceremonies.  That petition was not defeated.  It received strong support in committee.  But the full General Conference was never given a chance to even discuss it, thanks to the outright bullying of the liberal protest caucuses, who showed the world how their vision for the UMC is of a church governed by threats, selectively biased enforcement of rules, stopping our church from working, and the raw physical force of self-appointed enforcement mobs.  With their open embrace of such any-means-necessary tactics, the liberal protest caucuses have made very clear that they already do not see themselves as having much any meaningful degree of Christian unity with the rest of the church (though they are still happy to take and drain our money), and when push comes to shove, they will no more submit to Jesus Christ’s Golden Rule in their treatment of the rest of us than they submit to equally clear biblical teaching about sexual boundaries.

Finally, we need to have a mechanism for pastors and congregations who refuse to submit to our communal covenant to be allowed to leave with their property.  This idea has now been publicly endorsed by people on both sides of our denomination’s theological divide.

Yes, I do believe that efforts need to be continually made to persuasively teach the church’s faith to those within the church who struggle to accept certain parts of it.  But the fact of the matter is that there remains a significant minority element in our denomination who state very clearly that they are stubbornly committed to completely closing their minds and ears against ever being taught by the church, no matter what General Conference, Scripture, church tradition, reason, or Christian experience may have to say.  This comes after over four exhausting decades of intense studies and dialogues, after conclusive scholarship now begrudgingly accepted by even liberal biblical scholars showing how the Bible does indeed condemn homosexual practice, after powerful testimonies of how it is indeed possible to minister to same-sex attracted individuals in ways that are both compassionate and honoring of biblical standards of behavior, and after widespread acknowledgement that our denomination is unlikely to change its position for the foreseeable future.

I also understand the concern about the loss of property.  But such short-term losses are much less than what would be lost in the alternative of several more exhausting decades of further conflict over biblical authority and sexual morality, only at an increasingly intense level so that there will be barely time left for us to talk about anything else amidst all the publicity stunts, costly trials, and ever-hardening feelings of bitter betrayal all around.  Such an alternative path would likely result in our church having the same unchanged biblical position on sexual morality, but with the UMC having become a dramatically smaller and much more wounded, embittered, insecure, uncertain, and decaying shell of even our current self.

This ultimately poses to our church the question of what our church values more: keeping a small fraction of our real-estate assets even when the price of doing so is betraying God’s clear teachings to us in Scripture, sacrificing our identity as a unified connection in which we keep our word to one another, and losing a far greater number of members?  Or insisting on biblical faithfulness and having honest integrity in our communal life together, even if that means a short-term sacrifice of a relatively small amount of mammon?

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?