Calvinist Evangelicals in United Methodist Church!

on January 26, 2015

Last evening in Washington, D.C. I was walking by an old United Methodist sanctuary and heard uncharacteristic music emanating from the windows. Curiosity drove me inside, where I was surprised to see a full congregation of almost all twenty-somethings singing fulsomely as a band performed behind the altar. There being no seating left, I went upstairs to the balcony.

The congregation, of course, was not United Methodist but an Evangelical congregation tied to a Calvinist network and founded just a few years ago by a young pastor from out of town. Meanwhile, the home United Methodist congregation has virtually died off. I was glad to see the stately old sanctuary put to good use for vital worship and ministry reaching Millennials.

But I was saddened to contemplate there is no Methodist equivalent in Washington, D.C. or in most large cities. Institutional United Methodism in America has given up on cities and given up on young people, so no surprise we are declining by nearly 100,000 annually. Pockets of United Methodist vitality are typically in the suburbs.

Washington, D.C. is full of beautiful old Methodist sanctuaries that are mostly empty. Sometimes over the years I’ve been asked by friends where their young adult child newly arrived in the nation’s capital might find a vital and orthodox United Methodist church. I’ve told them there really are no options. So they end up at any one of dozens of Evangelical new church plants that successfully attract young people, like the one I visited last evening.

Think about it. The most powerful city in the world has almost no vital, orthodox United Methodist churches. Instead there are typically small, liberal congregations that celebrate their diversity but have little capacity for meaningful outreach. The same is true for most large cities. And institutional United Methodism has no ability to address this challenge.

The Evangelical congregation I visited this evening describes their mission evangelistically. Their website says: “We believe in the personal, bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ. The coming of Christ, at a time known only to God, demands constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service and energetic mission.”

It also says:

God’s gospel requires a response that has eternal consequences. We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.

In contrast, what is the mission of diversity churches? Inclusiveness, community building, radical hospitality, affirmation, etc. One United Methodist congregation in D.C. advertises its welcome to all this way:

No matter,
– Where you’ve come from or are going;
– What you believe or doubt;
– What you are feeling or just not feeling;
– What you have or don’t have; and
– No matter whom you love
All of who you are
– is welcomed into this community of faith
– by a God who loves you passionately.
Thanks be to God. Amen!

So what does that mean? And whom would it excite? All are welcome into what, for what? Most Millennials, and nearly everyone else, would respond with yawns. Hence the empty churches.

What can be done to share Methodism with young people and America’s cities? By the general church or most annual conferences, nothing. Diversity ideology and bland institutionalism have crippled those bodies from any effective action.

Here’s what might be done. Evangelical congregations in United Methodism might commit themselves to urban church planting. There’s no reason why strong churches could not plant 100 new congregations to preach the Gospel from a Wesleyan perspective in America’s largest 20 or 30 cities.

It’s easy to complain about our struggling denomination. But why not focus instead on exploiting available opportunities by sending young church planting pastors into our great urban areas, starting with Washington, D.C.? The ultimate impact would not just be local but global and eternal.

  1. Comment by Paul Reese on January 26, 2015 at 7:48 am

    Precisely! Broadcasting a Muslim call to prayer on Friday’s might help. No wait. Tried that. Nevermind. Let’s go with your idea.

  2. Comment by Jason on January 26, 2015 at 12:43 pm

    my wife and I came to faith in a Methodist church in our mid-twenties. We left and joined a non-denominational (Acts 29 affiliated, reformed theology) in our mid-thirties. We didn’t leave for reformed theology, we left because we wanted a church that wasn’t ashamed to be bold and up front with the simple core beliefs of Christian orthodoxy. I love and miss the Methodist church…

  3. Comment by smg45acp on January 27, 2015 at 11:47 am

    You ask why nobody is joining the UMC? Here’s a clue right here. http://www.lifenews.com/2015/01/26/united-methodist-church-leader-mocks-pro-lifers-at-march-for-life/

    The UMC mocks pro-lifers.
    So that leaves just the pro-abortion crowd left to join the UMC. Well, hate to break it to you not a whole lot of pro-abortion folks are church goers.

  4. Comment by Vacogito on January 27, 2015 at 2:02 pm

    Maybe not in DC, but outside of DC… check out Grace United Methodist in Gaithersburg MD.

  5. Comment by Benjamin Wortham on January 27, 2015 at 6:48 pm

    I will try to be very brief. I am a member of the fastest growing methodist community in a very conservative area of Texas. We accept orthodox and heterodox points of view without conflict. That is the source of our strength as a congregation. I have often read your blogs with an open mind but I will no longer do so. Your recent comments on the death of Marcus Borg where gratuitous and pastorally unacceptable. You had plenty of opportunity to counter his opinions while he was alive( and you did). To rehash old arguments after someones death is at best poor taste, and at worst unchristian. As a result, I know longer consider you a credible Christian witness. Mr Borg would never have been as ungrastious under similar circumstances. Shame on you!

  6. Comment by LarryECollins on January 27, 2015 at 11:47 pm

    It is never inappropriate to call heresy, “heresy,” whether the one espousing it is dead or alive. In this case I respect Mark for swimming against the tide of pro-Borg sentimentimental outpouring which accompanied his passing. It’s one thing to remember kindly the humanity of Marcus Borg; it’s quite another to praise the theological heretic. We must separate human sentimentality from theological orthodoxy.

  7. Comment by Benjamin Wortham on January 28, 2015 at 10:32 am

    Congratulations! You missed the point entirely! If mr. Tooley feels its appropriate to show up at mr. Borgs funeral and make the same comments in person I’d be very surprised. Thats the problem with the internet. It makes us feel free to behave in ways we never would in person. It was his timing I object too, which I can only interpret as mean spirited. Simply delaying his post for a week out of general respect for the bereaved would have been the decent thing to do. If you feel your beliefs entitle you to ignore basic civility then there’s little hope that they will spread.

  8. Comment by John S. on January 30, 2015 at 6:51 am

    And yet we still do the same to John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Paul, ….

  9. Comment by John S. on January 30, 2015 at 6:49 am

    Planting a church, in an urban enviroment, no matter the committment, will not succeed until the churches stand for something with distinctiveness and meaning. The UMC does not fit that bill.

  10. Comment by Mike Seigle on February 5, 2015 at 7:52 pm

    The UMC has a lot of resources that if properly applied could help it regain its relevance. However, I am not hopeful.

  11. Comment by Vegan Taxidermist on February 9, 2015 at 2:40 pm

    Methodist communities are thriving where I live, both inside and outside of the cities.

    The thing is, they’re Free Methodist, and the fact they’re Methodist is not advertised on their sign, in their name, or really anywhere at all.

    My parents came to know Jesus in a UMC parish. Wouldn’t happen today.

  12. Comment by PaynePicMin QCUMC on February 11, 2015 at 4:00 pm

    sending young church planting pastors into our great urban areas, starting with Washington, D.C.? We have one and his name The Reverend Dr. B. Kevin Smalls, Pastor Ebenezer UMC, Washington, DC

  13. Comment by Jeff Walton on February 12, 2015 at 11:08 am

    This church does have a fascinating history to celebrate: http://blackamericaweb.com/2013/06/10/ebenezer-united-methodist-church-little-known-black-history-fact/ Strangely, it appears to lack a web site or Facebook page in an era where 90 percent of new visitors check out a church online before they attend a service.

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