United Methodist General Conference 2016 was a resounding victory for orthodoxy. I do not refer to it as a victory of conservatives over liberals; the issues are bigger than political, partisan turf battles. General Conference was a victory for orthodox biblical standards. Here are just a few actions of GC that support such a verdict: the renunciation of RCRC, the refusal to endorse divestment from Israel, no change in the Church’s position on sexual issues, and charging local churches’ Church Councils with the responsibility to uphold the doctrinal standards of the Church. In the wake of that historic conference, an immediate question is: What will happen now?
Some of our liberal friends will leave, joining the Episcopal Church and other like-minded denominations. But many liberals will remain. Some of the clergy (and a few bishops) will probably accelerate the number of same-sex marriages they perform. Some Annual Conferences will refuse to discipline these violators of the Book of Discipline (BOD). Evidently, many liberals believe that if the church laws governing sexual morality are broken often enough, and if U.S. culture continues to move in a leftward direction (with the assistance of the U.S. Supreme Court), sooner or later the UMC will just give up the struggle and accept the culture’s view of sexual morality.
I humbly offer some unsolicited advice for orthodox, evangelical, conservative United Methodists. Do not focus on the misbehavior of certain clergy and bishops. Have no more sermons “deploring” the bad actors within our denomination. To do so is to lend support to Satan’s strategy. He wants to distract the UMC with attention-grabbing sexual issues so that we will avoid THE MAIN THING — MAKING DISCIPLES OF JESUS CHRIST. If the Book of Discipline is violated in our Annual Conference, we have a responsibility to see that charges are brought. But beyond that, we should ignore it and concentrate on evangelism and missions.
Offer Christ, by word and deed. Preach the cross-centered gospel. The fields are ripe with harvest. The people are hungry for Bible-centered truth. We are the only mainline denomination in America that has not bowed the knee to liberalism. What a great time this is for an evangelical in the UMC!
Rev. Dr. Bill Bouknight is a retired United Methodist minister, a member of the Memphis Annual Conference. He was educated at Duke, University of Edinburgh- Scotland, and Yale Divinity School. He served churches in South Carolina for 28 years. From 1994 until 2007 he served as Senior Minister of Christ UMC in Memphis, TN. Currently he is a part-time Associate Director of the Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church
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Comment by Mark Brooks on May 26, 2016 at 11:48 am
It is good to do missions and evangelism. But a church that doesn’t clean its own house isn’t going to do either of those things well. Good things happened at the conference. However, bad things happened as well, so the work isn’t done.
“Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter to have no company with sexual sinners; yet not at all meaning with the sexual sinners of this world, or with the covetous and extortionists, or with idolaters; for then you would have to leave the world. But as it is, I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who is called a brother who is a sexual sinner, or covetous, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or an extortionist. Don’t even eat with such a person. For what have I to do with also judging those who are outside? Don’t you judge those who are within? But those who are outside, God judges. ‘Put away the wicked man from among yourselves’.”
It would be a mistake to focus on missions and evangelism to the exclusion of church discipline and holiness. The UMC remains a ‘liberal’ mainline denomination in many ways. Biblical authority is still being flouted. Sin is still in God’s house. So continuing working diligently to fix that problem. What would be the value of missions and evangelism only to let the wolves in the house of God get at new Christians? First make the house safe. Then bring them in.
Comment by oldag22 on May 26, 2016 at 5:42 pm
Amen.
Comment by Joan Watson on May 26, 2016 at 5:57 pm
Mark Brooks makes a very valid point in his last paragraph. I have been a Methodist/United Methodist for a very long time. What I have recently discovered is that even local UMC’s that are not liberal do not necessarily have much to offer when it comes to a clear teaching of basic orthodox Christianity. It was only after I became so lost and confused–and part of that confusion was the result of three totally different pastors arriving hard on the heels of each other–that I finally distanced myself from all things church and stumbled into a clear teaching of orthodox Christian doctrine. Nothing has been the same since. Thanks to the Heidelberg Catechism and three very modern books about it, all the random pieces of the puzzle of the Christianity I have been collecting over the course of my life finally have a home in a much larger and grander understanding. At the time I could not find any comparable teaching from within the Methodist/Wesleyan camp; I know because I made a diligent search. Since then, I have discovered seedbed.com, the Wesleyan initiative out of Asbury Seminary which evidently came into existence about the time I encountered the Heidelberg. After a lifetime of vague understandings I am folded into this amazing story of God’s creation, our sin and rebellion and the unfathomable and unprecedented action God took to redeem us. Throughout my life, The Methodist/United Methodist Church has enriched my life in many ways, including making me feel good about myself. But what I really needed was to feel good about God. I am now excited about who God is and at the prospect of what he can accomplish in my life–transforming me into the truly human person he created me to be.