God’s Plans for Methodism?

The United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, one of the world’s largest missions agencies, opens its new headquarters in Atlanta on October 20, having left New York City after 200 years. Not very long ago, many evangelicals in United Methodism viewed GBGM’s New York offices in the ecumenical “Godbox” on Riverside Drive, with its hundreds of employees and indifferent bureaucracy, as the heart of denominational darkness. It was wealthy, radical and indifferent to the mainstream church. Many of us fought for its relocation out of New York.

My own vocation for church renewal began in 1988 when as a very young man I compiled a report for my local church on GBGM’s rejection of missions evangelism in favor of Liberation Theology, including grants to pro-Marxist groups. “Missionaries” in Nicaragua flaked for the Sandinsta regime instead of planting churches. The battle to reclaim GBGM for orthodox Christian beliefs seemed insurmountable. In 1992 the General Conference rejected proposed reforms mandating increased missionaries and restrictions on grants to outside groups. In 1996 it rejected moving GBGM out of New York after a stacked committee claimed such a move prohibitively would cost tens of millions.

GBGM’s board of directors had 180 members whose biannual meetings in New York, which I sometimes attended as a distressed observer, cost hundreds of thousands. Its New York staff of 400 seemed dominated by activists and persons outside the church. Its over $100 million budget, and hundreds of millions in assets, even 25 years ago, made it the church’s wealthiest and most powerful agency. Who could challenge it? How could it ever be reformed? Give up! Abandon all hope all ye who enter there!

God had other plans, and over the last 20 years GBGM, once the embodiment of liberal Protestant arrogance and church intrigue, began to reform. Its board of directors was reduced to a few dozen. Its headquarters staff in Atlanta will be only 168. Its grants to political groups have largely ended. Its departure from New York was self-initiated. A new generation of missionaries is more focused on Gospel than Marxist revolution. Its new locale in perhaps USA United Methodism’s most conservative conference, and one of the very few growing USA areas for our church, will help keep it exposed to and rooted in the church’s mainstream, not a radical fringe.

GBGM hasn’t yet reached Methodist perfection but it’s on the right highway. Almost nobody 25 years ago could have dreamed these dramatic improvements. As an idealistic young man I thought reform could be imposed politically from a newly informed indignant laity. But God had other, more effective plans. Today, GBGM is planting and nurturing churches around the world, in sync with United Methodism’s new global reality in which most of the church will soon be outside America.

Many American United Methodist evangelicals despair about our church. They see only bleak days ahead. There are indeed battles and tests ahead. But God possibly has plans outside our own limited imagination. And His plans are unfailingly good.