Global Methodists Do Annual Conference Differently

History was made last weekend as pastors and lay members from hundreds of Global Methodist congregations convened for the inaugural session of the Allegheny West Provisional Annual Conference, encompassing Ohio plus the western third of Pennsylvania. “So many have been working and yearning for this day for years,” enthused the Rev. Dr. Jessica LaGrone, Asbury Theological Seminary’s Dean of the Chapel. This Global Methodist annual conference triumphantly concluded with reportedly the largest group of Methodist ministers ever ordained in North America, and perhaps the world.

The October 12-14 Global Methodist annual conference session, held at Reynoldsburg Community Church outside of Columbus, Ohio, was unlike any official United Methodist conference I have ever attended.

Such feelings were widely shared. I asked several pastors to compare their experience of this inaugural meeting of this Global Methodist annual conference and its clergy session to their experience of similar conferences in the United Methodist Church. With overwhelming enthusiasm, they consistently told me this was refreshingly different. Here are quotes and paraphrases of what they told me:

• “You can’t compare them!”
• “Night and day!”
• “I couldn’t believe that this was annual conference,” when it is “not painful” and “I don’t have to have my guard up.” 
• This was “the first time in ten years that I actually looked forward to going to conference.”
• There were no undercurrents of agendas or division. 
• You don’t have fellow conference members refusing to even greet you because of your outspoken support for historic Methodist doctrinal and moral standards. 
• Until a few years ago, I could be heard, though not agreed with, in sharing my evangelical perspective in my United Methodist annual conference. But more recently, I lost even that.
• Clergy session participants felt a movement of God, with safety to weep in front of each other. This was “totally unlike” how in United Methodist clergy sessions, “business was tedious and decisions were based on inside information known only to the board,” while there was “tension in the room” due to “mistrust and simmering divisions among the clergy.”

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Greenway, the conference’s President Pro-Tempore, noted, “Not everything in our former connection was bad,” and so cautioned, “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Yet participants were driven by a hunger to go deeper than what they often experienced in mainline United Methodism. As Greenway put it, the main goal was never disaffiliation, but rather “to move forward as a movement of like-minded, warm-hearted, Spirit-filled, Jesus-loving, evangelical, orthodox, Wesleyan Christians committed to offering the whole Gospel to the whole world,” to be “a movement of disciples who make disciples who make disciples!” Other speakers highlighted the importance of recovering Methodist theology of sanctification and related practices of highly accountable small groups. LaGrone declared that in the GMC, “we have no desire to play church,” merely “going through the motions” while failing to fully access the treasure God has given us. The Rev. Dr. David Watson, Academic Dean at the UMC’s United Theological Seminary, recalled growing up very mainline, in a church culture that did not expect much to happen during worship or as a result of our prayers, before he encountered different streams of charismatic Christians, who “believe that God actually does stuff.”

Several factors made this a very different sort of Methodist conference.

First, there was clear unity on core doctrine. David Watson realized that Global Methodists will disagree about secondary issues, but said, “I don’t think we’re going to debate basic doctrine.” Greenway celebrated how “none of us have our fingers crossed behind our backs” in reciting the Apostles’ Creed.

When the ordination class stood before the conference to answer to John Wesley’s historic questions for would-be Methodist preachers, Bishop Mark Webb stopped after the question about ministers not being “in debt so as to embarrass you in your work,” to stress the importance of honesty in these vows, explaining that sincerity for this question really calls for congregations to step up to relieve ministers from burdensome debt. While these same questions have long been asked of United Methodist ordination candidates, this episode highlighted the new denominational culture of ministers actually meaning what they say in their ordination vows.

I only recall two, very brief mentions in plenary sessions of anything about homosexuality. Bishop Emeritus Mike Lowry preached that intra-Methodist disagreements over such matters were “just the tip of the iceberg,” and that “the issue that brings the Global Methodist Church together” is the basic creed, “Jesus is Lord.” LaGrone made clear that the GMC is “a church that does not hate or exclude LGBTQ persons,” but rather offers them the same welcome into repentance and new life as the church offers everyone else, which provoked enthusiastic applause.

Secondly, this Global Methodist annual conference has a much leaner bureaucracy, with a shift to focusing on empowering local congregations as the center of mission. Webb spoke of the need for accountability as a two-way street between bishops and congregations.

Within each of its circuits (intentionally smaller versions of what United Methodists call districts) this Global Methodist annual conference is planning to soon have all congregations jointly support one international mission partnership, one national mission, one local mission, and one new church plant.

Speakers explained that the GMC practices “a modified appointment system,” in which there are “no forced marriages,” which have caused such pain in the UMC. In Global Methodism, both pastors and congregations have the right to say “no” to a suggested match, although “there’s not an unlimited number of NO’s.” The Rev. Leah Hidde-Gregory, the pioneering President Pro Tempore of the Mid-Texas Global Methodist Annual Conference, encouraged fellow clergy sisters to trust the system. She cited a recent example of a Global Methodist clergywoman in her annual conference who was the first choice of three different congregations seeking a new pastor.

With less bureaucracy, there was less administrative business to conduct. The business session was extraordinarily brief. Greenway invited participants to discuss the short business agenda presented for approval. But apparently no one was interested in offering debate or floor speeches, which showed a new level of trust.

Thirdly, the break-out workshops were solidly biblically and theologically grounded, and should actually make a major, positive difference in how congregations approach their ministries.

Hidde-Gregory led an interactive workshop on renewing and revitalizing existing congregations, covering such topics as re-focusing on discipleship, welcoming demographically diverse visitors, and overcoming such roadblocks as a “scarcity mentality.”

Church-planting pioneer Steve Cordle led a workshop encouraging every congregation to help plant new congregations, for the sake of better reaching new disciples, providing new leadership opportunities for members, and re-energizing the parent congregation.

The Rev. Dr. Kevin Watson, Director of Academic Growth at Formation at Asbury Seminary (no relation to David), stressed the importance of having spiritual fathers and mothers in congregations, who can mentor spiritually younger believers as they grow and face inevitable crises of faith on the journey to becoming fully devoted.

David Watson’s workshop outlined “the consensual tradition” of historic Christian orthodoxy, refuted popular misconceptions, and taught how Global Methodists’ thinking about contemporary issues must be shaped by this firmer foundation than emotivist, relativist, shallow, or fad-chasing mindsets. He lamented how, despite early Methodism’s strong rules forbidding any member from owning slaves, within 60 years of John Wesley’s death, Methodists had their first slave-owning bishop. David Watson warned that the GMC was at risk of losing its rich, faithful Methodist heritage if it was not intentional about preserving it, including by recovering key characteristics of Methodism that have become abandoned or distorted in the UMC. Among other things, the New Testament professor explained how John Wesley’s promotion of “social holiness” meant communal discipleship—in contrast to how United Methodist leaders have long misrepresented this phrase as dragging the church into divisive, left-wing social-justice causes—and noted that Methodism’s founder only used this particular phrase once in his entire writings.

LaGrone conceded that not everyone would want what this new expression of Methodism offers. But for those eager to be part of this new movement, she summarized, “Welcome to the Global Methodist Church, where”:

• “Annual conferences look less like rules and reports, and more life holy conferencing and prayer and renewal”;
• Bishops contend for integrity and faithfulness;
• Pastors can move on from a congregation, trusting their denominational system to ensure both that their successor in their former congregation will build on the same biblical theological foundation, and that their new church will have already had the same faithful foundation laid;
• Small- and medium-sized congregations (which she called “normal churches”) enjoy similar privileges to those long enjoyed by large United Methodist congregations of having greater input in the selection of their pastors. 

Speakers compassionately addressed the wounds almost everyone there had brought with them, and offered assurances of the GMC’s commitment to not repeat the United Methodist Church’s mistakes.

“I know for you all to come here was difficult,” Lowry acknowledged, and “required trusting God.” He urged facing our own grief from the losses—including lost friendships and feeling that years of self-sacrificial service to the UMC “have gone down the drain.” “It must be faced, and not denied!,” Lowry preached.

Lowry pivoted to noting that “true healing cannot take place without confession,” declaring “it’s past time to confess our own complicity” in unfaithfulness. 

But while healing our wounds is essential, Global Methodists must ultimately, as Greenway exhorted, “look forward” and “not keep looking back.” Kevin Watson recalled Joshua preparing to finally lead the Israelites into the Promised Land, urging this Global Methodist annual conference to focus on God’s exciting new future rather than the wounds and wrongs of the past.

Speakers emphasized that we are not just saved in isolation, but into community. And what a wondrously large community this Global Methodist annual conference is! The Allegheny West Provisional Annual Conference has received 539 congregations, with more incoming, and already has nine new church starts. This makes it larger than the majority of American United Methodist annual conferences, and the largest Global Methodist annual conference. A repeated proverb of Greenway’s was to “be gentle with those who come early and gracious with those who come late.”

With such growth, now almost anywhere you go in Ohio or western Pennsylvania (except for the city of Pittsburgh), there is probably a Global Methodist congregation within a half-hour drive.

Those gathered last weekend still face serious current and upcoming challenges.

Lowry warned, “make no mistake: the road ahead will be difficult.” Global Methodists must beware “that disease of cultural Christianity” which is presently “crashing down around us.”

Other speakers underscored that the conference’s congregations need a deeper change than merely changing the denominational affiliation on their signs. Hidde-Gregory urged tackling the problem of how the membership of many congregations who have recently emerged from the UMC is much older and whiter than those who live around the church building. She insisted on the urgency of Global Methodists abandoning the culture of “just checking the box of one hour on Sunday,” because “God is calling us to be an army that goes out and makes disciples.”

Greenway admitted that the GMC will have its own internal problems and disagreements, but implored conference members to not indulge the devil’s desire that they turn against each other.

Since church members will die, move away, or walk away, Cordle stressed the necessity of the GMC continually bringing in new people, especially through aggressive church planting, in order to even maintain its numbers, let alone grow. “We don’t need another shrinking denomination” in America, he said.

But Lowry reminded us, “it doesn’t all depend on us—thanks be to God!”

Greenway preached that Paul himself may have felt tempted to water down his message to avoid offense. But instead, wherever he went, the apostle both named sin and offered grace, provoking violent opposition, but also seeing great fruit, as the Jesus movement grew from 120 followers to tens of thousands, in just a few decades.

As Greenway put it, “Serving God in a fallen world is not for the faint of heart—but we are not the faint of heart, we are the church of Jesus Christ!”

The Global Methodist annual conference session joyfully concluded with the ordination of a whopping 149 clergy set apart to lead the church serving God in this fallen world. This included some who were changing their category of clergy status, from licensed local pastor to deacon or elder, and from deacon to elder.

Here is a video of these “gate shaking” ministers, together with this Global Methodist annual conference’s presiding elders and board of ministry, processing into the ordination services, surrounded by the cheers of family, friends, and well-wishers: