Staying with United Methodism: A Personal Testimony

Several people have asked me why I still hold my clergy credentials with the United Methodist Church. After all, I have been associated with the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), with Good News, and was a staff person with the Confessing Movement. Even in the 1990s, I twice submitted petitions to my annual conference which, if passed, would have been forwarded to the General Conference, asking for a study group to examine the possibility of amicable separation (one got good discussion but failed; the second never was allowed even to come to the floor of the conference).

I have been Methodist Episcopal, Methodist, and United Methodist for nearly 90 years. Of course, I have had other influences in my life. My mother grew up not just Mennonite but fundamentalist Mennonite, and not just that, but a dispensationalist, fundamentalist Mennonite. She moved to a Mennonite community (Shipshewana, IN) to teach but for unconfessed reasons (I suspect that the eligible men were Methodist) attended the Methodist Church. There she met my father. They were married. I tell people my mother was on the Methodist roll but in her heart she was Mennonite.

They moved to the county seat (LaGrange) and joined the Methodist Church. In Indiana, county seat Methodist Churches often carry some prestige with doctors, lawyers and business persons as members. Even in the 1930s my mother was not happy with the pre-school Sunday school material offered by the Methodist Church. No Bible. Later, I read to find out why. Ethyl Smithers, in The Use of the Bible With Children, the “official” statement of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, stated that many Bible stories, especially in the Old Testament, should not be taught to children lest they take them literally and will have to have them reinterpreted later in life.

No mind. My parents sent me to a Mennonite-dominated community Bible school in Berne, IN, for five weeks each summer for 10 straight years starting when I was four. There, with 700 kids we learned all kinds of Old Testament stories, memorized many passages of scripture, and learned gospel songs. Back in LaGrange I collected perfect attendance pins for something like 10 straight years. My family visited all kinds of churches for revival meetings, missionary speakers and concerts. I was in a Methodist boys’ quartet which sang 153 times over a three year period. I went to a Methodist holiness background college (Taylor University) where we debated Calvinism, modernism, and holiness. I was also called into the ministry there.

When I declared for Garrett Biblical Institute (now Garrett-Evangelical) my mother’s relatives were horrified. They tried to pray me into some other school, and even to some other denomination (like Baptist), but God had other plans (it helped that my wife-to-be was close by). I was appointed to a three-point circuit about the time I went to Garrett (age 22) with unusual instructions from my district superintendent (“Keep an eye on the revival and don’t let it get out of hand”).

I learned many things in seminary but I learned ministry at my churches. We had revivals (they never got out of hand), prayer meetings, pot-lucks, vacation Bible schools, controversial charge conferences, and church camps. I learned how to do weddings and funerals and pastoral calls. I learned the blessings of having a good mixture of rich and poor and all kinds of social classes. We were all one in Christ in rural churches in ways that larger city churches (as I learned later on) would never be.

I argued for an evangelical presence in seminary. When I asked that we might occasionally have evangelical speakers in chapel, the head of chapels informed me that everyone there was evangelical. Some professors knew better. My favorite professor, William Hordern, used to comment that the biggest criticism he got from his popular book A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology was for including “fundamentalism” as one of the religious options for the present day. Hordern encouraged me to write an article, “New-evangelicalism—New Life on the Right,” that was published in The Christian Advocate.

When Good News came on the scene in the late 1960s I was one of the first supporters, and then an early board member. I helped to organize our annual conference’s Evangelical Fellowship. The purpose, as I tried to explain, was not to be political, but to have a fellowship where we could say “Amen” and “Praise the Lord” and use evangelical language and talk about evangelical concerns. Our bishop and the district superintendents were supportive. We soon were asked to lead the annual conference morning “Prayer and Share” sessions. I do not remember a single time when we were labeled as disloyal.

In the 1960s, I did a four-weeks continuing education event at a Methodist seminary and was appalled, not because of the liberalism, but because of what I considered as anger, from students and faculty, not just at society but even at the church. The sins: Vietnam, racism, sexism, colonialism, prejudice and hate. It was not only conservatives but liberals as well that were guilty. The seminary I had attended, Garrett, in the same hostile spirit, had become so divided into identity groups, and gave the faculty such a difficult time, that in May 1970, the school simply shut down (it did hold a graduation, but under duress).

I was involved in youth ministry at the time and witnessed the total takeover of youth ministry by anti-establishment types (I remember the accusations that the old Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF) was “Micky Mouse.” Youth ministry on the national level reorganized (and began funding gay groups). In 1974, a number of us were called to Nashville for an update. In 1967 there had been 13 youth staff under the Methodist Board of Education, 15 secretaries, 52 full-time conference directors, and 1,200,000 pieces of youth material printed quarterly. By 1974 there was one part-time youth staff, one secretary, and 400,000 pieces of youth material printed quarterly. All this was in the name of being “relevant.”

Still, our own annual conference program flourished. I remember sub-district youth rallies of 200 youth. Our senior high Institute was enrolling 3,000 senior high youth in our summer program per summer. In our North Indiana Conference (Methodist) we did programming mostly on a district, not a conference level. Our conference was second in the connection in Advance Giving.

I trace a lot of United Methodism’s problems to the 1972 Methodist/Evangelical United Brethren merger. Not because of the EUBs, but because the merger led to a restructuring that gave us powerful super-boards which seemed to be accountable to no one, especially to the General Council of Ministries, (an EUB contribution to merger). In a few years, the whole General Council on Ministries idea was discarded. It would be replaced by an agency almost as bad, the Connectional Table. The Connectional Table is made up basically of bureaucrats and is out of touch with ordinary local churches. More of this in my next article.

I have loved and appreciated every appointment I was ever given, but in addition to my first 3-point rural circuit, I remember with fondness my years as a district superintendent. I never would have expected to be a district superintendent except for Bishop Jim Armstrong, who, though liberal theologically, did believe in inclusion which meant that the conference would be strengthened with evangelicals serving on the cabinet.

We emphasized districts and local churches in those days. This meant regular district meetings with ministers (serve breakfast and they will come), district mission saturation events, Christmas parties, lay witness missions. For me as a district superintendent this meant going to lots of pot-lucks, joining several local church choirs for cantatas, preaching revivals, showing up unannounced at churches. It for sure meant being in every local church at least once during the year for charge conferences. This emphasis on districts and local churches has been replaced with group charge conferences and conference-focused programming.

Much of this began to change in the late 1990s (more of this in the next article). Despite the fact that most Protestant churches are still more conservative than liberal, and still affirm the traditional moral teachings of the historic church in regard to marriage and the family and human sexuality, modern progressive secular culture has begun to dominate in the progressive circles of mainline denominations, resulting in even greater gaps between seminaries, bishops, and bureaucracies on the one hand, and local church members on the other.

Nothing illustrates this better than the recent 2024 General Conference. The gay agenda won the day. Progressive interpreters of the conference speak of a new day, a new hope, a new big tent where all will be welcome. They suggest we will now be united. But how can we speak of being united when one-fourth of the American churches have disaffiliated? This would be the quarter of the church most committed to Biblical teaching on doctrine and morals. How can we be united when the African churches have not yet dealt with the implications of being in a church where the official denominational teaching on human sexuality says one thing and their own interpretation of Scripture says another?

I, for one, still want to hold out hope. I want to keep my ties with United Methodism. I want to speak of what things might be done to move the church in a positive direction. I cannot do this as an outsider. I have many friends still United Methodist who are feeling abandoned by fellow evangelicals. That is why I am staying, at least for the moment, with the United Methodist Church.

(A subsequent article will continue part two of Staying with the UM Church)