I attempted to post on the Facebook page “Friends of the Global Methodist Church.” Not surprisingly, it was declined by the administrators. This is what I attempted to post:
Most of these comments are angry. I get that. I believe in following the Discipline and always have.
But I challenge some of those leaving the UMC that they haven’t always followed the Discipline either. For example, the Discipline says all people may participate in the programs, ministries, and sacraments of the church, and I’ve seen too many instances when LGBTQ people have been removed from their volunteer positions or ostracized. One pastor I know even threatened to stand at the door and not let them in. Another said “I can love people without accepting them.” Another refused to participate in the baptism of an infant because it “legitimized their marriage.” This isn’t the way of Christ, and it violates the Discipline, too.
I’m not excusing the far left. I’m just saying to reduce the matter to leaving the UMC because “they” aren’t following the Discipline is to swallow the narrative of only one point of view. The other is that the punitive “traditional” plan of GC 2019 went way too far, was a rejection of true discernment by the bishops and commission, and was never intended to bring unity. It was a last ditch effort to get “those people” to leave, when the stated “end game” of the WCA was to leave anyway.
I won’t respond to comments. I just felt I should offer an alternative way of thinking, as a traditional, orthodox, and Wesleyan pastor who plans to stay in the UMC. I choose the messiness of being in community together and working something out to contextualize and move forward into the future, over a new denomination founded on a single wedge issue (though there is a lot of “straw-man” argument that it’s over other things). I will stay with the main body of the UMC and will not be joining the separatists.
I have nothing against those who do. Let’s just all be truthful that there are multiple and complex sides to these issues. Be who you are, but let’s stop blaming “those people” for our decisions. It would be better to depart in peace.
#stayumc
This post was deleted. I was able to repost this as a comment to another post, however. One person dismissed what I was saying about examples of not following the Discipline as “gripes.” Another said “all people” meant all races and nationalities, not “unrepentant sinners.”
I made an additional comment, later in the thread, that was deleted, and I'm not sure why, really. It was just a statement of fact.
A person asked me "how can you stay if you are a traditional church when it appears that the UMC will not stand on the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, etc. For me to stay would hurt my witness. The basis of my Christin faith is on all of these -- without them, there is no Christianity."
I responded "that is a great example of the straw-man arguments I'm talking about. That narrative is simply not true. Wesley's Articles of Religion will not change. In fact, they can't be changed. Of course, if you look you can find a nut somewhere but they don't represent the whole."
Another person then asked me to put what I was saying in context. I said this (a comment which was, curiously, deleted by administrators):
Look in section III in the Discipline. Wesley wrote the Articles of Religion in his own hand. Here's a copy.
There's also lots of other info on core doctrines if you have a Discipline handy.
To change these would require a 2/3 vote at General Conference, followed by a 3/4 aggregate vote of all delegates at all Annual Conferences world-wide. So, they are not going to change.
Before it was deleted, someone had responded in the same thread "thank you for continuing to illustrate why we wish to separate." I’m sorry, do you mean because I know that the core beliefs of the UMC are not changing? And I’m pointing out that this is a classic “straw-man” argument? I don’t know a single person staying in the UMC who wants our core doctrinal and credal beliefs to change.
In another thread, I was simply asking that we ramp down the inflammatory language. I have nothing against those who wish to leave. I encouraged them to share what they liked about the new church they were forming, the positive things that drew them to it, when instead what I was reading was just language such as “apostates” and the UMC having “sold its soul to the devil.”
Someone else said "I agree with you 100%. There is only angry hateful speech coming from this page. They also only want those who agree with them to respond. If I am correct nothing can be done until the vote in 2024. Some of the other stuff being said about the UMC is untrue. If I did decide to leave the UMC I would steer clear of the Global Church. I will block this rubbish from now on."
Another deleted comment was very interesting. Someone elsewhere had said the problem with the UMC is we didn't recognize that we were all sinners going to hell and we need Jesus. I simply asked:
"Do you believe in the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity?" I was engaging what the person posited, to see where they were coming from and where they got such an assumption. My question was deleted by administrators.
I will no longer participate. I just wanted to share openly that I was just trying to help them to see they can be who they are and start their new denomination based on good things they want to offer the world. There is no reason to use inflammatory, denigrating language about “those people” and “straw-man arguments” based on strung together exaggerated examples from extremists that don’t represent the whole.
