A United Methodist pastor wrote this? Is he unaware of the stands taken by the United Methodists?
Well, this article is comforting, in a way. The fact is that the world and the church have been at war since the beginning of time so the current evils are nothing new - just something we must fight during our period of conscription. We get called home, new ranks get called up, and we fight, until the last battle -
which we win.
John Lomperis is a good Christian man and a Methodist. He is also only partially right in this essay.
His position is that Christians are not to depart unfaithful churches, and his examples are early bodies of believers who had issues within their churches but who were also not told to leave those churches by the apostles. He recommends fighting for one’s church.
First, there’s a huge historical gap that renders comparisons between local churches in the bible with “denominations” of our day almost totally irrelevant. Would the advice have been different if Corinth had had thousands of churches instead of just one? Because, really, what is a Methodist evangelical in terms of distinction from an Evangelical Free evangelical? Not very much. It just might be a good thing for a sexually rampant Methodist local church to close its doors if everyone walked and stuck their finger in that bishop’s eye. “You can go only so far, bishop, but now you can do so with an empty building.”
Second, Lomperis ignores that Christ, Himself, tells the Revelation church at Ephesus that it’s in danger of losing it’s candlestick. What’s that mean? It means it is officially losing its reason for being. (You don’t light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick.) Christ takes away its right to be one His sources of light. Period. He closes the doors.
How do the people know? One, they sense it. Two, they see no fruit. Three, they know that the teachings are now heretical.
Third, there are subtle ways to maintain a congregation and rid oneself of a denomination if buildings and endowments are not important. A group could just depart as a group and still be THAT church.
Finally, a dissenting movement could officially separate from a denomination and form a new denomination. Lastly, a dissenting movement could persuade a denomination to endorse separate self-directing entities under a same corporate head that provides only paperwork facilitation to the entities under its banner.
I endorse denominational splits when a denomination has lost its candlestick. The Episcopalians (ecusa?) clearly have no reason to exist as a Christian denomination. Nor do the Unitarians for a long time now. The PCUSA and the ELCA are almost there. The UMC has a fighting chance to pull this out of the fire if their African churches are not suborned in some way.
Lomperis is a faithful man. He has missed a few things, though, in my view. If some must leave a denomination, he is not leaving the “Church” if he is simply finding a far more faithful body of believers.
The irony is too rich. The UMC is almost if not completely apostate at this point.