Posted on 04/15/2016 6:39:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
One of the first United Methodist Church congregations to join the LGBT lobbying group, Reconciling Ministries Network, will close next month.
St. Paul United Methodist Church of Denver, Colorado, a theologically liberal congregation that became the third church to become a Reconciling congregation, will soon close its doors.
The Rev. Jessica Rooks, head of St. Paul UMC, told The Christian Post the final worship service will be held on Sunday, May 22.
"St. Paul has opened its doors and built relationships with the LGBTQ community, the homeless and hungry in Denver, those struggling with addition, and individuals who struggle to fit into the current culture. St. Paul UMC created a safe and welcoming place for all to experience the love of God," said Rooks.
Rooks also told CP that members are discerning where to attend after the final worship service takes place.
"Our members are in conversation about where they will go next, and many are reaching out to neighboring United Methodist churches to decide which congregation is the best fit," she continued. "They have a number of options in and around the city of Denver, and I am prayerful they each find a church home soon after the closing of St. Paul."
Advocacy History
Founded in 1860, St. Paul was one of the first congregations to join what became known as Reconciling Ministries Network, an advocacy group that works to make the United Methodist Church more accepting of homosexuality and transgenderism.
In 1984, the St. Paul congregation joined RMN, being the first of several hundred congregations to have voted to affiliate with the LGBT advocacy organization.
M Barclay, spokesperson for RMN, provided CP with a statement regarding the news of one of their founding congregations shutting down.
"Reconciling Ministries Network is grateful for the ministry of St. Paul's United Methodist Church of Denver, especially for welcoming LGBTQ people at a time when so few were offering a safe place to worship," read the statement.
"Their witness was a catalyst for what has become a steadily growing network of more than 750 unique Reconciling communities across the country."
While some celebrate the history and actions of St. Paul UMC, others denounce their departure from traditional theology and argue that such a departure contributed to their decline.
Mark Tooley, president of the theologically conservative Institute on Religion & Democracy, told CP that St. Paul's fate comes as "no surprise."
"Few churches can long survive when primarily focused on political or social causes instead of Gospel evangelism," said Tooley.
"More broadly, only declining denominations surrender their biblical marriage teaching and invariably their decline accelerates. Reconciling type groups boast they're about open doors, but their cause inexorably leads to closing church doors."
At its peak, St. Paul had approximately 800 members. The nadir came in 1989, or five years after becoming a Reconciling Congregation, when the church had only 15 members.
By 2010, local media reported that the membership increased to about 250, with hundreds more active in the various charities that the congregation oversaw.
When asked by CP if she thought there was a connection between the Reconciling affiliation and St. Paul's membership woes, Rooks responded that she did not believe there to be a link.
"After becoming a Reconciling Congregation - one of the first three in the nation - the community experienced an increase in worship attendance, membership and community involvement," replied Rooks.
"In the last 10 years the congregation has experienced decline for a number of different reasons, and this spring the leadership and members decided it was time to close."
'A Death and Resurrection Story'
St. Paul UMC is one of three churches being closed in the Metropolitan Denver District, according to District Superintendent the Rev. Paul Kottke.
"Rising out of the closure of this historic church will come a new ministry, with a new vision for people who are not presently in our churches," said Kottke to CP. We're closing three churches in my district this year, and starting five new ministries, two of which are Hispanic.
Bishop Elaine Stanovsky, resident bishop for the Mountain Sky Area of The United Methodist Church, told CP that the start of the new ministries within the district show they are " leading into a season of new Wesleyan vitality in our region."
"We are helping churches in decline re-engage their neighborhoods, and when that's just not possible, we help them make 'end of life' decisions that give birth to new initiatives," said Stanovsky.
"We see St. Paul as a death and resurrection story. Just as St. Paul reached out to people outside the church in the 1980s, we continue to learn that new forms and styles of ministry can engage people who are not in our current congregations."
>>Liberal heresy has killed another Methodist church. Killed it dead.
It’s a Win-Win for the Progs. If it stays open, it becomes a source of income for the somewhat gay pastor who is guaranteed a job by the Connexion. If it closes, then they have killed a church.
Either way, it ceases to be a church.
While this UMC struggled with addition, many churches struggle more with division.
Quote: “When asked by CP if she thought there was a connection between the Reconciling affiliation and St. Paul’s membership woes, Rooks responded that she did not believe there to be a link.”
It appears to me that there is a link. The church became a secular, social justice club and stopped preaching the Gospel and perhaps believing in Jesus & His Father, other than using them as tools for the Methodist church club’s social humanism.
Rooks also told CP that members are discerning where to attend after the final worship service takes place.
NOUN
1.an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense.
Struck down, just like Sodom & Gomorrah.
Luk 12:51 Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!
Indeed.
There is a reason churches that preach the gospel are growing and those that don’t aren’t.
Bingo.
I curse the day UMC allowed women pastors. Whenever and wherever that happens, the gay takeover begins and doesn’t end until the congregation of true believers is destroyed. But not before they — and the God they worship — are repudiated, stripped of their leadership roles, shamed, humiliated, denied access to historic records or gravesites, and their children scarified.
Not a surprise. They abandoned the Gospel.
In 1981 I left the UMC and became a Roman Catholic. At the tops levels, the UMC is an ultra-left wing political party. At the local level it is a social club. There’s just no room for Christianity there.
>>I curse the day UMC allowed women pastors.
That speeds up the process of destroying a denomination, but the real problem lies in the fundamentals of Wesleyan theology. Wesley lived in a time and place where the poor were excluded from church and were used and discarded by the wealthy elites who sat in their expensive purchased pews every Sunday. So, he brought the gospel to people that the elites had dismissed as unworthy. When Asbury and Coke brought Methodism to America, they brought that egalitarianism with them.
America was born later and flourished. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a big hit on the frontier in those days when the Appalachians were the frontier and it grew at an amazing rate.
Fast forward to the 20th century. America is doing a pretty good job at bringing the poor in to sit at the table. Churches no longer require you to buy a pew. We have safety nets, easy transportation, free schools, and plenty of jobs. And the rural ME Church becomes the suburban UM Church.
The Wesleyan drive to “create” social justice has to search far and wide to find anything that even looks like an injustice and they find fringe causes like woman pastors and gay marriage.
The pastors (male and female) preach that “the church needs to get outside of the walls” and “serve the community” even though the community doesn’t want them. Your outreach programs turn into handout programs to people who want free stuff but get offended when you preach to them.
The liberal pastors preach about the Sermon on the Mount, the loaves and fishes, and Acts 2 all the time.
Well, Jesus gave the loaves and fishes to people who came to hear the message. It wasn’t a “community outreach” program to supply food. It was a call to salvation and people got hungry because they listened the preaching all day.
And in Acts, the church took care of its own needs first so that it would have the resources to reach out to the community—to spread the gospel, not sandwiches or free clothing. That was for those who came in to the church.
So, the UMC continues to tirelessly search for ways to create social justice, while ignoring the gospel because “that might offend those that we are trying to reach” (a quote from one of my Methodist pastors back in 2010). Once again, ignoring Jesus who said that he came to divide.
And then there is the Wesleyan conundrum that says that you obtain salvation by faith not by works, but you can lose your salvation by not doing enough. The liberal clergy uses that fear to scare you into being a social justice warrior by using the words of James (”faith without works is dead”), but if you point to all the other scripture that says that you are secure in your salvation, they accuse you of proof texting—like those damnable Calvinists do!
My Denomination is seriously hurting. I hurt for it, but the patient may have a terminal illness. This article suggests that it does.
A most thoughtful reply. I had let some doubt about Wesleyanism as regards “social justice” seep in over the years, but you have laid out the issue very clearly.
Nevertheless, there are so many issues regarding children that could be healed by the gospel within the congregation, such as effective teaching on marriage, family, childrearing — and so many resources available now. The churches can do social justice to the entitled generations by being places for AA, NA, Alanon and SAA meetings, and by sponsoring Christ-centered day care, afterschool care, shut-in ministries, educational outreach to lure children away from school indoctrination, etc. Instead, so many of the congregations have just gone along with the commie agenda. I had 6 out of 10 gay or lesbian UMC pastors, and of the other four, three were actively in support of gay “rights.”
You don’t have “rights” in the Church. You have grace, if you are truly saved and surrendered to the will of God and “death to self.”
The enemy will always attack a work of God but God will raise up another one to carry the torch if need be.
He always has.
>>The churches can do social justice to the entitled generations by being places for AA, NA, Alanon and SAA meetings, and by sponsoring Christ-centered day care, afterschool care, shut-in ministries, educational outreach to lure children away from school indoctrination, etc.
It can do all that, if it has the resources. But, the church has to care for its own first. I don’t mean that to sound as selfish as it does, but there are people in the congregation who are hurting or in need and when the pastor gets up every week and preaches on how “we must do more for those outside our walls”, you feel guilty for having needs and then you feel abandoned because you are unfortunate enough to be inside those walls so no one wants to help you. These leftist SJW pastors are often terrible at meeting the needs of their congregants, but Wesley took care of his own people to help equip them to go out in the world.
I had a SJW pastor once cancel church 10 minutes into the service one Sunday and he told us to get out and do something for someone you don’t know. It was well-intentioned, but poorly executed.
I went to a comfortably middle UMC for a number of years, and when faced with a choice of opening a day care or restoring the rarely-used small sanctuary in the old building because several of the oldest members had been married there, guess which they chose? I was so disgusted.
Indeed, math is hard!
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