Posted on 03/02/2019 6:26:23 AM PST by Gamecock
COLUMBIA, SC When the Rev. Mel Arant stands behind the pulpit of his Upstate South Carolina church this Sunday morning, he plans to raise a subject that’s caused him and the worldwide United Methodist Church much grief over the past week.
“This was a terrible experience,” said Arant, the pastor of Pendleton United Methodist Church. He was one of the 16 Palmetto State delegates to the international conference of the United Methodist Church that last week was torn over the church’s stance on LGBT acceptance and inclusion.
“I think that what we found is a deep wound, and we don’t know how to treat it yet,” Arant said. “What’s going to happen in your local churches is pastors like myself are going to stand up on Sunday morning — we know which way our body leans — and we’re going to remind them that we are here to hold the door open for lost people and that you cannot do that if you are only looking in a mirror.”
United Methodist Church members around the globe are divided by the church’s newly strengthened ban on same-sex marriages and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer clergy. Some South Carolina United Methodist churches are struggling with how to respond and move forward.
The widespread tension stems from a vote Tuesday at an international United Methodist conference in St. Louis. Just more than half of the 822 worldwide delegates voted to affirm the church’s existing ban on performing same-sex marriages and on ordaining LGBT clergy and to strengthen enforcement of those tenets of discipline. And in a separate vote, they took steps toward creating a process through which individual churches could possibly leave the Methodist denomination.
Those proposals are still under official review by United Methodist leadership.
An alternative plan that was narrowly shot down at the conference would have allowed local and regional church leadership to decide their own stances on LGBT acceptance and inclusion.
The emotional debate at the conference highlighted deep divisions between progressives and conservatives in the faith and hinted at a possible splintering of the denomination. There have been denominational splits in the Presbyterian and Lutheran churches in recent decades, also stemming at least in part from differing views on LGBT issues.
There are nearly 1,000 Methodist churches with more than 222,000 church members across South Carolina. The number of both churches and members has been declining in recent years, a trend consistent among major Protestant denominations in the state. S.C. United Methodists lost more than 16,000 members in the past decade, according to statewide church statistics.
United Methodists claim nearly 7 million members in the United States and more than 12 million members worldwide. It is the second-largest Protestant denomination in the country and in South Carolina.
In a statement this week, South Carolina’s statewide United Methodist leader lamented the polarization displayed at the conference and emphasized the need for unity in the church.
Bishop L. Jonathan Holston neither affirmed nor condemned the conference’s vote against gay marriage and clergy but said that “this is not a day to declare winners and losers — this is a time for us to really seek God’s grace together.”
“At times like this, it seems there is so much that divides us, but we need to focus on those things that unite us – our mission and our ministry at home and abroad,” Holston said. “We need to remember that we are God’s people, and that we have a future with hope. We are just going to have to discern what that future is going to be – and how we move into it together.”
Joe Cal Watson, a retired Methodist minister who pastors Columbia’s Whaley Street United Methodist Church in his retirement, was more blunt than the bishop in his reaction to the LGBT vote.
“This whole thing ... is sort of disgusting,” the progressive-minded Watson said. “People are in different places in their lives, and they should have the right to choose without being set aside.”
Watson said the issue of LGBT inclusion rarely if ever gets raised in his own church because “it doesn’t touch their lives” in the small congregation. But he expressed agitation at the greater church being divided over something he doesn’t consider a church-defining issue.
“We have enough controversy, if we’d let everybody choose their way and get together on the big issues,” Watson said.
But at Two Rivers Church just outside of Charleston, the issue of inclusion is intensely personal. A number of church members and lay leaders are LGBT. And rarely does a Sunday go by that the church doesn’t talk about inclusion in one way or another, said Stanton Adams, the church’s communications director.
When it formed as a church about a year and a half ago, Two Rivers “was going to be a space where all were welcome without exception,” Adams said. “People don’t want to be told, ‘You can be queer, or you can be Christian.’ That’s the space we’ve provided for people, is to say, ‘Please, bring us everything you have, and we will love every bit of it.’ There’s no exception. There’s no change order there.”
The international conference’s vote was hurtful, he said.
But Two Rivers’ values “won’t change, and they’re not up for debate,” Adams said.
There has been widespread wondering about whether and how many churches might try to leave the denomination in the aftermath of the LGBT vote. Adams said it’s too soon to contemplate whether Two Rivers’ relationship with the denomination could change in the future.
“That’s a very formal conversation we would have to have with our leadership team,” Adams said. “This is still very fresh.”
The church’s message for now will be to “acknowledge that hurt, and we want to do whatever we can to make it right,” he said.
In the opposite corner of the state, Arant’s congregation will hear a fundamentally similar message from their pastor.
“My congregation is conservative-leaning. My goal is to remind them that nobody wins when the church is divided,” Arant said. “It distracts us from our main mission, which is to know Christ personally, but to make Christ known in the things we say and do and how we treat and talk about people. And when the church is divided over small issues, it distracts you from that.”
Amen
well said
This could also be phrased in the reverse: "UMC members are divided by the church's seeming willingness to perform false 'marriages' and accept homosexuals and other deviants as clergy."
How can a congregation turn to a tranny preacher when the preacher is unclear on biblical teaching and uncomfortable with his own reality?
“Please, bring us everything you have, and we will love every bit of it.’
You can shove that and while you are at it shove your gun control too.
Amen!
When the churches accept the values of the Left, and the Left take over the churches, real Christians will be criminals.
I grew up in a Methodist-Catholic household. My oldest sister always wanted to be a nun, my middle sister thinks religion is spooky and is generally afraid of it, but I shied away from Catholicism and went with Methodism (sort of). But I’m not a complete stranger to either... and thanks to Young Life, excited high school in better spiritual shape than if I hadn’t happened into a Tuesday night meeting only because the Young Life group needed a 2nd guitarist.
I don’t think my father really bought into Catholicism because he was, and came from, a long line of Masons. It was a weird religious experience growing up in my family... Mother was devout (and generally shunned) by Catholicism but her 13 siblings greatly cushioned her choice of 2nd marriage with a child from her first husband (a Catholic) who was KIA in France during WWII. My step-brother was also a Catholic but he was out of the house by the time I was eight years old, and I never really knew him, and then he passed away at 25.
So it was complicated and I, was the proverbial wishbone when it came to where I would attend church and even a bit of schooling. Latin was a great struggle for me, or perhaps my heart just wasn’t in it. But as I grew and attended a Methodist College... for the first time I saw first hand how organized religion played fast and loose. And I was not impressed.
So this latest move by the United Methodist comes as no surprise to me. I have tinkered around with evangelico methodism, and I think that is more in line with what Wesley was trying to convey however even that is a scant cross section of denomination.
So by the sheer synthesis of this confrontational dialectic that I have been sifting through for many decades I really come away with a confused feeling, rather than a determined outlook. Because like many things in our life there is the thesis and antithesis and the synthesis, especially in modern religious denominational Christendom. I have considered many times about returning to those fledgling remembrances of Catholicism in my early days but I do not know if I can cross over successfully with the revelations (and baggage) that has been foisted upon me and are also pouring out of the universal church at this point in its history. I feel alienated yet I know then I have a certain strength that comes from The Word and not modern day interpretations.
Do we, or can we rely that those who lead the flock astray are going to pay dearly for their vanity? This is not a negotiation with the Lord and the dogmatic vise that is crushing Christianity just within itself, is mind-boggling and may cause many to miss or perhaps disregard The Promise altogether.
Church is where we discuss our spirituality, our relationship and responsibilities to our God and to each other.
Explain to the congregation it's not appropriate to talk about sexual practices (gay straight or whatever) in open Church settings. Period. If someone doesn't 'get that' ask them to find a different Church.
It seems too many believe sin is something one votes on. Adultery? Who are we to judge? Killing babies? Who are we to judge? Homosexuality? Who are we to judge?
“9 I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. 11 But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12 For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? 13 But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves.” - Paul, Apostle of God
It may not be appropriate to discuss sexual techniques in church, but it is certainly appropriate to discuss what forms of sex are blessed by God, and which are condemned as evil!
“Please, bring us everything you have, and we will love every bit of it.”
Yes, Christ welcomed EVERYONE without any litmus test, but he did not “love every but” that he called upon them to change.
He accepted people, but he never accepted what he told them was wrong, to repent from.
Why is it Liberal Christians only get one half of that message? They get the loving accepting Christ, and not the Christ whose message was against the sins of this world.
Actually, the odds that it'll never pass are better every day.
Methodist membership in the U.S. has been declining every year. However, Methodism in Africa has been growing by several hundred thousand every year. They are the reason the "One Church Plan" pushed by the liberal bishops was defeated this year.
Thank God for the Africans!
Isn't it ironic that the missionaries sent to Africa those many years ago would build churches who would send delegates to save the U.S. Methodist church today.
The left takes what is simple and makes it complcated.
Turn away from sin..don’t except it..and especially do not cater to it or embrace it.
Small things? Let us not let a "little thing" like homosexuality and perversion come between us and our God.
Its all that “democracy” brainwashing.
They think if they can get a 2/3 vote they can
over ruleGod.
They forget God has ultimate veto power.
To paraphrase the words of John Keats, " Beauty (the word of God) is truth, truth beauty -that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."
The issue is being ashamed of God's word.
Butt hurt?
Sigh - even some South Carolina Methodists
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