Posted on 04/13/2023 4:04:42 AM PDT by fwdude
Just before Holy Week, newly elected Bishop Connie Shelton brought an extraordinarily heavy-handed tone to her recently begun leadership of the (eastern) North Carolina Annual Conference. Shelton ambushed an historic, conservative congregation with the announcement that she was abruptly shutting it down, while seizing its property and assets!
This was imposed on the congregation suddenly, without prior consultation or notice.
Shelton did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
I previously observed a worsening pattern of United Methodist bishops choosing to have fundamentally abusive relationships with the congregations they are trusted to lovingly shepherd. It is becoming increasingly normal for the former to effectively tell the latter, If you try to leave me, I will greedily and sadistically impose needless pain and suffering on you.
Now, liberal Bishop Connie Shelton has made an unforced choice to escalate things by effectively telling a conservative congregation, If I cannot control you, I will end you, very quickly.
(Excerpt) Read more at juicyecumenism.com ...
Start a new Methodist church that has no affikiation with the main body. We are seeing why the church was not meant to be a source of power in society.
This is what the left does. Their goal is to infiltrate and ultimately take over every conservative entity.
They can wait decades, it doesn't matter. They keep their eyes on the prize.
How I wish our side had half their determination.
The left is all about power, money and control. These 20 people can find a better situation to worship in. I say this as a previous Methodist for 17 years at a United Methodist church, member of Staff Parish Relations Committee, where things got so contentious, we were actually looking to see who owned the property, where the DS was protecting an addicted pastor and forcing the congregation to put up with his behavior, not believing us that we had a problem pastor, until finally he was put in residential rehab.
Imagine all the money these people put into this church. Then to have it confiscated by commies Sad.
I witnessed this happen to a Episcopal church in the 90s. Boom, gays took over. The parish never knew what hit it. I left. The local parish was then racked by sex scandals.
All six recently appointed bishops are hard left and the “leadership” doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. Disaffiliate!
Dying church, valuable property is the urban norm for many UMC congregations. This one was down to 25-30 congregants. I’m in a UMC circuit church and we average 50-70 at our church (the other circuit church is slightly less). The UMC wants to turn the building into a “community center” which translates to “where people go to shoot one another” and receive leftist indoctrination. It will be a big financial drain on the church.
They are natural parasites.
Liberalism is killing the UMC.
Most “churches” enjoy the Constitutional protections afforded them while they are now nothing more than political action committees masquerading as houses of worship. Then they wonder why attendance is in sharp decline.
“The left is all about power, money and control.”
That’s because leftists do not believe in God and many worship satan. If not direct satan worship, they worship the earth, etc. This life is all they have so they will stop at nothing to win in this world. But any real Christian knows the folly of losing your soul to gain the world.
The problem for churches today is that they stopped focusing on saving souls, and instead focused on “saving” this fallen world according to the wisdom of men and not according to the wisdom of God.
Unfortunately, the Methodists are not the only ones that suffer from this infiltration. So-called main stream Christian denominations are destroying Christianity from within.
This is why I have always been part of a Congregationalist Baptist church. No hierarchical power structure over the church. The church answers only to Jesus and it’s own congregation.
No surprise. National religious organizations have long since devolved into a racket. Episcopalians have spent untold millions suing each other for the sake of property and money, effectively killing off the denomination in America. Schisms have decimated the rest of the mainline churches. Bergoglio has attacked the edifice of the Roman Catholic church and divided its members. Such destruction is always at the behest of a liberal faction hungry for power.
There’s no such thing as a liberal/left Christian. You’re either a Christian or you’re a Satanist. This “bishop” is a Satanist.
too few understand as you understand!!
So can a real Christian Methodist Bishop shut down a radical, Leftist-pushing congregation? If so, why not do it (say, to the one this Connie person tries to make).
“...uing each other for the sake of property and money...”
these legal battles have more to do with the parish, the people, wanting to keep what they consider a holy site which they have purchased, cared for and maintained often for generations. Their families are buried in the cemetery, their baptisms and marriages were there. It is their spiritual home. Many have fought to keep it. Some have won, many have lost.
“Liberalism is killing the UMC.”
Sort of true, more accurate to say it already has killed it. It’s in it’s death rattle.
This is one reason I have not been to church for a very long time. Churches have gone down the wrong path and there are more and more of this happening. Todays “organized religion” are looking to the world instead of looking at heaven.
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