or, like Mr. Buehrens of "Unitarian First Parish" in Needham, Mass
No point in reading further.
The young people in attendance all appeared to be descendents of current elderly members, rather than members themselves. Quite a contrast to the congregations I attended some 30 years ago, when each had around 100 in attendance per Sunday, and a lively charge youth group.
The pastor, a young and passionate expositor of the word, is rightly to be honored as a faithful servant of God. A clue as to why the churches he serves are aging out, dying, appeared in the responsive reading. It was Psalm 100, as updated, modernized, and sanitized by editors who were smarter than God. The vile, contemptible, evil, sexist, and degrading pronouns God had chosen to reveal Himself by had all been deleted by those who were wiser than Him, and replaced by the androgynous noun God.
The pastor was stabbed in the back by the hymnal makers and providers of sunday school material. If I want feminist humanism, I can turn on the TV or pick up any magazine at the supemarket checkout counter. Most serious Christians prefer a denomination whose publishers are not ashamed of God, and feel no need to correct Him as though He were an Asperger's Syndrome case, Who needed to have His utterances constantly curbed, corrected, and explained away.
I had red pen in hand, but decided against "correcting" the hymnal folks' "corrections" of God's original message. A sad voice in the back of my head said, "Let the dead bury the dead. The living have work to do." The remaining faithful members, those who are deeply loyal to what the church used to be will pass on within the next few decades. Unless a miracle happens to reverse settled trends at the denominational level, however, a lot of Methodist churches are going to be closing their doors.