Written about The Episcopal Church and the orthodox Anglican Bishops of Africa but it applies to The United Methodist Church as well.
Posted on 01/26/2021 12:50:15 PM PST by lightman
Written about The Episcopal Church and the orthodox Anglican Bishops of Africa but it applies to The United Methodist Church as well.
Did he not want to stick around for the split?
Which direction did he go? The more conservative or the progressive route, if you don’t mind saying.
I keep reading about this pending split, of the UMC, but it never seems to be happening.
Is their a timeframe, or deadline?
Thank you so much for posting this. The issue is particularly poignant in my case.
As a teacher of an adult Sunday School class in a rural UMC church with only about 40 members, I watched over the years as a parade of pastors came through the door, many of whom were clearly apostate in terms of adherence to scripture.
Finally, last year the church had had enough. The lady pastor said “I believe in a loving God...there is no Hell!” Yikes!
The peasants grabbed their pitchforks, changed the locks on the church and locked the UMC out. Moved to a machine shop for services. There is a wonderful, loving and liberated spirit in the worship.
We are in the concluding phase of moving back into our church as a fully independent body of believers. The UMC is a godless, heretical bureaucracy. But then, so is Washington DC. The attorney Dan Dalton in Michigan is doing some great work for those abandoning that sinking ship.
“Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross!”
Thank You Again for Posting!
I would have been sorely tempted to respond, “Lady, an angel supposedly came to Joseph Smith and told him that you need to be married to a faithful Mormon man to get to heaven, and not only that, but you should be happy to share him with his other wives. Why should I believe your angel and not his angel?”
When I was just a little, tiny fella back in the early 1950s, my dad worked for the railroad and would be gone from home for weeks at a time. We were literally poor as paupers until he got back home with his pay. No credit cards back then, no phone. We had an old beat up 1940s-type Plymouth car that we couldn’t even drive because we had no money for gas.
Every once in awhile, someone would leave a bag of groceries on our doorstep. One day, I saw the man who was doing it, and it was the Methodist pastor of the small church down the road from us. I recognized him from going to that little church.
My mother was Pentecostal to the core; head to toe, but sometimes, we’d all get dressed and go to that little church I think she took us there because we could walk to it since we couldn’t afford to drive anywhere else, and something was better than nothing? Who knows. I never did ask her. That church was always packed on Sunday mornings. I can remember as a little fella sitting there listening to those messages. That preacher was full of hell fire and brimstone back then. I can remember him shaking that Bible at the congregation while preaching Christ and Him crucified.
A few years ago, I had the chance to revisit the old place and that Methodist church is still there...only now, it’s much newer and way nicer. We went that next Sunday. It was full of homosexual couples, and to say the least, we felt somewhat out of place. When the lady pastor presented the message, there was absolutely NO scripture at all....just a feel-good message out of some secular magazine article.
Now, I’m definitely no saint, and the Lord has a lot of work to do with old boy, but I sat there thinking how far they’ve gone compared to the early 50’s.
Never went back...and probably never will.
I grew up in a small, old-fashioned United Methodist church in southern Illinois and will always be grateful for that. But knowing some of the clergy in that area, nearly 40 years ago, I can see where a lot of the trouble came from. They were not the source of bringing the world into the church because they were pretty much traditional believers. But they were nice people willing to compromise with the world to keep the peace. I think a concern for preserving their careers also played a role with some. The first compromises seemed small, but actually amounted to the camel’s nose getting into the tent. Eventually, the whole camel was in.
I have long since moved on. The only times I have been in a UMC in this century were for my parents’ funerals. Knowing what the UMC was and could have been, I am sorry to see this happen.
You fought hard. How are things for you?
LOL!
Where did he go?
I was raised Methodist, but let the church many years ago. Well, to be fair, I felt they left me. I talked to many pastors about the changes that I saw and was left sadder and sadder.
It is not just the Methodists that undergoing schism at this time. Sadly, we live in a world that believe in getting along and going along that everybody must arrive at the same place regardless and that religion itself is a problem and should be shunned by thinking people.
For all these reasons and more, this falling away is yet one more indicator that we are living in the end times and Our Lord will be returning soon.
Jesus established one holy catholic (universal) and apostolic church. The Church is one (not many) in unity with the Trinity and professes one Lord, one faith, and one Baptism and forms one Body under the leadership of the Holy Father, successor to Peter the Apostle.
Man has followed false teachers and rejected some of God’s revealed truths. Accordingly, many are not following the teachings of Jesus Christ but their own man-made opinions.
Few will enter Heaven unless they repent and change their ways. There is one God and His Truth does not have thousands of different versions. We all need to seek God’s truth and follow Christ not the ways of the world.
Jesus told us the way is hard and the gate narrow. Mat 7:13
I too was baptized Methodist and grew up worshipping in a United Methodist church located in rural SC. This church could trace it’s founding back to the early 1800’s. From it’s founding, a majority of families would contribute to a fund especially set aside to take care of the church and the parsonage. I mention this because in the early 80’s when Magnum PI was popular, the preacher decided he wanted a Ferrari just like Magnum drove. He pointed out there was more than enough money in our church’s fund to provide one for him. The church members and the Bishop’s office in Columbia had issues with this. They thought (and I agree) a preacher did not need to be driving around in an expensive Italian sports car. So they reached a compromise and bought him a Puegot instead. He drove that car around town and in a within six months the treasurer of our church found our fund- that had been set up in the 1800’s and had had contributions religiously made to it every month for over a 150 years was nearly empty. The preacher had started embezzling the money right after he was denied his Ferrari. A lot of people, my family included, lost faith in that church. I don’t think they have fully recovered the damage a man of the cloth caused.
Actually, Christ left us a Church (cf. Pentecost, 33 AD). And by Divine inspiration, the Church gave us the Bible, among many other things as well!!!!
We have a Methodist Church in the area . . .that after the pastor decided he couldn’t go along with their doctrine and left the church. . . 12 people followed him. Within a year they now have 99 faithful attendees.
I’m speaking of the Orthodox Church.
Read your Bible, about what happened at Pentecost, what the Apostles did, and the Epistles that some of them wrote. No matter what denomination you belong to, you received everyone you need for salvation through the original Church. And there’s no glory involved—we are all sinners saved by the Blood of Christ!!!!
A rural church had a sweet spirit (which I experienced first hand on a visit), celebrated 100 years, and decided they no longer wanted to be a part of the Methodist agenda. The congregants built the church and then a few years ago remodeled it. Well, because of their stand they were given notice to evacuate, the doors locked, and whoever was in charge at a higher level in the Methodist hierarchy told the church he would rather see the building turn into a coon hunter’s barn than another church. I was told Methodists don’t own their building even if it is paid in full and built by church members. At least it was the case with this church. The members chose to go to other Bible believing churches in the area. It was so sad.
So true. It’s the word of God. We are sinful but we cannot say sin is good. We must try to blot out sin and if a church embraces sin then we must leave it. It has no matter what name or affiliation that church has.
They are ok. I retired, but then got asked to fill in at a church that had left the United methodist church. So, we are attending and preaching there for now while they search for a new full time pastor.
It’s refreshing not hearing about what the umc is up to when I attend a methodist church on Sunday morning. :>)
I think the umc meets in late summer to vote on splitting. I expect 3 or more offshoots to come out of that. A smart church will leave, but the process I’ve read makes it easy to do nothing and stay, but requires determined focus, voting, and planning to leave.
“Unless the person saying it is in the process of becoming Roman Catholic. When you think about it, any Protestant, by definition, believes that there are some issues worth splitting the church over.”
https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/unity
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