The Methodist mess in St. Louis

Before the United Methodist Special General Conference opened on Saturday, we prayed. Perhaps God would miraculously grant a fruitful discussion among 800 disputants who have very little in common except our cross-and-flame nametags. We prayed for openness to different points of view, unity, communion, gracious listening, holy conferencing, empathetic feelings, and generosity of spirt.

At some point I shifted my own prayers to, “Lord, please melt the hardened hearts and smite everyone who intends to vote against the One Church Plan.” This plan, recommended by the UMC bishops, aimed to give more discretion to local churches and annual conferences in LGBTQ inclusion, ministry, and mission. It was summarily trashed early in the voting; the rival Traditional Plan, which reaffirms the denomination’s prohibitions against same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy, was approved.

The Lord, as far as I could tell, had business elsewhere. In fairness to the Lord, months earlier nearly everybody had announced how they would vote on the questions before us. Many vowed that if the outcome was disagreeable to them, they would pack up their congregation and exit the UMC. Ever try to have a church meeting after half of the attendees announce, “If this doesn’t go our way, and maybe even if it does, we’re leaving”?

Now it is the UMC’s turn to experience the agony previously endured by the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans, though I fear that our interlocked, connectional polity will make our pain worse. We bishops believed in unity but couldn’t figure out how to lead it. As we called for generosity and openness from the podium, Traditional Plan politicos were busy on the floor counting votes and making deals. The Traditional Plan carried the day but with a majority so slim that few could call it a victory. (Every pastor knows not to go into a building program with less than 60 percent of the vote.) Traditionalists and progressives did share one conviction: don’t trust bishops.

The misnamed Traditional Plan—little in the 200-year tradition of American Methodism justifies such punitive, exclusionary measures—passed after being amended in a fruitless attempt to overcome its lack of constitutional validity. The traditionalists from the Wesleyan Covenant Association got to go back home proud of the way they had defended “scriptural authority,” eager to roll up their sleeves and go to work tearing asunder the church that produced them.

In the four decades I’ve been an ordained leader in the UMC, we have lost 30 percent of our membership. Our response? Spend millions of dollars and hours of work to decide who else we can exclude. From what I know of Jesus, I predict he will not deal graciously with the infidelity of this church born in John Wesley’s exuberant, extroverted, “Salvation for all!” A chill overtook my once-warmed Wesleyan heart as convention delegates casually discussed the conditions for a “gracious exit.” Never had I heard schism so openly affirmed in a church meeting. My question for right-wing schismatics: Do you really think that your vote at General Conference can stop the Trinity from creating LGBTQ Christians and then recklessly sending them to lead Methodist churches?

What now for the UMC? There will be significant losses from LGBTQ Christians and their allies who have given up on the UMC, along with losses from those for whom the UMC will never be confined, closed, and conservative enough. We’ll be poorer for the loss of both conversation partners. As for those in the global church who participated in this smackdown of North American Methodist mission and evangelism, they may soon regret the loss of financial support from a considerably weakened North American Methodism.

If any good comes out of this debacle in St. Louis, it may be the recognition of some basic realities.

First, no fundamentally helpful decisions will ever come out of any General Conference, no matter how much prayer precedes it. The General Conference is no longer a viable means of governing the church. Polls showed that the majority of North American United Methodists supported the One Church Plan. Many African and Asian delegates, who come from vital churches full of Holy Spirit-induced innovation, joined the conservatives in dictating to the North American United Methodists the boundaries of our mission and the scope of congregational formation. A big, no-holds-barred, winner-take-all political convention may work for a national political party. It’s a disaster for the body of Christ.

Second, over a couple of decades, people my age have constructed the Book of Discipline to serve the interests of our generation, albeit unknowingly. Adaptation or innovation in the general church have been rendered impossible. If there’s any good worth doing, there’s a rule to be passed to force you to do it. The way to come to a good decision is through endless meetings followed by coercive, will-to-power voting.

In this Special General Conference we have now declared ourselves to be the church of the aged. The average UM is white and 61 years old. Just like me, my church has got too much past and too little future. I fear that this will be remembered as the week that the UMC decisively, openly turned away from ministry with anyone under 40.

Finally, the Holy Spirit doesn’t work from the top down. The Spirit does good from the bottom up, through God’s hijinks in the local church. We Methodists may brag that we are “connectional” in organization and episcopal in polity. But, by God’s grace, this train wreck may give us the opportunity to rediscover the power of the local and congregational.

The question of LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage, insoluble at a corporate-style global gathering of 800 people, is more or less resolved in every congregation I know. The solution may not be one of which I approve, but in a way that somehow works in the present moment for that congregation, in the place where Christ has assembled them, they muddle through. They may still have great differences; they may have lost members because of their solution. There may be repeated, heated arguments. The pastor may be uneasy with and unsure how to lead their work in progress, but they have practiced forbearance because Jesus told them to. They have discovered the adventure of worshiping the Trinity with people with whom they disagree, because, like it or not, those are the folk whom the Lord has convened and made Methodist. They muddle through.

All pneumatology is local, gift of God from the bottom up. Now those of us who still love and linger in the UMC can fully give ourselves to that local task of muddling through. I told my seminarians, “If you are wondering why God Almighty would call somebody like you into the United Methodist ministry, here’s your answer. God is calling upon you for assistance to clean up what my generation has messed up.” By the grace of God we may rediscover the joy of working with a relentlessly redemptive God who can bring good even out of our mess at General Conference.

It must be recognized that the "One Church" plan was a plan promoted by the UMC North American bishops and the author of the article is a retired UMC North American bishop - William H. Willimon. When he speaks about the "One Church" plan it was a plan drafted and supported by his leadership friends in the UMC.

Throughout the article there are so many arrogant self-serving statements by Mr Willimon.

At some point I shifted my own prayers to, “Lord, please melt the hardened hearts and smite everyone who intends to vote against the One Church Plan.” This plan, recommended by the UMC bishops, aimed to give more discretion to local churches and annual conferences in LGBTQ inclusion, ministry, and mission. It was summarily trashed early in the voting; the rival Traditional Plan, which reaffirms the denomination’s prohibitions against same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy, was approved.

Then he lies about the traditional plan, which REAFFIRMED long standing UMC tradition and teaching, saying:

The misnamed Traditional Plan—little in the 200-year tradition of American Methodism justifies such punitive, exclusionary measures

So in crazy Mr Willimon's eyes, the Traditional Plan which reaffirmed (by his own words) longstanding UMC tradition and teaching yet somehow has little in that 200 year tradtion to justify it. How is a reaffirmation of longstanding position NOT justification for it?

He mumbles: We bishops believed in unity but couldn’t figure out how to lead it. But clearly the bishops thought the One Church Plan WAS the way to lead the church. I guess he can't dare admit their leadership not only failed, their leadership course was rejected.

Again he lies: (and he's a UMC bishop)

In the four decades I’ve been an ordained leader in the UMC, we have lost 30 percent of our membership. Our response? Spend millions of dollars and hours of work to decide who else we can exclude.

Within the UMC of North America, its bishops, its regional conferences, its national agencies, its seminaries and its churches have not, altogether, been spending millions of dollars rejecting the LGBT political agenda. There has been a de facto accepting of that agenda in many places at every level of the UMC. That too may not be universal, but there has also not been univeral North American UMC agendas against the LGBT agendas. And whereever there has been no outright opposiotion to the LGBT agenda, there has been a look-the-other-way de facto accepting of it, when there has not been outright overt application of it, which there has been plenty of.

Mr Willimon should be called on by the promotors of the Traditional Plan to name where exactly were the millions of dollars spent "to decide who else" the UMC should exclude. I don't think he can identify a penny.

Mr Willimon Said: What now for the UMC? There will be significant losses from LGBTQ Christians and their allies who have given up on the UMC, along with losses from those for whom the UMC will never be confined, closed, and conservative enough.

I think he knows his Progressive UMC members well enough to know that they have no intention of leaving the UMC over this particular loss on the LGBT agenda. I think HE KNOWS they are committed to the idea: O.K., next time.

In re: As for those in the global church who participated in this smackdown of North American Methodist mission and evangelism, they may soon regret the loss of financial support from a considerably weakened North American Methodism.

Maybe the churches in Africa and Asia don't particularly think they require North American UMC colonialism any longer.

This next statement of Mr Willimon is TOTALLY self serving: First, no fundamentally helpful decisions will ever come out of any General Conference, no matter how much prayer precedes it. The General Conference is no longer a viable means of governing the church.

The process was fine, for decades, as long as the Liberal leaning bishops like Mr Willimon were winning, but suddenly when the process is no longer serving them, to him it can only mean the process is bad, or wrong. It certainly cannot mean him and his friends were wrong. /sarc

He laments that: In this Special General Conference we have now declared ourselves to be the church of the aged. The average UM is white and 61 years old.

But he cannot acknowledge that the ever increasing Liberal trend of the UMC is part cause of that, as during the same period the growth of Christian churches in North America has been more with more Conservative churches than the more Liberal "mainline" churches like the UMC.

Mr Willimon's sanctimonious religious problems:

Lamenting the results, he says:

The Lord, as far as I could tell, had business elsewhere. So, G-d didn't care and was not concerned, ONLY because things did not go Mr Willimon's way? That presupposes that G-d could not possibly have been in favor the the Traditional Plan, and those in favor of the Traditional Plan were not listening to G-d at all. Says who?? And Liberals wonder why their sanctimonious arrogance stinks so much.

Hey Chaps, I was under the impression that William Willimon is sort of conservative.

I was never under that impression. IIRC, he was the pastor of the Duke University chapel, a position in a liberal school that no conservative would ever have gotten. Plus, I read UMC-ese, a language probably not of angels. Once the denomination buzzwords are known, the curtain is lifted from the intentionally darkened mind.

This is such a disengenuous article, and Willimon knows it: "Now it is the UMC’s turn to experience the agony previously endured by the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans,". Willimon is pretending that the UMC is now to experience for the first time the agony of homosexualism's confrontation with the church. Like me, he's watched every General Conference since the 70's fight over homosexuality and consistently and loudly REJECT it.

He laments the traditionalists' newfound ability to organize votes on the floor of the conference, while totally ignoring that's what his side has been doing for decades.

Finally, he tries to pretend the whole world is aghast at the direction taken by the Methodists. The reality is that about 90% of world Christianity NOW rejects homosexual ordination and marriage. Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Fundamental, Charismatic, etc. To suggest that western Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, Mainline-ism is the overwhelming state of modern Christianity is to have a huge problem with mathematics and counting.

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