Posted on 05/03/2024 8:05:59 PM PDT by Morgana
The Global Methodist Church has issued an official response to the United Methodist Church's General Conference votes to drop the denomination's decades-old ban on ordaining noncelibate homosexuals and allow the blessing of same-sex weddings.
UMC General Conference delegates voted this week via consent calendar to remove assorted rules from the denomination's Book of Discipline, shifting its stance on multiple LGBT issues.
Launched in 2022 as a conservative alternative to the UMC at a time when many churches were planning to leave the mainline Protestant denomination, the GMC issued a statement Wednesday stating that it "do[es] not have any affiliation with their decisions, nor do we wish to comment or provide commentary on the actions of other religious organizations."
Nevertheless, the nascent Methodist denomination took the opportunity to state that it remains "dedicated" to maintaining a historic understanding of Christianity.
"The Global Methodist Church maintains its steadfast commitment to advancing its mission, which involves proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and serving its community of more than 4,501 churches and congregational members worldwide," stated the GMC.
"Rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ and the historic confessions of the Christian faith proclaimed over the past two thousand years, The Global Methodist Church remains dedicated to upholding its denomination's strong foundation."
The GMC was launched in 2022 after the UMC delayed its General Conference, originally scheduled for May 2020, for a third time amid the COVID-19 pandemic. GMC's goal was to provide a new denomination for conservatives seeking to leave the UMC in objection to theologically progressive leaders within the denomination refusing to abide by the denomination's rules on sexuality.
Although decades of efforts to change the rules prohibiting gay weddings and noncelibate homosexual clergy had failed, many liberals within the UMC refused to enforce or follow the Book of Discipline's ban on ordaining LGBT clergy.
A 2019 special session of the General Conference approved a temporary measure creating a disaffiliation process for congregations that wanted to leave the UMC. Over 7,500 churches had done so by the end of last year.
On Tuesday, as part of a consent calendar vote, delegates voted 667-54 to remove the Book of Discipline's ban on funding LGBT advocacy groups and mandatory punishments for clergy who blessed same-sex unions.
The following day, delegates approved without debate in a vote of 692 to 51 a consent calendar that included removing a ban on "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" being ordained, a measure that had been in the Book of Discipline since 1984.
John Wesley, George Whitefield and Charles Wesley would be utterly appalled.
I so agree.
I know I am.
I went to my Grandmother’s Methodist church as a little girl. They were not like this at all. I know those people, who are long dead as my Grandmother is, would not have approved of this.
A small former UMC church out in the country near me that disaffiliated had contractors working last week to more than double the size of their parking lot.
The United Methodist Church has ceased to be Christian and therefore is not properly a church at all.
The “modernizing” churches are haemhorraging members who either determine that there is nothing useful in this Christian stuff that changes every week or they are moving to Churches who retain the original Doctrine and do not waver and collapse when the wind blows gently against them.
Orthodox Churches are ballooning in this country as are the Traditional Mass Catholic Churches even as Boss Bergoglio tries to shut them down,
Therein lies the structure of the issue. "Democratic" procedures involving a denomination's scriptural "repository of faith" means the repository can be raided / emptied / trashed.
Sample the people who voted, in their own voices, because this is what UMC "theology" like -- pure identity politics.
This is the United Methodist Church. They've gone fully woke.
Not me... Liberal scum has infected everything. All part of the plan.
I wonder what regional youth conferences in the UMC look like today. When I was a teen we had discussions with preachers and on two occassions at one conference we had open calls for all teens who were ready to come forward and declare-confess their acceptance of Jesus Chirst as their Savior. I imagine they avoid that today.
The ruling class religion is Sodomy.
This just shocks me
You’re shocked that the Global Methodist Church won’t ordain LGBT or marry same sex marriages, like the UMC?
My estimate:
How we rank crimes, failures, and sin, has a high probability of not matching how Jesus would rank those, if he would.
What I find in the Bible, is that sins rank highest, no matter how we define crimes and failures.
Also ranked highest, according to Jesus, is a determination to sin no more, though we try and fail, again and again. I think, that “keep on trying,” shows faith and hope are somehow still alive.
Anybody who seeks forgiveness, help, kindness, love, relief, protection, and shelter from Jesus, and despite repeated failures keeps on trying . . . I would not get between that person and Jesus.
Whatever a person’s failures are, Jesus is their judge, and thankfully I do not have to worry about failing that person by getting in their way - but I do try to point them along the way to Jesus.
And, I try to convey, there is no path that sin can accompany them, at some point along their way that Jesus knows but is unknown to most of us.
Study of Jesus may clarify that point for some, but more important, is focus on Jesus while not worrying about that point of leaving sin behind.
To wit: Your sins are not you, and you cannot take your sins with you. Pride is what keeps sin sticking to you. Leave pride behind. Ask Jesus to wash away pride.
Pride is what keeps sin sticking to you. Leave pride behind. Ask Jesus to wash away pride (sin)....
Do you suppose the UMC is teaching this ⬆️, regarding same sex lifestyles and marriages?
But, will they continue to support the UMC financially?
Agreed. They are probably rolling over in their graves now.
Seems like pro-pride churches refuse to teach it. Not happy to see UMC churches go that direction. Lost a couple friends who left a Presbyterian church (where they were married) in favor of a UMC church where they found “inclusivity.”
Their decision back then: “It is OK to be gay.” But I never learned, if they were just trying to hold the church doors open, or they had some notion that Jesus would say the same.
I do not find “depth,” and “breadth,” and “greater understanding of love” by sanctioning homosexual behavior and pop-cultural sexual depravation. But that broad license appears to be found in somce churches, and specifically some UMC churches.
I do find, that our worthy, genuine, American Culture has been bashed by leftists for long enough to be missing from a the awareness -ability of many young people.
Young people whose parents are also missing in action.
On the other hand, I know a young lady now 18 years of age, who is a remarkable achievement.
Her father was born into crime and wandered a metropolitan area for the first 19 years of his life, living off the proceeds from crimes. He was caught and sent to jail at age 19.
This not-yet-a-father met a visiting angel of a girl from a regional church. Like a movie that many of us would like to see, that young man and that young woman ended up getting married after he left jail behind.
He became a determined, self-made building contractor. They had kids, one of whom, is this young lady I knew for a while - a girl who was squared away, smart, careful, attentive, productive and working at age 16, at a restaurant where I sometimes visited.
I can't really say what's "right", that is up to each denomination to determine what is their doctrine.
However, I will say this. If they are going away from their roots, why would their members stay with them?
It's too easy for them to become secular and decline to be part of the congregation.
Apparently, that's happening because most denominations in the U.S. are in decline nowadays.
If that were true, GMC would not be allowing women pastors, which is what sunk the UMC.
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. —2 Timothy 3:1-7
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.