State of the UMC Update (March 2021)

some of you have uh been keeping up with what's been happening in the united methodist church some of you may not have been and that's okay i'm not saying that you should um but i want to just share some thoughts kind of where we are uh what has happened since we last had a gathering like this uh gosh that's been well over a year ago and uh keep you uh kind of up to date on what's happening but i wanna start with the word of prayer and uh we'll go from there let's do that father thank you for uh the the privilege of just being together as your body thank you that uh when we're together you are always present with us when two or more gathered in your name that you're there and so that means you're here with us because there are two or more here and we're gathered in your name so would you would you open our our minds and and our understanding we preached about the holy spirit we'll be preaching about that at 11. uh god we believe that promise to be true that you can teach us what we need to know and so help us to do that in this time together please in jesus name we pray amen well i want to uh start with a little bit of kind of review so some of for some of you this will be um it'll be the review before the exam remember did you ever have that when you're in school i was so grateful for those because i was like that's the only way i was going to pass um but i want to remind you of some things that have that have happened but i want to start with for those of you who may be a little bit fuzzy on the structure of our church which has been very historic very much a part of who we are as methodists coming to us primarily from john wesley our founder but i want to talk to you a little bit about the the structure of our church the current structure is this we are as you know park avenue united methodist church is a local church that's where most of the work gets done in all of united methodism when i've been on trips to uganda when i've been on trips to costa rica and we've been to methodist churches there a lot of what we do here is the same thing you'll do around the world and it's mostly in the local church and so we are a local church as a local church we are part of a a district is the next level of our uh structure it's called the south central district you may already know that our district superintendent is reverend paula lewis and she covers our area which i don't know how many churches we have in the south central district but it runs from way cross to valdosta up to tifton douglas in that area there are six districts in the south georgia annual conference so the the next uh level of our structure is our annual conference it's called the south georgia annual conference and it runs think about the nat line for those of us who know about nats it runs from from savannah to macon to columbus and below so from there to the florida line to the alabama line to the coast that's the south georgia annual conference and we have a bishop his name is uh lawson bryan and so he presides as our bishop over the south georgia annual conference and he has six district superintendents like the reverend paula lewis and they make up what's known as the cabinet it's a lot like the federal government right so it's the president and the and the cabinet and so that's the structure you go from there though the south georgia annual conference is one of many conferences and we are part of what is known as the southeastern jurisdiction it's a conference and so it's uh i want to show you a picture of the conferences that we have in the united states here's the map and so these are all of the jurisdictional conferences and you can see us in the beige sort of brownish light brown color there that's the southeastern jurisdiction and you'll see that georgia there's a line do you see that little line i call that the nat line uh that's between north georgia and south georgia so there are two conferences in georgia north georgia south georgia this is this is really interesting the north georgia annual conference has more members just in that that northern part of georgia has more members than all of the blue western jurisdiction put together is that crazy in fact south georgia has more members than almost all of the western jurisdiction that's interesting to keep in mind because the bulk of europe methodists are going to be in the bay the brownish bay southeastern jurisdiction the texas uh south central jurisdiction the purple is where most of your your united methodists are are are found um there's some obviously all around the world but that's where they kind of are gathered so we have jurisdictions ours is called the south georgia i'm sorry the southeastern jurisdiction the southeastern jurisdiction is primarily responsible for electing bishops i'm a delegate to that conference whenever it meets i'll talk about that in just a few minutes but the next structure is then we are part as a jurisdiction we are part of the general conference which you can think of that as the federal government it's it's it's everything uh that united methodists are the the jur the general conference is over everything and uh so ours is just called the united methodist general conference and so you can think of it kind of as it covers all of these other structures that we have that is a legislative body it's kind of like our congress to some extent it meets every four years supposed to meet every four years and every annual conference elects delegates to the juris the general conference so south georgia elects delegates both clergy and lay you have an equal number of delegates so south georgia we elected four clergy delegates and four lay delegates and those eight people together go and vote at general conference we have some some alternates i'm one of the alternates to the general conference so if someone is sick or something i'll step in and take their place but that's how legislation is decided it's by the delegates who come together at the general conference that's supposed to meet every four years and the delegates vote on whatever legislation is presented there now you know obviously that there is a theological divide in the united methodist church it's not new it's been around uh for some 40 50 years now and i want to read something to you i'm going to read a letter that kind of speaks to this let's listen to this listen to this letter dear friends i wanted very much to write to you concerning the salvation we share instead i must write to you to fight for the faith delivered once and for all for god's holy people godless people have slipped in among you they turned the grace of our god into unrestricted i'm sorry unrestrained immorality and deny our only master and lord jesus christ and the letter goes on anybody know who wrote that letter jude it's in the bible jude the brother of jesus wrote that letter there is there is a theological divide that has been around for a long time um it it has been presented primarily along the issues of human sexuality marriage and ordination that is the presenting issue that we have been divided over for a long time but that is just as bishop mike lowry the bishop of the central texas conference of the united methodist church he describes that as that's really just the tip of the iceberg and i was reading uh something that he wrote recently and then and this image came to mind it's like that's just the little piece that's above the water but there is this huge iceberg that is below the water and it really has to do with how we understand god how we understand jesus christ how we understand the doctrine of the bible how we understand the resurrection the virgin birth in fact bishop bishop lowry uh was writing about some conversations that he had with some very uh influential united methodist pastors and laity he had a conversation the the first one he he referred to in this uh article which i'll be glad to share with you which i just read last week he says that he had a a conversation with a highly regarded retired clergy person this man he was a man had been a serious candidate for bishop to be elected for bishop at some point in his career and he says we were discussing what doctrinal convictions were required for ordination to ordain a pastor like i'm an ordained elder and so we asked him he asked this this retired pastor he says would you vote for a candidate for ordination who did not believe in the trinity father son and holy spirit and uh the other man responded uh he he paused and noticeably thought for a moment and then he said yes i would i would i would vote for somebody who did not believe in the trinity and so bishop uh lowry is saying hey can you just just take a moment and think about the implications of a statement like that at the very heart of our understanding of god is the trinity it is in the the articles of our religion contained in our doctrine it's the heart of who god is he is father son and holy spirit yet we've got people out there in methodism who are saying that's not important anymore well he goes on he had a conversation with some district superintendents uh and one prominent d.s asserted that the talk of the crucifixion of jesus christ ought to be jettisoned do you know what that means that'll be thrown out this is what this district superintendent said she said listen to this this is the quote we have to stop preaching that jesus died on the cross for us it does damage to people well he's not done he hadn't he said there was a another ds who was in that group and and this this ds agreed with that comment about the crucifixion doing damage to people and then added added this thought to it said here in communion holy communion our sacrament that that that should not there should not be any confessional language in it at all he went on to say we have to stop making people feel guilty and like they need to confess sins when they come to church we aren't catholic now that's a district superintendent who is making that kind of a statement he said he had another conversation with the senior pastor of a large church in his conference in in texas and and they were they were talking about the mission statement of the united methodist church which is to make disciples of jesus christ for the transformation of the world let me say it again to make disciples of jesus christ the great commission for the transformation of the world and here's what that senior pastor said he had been a delegate to general conference and served in leadership positions on the board of ordained ministry um i've had the pleasure of serving on our board of ordained ministry uh he argued this is what he said that we need to leave out the part about jesus christ and emphasize just the transformation of the world so leave out the part about make disciples of jesus christ and just say hey our mission statement we're about transforming the world listen transforming the world is a very noble and it's a good mission to have obviously but it's like somebody told me bobby gail when we were in new orleans during um hurricane relief we were down there mucking out some houses and he stopped me he says jimmy look up and down the street this place was deserted so look up and down the street says look down there can you see way down that block you see there's some people working on on a house i said yeah he says those those are those are christians those are uh they're they're baptist folks they're wearing green shirts he said look down the street down here we see these folks over here uh these are some more christians that i met at the church of where you know where we were where we were getting supplies he said you know what the work that's being done here is being done in the name of jesus christ you know we're not just a local government we're not fema we're the disciples of jesus christ trying to help people in need but this person says we shouldn't do it he says we need to live leave jesus christ out of it and and so there's this there's this bigger theological divide i think you all understand that it's not just over the issue of human sexuality or nation in marriage it's much bigger there are people out there who do not believe in the resurrection of jesus christ that are united methodist pastors that are teaching that and that's troubling for a lot of people um there are people out there who are who are teaching and preaching that the scripture is not authoritative the holy bible is not the authority it's just a good read that has some good stuff in it and so i i hope you understand that you know while the the presenting issues are are significant issues for very many people the real issue is much bigger in fact dr timothy tenon who is the um he is the president of asbury theological seminary says this he says we need to remember refresh what this whole struggle has been about over the last 50 years it's not about human sexuality it has not been about the terms of separation it's not about the trust clause these have served as some of the presenting issues the struggle has been about nothing less than the recovery of biblical apostolic christianity it is about a prolonged and fresh encounter with the lord jesus christ who alone is the lord of the church and who has promised us that he will build his church and the gates of hell shall not stand against it it is about a renewal of our wesleyan message of holiness sanctification the redirected heart and the spirit-filled life and i i agree i agree with that so so where where are we in this struggle with uh with this divide we're at a place where a lot of people in fact the vast majority of methodists who who are speaking on this are are in agreement that it's it's time for us to to shake hands and go our separate ways you've heard me speak on that that before and so just a reminder that back in 2019 i went to the general conference which was a special call general conference and the purpose there was to receive the report that this commission on a way forward had had put together on plans to handle uh this issue and you remember there were a number of plans that were uh presented but the one that actually packed was what was known as the traditional plan and it basically strengthened this uh theological uh struck this basis that i've been talking about it upheld where we have been and kept the same things we've had in our discipline for this long period of time so it basically reaffirmed what we already have believed it also passed what's known as a disaffiliation policy which allows churches who do not agree with this to leave and take their property with them if they'll pay some fees i'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second but since then after that 2019 call general conference which you remember my report on that it was for me it was it was one of the most troubling things i've ever been to in my life and i think what i said was because of all the arguing and all the the mean spiritness that was there i think i told you that when i got home that night um when we got back to valdosta that i was like i felt i felt like i needed to take a bath i probably did need to take a bath but i really felt like i needed to take a bath it was it was not fun and i said before i don't want to go through that again i don't think i don't think many people want to go through that again so violations of the book of discipline have continued since then and people are when it comes to ordination they are ordaining uh lgbtq folks they are performing marriages they're they're in direct contradiction with what our general conference has said in our book of discipline has said for all these years and the bishops and conferences are refusing to enforce those provisions and it's just like you might as well not even have them in the book of discipline even though that's what general conference says we should have done based on a vote so what were the possible uh options after the 2019 meeting well we were supposed to have our regular four-year general conference in may of this year but as you know we we didn't um you know there were some options there first was that there were a lot of progressive uh delegates who had been elected in the united states and the thought was that they might possibly have enough votes to overturn the traditional plan that had been passed in 2019 another option would be that if they didn't have enough votes we would still have the conservative votes to strengthen to put some more teeth or some teeth in enforcing the book of discipline and then the third one was to possibly pass a separation policy some way to a plan that would allow us to separate gracefully and go our separate ways and go forth and prosper in both directions it doesn't it doesn't matter or the possibility that nothing would happen those were the options that we saw and were anticipating coming into uh 2020 but right this is not a dog toy is it the coronavirus hit which put us off track completely in fact had it not been for coronavirus here's what i think would have happened i think we would have met in may of 2020 and we would have had a separation policy passed right at the very beginning of general conference and we would already be working towards two different denominations at least so i want to talk a little bit about that separation policy because something happened i reported on it a while ago on a wednesday night or at some point we had a council meeting there was a group of there were a group of folks who got together to to talk about how we would go about separating and they put together something known as the protocol of reconciliation and grace through separation this happened in december of 2019. you need to know it was people on all sides of this this issue and and listen i'm i'm not naive enough to think that that everybody agrees on this issue even here i i understand that there may be folks who who have different opinions about that and that's okay that's okay but they brought all sides together in atlanta at a meeting and brought in a fellow named feinstein who was a lawyer who helped them negotiate a way forward by separation and they all agreed that this is what we needed to do progressives conservatives centrists bishops they had a good group there and and so this plan if it were passed would allow for the separation and to form two or more denominations a progressive or a liberal uh you know united methodist church and then a traditional version or maybe some kind of third version we really hadn't heard much about a third version sort of like the presbyterians have done in the past i think the episcopalians some others have done this in the past so it would allow a traditional denomination and i want to talk about the global methodist church some of you may have heard about that i'm going to come back to that but that would be the traditional version of our new methodist denomination i'll come back to that the other option was what they called the post-separation umc and that's the the progressives part of what was left of the church and then the third would be some other denomination but as i said i haven't really heard much about that but here was the other piece of this plan that was interesting it would authorize annual conferences and local churches to vote to affiliate with one or more of these denominations so it basically gave the churches the right to decide who they wanted to affiliate with but also an annual conference could do that like the south georgia annual conference would be able to vote to say hey we want to stay together as a conference but we want to be part of the traditional church not the progressive uh post-separation church and and that was a good thing and you could do so without penalty you could take your property the conference could take the property that the conference owns a local church could take their own property and leave and be affiliated with a new denomination which is which is important conferences and churches could vote to leave and retain their property without penalty because here's here's the catch for some of you who don't know the reason park avenue couldn't right now and just say hey we're done with this let's go uh we're we're no longer part of the united methodist church we're going to be an independent methodist church or whatever the reason that we couldn't do that without penalty right now is because our property is held in trust under a trust clause by the annual conference so we don't technically own our own property even though we built it you built it we paid for it you paid for it it's ours but they have a this trust clause which says that if we ever stop being a part of the south georgia annual conference then our property goes to them it's called a trust clause but under this protocol the trust clause is waived and there's no issue there at all so the conference couldn't take your property so so to illustrate that here's what happened let's say we get fed up and we say okay we're done so i go to my district superintendent and i say hey we're we're through with the methodist church as it appears right now we're gonna we're gonna just do our own thing for a while and then we'll see where we go and she'll say okay fine give me your keys and i would say oh we have to give you our keys and so she said yeah you can leave but you can't take your property we get your property and so that's the way the trust clause works but under this provision that's waived it goes away so we thought going into may 2020 that that would actually pass we would get the protocol passed we would separate and move on and go where we could but the coronavirus hit and so may 2020 we were supposed to be in minneapolis for the general conference it was postponed until 2021 but since then it has been postponed again and so it is now set the one that was supposed to be 2020 is now set for 2022 in i think august and september um so that uh there will be no vote on anything from a general conference level so far as we know uh from a general conference position until 2022 except there's one one exception to that and that is that our bishops have asked for a call general conference which will be held on may the 8th of this year for really one purpose the primary purpose of it is to allow those those pieces of legislation that need to be passed in order to continue business as a general conference to be passed in other words just the rubber stamp things we've got to prove a budget we've got to prove some hirings you know staff things whatever it is for the general conference so there would be no work done at that call general conference on may the 8th concerning the split or concerning the issue of human sexuality marriage and ordination some have asked including many conferences have asked that that protocol for reconciliation separation reconciliation be placed on the agenda it's going to be a one day virtual general conference it's going to be almost impossible to do because we have people from around the world we have brothers and sisters in africa brothers and sisters in the philippines brothers and sisters in europe and in the united states and trying to get us all together at the same time on a zoom call of some kind you can imagine the nightmare of that but there are some who say but we have enough we could if we can get together to vote on a budget we can get together to vote just simply whether we should separate or not i don't think that i don't think that the council of bishops is going to allow that to be on the agenda we'll just have to see but right now it's not on the agenda but there's another issue and this is a this is a pretty significant issue and that is election of bishops uh we we elect elect bishops at the southeastern jurisdiction remember the one this the brown that was up on the screen that's where we go to elect our bishops that's where we go to get our bishops who will be in charge of the south georgia annual conference here's the problem with the election of bishops right now we've been meeting i'm a delegate to that one we've been meeting by zoom call and what we have been told is that the funding for the episcopal fund the money for the episcopal fund which pays all of the salaries all of the expenses of all of the bishops around the world it is dwindling fast in fact the prediction i could give you the the the charts the prediction is that at the current rate of giving the episcopal fund will be depleted by 2024 and so we must take drastic action to eliminate some cost we can't increase the funding we hope folks will give but you know we've got to look at our actual cost so what we've got to do is eliminate some bishops and so the proposal is that we not elect bishops in the southeastern jurisdiction uh this coming year we have helped me remember i think 13 bishops i think that's right is it right david doesn't it sound right 13 bishops in the southeastern jurisdiction out of nine states we have 13 bishops and what they're proposing to do we have five bishops that are that were set to retire already but they agreed to stay on another year including our bishop bishop brian he he is set to retire in fact he was supposed to retire last year but he said he would stay through september of this year so the proposal is that we elect no more new bishops which is kind of good because most of the delegates that were elected to the jurisdictional conference are progressive it's amazing i mean for us to elect a bishop that lines up with traditional thinking at the jurisdictional conference would have been highly unlikely but here's the thing what they do now if we do not elect new bishops then who's our new bishop what do we do and the proposal is that they redraw the lines for the episcopal area the bishops area before we became south georgia and north georgia georgia was one conference does some of you remember that and we had bishop looney some of you remember bishop looney he was one bishop over both areas and that's the way it used to be until we decided that we needed our own bishop which was many years ago there's a proposal that we do that that we combine those uh areas again and make south georgia and north georgia one conference for purposes of a bishop if that were the case then what we would do let's see if i've got them down here so we're going to merge we're going to merge episcopal areas so here here are the options for south georgia the first one is that we would merge with north georgia if that were to happen then we would receive as our bishop bishop sue who is uh who's been there i think four years or working on four years bishop sue is not not shy about her position theologically she is a very strong progressive bishop and has made that position clear in north georgia to the to the extent that some pastors who are conservatives have been moved from churches some conservative churches have been closed there have been some things that she has done that would probably not line up with south georgia theologically um but there is also the argument that north georgia's large enough they need their own bishop so the next option is that we might be combined with alabama west florida which is more theologically aligned with south georgia that would not be necessarily a bad thing at all the third option is that we might end up combined with south carolina and i really don't know enough about south carolina's bishop or their episcopal area to comment but that's that's probably less likely but those are issues that have to be decided this year and in july we will have the the southeastern jurisdictional conference there so just to give you an idea you can see alabama west florida it's kind of the lower half of alabama and part of florida so you could just erase that line between south georgia and alabama west florida and that might be our new episcopal area or erase the mine up there between south carolina and south georgia and that becomes the episcopal area or the one between north georgia and south georgia so that's that's a major issue who's going to be our next bishop and what influence might that person have in shaping um the um the identity of our conference if that makes sense to you so i'm giving you a lot of information i know and and i'll post this there'll be a video about this but i need to tell you about the global methodist church this is the new version of the united methodist church in a traditional sense this is something that has been in the works for a while now really since they were talking about separating the wca the wesleyan covenant association the group that i'm president of our chapter in south georgia of has been part of this it is not it does not come solely from the wca it comes from others who've been part of the to work to pull this together but this was just recently released and you can go to a website to actually see what it looks like and they have released their version of the book of discipline our law book to say to say it in other terms and it is very very close to what we have currently in our book of discipline it maintains the current stance the traditional stance on same-sex marriage and ordination of lgbtq plus it also maintains much of the same structure that we have right now which is the bishop and the cabinet an appointment process there's one exception there what it does which is i believe a good exception it removes the guaranteed appointment of ordained elders if you are an ordained elder in the united methodist church you are guaranteed a job no matter really how well you do or how poorly you do and sometimes sometimes that's a great thing but sometimes that can be an issue but they pulled that out of it which i think is the right thing um just like other places it ought to be based on your merit your ability and and the giftedness that god uses through you the other thing that is a positive is that bishops now would be elected under this new traditional church would be elected not for life but for set terms that's been part of the problem with enforcing the book of discipline currently because a bishop is elected for life and the vast majority of bishops that are um part of our council of bishops now lean towards either being a a little left a little left-leaning centrist or or a progressive and so they have a lot of sway in what happens and uh there's really no recourse against them if they uh do not enforce provisions of the book of discipline so they're going to be they could be voted out uh as opposed to right now so they're they're going to be elected for set terms property under this new provision this new denomination that there will be no trust clause which is a good thing so churches who have built and paid for their churches will actually own their churches without threat that the denomination might or the conference might take their property from them and this is one of the stronger pieces of this new book of discipline too there is accountabilities there are provisions in there that say listen we expect that you will uphold the traditional um teaching of the apostles of the wesleyan understanding of christ and the trinity all those things that we have so it's it's it it does things that our current book of discipline will not do for that accountability the plan is that the global methodist church will officially launch that means it becomes an official denomination as soon as the protocol for separation is passed or there is an understanding it becomes apparent that uh there's just they're just delaying this idea of considering separation um you know the the kicking the can down the road again is not good for for method methodism there are a lot of methodists maybe not in our area so much but there are a lot of methodists who uh um who are leaving our churches because they're just tired of this and they've decided that they don't want to be a part of it anymore i i'm very blessed that i i do have the opportunity to talk with leaders and other conferences and i was on a zoom conference not too long ago with leaders that are from our jurisdiction and they were saying that their their churches are hurting they're hurting people are leaving people are not giving and it has to do with these issues and it's it's troubling not only that they're also telling horror stories of how some of the progressive district superintendents and bishops are harming those who are traditionalists in their conferences which is just to me it's just i just can't even understand why that would happen but it is happening we haven't seen a lot of that in south georgia which is good so i know that's a lot of information but let me just kind of give you a couple of things um what can we do what do we do as a church where are we and and there's always the option it's true whether we're in the local church or whether we're in the annual conference whether we're jurisdiction or or general conference there's always the option just to do nothing just to keep doing where we what we're doing where we are right now but there's also this option that when we feel that the time is right and when we feel like we're ready we could if we wanted to if this church voted to do so we could say we wanted to leave under the current disaffiliation policy which means we have to pay some money in order to do that some of you have heard maybe some talk about that here's the current disaffiliation policy you get to leave the united methodist church and take your property with you so that they waive the trust clause but you have to pay the current year apportionment so we'd have to pay 2021 apportionments and 2022 apportionments and then we have to pay a portion of the clergy pension liability for unpaid i forgotten what the proper name is but it's basically we have to pay for pension liability that has not been funded if that makes sense to you and the number that we've gotten i think terry you're in here somewhere right is somewhere in that neighborhood of 400 000 terry for us to do that right now a little bit higher than that which is basically two years our and our our apportionments to the united methodist church right now are about two hundred thousand dollars a year and you may know that our finance committee we we voted to withhold some of those funding some of that funding to the general conference um that goes to support uh um we think the those areas that do not line up with south georgia and with park avenue theologically and we we just we just we put those that money we've escrowed that money over on the side which we could possibly use if we ever got to a point where we wanted to pay this money and leave that's two options a third option is to wait and see if the protocol is going to be passed will it be passed in 2022 which will make it easier for churches to leave we only have to pay for our pension liability or we get to take it with us to the new denomination so we don't pay anything another is to wait and see what our annual conference will do well our annual conference vote to leave and go with the new global methodist church the traditional church with or without the passage of the protocol i was on the phone uh this past week with a lay person from another city and another church methodist church and he said jimmy i want your thoughts on i'm thinking about submitting legislation at our annual conference so south georgia's annual conference is in june that asks the annual conference to disaffiliate from the united methodist church he said i want your thoughts on that and and uh we we kicked it around so there there there are churches in our in our conference there are laity in our conference who are saying it's time for us to as a conference to leave and be our own conference until we join the global methodist church and i don't know whether that legislation will be presented or not but i want you to know there's just some there's some people that are thinking along those lines in fact your delegation uh i'm part of our delegation elected uh we we have been talking about that as well even meeting with the bishop to talk about that at times but there hasn't been any real action in that direction taken so what do i think is going to happen i know you've all been waiting with baited breath to hear what jimmy thinks is going to happen here's here are my thoughts and you know what if it proves right good if it doesn't that's okay too because there are a lot of uncertainties here as you've already figured here's here's the here's the first thing i think i i don't think that the protocol definitely not going to pass this year 2021 at the call general conference so may the 8th i just don't think they're going to do that i don't really think it's going to be passed in 2022. there are a number of reasons for that number one i'm not so sure we're going to meet in 2022. it all depends on what happens with the coronavirus whether it goes you know wild again or not it depends on whether people in other countries can get the the vaccine and i mean how do you there's just all those logistical concerns so i'm not so sure there are a lot of other people who are smarter than me that know more of the united methodist structure than i do who think that the idea is just to kick the can down the road again and so we may not even have a general conference until 2024 it might get pushed back till then with the idea from some of our progressives that we can elect more progressive delegates and maybe overturn the traditional plan and change and become the progressive church we wanted it to be the third thing is this i think what's going to happen is i think some of our larger conservative united methodist churches maybe some in our conference are going to leave i'll tell you the the the conversations that that i'm in and we meet regularly terry and jamie and kathy and brooks all them know i'm on the phone a lot with zoom conferences and meetings they're they're people are tired they're just tired and um they're tired of fighting they're you know it's like i've said before when when i left my law prior to standing in the ministry i didn't get into ministry to fight i didn't i got into ministry to help people know jesus and so there's just this sense from a lot of people your conservative churches they've been fighting this fight for so long it's like why don't we just let's just go do our own thing let's just go be who we want to be and teach people about jesus and love people and try to make a difference in the world and leave all this other stuff in this fighting and this bickering behind and i'll tell you what as your pastor that sounds pretty good to me at times because i spend a whole lot of time having to deal with it and so i think that's going to happen i'm pretty sure that's going to happen in other conferences too and i think that will happen before uh 2024 for sure um i believe also that this new traditional church is going to launch in 2022 one way the other if the protocol comes up if we do have a general conference in 2022 the protocol is passed they'll definitely launch if we have the general conference in 2022 and it's not passed they'll definitely launch so i think that will happen then um i think that some annual conferences will vote to leave and go with the general the global methodist church at some point before long and i think that many local churches do you know last year we lost in our district we lost four churches four churches said i've had enough and they paid the money and they pulled out and so we approved at our annual conference last year the digital zoom annual conference last year that those churches could do so i think it was a total somebody help me remember was that nine churches total there's a number of churches in the in the annual conference our south shore daniel conference who left and said i'm done so what do we do now what do we do now i hope you're doing this already i hope you're praying i hope you're praying for your pastors and uh for for just this whole this whole struggle please keep praying i mean debbie and i have our we have our prayer list that's written out and so when we do our morning prayers and we go through we call it's like six pages now david in our journal and so a lot of your names are in there but i start with my family then i start with my staff and then the next thing i pray for is our conference and our our denomination and and what god is wanting to do there i i hope that you'll stay informed there there is a ton of information out there on the internet some of you may have seen some of it some of you may have questions about it i'm happy to answer questions about it but you do want to stay informed with the right information and i'll help you do that our church will help you do that our staff will be prepared yeah i mean i don't know what's happening i don't know what's going to happen but just be prepared there may become a time there may be a time in the life of this church when it's no longer united methodist i've been methodist all my life i was methodist before it was united methodist raise your hand if you were methodist before it was united methodist you know names change sometimes and and for me there's there's a sadness there because i i believe in my time in ministry i've been in the ministry now 20 years i've watched our denomination change in the 20 years i've been in ministry it's not the same denomination that i signed up for when i said i wanted to be a minister and that that's troubling to me because i love the united methodist church i love the methodist church i love i love the wesleyan teaching i love that john wesley did all that he did and i don't ever want to lose that but it's like somebody very wise said they said it's not that that we would consider leaving the united methodist church it's that the united methodist church has left us as we understood it to be when we first joined it educate others let them know about it keep doing what we're doing now just keep doing what we're doing now and and love god and love others we're going to love everybody we're going to love everybody it doesn't matter what their human sexuality is we're going to love them we've got to because jesus loves them and we're going to do that and keep doing that and so here's kind of the bottom line i tell you this every time that no matter what happens no matter what happens we're still going to be park avenue and we're still going to do what we do your sunday school class will still meet we will still have worship it will look just like it looks right now so that's a good thing what happens out there happens out there but we're still going to be who we are we're going to follow jesus christ and we're going to love others and we're going to worship the risen king and so that's my plan so there's some resources if you want to learn more i'll give these to you you're welcome to get a copy of my presentation today if you'd like to and slow it down and look through it do i have any time i might have time for maybe one question if somebody has one that you say i just got to get this question in right now um i'm happy to maybe entertain the question that's a good question the question is are we seeing violations basically of our book of discipline in our annual conference the good news is we have not seen that not in an open way we are seeing it under the surface we've seen a little bit of the tip of the iceberg but we're seeing and hearing more about it under the surface um and and i think i think what we're seeing is we're seeing um more of our young clergy lean towards progressive ideology and and that's influencing other areas of our conference i'm aware of some instances in our conference where you could argue there were violations of the discipline but it's not as egregious what's the right word it's not as bad as in other conferences which is a blessing i told my folks that i was on the zoo meeting with the from the sec the southeastern jurisdiction i said uh being in south georgia and sometimes is a blessing and a curse the blessing is we don't have those things the curse is we don't have those things which means we're lulled to sleep and we don't need to be asleep we need to be aware of what's going on so good question yep yep one more maybe been here a long um one thing i never understood is why we live from the methodist church the united nations church and my opinion is whatever if we go back to work with you gary all right yes one more time yeah our understanding from cfna is that which is our financial um group that's part of the united methodist church there will be no issues with that that it'll either transfer to the new denominations they've already worked that out with uh what's the name of the outfit we pay the money to west at westpac they've already worked all that out with them and it won't affect us um so yeah that's a good thing yep all right i think i need to go preach let me pray for us and we'll we'll wrap it up father thank you i know that you lord want us to be aware of what's happening in our world you placed us in our world you told us not to be you told us to be in the world but not be of the world and that's true when it comes to a denomination too our identity our identity is in you jesus christ as your beloved children and that's where we should live and breathe and place our hope and our trust always because everything else that takes that place becomes an idol and we would be guilty of idolatry we don't want that we want to follow you closely thank you for these friends thank you for this church for the work you're doing here and for your presence among us that is making a difference in lives we're grateful lord we love you bless us please in jesus name we pray amen so you

Channel: Park Avenue Church (UMC)

Views: 40,698

Keywords: Christian, Jesus, Moving towards Christ, Church, Christianity, united methodist church

Id: 8hG_vLf5pz0

Length: 50min 15sec (3015 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021