Three Reasons Why I Hope We Stay UMC

Three Reasons Why I Hope We Stay UMC

1.    Because of what the UMC has given me.

It gave me a church home, with wonderful people who taught me about God and taught me to love Jesus. It was in the UMC that I heard the gospel preached by local pastors who were sent by the UMC to serve our circuit of 3 churches.  It was in the UMC where I learned to sing the songs of the faith from the Cokesbury Hymnal and the Methodist Hymnal.  It was in the UMC where God’s love and grace penetrated my nine-year-old heart and I said, “Yes” to being a follower of Jesus.  When I made a public profession of faith and was baptized, it was the UMC that I joined. I promised to be loyal to the UMC and support it with my prayers, my presence, my gifts and my service. That promise still means something to me.

I experienced the love and fellowship of fellow believers in the UMC.  We helped each other grow, served together, and worshiped in spirit and in truth.  It was in the UMC where I felt God’s call on my life.  The UMC gave me a chance to be a lay speaker, and as God’s call became clearer to me, a certified candidate, then a licensed local pastor.  The UMC gave me churches to preach in, congregations to serve.  The UMC helped send me to a great university for a fine theological education, then the UMC made me accountable, screened me carefully and lovingly, and at the end of the process, a UM bishop laid his hands on my head, and in a tradition that stretches back to John Wesley, ordained me as an Elder – set apart for Word, Sacrament, and Order.

When I went through a traumatic divorce and stepped away from ministry for a season, I didn’t step away from the UMC.  I sang in a UMC choir, listened to good preaching, and eventually found a UMC that would be home to me, my new wife, Tammy, and our children.  All three of our babies were presented for baptism in a UMC. It was in the UMC that they were raised, nurtured, taught, and where they would go on to be confirmed and received into full membership…where theypromised to be loyal to the UMC, and to support it with theirprayers, presence, gifts, and service.

It was in the UMC that my children were taught to love God and love others.  They went to Camp Sumatanga, a UMC camp.  They worked at UMCOR Sager-Brown on week-long mission trips. All three of my children still love and still attend a UMC. (Even the 2 that are already off to college).  My oldest daughter is a student at Birmingham Southern College, a UMC affiliated college, and has received help and scholarship money from the UMC.

When I felt God’s call back into full-time ministry, the UMC again carefully and lovingly screened me through the Board of Ordained Ministry and then welcomed me back in.  I came back in full-time 17 years ago.  I have never loved anything I’ve done vocationally as much as I’ve loved being a UM pastor.  I am proud to call myself one.  Even now.

2.    Because of what I’ve given the UMC

I’ve given the UMC 32 years of service as a pastor at every imaginable level.  I have served as a local pastor of single-church appointments, two-point charge, three-point charge, and even a four-point charge. I’ve served in rural congregations, small towns, cities…on staff at three different churches…currently senior pastor of a great UMC with a great staff to work with in ministry.

I’ve said, “Yes” to every appointment I have been offered by every District Superintendent and under five different bishops.  I’ve moved my family around, because I made a covenant to be intinerant.  It has not been an easy road.  My wife has had to give up jobs that she loved.  Our most recent move came when our middle daughter was about to enter her senior year in high school and when our son was about to enter his junior year.  Many hours in prayer, and many tears shed along the way – the years stack up and I’m still serving as a UM pastor.

I’ve given the very best of my time and my talents to the UMC.  I don’t know how many I have baptized, how many I have disciple, served with in missions…don’t know how any weddings – never counted the funerals, hospital and nursing home and home visits…I never counted the hours I gave serving on a UM committee of some kind – but they would all be way up there…hundreds.

I’ve given the best years of my life serving as a UM pastor.  Even with all the heartache and the controversy…even with the most recent threat of schism…I would still do it all over again.

3.     Because of what the UMC stands for and what it gives to the world

The UMC has always been a place where people could grow into their faith.  We are a connectional church.  I have always valued the connection.  We offer a “big tent,” under which many people with a variety of theological backgrounds have found refuge.  My WCA-leaning friends might view that as a weakness.  I see it as a strength and a gift to the world.

Is the WCA tired of wrestling with issues of human sexuality?  The tough questions are messy and necessary – they are “messesary.” You don’t get the questions to go away by starting a “new” denomination (which looks a lot like the old Church of the Nazarene).  If we need to evolve on these issues, then let’s evolve.  Let’s not take the gift that is the UMC away from the world.  I do not believe, as some have suggested, that the UMC is a “50-year-old failed experiment.”  It is a gift.  It continues to give a place for people who don’t want to be just another fundamentalist.

Wesleyan theology is sound and is a gift to the world.  The combination of personal piety and social holiness is a gift.  If a split happens, the WCA does not get “custody” of Wesleyan theology.  It is woven into the DNA of the UMC.  We will still offer the gift of warmed hearts and working hands to the world.  It’s the way of the UMC.

Do we offer “open hearts, open minds, and open doors” to the world as we have claimed?  Despite the negativity from within and without, I think we are trying…trying to.  Have we failed to do so in some areas?  Yes. Our LGBTQ neighbors areour neighbors, and we are called to love them as ourselves.  We have done real harm to this community by singling them out as “incompatible with Christian teaching” in our Book of Discipline (which is not holy writ and can and does change).  That’s my opinion, of course, but it comes after listening to my LGBTQ friends tell me how they have been hurt.

What if the gift kept on giving? What if we offered a graceful, nuanced reading of the six “clobber passages” in the Bible related to homosexuality the same way we have done with “women keep silent in the church,” and the same way we have done with divorce and remarriage (which could also be considered “incompatible” with Christian teaching, by the way). I know what the Bible says. I have a very high view of the authority of Scripture. I know what the Bible says about divorce and remarriage, for instance.  But it is not enough to know “what” the Bible says.  

When the lawyer came up to Jesus in Luke 10 and asked him what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus asked him two questions.  Two.  (1) What is written in the law?  (2) How does it read to you (literally – “How do you read?”)

The lawyer gets the first question spot on.  He knows whatis written in the law.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10: 27) Jesus congratulates him for his answer. Jesus tells him he got it right… “Do this and you will live.”  (How the heck have we reduced eternal life down to repeating a “sinner’s prayer” is beyond me – but that’s for another day)

So now the lawyer gets to the second question: “Howdo you read?”  When the lawyer said, “And who is my neighbor?” he was wanting to justify the boundaries he had drawn about who his neighbors were…they were his “Jewish” neighbors…they were the ones who thought just like him.  They were notthe Romans, and certainly not the Samaritans whom he hated like poison.

And so Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan.  That’show Jesus reads the law.  He crosses every boundary with the love of God…dead people, lepers, tax collectors, Samaritans…women, children…even divorced people.  I didn’t plan on being a divorced-and-remarried clergyperson…yet here I am.  And the UMC gave me a place to serve and use my gifts.  The UMC evaluated my giftedness and my “calledness” based on something other than my having been divorced and remarried.  The UMC could offer that same gift to the LGBTQ persons who are called and gifted.  Maybe we will someday.  Maybe then people wouldn’t have to roll their eyes when we say, “Open hearts, open minds, open doors…the people of the UMC.”

I have good friends who disagree with me on this and other subjects.  I’m OK with that.  That’s kind of what I love about the UMC.  We don’t have to sign a “pledge” to agree on every point. But I have clergy friends that I have known and loved for years who have already hopped in the WCA boat and are just waiting to sail away.  We are losing something here, people.

Who am I to say?  I’m just one centrist, comfortable-in-the-messy middle person.  I do not lean far to the right and I don’t lean far to the left.  I don’t think I’m alone here, though.  I think I am the UMC.  We don’t have to agree on everything.  I will walk beside you and work with you if you will let me.  Come to my UMC and you will hear me preach Jesus. I hope to stay in the UMC.  It is not a curse. It is a gift.