'A Way Forward' Commission Faces Impossible Options

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The United Methodist Church has created a committee called the Commission on a Way Forward, and charged it to work with the Council of Bishops to prepare a proposal for the United Methodist General Conference on a way out of its impasse on human sexuality. Specifically, the denomination is not of one mind on how it ought to minister to and receive into its ministry people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer (LGBTQ) or any of the other names of the orientations folks now apply to themselves.

In my judgment, the Way Forward Commission has an extremely limited number of options before it as it does its work. In fact, there are only four. The options are as follows:

1) Remain in the status quo. This would mean that the Church would continue to prohibit the ordination and appointment to ministry stations of LGBTQ people, and it would continue to prohibit its clergy from performing same sex union ceremonies and prohibit such ceremonies from being performed in its churches. These prohibitions are church-wide–they apply anywhere in the world where there are United Methodist churches.

2) Abolish the prohibitions that discriminate against LGBTQ people on a churchwide basis, which is the exact reverse of option 1.

3) Reintroduce A Third Way, which was the proposal I wrote for the Connectional Table, the planning and program coordination agency for the UMC, which introduced the proposal to General Conference last year. The proposal had its origin, unapologetically, in the proposal put forward in advance of General Conference by Adam Hamilton and others, which he called A Way Forward. There were some differences some might see as subtle, but in essence what I did was put in legislative form Hamilton's basic idea. Rev. Hamilton proposed to make decisions about ordination, appointment, and same sex unions subject to local decision and control, where there is room for debate and decision about just what the word "local" will mean. A Third Way was rejected by General Conference last year.

4) Propose some sort of division of The United Methodist Church along ideological lines.

I did not identify these options as "possible," because I know that neither of the first two is possible. Option 1 is already de facto inoperable. Several of the regional branches of United Methodism have formally and officially abrogated the UMC's official stand on inclusion. It is not working even in many regions that have not taken official stands against the United Methodist position, because they simply are not following the bans. They openly ordain and appoint LGBTQ people, and many of the denomination's clergy openly perform same-sex union ceremonies as a matter of being in ministry to this community of God's people. Many United Methodist bishops tolerate or encourage this work in their areas of responsibility.

Option 2 is not possible, because on the other end of the spectrum huge blocks of United Methodists will not in the foreseeable future accept inclusion of these changes. Several unofficial caucus groups have stated as much. These include Good News, The Confessing Movement, and the new Wesleyan Covenant Association. You can add to that group virtually the entirety of United Methodist leaders across Africa, which is home to a large and growing part of United Methodist membership.

Option 3 I fear may not be possible, either. As I said above, it failed at General Conference last year, and it is likely to fail if the Commission on a Way Forward reintroduces it to the next General Conference. Its failure seems assured because most, if not all, of the groups who oppose Option 2, notably the Wesleyan Covenant Association, have already declared their intent to oppose the special commission's recommendation if it is any variation on A Third Way. From their point of view a regional option is not a solution.

That only leaves Option 4. Any other conceivable possibility is a variation on one or more of these four. There are no other choices. The best I think we're going to be able to do is go forward in some sort of organically separate manner, hopefully preserving some form of unity through what I choose to call a Wesleyan Alliance of similarly rooted churches.

Lonnie D. Brooks of Anchorage, Alaska, has served as lay leader of the Alaska Missionary Conference and as its sole lay delegate to General Conference.