Iowa derecho food
Whether your spiritual gift is to serve food to victims of a weather emergency, as these volunteers did after the August 2020 "inland hurricane" in Iowa, or some other kind of service, David Bryant advises United Methodists to "suit up, show up, speak up, and pray" for the church despite the impending UMC split. (Photo by Mike DuBose, UM News.)
Special to United Methodist Insight
(Items in italics are direct quotes of John Wesley)
I was recently in a conversation among predominantly conservative evangelical Christians. One discussed the “recent” rise of liberalism and the ridiculousness of “their” views. The speaker’s point was that scripture is obvious and that all any intelligent person has to do is read it. In this same vein, conservative Methodists recently announced the name of their new denomination – the Global Methodist Church – and its structure. Its website www.globalmethodist.org describes the denomination as answering God’s Will for a new church rooted in Scripture and the historic and life giving teachings of the Christian faith.
Really? They really think “God ‘s Will” is to add more division to the already fractured Church Universal? The truth is this new organization is just another evangelical Christian denomination designed to exclude a certain group of people from God’s church and be arbiters of God’s Grace using cherry-picked and selective scripture. In my opinion, Pharisees for the Control of Christ would be a better name for the new denomination.
My understanding is that John Wesley declared himself a man of one book; yet he read many to gain perspective and demanded the same of those he mentored. (If you want to be a better preacher, be a better reader.) He also believed, however, the Bible was a guide to salvation not a legal text, a historical text nor, necessarily, a text for a secularly moral life. (Be not you swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.)
I don’t know what John Wesley would think of today’s Christian conflicts but I doubt he would be surprised. “Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason. It is our part, by religion and reason joined, to counteract them all we can.” Today’s debates center on just this quote. Conservatives claim the scriptural high ground of literal biblical inerrancy. Progressives claim the spiritual high ground of a covenant relationship with Jesus’ teachings of love. Both sides use the most passionately appealing arguments possible and are willing to split the denomination to further their agenda. “My fear is not that our great movement, known as the Methodists, will eventually cease to exist or one day die from the earth. My fear is that our people will become content to live without the fire, the power, the excitement, the supernatural element that makes us great.”
But what of this “obvious” message of the Bible? Scripture is undoubtedly not that obvious nor is the debate recent. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth. A brief look at the history of the Christian Church will reveal quite the opposite.
Bear with me here for a brief overview of the historical timeline of Christianity. All of these were born of conflict and doctrinal interpretation:
- Birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus
- Day of Pentecost
History summary
Chart by David Bryant
Do you still think the “New Liberalism” interpretation is the issue? It looks to me like Christian Nationalism and the intent of conservative evangelical Christians to mandate their agenda is the (relatively) new politico-religious issue in a long list of divisive issues.
Still think disagreement didn’t previously exist? Well, get this…
According to the World Christian Encyclopedia there are 34,000 branches of Christianity in the United States. Obviously, this is ludicrous. The WCE assumes that every non-episcopal, independent church is a totally separate branch of Christianity. When one starts lumping all churches that claim the designation Baptist, the numbers drop to greater than 4,000! When all non-denominational, independent churches are lumped under “non-denominational/independent” the number drops to between 1000-1,200. The number 1,200 is a far cry from 34,000 but still… 1,200 disagreements on who Jesus was/is and how to go about worshipping Him doesn’t seem like an obvious message or new dissent to me.
What, then, can we as individuals do? How do we pick up our cross, give up our lives and follow Jesus as organized religion, including the UMC, fractures the church into smaller and tinier pieces?
Suit up. Explore your spiritual gifts at https://www.umc.org/en/content/spiritual-gifts . Take the assessment. Remember, it’s okay if the results are somewhat fluid. God may give you different gifts at different times to meet different circumstances.
Show up. Look at the activities of your local church. Find what matches your gifts and interests, then volunteer.
Do the next right thing. If you have a passion for a ministry not provided, talk to your pastor and whoever in your church chairs the Missions/Outreach functions. They can guide you through the labyrinth of approvals and support necessary. “Do all the good you can by all the means you can in all the places you can at all the times you can to all the people you can as long as ever you can.”
Follow your calling. If you feel a deeper calling, talk to your pastor. You may find the pursuit of Lay Servant, Lay Speaker or Lay Minister rewarding.
Speak out! Don’t sit back and let louder, stronger voices dominate the agenda and discussion. Study an issue that gives you angst. Ask questions. Explore corporately with others. Communicate your findings with assertive, actionable humility. “Give me 100 men who hate nothing but sin and love God with all their hearts and I will shake the world for Christ!”
Pray, pray, pray… “Proceed with much prayer, and your way will be made plain.”
Keep your perspective: In human eyes, someone has to be wrong; but, in the eyes of God, we may all be right. The process of seeking God’s truth – not our own – may be the point. This is a critical point that Christian Nationalists miss when they seek to force their views on all. As I’ve said repeatedly in the past, when I stand in the presence of Jesus, I would rather be wrong for having included someone He didn’t want than having excluded someone He cherished.
A member of Bethesda UMC in Powdersville, S. C., retiree David Bryant says he's “living the dream” of a life in service. He's involved in community and church-related food and hunger ministry, disaster response through UMC-ERT and is pursuing Lay Speaker certification through UMC Lay Servant Ministries. He cites his primary interest "is in the Social Principles of the UMC and issues of social justice."