I have not regretted going over a year without commentaries on Judicial Council Decisions. Most of the issues before the Council were of how best to allow separation from the denomination by discontented pastors, bishops, churches, and conferences over gay rights. Those decisions regarding separation have been carefully and thoughtfully described by Heather Hahn of the United Methodist News Service in her respective articles at the time of their publication by the Council. I really had nothing to add regarding the meaning and legality of Paragraph 2553 and related paragraphs allowing withdrawal.
I have temporarily passed over the decisions on other subjects. I hope to address those in the near future.
I complained privately that the whole issue of splitting the denomination was distracting us from global warming, THE crisis facing humanity. A recent Council of Bishops was reported as incidentally looking at climate change and I realized I had to say something publicly.
I knew the bishops were stuck in various levels of litigation over separation. If I was going to get them to shift priorities (dropping so much of the other stuff they are expected to do) and build up the denomination, I needed to offer some specific steps to consider to do that building and finally offered some vignettes to encourage use of those steps. I hope my letters to the bishops was of help to them.
Part of saving the planet, besides facing up to global warming, is establishing a stronger church so that we can work together better and so that we can lean on each other through the tragedies of floods, fires, and storms that are upon us and yet to come.
The Judicial Council has little opportunity to deal directly with global warming because there is little church law dealing with it. Once General Conference provides appropriate laws, the Council will be able to get involved.
Here is a sample of the letters I sent to both active and retired United Methodist bishops:
Dear Bishop,
The focus of my day was preparing for and having a CT scan. The warmth of the iodine I received for the scan reminded me of how my body warmed during a similar test when I was hospitalized two years ago. Only that time, the warming did not stop after a few minutes. The scan required that I tolerate the heat build up for 18 hours. Sorry for the hyperbole – it was 24 minutes but in minute 23 I was ready to claw my way out of the machine because I could no longer tolerate the heat. By 2031, the whole planet faces heat that billions will not be able to tolerate.
Then this afternoon (May 3, 2022), there was a crash of thunder and our TV went off. Out our windows we saw the branches were thrashing all around, and suddenly we could hardly see more than a few yards because of the downpour (four and a half inches in two hours). Typical of summer weather in Florida. Except, it is not summer for six more weeks. And the downpour lasted way more than the typical ten minutes. Certain parts of our country may find themselves wishing such storms would end in two hours. And they may be flooded out before 2031, you know, like what happened in 2019.
My neighbor went out after the rain and found a tree on fire (struck by lightning and still dry despite the storm). Our fire department got it under control, luckily. Our dry winter weather causes a wildfire season by early spring so our neighborhood was fortunate this time.
As of this writing, the Global Methodist Church is a week old, leaving you all with a ton of concerns as pastors and churches absorb your time as they seek to leave. They will again drain the focus you've begun on global warming. I know both Keith Boyette [GMC top executive] and Tom Lambrecht [executive vice president of Good News, a conservative caucus] and asked them what they are doing about climate change. I got no response.
Good leaders know when to delegate. Maybe you should hand off direct action on global warming and give that responsibility to one of the denomination's agencies who can focus on it and not be distracted by all the stuff for which you are responsible. Let someone else save the world so that you can focus on saving the Church.
In the collegiality of the clergy,
Rev. Jerry Eckert
The Rev. Jerry Eckert, a retired clergy member of the Wisconsin Annual Conference, lives in "active retirement" in Port Charlotte, Fla. He writes/edits both Jerry's Place and the blog for Associates in Advocacy (AIA), a volunteer organization of United Methodist clergy who assist ordained ministers through the church's complaint process. This post is republished with permission from the AIA blog. To reproduce this content elsewhere, please contact the author via the AIA website.