What Has Been Lost in General Conference 2019 Actions?

March 14, 2019

12:53 PM

Weeping Angel

It has been two weeks since the vote at General Conference. I watched in the days after as churches and pastors in the Mountain Sky Conference received flowers and casseroles from mainline denominational neighbors. A friend from San Francisco sent Robin and me flowers. A neighbor came to the door (we had only met once) with a plate of cookies. She could not control her sobbing as she passed them to us.

This seemed so familiar, but how? Then it hit me:

This is what we do for each other when there is a death.

Grief hung heavy over The United Methodist connection following General Conference. I had the privilege of serving communion at St. Andrew United Methodist Church the Sunday after GC. The entire youth choir lined up to take communion with me. Some had tears in their eyes. Others were sobbing. Many fell into my arms, yearning for comfort.

What, exactly, died on February 26, 2019?

While the headlines read that the UMC has doubled-down on its anti-LGBTQ stance, the harm of the vote extended far beyond LGBTQ United Methodists to include their families, their friends, their mentors, and so many others. It has cracked the connection not only between conferences, but also our United Methodist-related institutions, who now wonder how they can remain a part of a denomination that has firmly institutionalized discrimination. But even more, it has caused The United Methodist Church to reject essentials that make United Methodists methodists:

OUR THEOLOGICAL TASK: The Book of Discipline reminds us that the theological task of United Methodism is critical and constructive, contextual and incarnational, and essentially practical. It includes “the testing, renewal, elaboration, and application of our doctrinal perspective in carrying out our calling ‘to spread scriptural holiness over these lands.’” But by a slim majority, the ability for United Methodists to engage the theological task across our various cultural contexts was restricted and thereby our ability to spread scriptural holiness has been hampered.

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION: Wesley drew from his Anglican tradition a method for theological reflection (Scripture, Tradition, Reason), but added a fourth, Experience. While we first turn to scripture for a foundation for theology, it is held in conversation with the other three. However, at General Conference, this methodology (which has enabled us to live with the wide spectrum of theological perspectives and honor each as faithful) has been rejected to a biblical literalism that is far from our Wesleyan roots.

GRACE: Perhaps what has distinguished us from other religious traditions has been the Wesleyan focus on grace: prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. As I used to tell my United Methodist Doctrine students, we really are about grace, grace, and more grace. This grace has enabled us to experience the wideness of God’s love, which leads us deeper down the path of holiness. This grace has been reflected in how we conduct ourselves in community, in particular when we disagree or have experienced brokenness: how can grace help us build up not only our individual relationships, but mend the places broken by sin? However, GC 2019 replaced grace with rigid rules and punitive punishments. Instead of seeking restorative justice grounded in an understanding of God’s grace, GC 2019 has banished the centrality of grace from the way we order our common life together.

This is why the decision at General Conference is creating such backlash and dissent—it is no longer a Progressive-Traditionalist disagreement about the role of LGBTQ people in the life and ministry of the church. It is a struggle for the very ethos of Methodism itself that crosses the theological spectrum found in our church.

This is the season of Lent. How appropriate that we take this journey with Jesus at this time. In Lent, we confront the reality of mortality and death. Yet, we also know that death is never our end. God will roll away the tomb. New life will be offered. Resurrection is within reach.

I am not sure what will spring forth from this death, but I know that God is not through with us yet. May we be open to what God has in store for us, for “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)

Oliveto Communion

Bishop Karen Oliveto (right) shares bread with a delegate during a February 23, 2019, worship service in the special session of the General Conference of The United Methodist Church. Bishop Oliveto leads the Mountain Sky Area of The United Methodist Church. (Photo by Paul Jeffrey, UMNS.)

Bishop Karen Oliveto serves as the resident episcopal leader in the Mountain Sky Area, which includes Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and part of Idaho. This post is republished with the bishop's permission from her Facebook page.

Comments (8)

Comment Feed

I understand you are disappointed

I would have been disappointed if the One Church plan had passed and I would have already shook the dust of the United Methodist Church off my feet and moved on. But the reality is you chose disobedience; you chose to go against the official stance of the church and now you are learning that there is always consequences to disobedience. I have been watching this conflict evolve since GC2012 and the one thing I could not understand is why anybody thought that General Conference would finally change its mind. The whole reason we were thrown into the Way Forward Process was because progressive leadership wanted to stave off the outcome of GC2016. So the can was kicked down the road and we ended up exactly where we would have been if GC2016 had been allowed to play out. Where is the surprise and hand wringing in that?

betsy more than 5 years ago

Love

Jesus teaches love and we need to love one another!

doug more than 5 years ago

Oh Good “Grief”, Bishop! We traditional types have been suffering for decades!

Just a little too dramatic with the death metaphor and little cakes and flowers and hand-wringing; we traditionalists have been watching our Methodist church succumb to liberalism, accentuated by mal-practice by bishops and the phony-baloney “Judicial” council who held office, but betrayed our trust by allowing the growth of homosexual clergy in our denomination despite most unambiguous rules to the contrary. They even gave us the full insult by allowing a lesbian bishop, putting an exclamation point on it with giving her (you) the sacred “in good standing” seal of approval. Nobody sent me a card or cookies!
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So, you liberals got a body-blow you did not expect; the Africans are more committed to traditional morality than they are to your convoluted interpretations of what the Bible says now, as opposed to centuries ago. We traditional Methodists have received a few blows over the years ourselves. The one delivered to both of us in February will hopefully result in a resurrection of the traditional Methodist Church and a new Methodist denomination for you and other progressives.

Until then, please spare us the dramatic tears for a great denomination which is dying from the cancer of liberalism.

Reese more than 5 years ago

Seems the Bishop overlooked something

The BOD also identifies that homosexuality is incompatible with the teachings of the church. Also, as For spreading scriptural holiness, what could be any more clear than homosexuality is a sinful act and marriage is between a man and a woman?

If the Bishop had any shred of decency left and any love left for the UMC, she would resign and go in peace.

Steve more than 5 years ago

Evidence is nonexistent

for your pithy assertions. The Book of Discipline passages were written in haste, devoid of evidence and temperance, by a rump faction in search of power and control when they obtained said power and control.

George Nixon Shuler more than 5 years ago

Your claims aren’t valid

It doesn’t matter how the BOD passages in question were written nor who wrote them. They were voted on and approved. At GC 2019, the passages were again not only validated, but strengthened. The bishop swore an oath to uphold the BOD, the whole BOD, not just the parts she agreed with. There is no cherry picking of the BOD.

The bishop and others who have willfully ignored their oaths are in violation of the BOD. They have broken their promise they made to the UMC before God. They have no credibility and have lost their way. All of them should resign and go in peace. It would be the honorable thing to do, saving both them and the UMC from further pain and delays.

Steve more than 5 years ago

United and Uniting

"The United Methodist Church will live into this more fully in 2019 and provide a critical witness to a fractured, hurting world that differences do not have to lead to division and unity is not the same thing as uniformity."

Either she really didn't have much of a clue earlier this year (which begs the question of she would listen now) or this was all part of a bigger plan of her way or the highway.

Anonymous more than 5 years ago

Thanks but no thanks

I have a difficult time reading your sermon and sympathizing with your hand-wringing when you are in blatant defiance of our Denomination’s rules. I guess you don’t wish to or can’t bring yourself to accept your piece of responsibility for us reaching this disfunctional point. I’m sure you and your wife are lovely people, but you have and are still making a mockery of the oath you took to follow our church’s discipline. And yet I’m sure you want us to continue paying your Bishop’s salary and all the attendant benefits. Please do the honorable thing and resign and take your ministry and skills to a denomination that embraces GLBTQ etc clergy and leaders. You cannot be an honorable Methodist and openly live in defiance of our Discipline. You have forfeited your right to lead in our church and to collect your salary. Before the inevitable onslaught comes, I don’t hate you. As I said, I’m sure you are a lovely person with a good heart. You just have no right to continue being a credentialed Methodist minister, much less a Bishop.

John more than 5 years ago