A Note About the UMC

Grace to you, Christ Church family.

I write this letter to you during a personal time of transition. We are leaving Christ Church Birmingham, where we have served the last 15 years, and will be journeying to you to serve as your new Senior Pastor. Because we love the people we have served, we are navigating the “good-byes” with a desire to do our best to shepherd the hearts of Christ Church Birmingham through this tender season of transition.

Missy and I have marveled at God’s leading in our transition from Birmingham to Memphis. This is the second occasion in our lives when God clearly spoke to us regarding moving to another city to serve. Because God is leading, we are excited about all that lay ahead. We are looking forward to joining you and getting to know you. My first day as your new Senior Pastor will be Tuesday, July 5th. My first day in the pulpit will take place on Sunday, July 10th.

I am thankful for the legacy of Christ Church Memphis. Your commitment to the centrality of Jesus Christ, the teaching of the Scriptures, engaging the sacraments, and the expression of local and global mission is inspiring. I share your passion.

We are living in a unique and challenging time in history. Those reasons include a pandemic, war in Ukraine, the tragedy of racially motivated shootings in our nation, and many other issues. We are also in an hour of challenge within the United Methodist Church.

The United Methodist denomination is in a constitutional crisis. The United Methodist Book of Discipline, which every ordained minister has vowed to uphold, is blatantly being disobeyed by bishops and ministers in several Annual Conferences throughout the United States. Because of the ongoing violation of by-laws, new legislation was passed by a simple majority vote at the 2019 called General Conference to seek to restore good order to the denomination.

Regardless, bishops and clergy in multiple regions of the United States have continued to defy the order of the church, which is the very covenant they vowed to uphold upon their ordination. In the words of Carolyn Moore, “The anarchy has been excruciating.”

The United Methodist denomination is also in theological crisis. Contrary to what you hear in the news media, the divide in U.S. United Methodism is not just about the theological view of the body and human sexuality. Human sexuality, and the attempts to redefine marriage for the church, is merely the presenting issue that is a symptom of much deeper issues. Dr. Timothy Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary, which educates more future United Methodist clergy for pastoral ministry than any seminary in the world, unpacks this issue in another way through his article titled, Orthodoxy vs. Heterodoxy: The Fundamental Divide in the United Methodist Church. (If you are reading a hard copy of this letter, you can access the article through a Google search).

Writer and former attorney, David French, refers to this in his article titled, The Sad, Necessary Division of the United Methodist Church. Here’s a brief quote:

The secular media will cast the divide primarily in the terms it understands—as focused on “LGBT issues”—but that’s incomplete. The true fracturing point between Mainline and Evangelical churches is over the authority and interpretation of scripture. The debate over LGBT issues is a consequence of the underlying dispute, not its primary cause…there is a strain of Protestant Christianity that views the Bible as valuable but not infallible or inerrant. Evangelical Christians, by contrast, strongly dissent from that view.

In light of the constitutional and theological crisis in United Methodism, over 100 churches in the North Alabama Conference have entered into a disaffiliation process from the United Methodist Church. This includes Christ Church Birmingham where I served for 15 years. 107 churches in the Florida Conference are in the process of disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church; and over 200 churches in the North Georgia Conference are in the process of disaffiliation. This is but a sampling from three regions. Almost all of these churches will be aligning with the new, Global Methodist Church.

As a member of Christ Church Memphis, it is important for you to take the time to be informed. Therefore, I want to recommend taking the time to read the book, Are We Really Better Together. In the coming weeks, this book will be made available to you to pick up before and after worship on Sundays.

We will be taking a church wide vote on disaffiliation from the United Methodist Church on October 2, 2022. This will require a 2/3’s majority vote, the payment of two years of apportionments and the payment of our share of unfunded pension liability, and a vote of approval by the 2023 Annual Conference.

Before I close, would you hear your new Senior Pastor’s heart? I am not becoming your new Senior Pastor for the sole purpose of disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church. Because of the complexities in the United Methodist Church at this hour, I would have to navigate and shepherd a local church through the choices before us no matter where God called me to serve. We were navigating the waters of disaffiliation at Christ Church Birmingham, just as you have been doing at Christ Church Memphis. Now, I look forward to joining you in that endeavor. While I do believe disaffiliation is the right choice, know that my primary passions are rooted in serving Christ, and in serving and loving you as we glorify God in making, maturing, and mobilizing disciples of Jesus Christ by loving Jesus—and loving like Jesus—in the world.

Missy and I are praying for you daily.
I long to be with you, Christ Church Memphis.

For His renown,
Paul