Where Do We Go Next?
Theology, the Bible, human sexuality, mission, and discipleship have created a divide in the United Methodist Church. In light of this divide, the best way forward is to stop the gridlocked denominational strife, and bless each other as we go our separate ways.
Topics Addressed
Click questions to see answer.
Is there any hope that those in defiance of the Book of Discipline return to a traditional theology?
Do those in disagreement want to change the Book of Discipline?
What do we want to say to those who wish to stay with the United Methodist Church?
How would John Wesley view disaffiliation from the United Methodist Church?
What are words of encouragement for those in favor of disaffiliation?
Grant Caldwell: Our conversation moves in a more practical direction today. Let's just discuss this simply with those that are for or against the process of disaffiliation.
First, we have those that are in favor of remaining United Methodists and are in favor of changing the doctrine and discipline regarding the aforementioned topics (theology, biblical interpretations, human sexuality, discipleship, mission).
The doctrine and discipline were upheld in 2019, but this group has continued to move in defiance against it. Is that correct?
Rev. Paul Lawler: That is correct.
One of the things that people may or may not know about United Methodism is that while we're a global denomination, the Western portion of the Church, i.e., particularly those in the United States, have a more progressive view of Christ and Christianity.
Therefore, you would see the majority of leaders in the Western United States in favor of changing our perspective on human sexuality. Doing so would actually move us out of unity with the majority of the overwhelming majority of the Church for 2,000 years. It would also move us out of what's codified within doctrines and disciplines in the Church.
In addition, we would leave the Orthodox perspectives on human sexuality among Catholics around the world, Eastern Orthodox around the world, as well as the overwhelming majority of Protestants around the world.
When we are told, "Let's pray for unity in the church," let's remember when Jesus said in John 17, "May they be one as you and I Father are one," Jesus taught that before there were denominations. The context for that is in unity with the Body of Christ.
What's at stake here is our being in unity with the greater Body of Christ, the Church in regard to the last 2,000 years, as well as the majority of the Church around the world today. Jesus did not teach us to pray through the lens of maintaining institutional unity, which is a different matter.
Is there any hope that this group would move back under the doctrine and discipline as is? Or are they moving in a completely different direction that would change the doctrine and discipline in the future?
I do not believe there's any hope that they are going to change their plans and hopes for changing 2,000 years of theology and perspective on human sexuality in our generation. In another generation, that may be possible, and let me explain why I say that.
If you read the Pew research data on the future of mainline denominations, those being Lutheran, Presbyterian USA, Disciples of Christ, United Methodist Church, there is a coming, to use Lovett Weems Jr., terminology, different context, "There is a coming death tsunami."
I know that sounds dramatic, but somewhere between 2034 and 2054, we expect to see this within mainline expressions based on the trend lines.
I also would say anecdotally, but you can walk into most United Methodist Churches, not all. That would be hyperbole. Notice there is an absence of younger generations. The point of the data is that the United Methodist Church will go through a reformation by virtue of collapse based on the statistical data.
This is not my personal opinion. This is not me being a doomsayer or being negative. You can do some Google searches and look at some graphs where we see trend lines in mainline denominations. You can also read the Pew research data as well to see the substantiation of what I'm sharing.
While that's painful, in the next generation, it possibly could work for good. When we read history and Scripture, we notice that when people get to places of desperation, then they begin crying out and turning back to God. We see historically and in Scripture that God often renews.
I don't want to see anything other than good things for people, so I haven't lost hope for the United Methodist Church. But I do believe we should disaffiliate. We'll get to that in a little while. I think it's going to take another generation before there is a potential for a turnaround.
Often in politics, you see a minority, either on the Far Left or the Far Right, that doesn't make up the actual constituency of the whole. Let me ask that in terms of this with the UMC. Is this a group that wants to change the Doctrine of Discipline? Is this a small group, or is this something that's pointing in the direction of this is what the future of the United Methodist church will be?
You certainly can go to websites and see that there are large swaths of constituencies in Western culture in the United States that are determined to change our doctrine and discipline, particularly around matters of human sexuality. This is not a minor or periphery group of people. This is a critical mass of persons within United Methodism, primarily in the United States.
This seems like such a moment for our denomination, but where is this leading the United Methodist Church? You mentioned it a little bit with the research, but what is all this unto? Where is this going for the people called United Methodists?
I think I'm going to have to circle back to some of what I shared in your previous question. United Methodism, at one time, was a movement. With our trend line as a whole being downward, we need to step back and examine the landscape of emerging generations and the movements that they're attracted to. We're in an hour where people make statements like, "Unless we change our perspective on human sexuality, we won't reach young people."
I would say Google "Jesus Image." It's not a United Methodist movement, but watch the videos of this Church out of Orlando that's holding gatherings around our nation. Just look at the average age of people. Look how gospel-centered they are.
Look at Passion gatherings that are college students. Again, Louie Giglio and all of that team have always held to traditional Orthodox theology. Look at the most vibrant college ministries on college campuses across our nation, and take note that the most vibrant life-giving ones are not rooted in progressive theology.
If I may, let me appeal to common sense rather than theology for a moment.
If you're sitting on the board of a company or corporation, and you see models where the trend line is upward, and to the right, then you see models that are actually imploding. As a responsible board member, you would speak up.
Whether it's Starbucks or FedEx, you would ask the question, "It seems these are the best practices. Let's learn, and let's apply the best practices so that we are effectively on mission."
So with that simple common sense illustration, I would invite the listener to be aware that we're in an hour where church leaders across the United Methodist Church have adopted best practices that anecdotally are not up and to the right. Rather they fuel a downward trend.
So for that reason, we are deeply concerned in terms of the future of the United Methodist church.
For someone that would like to stay in the United Methodist Church, what would you say to them? What would you encourage them with?
First of all, I honor you because you're made in the Image of God. I respect you because, being made in the image of God, you have a mind, will, and emotions. All of us are going to follow our own convictions and conscious.
I think the best way for me to answer that is to think more subjectively. I don't want to degrade or be disparaging in any way.
For me, I want to be a part of a movement. I do not believe United Methodism, in this iteration, has the generative capacity to be a movement again. I believe that we need a new wineskin in order to be a movement again.
I think the wineskin that we're in is brittle and broken, and it cannot contain the new wine that's necessary for reaching this culture. I passionately believe that in order to be effective in reaching this culture, and particularly one that's growing more diversified and polytheistic in some ways, we must have robust pneumatology (a branch of Christian theology concerned with the Holy Spirit).
This is anecdotal, but I find that we're lacking that in critical mass at this stage of our history. In order to be a movement in the future, I believe there must be a wedding of intentional discipleship and vibrant pneumatology that's wed with an intentional local and global mission.
I do not find those characteristics to be pervasive in the wineskin that we currently know as United Methodism. I do believe that the future is bright for Methodists, but I believe it's bright for Methodists who are in a new wineskin with new wine.
Speaking of the new wineskin and the new wine, let's shift to those that are in favor of disaffiliating from the United Methodist church. This has been the expressed opinion of both yourself as Christ Church's senior pastor, and the lay leadership, as well as the Executive Committee and Church Council of Christ Church. Let's speak about the positive side of disaffiliation.
Your answer to the person wanting to remain in the UMC was an appeal to look towards the future, to look towards truly reaching the lost. What would that look like in the future of this new Methodist movement?
I want to bridge into our present iteration of the potential for a new iteration of Methodist expression.
First of all, I've worked with church planters a lot through the years. This is anecdotal, but one of the things that when I'm in conversation with a young person who has entrepreneurial gifts, what we would call "Apostolic Gifts" for planting churches and developing movement, is that the United Methodist structure and the state of the United Methodist church repel most of them.
Highly creative, high-functioning, high-caliber persons who have God-breathed gifts for planting churches and disciple-making ask, "Why would I need to step into a system or remain in a system that has a high level of dysfunction? Does it have bishops retiring early and resigning? It also has high apportionment formulas?"
Those kinds of things repel persons who have these kinds of gifts. Why is that relevant? The reason that's relevant to the person in the pew whose gathering to worship is that we again are talking about our children, grandchildren, and the future generations, and the potential of Methodism being a movement again.
Historically, there is never any Christian movement apart from persons who are gifted and wired, like John Wesley or Phoebe Palmer. Movements are tethered to persons who have Apostolic gifting. We were birthed out of that framework with Father Wesley.
At this hour of history, persons who were wired like that are not attracted or even often repelled from serving in the United Methodist church.
On that one, while I don't have statistical data, I do have anecdote after anecdote. Oftentimes when I'm at a conference, and I'm talking with a church planter or a person interested in church planting, when they hear I'm United Methodist, I am guilty until proven innocent. They want to determine if I have abandoned historical theology because of the things that they read in the newspaper.
As we move into the future, it's important for the reader to be mindful. Disaffiliation is unto something. It's unto a new a wineskin. It is unto moving into a day where Apostolic, high capacity, entrepreneurial, church planting, disciple-makers, and young people have a part and a role in molding and shaping a preferred reality.
Let me contrast it this way; there is a systemic challenge and problem in the DNA of the present iteration of United Methodism. It is tethered to what we call the "Guaranteed Appointment," which hinders the development of high-caliber, high-functioning pastors and leaders that help cultivate movement.
For this reason, we need a new iteration. We need a new iteration where there isn't a guaranteed appointment. If you're not performing, if you're not serving in a way where you're demonstrating faithfulness, leadership, discipleship cultivation, propagation of the gospel, and even new church plants, then you're not guaranteed that you're going to have employment because you got a degree.
We need to move into a new iteration where there is higher cultivation of the pastoral leadership cream of the crop, and there isn't a guaranteed appointment, for the glory of God through a people called Methodists. Our problems are much deeper than human sexuality. They're much more systemic
Just to echo your anecdotal evidence, that's something I've experienced as well, even here in the city. After sharing the Church that I'm at, I have to qualify that with our gospel centrality due to opinions and knowledge of what's going on in the United Methodist church.
This is something that may not be seen at Christ Church Memphis due to our longstanding history of serving the city and the established reputation of gospel centrality. But a day is coming where more of those questions will be asked of us, of what we believe is true, and what we're staking our lives on.
This is a massive statement. I think that what you're saying is so important for us to look at disaffiliation because you're asking us and calling us not to focus on the problems at hand but a vision of what could be.
As it is in the Christian life, we're not to repeatedly just say no to something. We're to shift our eyes towards Christ and towards a greater, more glorious vision of what we could be, what we will be in him.
This idea of a new wineskin, of a new denomination, is doing the same thing where you're asking us to realize the weight that's on us being in this current denomination. This current institution exists for the sake of the institution rather than the institution existing for the sake of launching a movement, as I've heard Pastor Tim Keller phrase it. We have a chance to move from that into a movement that really sets us up to flourish as a church.
I've heard many people against disaffiliation bring up Wesley, who you mentioned earlier, was famous for collaboration across different theologies. He was really famous for this big tent idea that you mentioned in the very first episode. How do you believe that John Wesley would view the idea of disaffiliation from the United Methodist church?
Let me respond to that in a couple of phases.
First of all, John Wesley would not be in favor of the big tent as we now know it. I do not believe John Wesley would be in support of what we've seen in terms of theological pluralism or theological indifferentism, which is a characteristic of the big tent. Wesley did have a Catholic spirit, and I think as Christians, we all should manifest that. I wanted to validate that.
The second thing I want to say in regard to that question is that Wesley was a Christian first. Yes, he was a Methodist, but he's a Christian first. If you read that, it becomes so clear. The word "Methodist" was often a term of derision in the early Methodist movement, and it was because Wesley was so intentional and methodical in how he went about developing disciples in classes, bans, and societies. We want to validate that.
Wesley, because he was Christian first, was not about the institution. Remember, Methodism wasn't an institution. It was a movement outside the Anglican Church in the early days. John Wesley is often misquoted. What happens is people quote his sermon on schism. They only give the reader a part of what John Wesley said around when a time comes for a church or a movement to divide.
What gets quoted in his sermon on schism is the part about the importance of church unity. Amen, the Scriptures certainly note that.
The Scriptures also note there's a time to divide. This is right out of his sermon on schism. He said, "If I could not continue united to any smaller society, church or body of Christians without committing sin, without lying and hypocrisy, without preaching to others doctrines which I did not myself believe, I should be under an absolute necessity of separating from that society."
Wesley is admitting that if forbidden to do what God called him to do in preaching the gospel, he would separate from the Church of England.
The point is, is that Wesley is declaring that there is a time when you say, "Wait a minute, that's a clear boundary." What's important for Christians to understand is that if you codify a new definition of marriage in addition to all the other issues we've talked about in this series, it is an abandonment of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The reason is that marriage is an icon of a deeper reality, and you find this in Ephesians chapter five.
As I've shared earlier, that whole imagery of marriage according to Scripture is to help us understand the deeper reality of Jesus in the bride. Jesus Christ and the Church, the very bride of Christ. The point is all of history will be summed up when Jesus celebrates the marriage feast at the culmination of history as his Church is redeemed into eternity. This imagery is sacred and holy, and to toy with this imagery and to codify different imagery is actually codifying a distortion of the image of God himself.
For the listener, it's important that we recognize that there is a time, according to John Wesley, and certainly according to the words of Scripture, where we must say, "Okay, this is a time where we need to separate and move forward."
I want to end with a similar question that I asked previously. What would you say to those that are in favor of disaffiliation? We hear that disaffiliation will be costly in terms of leaving. How would you encourage the church towards this?
This is an hour where it's important that we stand in a spirit of love and convictions. We must manifest great grace, particularly for persons who may disagree but at the same time stand on eternal truth.
I would also add that it's important that you have a long view. Disaffiliation is not about disaffiliation in and of itself. It is about what it's unto. That's moving into a new day of greater kingdom manifestation and disciple-making, gospel-sharing, church planting, and mercy ministry on a local and global level by God's grace like we've never seen before. Let it be so, oh God.
