I have my own personal interest in the latest news coming out of the United Methodist Church General Church Conference. As many may already be aware (in a nutshell) the UMC denomination has opened its doors to full inclusion and participation of LGBTQ+ persons in the ministry. Those clergy members who may have been defrocked or licenses suspended in years past for officiating or assimilating S/S marriages or ministry as per their manual of Discipline, will now be restored to full ministerial status within its circles.
I suppose this is unsurprising as the conservative ministers of the UMC left to form the Global Methodist Church. There would now be no resistance to such radical and unbiblical change, except for the African delegation which tried to hold firm, but were overwhelmed by the interesting influx of progressive ministers installed and prepared to finalize the apostasy of a once great giant of orthodox faith. It has now found the trail of the United Church of Christ and the National Episcopal Church.
I ostensibly “grew up” in the UMC until I was 18 years old and then after receiving Jesus Christ personally (born-again), I attended and was basically trained and educated in another Wesleyan denomination, the Church of The Nazarene. My latter graduate degree was from a different theological perspective, but even then, my D.Min. dissertation was exploring John Wesley’s leadership of an 18th century renewal movement.
I have friends or family in almost all the major Wesleyan denominations (UMC, Global Methodists, Wesleyans, Free Methodists, Southern Methodists, and others whose name does not contain Methodist or Wesleyan). I have read nearly every page of John Wesley’s voluminous journals, his notes on the New Testament, and brother Charles’ journals as well. I have read the correspondence and debates of Wesley and Whitefield, as well as spending many hours of research in Wesley specific libraries. I do not claim expertise, but you might say I have a “handle” on the person of John Wesley.
So much opining could be done on what I witnessed and have read, but the most fascinating part of these events has been watching local Methodist pastors online attempt to navigate the decisions of their conference to their local churches. Some, you can tell, understand that the week’s activities provided untold land mines and potholes to the conservative elements still remaining in their churches. For others, well they were down right giddy with excitement that the UMC will now allow every walking identity crisis to preach and minister within their circles.
History teaches me where this will end. The once great spiritual juggernaut of American Methodism, which literally planted as many churches as post offices throughout the United States, will find itself on the ash heap of heretical movements. It will probably take a generation, and there may always be a building which says UMC on the outside, but make no mistake, the outcome is irrelevance. What an oxymoronic moment. In search of “cultural relevance” they will become historically and spiritually irrelevant.
One minister started his message with a personal story to illustrate this illustrious moment. He began by explaining that he had a John Wesley bobblehead toy which sat on the corner of his pulpit. Apparently, it was a permanent piece of pulpit decoration. However, on the Sunday of the UMC General Conference, he walked in the sanctuary to find that the Wesley bobblehead had fallen and was broken into several pieces. Mystified, he wondered if someone had bumped the pulpit, or had it been intentionally vandalized, or (jokingly) did the ghost of John Wesley dislike the figurine?
He used this moment as a metaphor to explain how broken the Church had become and upon his gluing Wesley back together again it represented the “wholeness” (ironic, huh?) of finally welcoming LGBTQ+ people and ministry into full participation. His application was not simply strained and inaccurate, but honestly blind to what probably was a prophetic moment for both him and the UMC.
The Wesley bobblehead not only toppled from its place on the pulpit, but it is likely Wesley himself just rolled over in his grave. I can assure everyone that Wesley would not have embraced the recent UMC decisions. The bobblehead moment was more akin to the declaring of “Ichabod” (“the glory has departed”). It was a sign that any vestige of Christianity, much less Wesleyanism, has officially been broken.
This has to be painful for those members who have held on hoping for miraculous change, but it appears the rudder has been set. Good-bye United Methodist Church. And may this be a lesson for every evangelical denomination. Orthodoxy is only a generation from being lost. As Wesley rightly identified himself as, Homo unius libri (a man of one book), let us recommit ourselves to being a people of that same book (Bible).
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