What’s going on with the UMC?
As you may have heard, the United Methodist Church is going through a time of rebirth, restructuring and renewal. It is both invigorating and sad, as churches leave the denomination due to disagreements about welcoming LGBTQIA persons into the church, into her leadership and into the body of Christ.
I am grateful that La Siesta Evangelical Church is a part of the Iglesia Evangélica Española , the Spanish Protestant Church which welcomes all people regardless of sexuality, race, ability, class, culture, age and /or gender identity. Their website states: "We, in the Spanish Evangelical Church recognize that the dignity of people is an inalienable gift of God's Grace and mercy." (https://iee-protestante.org/)With the number of churches disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church reaching 6000, I thought I’d reflect a bit on the implications of this development on the work of missionaries throughout the world.
Above is the mission map from 2020, depicting all the various places to which missionaries are sent. Missionaries are selected from various countries and cultures and sent into various cultures and countries that are not their own. The Covenant Relationship program encourages partnership between UMC churches (mostly in the United States) with Global Missionaries. Each term, we missionaries visit our supporting churches (this is called itineration) to report on the work we’ve done , to answer questions, to show the faces of those we serve through our work and to encourage continuing our Covent Partnership together.
At a recent Zoom gathering of missionaries preparing for itineration in the upcoming year, the issue of disaffiliation became a topic of conversation. If a partner church has disaffiliated, are we missionaries able to visit? How do we process the donations we receive from disaffiliated churches? What do we say when approached about the issue of LGBTQIA rights and our personal views?
Several missionaries reported that churches who had been supporting them for years have now disaffiliated and now the relationship was awkward. It was determined that disaffiliated churches were still able to support GBGM missionaries, as all people are able, through the Advance website. However, the General Board of Global Ministries remains a United Methodist Agency, a missionary-sending body of the United Methodist Church. Therefore, when itinerating, UMC churches will receive priority in scheduling.
Bishop Karen Oliveto, Mountain Sky Annual Conference
Although much is changing in the United Methodist Church and we are all learning to ride the waves of these difficult times, much remains unchanged. Bishop Karen Oliveto explained at the Mountain Sky Annual Conference:
I want to be clear that even as we change because there are some who no longer want to be in relationship with us as United Methodists, there are some things that are unchanging:
We will continue to serve our triune God.
We will continue to follow Jesus Christ.
We will continue to be led by the Holy Spirit.
We will continue to affirm our faith as Christians.
We will continue to ground ourselves in Scripture and hold it as an authority for our lives.
We will continue to allow our faith to be informed by the unique ways we United Methodists do theology, which is through the primacy of Scripture as informed by Tradition, Experience and Reason.
We will continue to be Wesleyan, grounded in grace, grace and even more grace.
We will continue to affirm our connectional system, knowing that we can make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world more effectively in our neighborhoods and around the world together than we ever could separately.
We will continue to ensure the dignity of every child of God, and make sure they are welcomed in our churches for who God has created them to be, not who we think they ought to be.