70 Georgia churches leave United Methodist Church over homosexuality debate

I tell them about my conversation with a highly respected tall-steeple pastor who told me, “Rob, the Church created the Bible. So, we can re-create the Bible.” I tell them that worst of all we are divided on Jesus. Some of us believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life for all humankind. But we have a bishop who has warned us not to make an idol (a false God) out of Jesus. We have a UM seminary professor who told me, “God is wholesale; Jesus is retail,” meaning Jesus is just one of many religious teachers, not really different from Mohammad or Buddha. We had a UM seminary president who said if you feel a need to tell persons of other religions about Jesus, you don’t understand Jesus…

It’s time to believe hard things. And it’s time to do a hard thing: Prayerfully consider leaving the UM Church. I hope you and your congregation will join other traditional Wesleyans in the Global Methodist Church. -Rob Renfroe

https://goodnewsmag.org/hard-things/

David R. Brumbelow

For over a century now, the UMC and its predecessor churches have basically been split—you had most of the seminaries and a lot of urban churches holding strongly to theological liberalism, while suburban churches were mixed liberal/evangelical, and rural/small town churches generally went evangelical to a degree. We can debate, I guess, what the dividing line ought to have been, but many churches are at a point where they’re ready to leave when creeping liberalism, women in the pastorate, and official support of abortion were somehow not enough.

I grew up Methodist and still cherish things like the multiple readings each week that we enjoyed there. That noted, the various stands that were taken by the bishops pretty much forced me to make a hard decision in 1989 about whether I could worship at those churches in good conscience. I’m simultaneously glad and sad to see others coming to that point.

My roots (through birth) run deep in American Methodism - probably back to the early 19th century. I am a Methodist today though my brand is two splits off the main body with the first being 150+ years ago.

Bert’s comments are well made. I would certainly agree that the United Methodists who are now forming the Global Methodist Church are definitely concerned over “creeping liberalism” and “official support of abortion.” “Women in the pastorate” - now that’s another matter altogether. I believe you will find the the new group will have plenty of that in it!

Presently I am spending a few days in the mountains of North Georgia. The North Georgia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church is the largest in the United States. The largest congregation in the North Georgia Conference - a church of nearly 10K members - has just settled financially with the Conference in order to leave. (Reportedly it cost them 13 million dollars.)

Read the following insightful piece by an long-time ordained UMC minister in Georgia. I could weep over the pain these people feel as they cease being Puritans and become Pilgrims.

https://juicyecumenism.com/2022/06/01/warren-lathem-north-georgia-ripple-effects/

Interesting that the churches choose to leave about homosexuality but not about denial of inspiration and denial of the deity of Christ. I realize there are more issues involved, but aren’t inspiration and deity of Christ more important? Maybe because homosexuality is a more personal, emotional issue than others. Yet I would not like to stand before Christ and explain why I stayed in a church which denied Biblical teaching about Christ but left when that church denied Biblical teaching about sexuality.

[WallyMorris]

Interesting that the churches choose to leave about homosexuality but not about denial of inspiration and denial of the deity of Christ. I realize there are more issues involved, but aren’t inspiration and deity of Christ more important? Maybe because homosexuality is a more personal, emotional issue than others. Yet I would not like to stand before Christ and explain why I stayed in a church which denied Biblical teaching about Christ but left when that church denied Biblical teaching about sexuality.

There was no good framework to leave until recently

Dave: Explain “no good framework”. If by that you mean churches did not have a way to leave the UMC without leaving their property and pensions behind, I do not accept that argument. By that rationale, those UMC churches which held to more Biblical doctrinal beliefs remained in the UMC for decades, supporting liberal theology, enabling the UMC to continue promoting its liberal theology. The UMC was glad to have the more conservative churches remain since they continued to send money to the denomination. Those churches which held to a more conservative belief would have been better off to have left decades ago. Meanwhile, the children who grew up in those churches also remained in those churches, continuing the enablement. Much better to apply 2 Cor 6:14-18 and leave the unbelief behind.

If the cost of the church building is an issue, take a drive around your town and look at all the old church buildings that are currently in use as hair salons, martial arts studios, restaurants, bars, and the like. They’re being used as such because used church buildings generally sell for far less than it would cost to build them, and because (masonry construction, high ceilings, big windows) they’re hard to light, heat, and cool.

Hence, if you’ve got a strongly evangelical congregation in a town where theological liberals are like hen’s teeth, you might be able to get the old building back for not too brutal a price after a short time in the local elementary school.

Not an issue for me—I left for reasons of theological liberalism and also because I disagree with the Methodists on baptism and episcopal church government—but for those who align more closely with Wesley, that’s a possibility. It’s also a historic Methodist reality, as Wesley’s group was expelled/split from the Anglicans in 1795. There is not a strong notion of any inherent authority among the bishops that would make such a split theologically problematic.

I agree that there were good reasons for orthodox Methodists to depart from the UMC long before the conflicts over human sexuality issues arose. But, truthfully, didn’t men like Bob Jones, Sr. and “Fighting Bob” Shuler stay in the Methodist church long after both neo-Orthodoxy and Modernism were quite evident in its institutions and leadership? A case could be made for saying that they should have left long before they did. (Actually, I’m not sure either man ever surrendered his ministerial credentials and withdrew.)

I would have to do some research into Jones and Shuler before responding to that point. But, for the sake of argument, to compare their situation in the early days of beginning unbelief to today where unbelief has been evident and promoted for decades is not a good comparison. Christians refusing to leave unbelieving churches today because Christians decades ago didn’t leave seems self-serving.

Perhaps I failed to make my point very clear. I don’t think I said anything that excuses Christians today of not leaving unbelieving churches because Christians decades ago didn’t leave. My point was that people don’t all arrive at the same understanding on matters of separation at the same time. The fact is that there were entire groups of churches in the northern Methodist denomination and in the ME Church, South, which withdrew at the time of the merger in the 1930’s. They had concerns then about the theological declension in both bodies. There were others, however, who chose to remain with the merged Methodist Church who were very vocal about the serious problems in it. I merely chose Jones and Shuler as examples. The Jones family attended the Methodist Church in Cleveland, Tennessee until the school relocated to Greenville in the late 1940’s. I base that on comments I heard Bob Jones, Jr. make late in his life from the platform at BJU.

Most of the seven churches of Revelation (and they were real, local churches) had serious internal problems, yet Jesus did not command any of the good members (and there were good members) in those churches to come out of their churches.

Internal problems are not the same as doctrinal unbelief.