By BILL PIKE Thursday, June 29, 2023 Roanoke Times
It’s OK, Roanoke, the Methodists have left the Berglund Center. The 241st Session of the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church ended around midday June 17.
Mark Twain once stated: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Fransisco.”
For me, the coldest first day of summer I ever spent was at the Berglund Center on June 21, 2019. I was attending the annual conference as a Richmond district delegate for Trinity United Methodist, my church in Henrico County.
A family sitting behind me was wrapped in fleece throws. They looked like diehard fans in a football stadium on a blustery, cold December day.
Maybe the coldness of the Berglund Center was requested by the conference leadership to keep attendees awake during debates and sermons.
I didn’t attend the annual conference this year. I took a break. I’m hoping the younger members in our church who attended will take up this torch now.
In case you haven’t noticed, churches in America have been struggling for several years.
Perhaps you recently picked up on this headline: “The importance of religion in the lives of Americans is shrinking.” That headline came from a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.
The institute collected data from 6,600 adults in all 50 states. The leading takeaway: “Just 16% of Americans surveyed said religion is the most important thing in their lives, … down from 20% a decade ago.”
The CEO for PRRI, Melissa Deckman, stated: “Americans are becoming increasingly likely to become religiously unaffiliated.”
I’m a lifetime Methodist, and I agree with Ms. Deckman’s statement.
When I consider the current state of the so called “united” Methodist church, I believe chiggers in wild blackberry vines are more united as they attack an unsuspecting blackberry picker.
Declines in attendance, shrinking financial support, our political divide, human sexuality, interpretations of Scripture related to human sexuality, the aftermath of the pandemic, and disaffiliation have impacted our Methodist “unity.”
This session of the conference was led by our newly appointed bishop, Sue Haupert-Johnson, who has already made some difficult decisions.
Back on May 6, a Special Called Annual Conference session was held. Over matters of human sexuality, 64 Virginia United Methodist Churches were approved to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church. By session vote, 90% approved and 10% disapproved.
More recently, on June 5, a joint resolution was reached involving a Virginia United Methodist pastor who had performed a same-gender wedding in the fall of 2019. That pastor was under complaint for more than 1,300 days. My guess is both parties feel a sense of relief that a resolution was found.
Annual conferences are fairly predictable — an agenda is followed, reports made, prayers, singing and sermons fill the Berglund Center, debates occur, new clergy ordained, aging clergy retire, appointments approved, and maybe by the end on Saturday attendees are renewed with hope.
With regard to hope, the PRRI research noted the following: “[F]or people who do still attend religious services, they say they’re optimistic about the future of their house of worship.”
In this year’s Book of Reports, I did find hope and optimism. For eight years, I served on the conference’s Board of Higher Education. From the work of our Wesley Foundation campus ministers at various universities in Virginia, I leaned a lot.
Bret Gresham is the Wesley Foundation campus minister at Virginia Tech. To his credit, Bret took a different approach in writing the annual report about his work with students at Virginia Tech.
Bret’s tactic was to answer longstanding questions by conference leaders as to whether campus ministries are effective and worth the annual investment.
Bret started with: “Why is campus ministry important?” His response: “For many college students it is a matter of life and death.”
Consider this quote from a Virginia Tech student: “I was done with the Church prior to going to college, but if it weren’t for Wesley at VT, and the community within it, I would have ended my life due to events that transpired my first semester of college.” (Book of Reports, pages 69-70)
I wonder what the Virginia Annual Conference might learn about itself from this simple question and its heart-wrenching response?
If the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church expects to hang on and find stability, heartfelt questions combined with active listening might help the membership in regaining hope.
Anne Sullivan, the American educator best known for teaching Helen Keller, said: “We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.”
The Virginia Annual Conference can no longer afford to fear change, nor can they shrink from thinking and working for the good of all.
Bill Pike is director of operations at Trinity United Methodist Church in Richmond.
Author’s note: I was honored to have this op-ed piece published in the Roanoke Times on Thursday, June 29, 2023. Thanks to the newspaper’s staff for the appropriate editing, and the willingness to run the piece.
might be baloney 