More Methodist Musings

Historic Vote

As a lifelong member of the United Methodist Church, I’m relieved with the news from Charlotte, North Carolina.

On May 1, multiple news outlets reported that members attending the General Conference of the United Methodist Church “by a 692-51 vote, passed several rules without debate, including overturning both its ban on gay clergy and the penalties for holding same-sex marriages.”

From my perspective, it’s about time for the church to initiate this change.

This emotional issue has resulted in many Methodist churches in America leaving the denomination through a disaffiliation process. Methodists aren’t the only mainline denomination to be walloped with challenges related to human sexuality.

For many years, data has a revealed a steady decline in church attendance across America. While it is true that the pandemic added to the woes of churches, churches were struggling before COVID-19 hit. Declining attendance, shrinking budgets, and deteriorating facilities are among the challenges experienced by churches that resulted in closures.

In Virginia, I had the privilege of attending three annual conferences. At each annual conference a handful of churches were closed because of challenges related to attendance and finances.

Even if the reorganization plan gives relief to the church’s stance on human sexuality, challenges related to attendance, finance, and facilities are not going away.

With a decline in church attendance and religion in America, the release of a January 2024 report from the Pew Research Center has an interesting finding.

The Pew report found that the “religious ‘Nones’ are now the largest religiously unaffiliated cohort in America at 28%. The ‘Nones’ are larger than Catholics 23% and evangelical Protestants 24%.”

I wonder how many of the ‘Nones’ are from the LGBTQ community, or individuals who didn’t grow up in the church, or who had an unpleasant church experience? Also, I wonder if the Methodist church or any other mainline denomination can find ways to bring the ‘Nones’ back to church?

For the last twelve years, I’ve had the privilege of working at the Methodist church where my family and I are members. With this work, and in my previous career in public education, I’ve come to realize that churches like schools are interesting places as they both center upon working with people.

I find church leaders and their congregations to be good people who care deeply about their church. However, these good people are often reluctant or incapable of making needed changes. This inability to change has hurt churches more than they realize.

Whether related to human sexuality, declining attendance, drops in revenue, and deteriorating facilities, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of church closings. And there is part of me that wonders if churches would benefit from undergoing an accreditation process. Schools, fire/police departments, non-profits, and some professions are familiar with this practice.

I’m curious to learn if the challenges that churches are experiencing could have been avoided or corrected with a rigorous “self-study.” This diligent internal examination would require churches to carefully assess their programming, personnel, finances, facilities, outreach, and communication.
Even if an accreditation process was available to church leaders and their congregations, I’m not certain they would pursue taking a hard look at themselves. It is easier to develop a strategic plan that collects dust rather than asking difficult internal questions about your operations.

However, if churches have any desire to slow their downward spiral, leaders and their congregations must work quickly to assess their fiscal, mental, physical, and spiritual health status.

Our current church times are in sharp contrast to the boom of the 50s and 60s. Then the mentality was if we build a church—they will come.

Within easy driving distance to our church are five other Methodist churches. Today, any of those congregations could be nervously thinking— ok, we’ve built this church, but do we have capacity to sustain it?

In her book, Factory Man, author, Beth Macy, wrote about John Bassett III, and the challenges he faced in America’s furniture industry. I love this advice from Mr. Bassett— “be willing to change and improve repeatedly.”

If the United Methodist Church has any hope
of being around for fifty more years, church leaders and congregations must “be willing to change and improve repeatedly.”

Failure to change beyond the Charlotte vote guarantees two things: the ‘Nones’ will continue to grow, and more Methodist churches will close.

Yes, I’m encouraged by the Charlotte vote.

But now, the real work must start.

An impatient world will be watching to see if Methodists can truly become more inclusive.
I hope we can.

Post Conference Reflections

I am a lifelong Methodist.

But, I did not attend the General Conference of the United Methodist Church that was held in Charlotte, North Carolina from April 23 – May 3, 2024.

Nor did I carefully follow any pre-Conference wrangling, or any daily news reports about what was taking place at the conference.

Personally, I wasn’t optimistic that we Methodist could agree to settle our differences found in the Book of Discipline related to ordaining gay clergy and clergy having permission to perform same-sex marriages.

On May 1, multiple news outlets reported that members attending the General Conference of the United Methodist Church “by a 692-51 vote, passed several rules without debate, including overturning both its ban on gay clergy and the penalties for holding same-sex marriages.”

From my perspective, it’s about time for the church to initiate this change. And, I can’t believe that making this change took over fifty years.

Now, the tough work must begin.

No one can deny that the COVID-19 pandemic walloped churches. But the truth is that churches were in trouble prior to the pandemic. Attendance was down, financial giving slipping, and facilities were feeling the impact of neglect. Add to this to the struggle to understand a changing world related to LGBTQ communities, and churches were in trouble.

For Methodist, even with this historic vote, we have lots of work to do to attempt to slow the multiple challenges that church leaders and congregations face. Personally, I don’t sense we are done with churches closing.

In her book, Factory Man, author, Beth Macy, wrote about John Bassett III, and the challenges he faced in America’s furniture industry. I love this advice from Mr. Bassett— “be willing to change and improve repeatedly.”

If the United Methodist Church has any hopeof being around for fifty more years, church leaders and congregations must “be willing to change and improve repeatedly.”

I’m not sure if Methodist leaders and their congregations realize how much the church has been hurt by the paralyzing inability to change.

In David Halberstam’s book The Teammates, he writes about a 1997 decision made by the management of the Boston Red Sox to let go a long time coach and team legend, Johnny Pesky. This wasn’t a popular decision in Boston.

Five years later, the Red Sox were sold. One of the first things the new owner did was to bring back Johnny Pesky.

Halberstam wrote the following when he reflected about the general manager of the team who had dismissed Johnny Pesky: “It was almost as if his strategy was designed to separate himself from the team’s rich history and lore, as if the past was more of a burden than an enhancement, and that in order to build for the future, he had to destroy the past.”

As the Methodist church looks to its future, it must not bury its past. Rather the church must understand its past to learn how to shape the future.

We Methodist are at a critical point. If we continue to mire ourselves in “that’s the way we have always done it mentality,” we’ll miss an opportunity to connect with people who are searching for a community.

I’m not a big believer in banners that adorn the front lawns of many churches. I think a banner is a blur to a driver zipping by a church.

Yet, out on the lawn of Trinity, is a banner that reads: You Are Loved. Find Your Community Here.

Methodist— you, me, we, us are overdue to love all in our community.

The third verse of Psalm 23 states: “He restores my soul.”

Isn’t this an opportunity through love to “restore our souls”?

Isn’t this an opportunity that we can’t afford to miss?