FROM OUR PASTOR
With the highly anticipated convening General Conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, rapidly approaching, the Global Methodist Church is delighted to announce the launch of the convening General Conference website.
The website is currently in its first phase and will continue to expand as more information is solidified by the various General Conference committees. It will include pages for registration, travel information, prayer guides, recognition of sponsors, and more.
The website will serve as the central hub for all information and updates related to the convening general conference. It will provide the latest and most accurate information about the General Conference, making it easy for people to stay informed and involved.
Per the instructions for doing so, all GM Church members and local churches can submit petitions for consideration. The website provides a seamless platform to do so. This makes the process efficient and organized for everyone involved.
Take a moment to visit the website at https://www.sotheworldwillknow.org/ and explore all the features it has to offer. We hope you will find it easy to navigate and informative.
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A MESSAGE OF HOPE
Callously Breaking Covenant: Reflections on UMC General Conference
It has been heartbreaking to be a United Methodist this week. Among the reasons for traditional Methodists to be angry at what has taken place at General Conference is the overturning of doctrine central to Methodist social witness.
Also aggravating has been self-congratulatory and virtue signaling language used to masquerade deeply unchristian actions. While praising themselves for the passage of unbiblical legislation, delegates have papered their actions in a veneer of love and kindness. This is evil and it should be called out as such. It is also a violation of the Wesleyan principle to “do no harm”, which has been bandied about leading up to General Conference.
Delegates began by passing the regionalization plan, long opposed by conservative Methodists. Liberal delegates did this despite their majority making the plan unnecessary to achieve their desired changes to church teaching on sexuality. They praised themselves for “decolonizing” the church. They did so despite the objections of African churches and despite the sad reality that the African church has been continually underrepresented at General Conferences, and despite the fact that UMC has been notorious for not helping African Delegates receive necessary visas to attend Conference. This year more than 70 African Delegates were unable to obtain visas. They have disenfranchised the African churches’ ability to impact their fellow Methodists’ doctrinal beliefs while praising themselves for being “de-colonialists”.
The delegates also praised the regionalization plan for allowing the UMC to remain connectional while disagreeing on doctrine. But how can we be connectional when we cannot recognize something as fundamental as one another’s marriages and ordained clergy?
Jubilant celebration of changes to the church’s stance on traditional marriage and ordination requirements was a spectacle. Delegates sang Draw the Circle Wide. This “circle” is apparently not wide enough to include traditionalists, people with whom they have covenanted for years.
This perhaps is the most heartbreaking aspect of this week. Methodists do not just attend church together or, in popular parlance, “do life together”. We covenant with God and one another. At our baptism and renewed at confirmation, we enter into covenant, and we affirm these vows every time someone is brought into the life of the church and in services throughout the year. It was covenantal vows that the delegates carelessly tossed aside.
In doing so, they demonstrated that they care more for the deposed monarchs of Hawaii than for people who have loved them and prayed for them throughout their time in the church. The 75-year-old man, who taught them Sunday School, the 85-year-old woman who helped them pour glue on to some silly craft at VBS, the now retired pastor who baptized them, the people who threw their baby showers, prayed by their side in sickness, cried with them at funerals and so many moments in between, all tossed aside. The circle simply wasn’t wide enough to include them.
This Sunday, many Methodists, large percentages of which are elderly, will have difficult decisions to make. To lose one’s church is a kind of death. It is not because of the physical building but the community of faith that exists within it and who hold it as a central part of their lives. Fellowship has always been important to United Methodists, and much fellowshipping happens within the walls of our churches. Its loss will be particularly hard on the elderly, who will be robbed of the ability to finish out their lives serving Christ in the churches to which they have dedicated so much of their lives.
Delegates to General Conference celebrated the end of disaffiliations. Praising unity and instead, insultingly offered a path for reaffiliation for churches that have departed. In 2019, “gracious exits” were offered for churches who could not affirm the outcome of the conference, then it was liberal members of the church who lost at conference. But in 2024, those liberals, now in the majority, denied that mercy to those who might wish to exit, and they praised themselves for denying to others the grace that was shown to them.
But we should not lose hope. God does not promise us a denomination, but He does promise to preserve His Church. The church as C.S. Lewisdescribed it “spread out through time and space, rooted in eternity.” Against this Church, Christ assures us the “gaits of hell will not prevail.” And by His grace, a traditional and biblical expression of Wesleyanism will still be part of this Church. Through the Global Methodist Church, independent Methodist churches, and those, who in the coming weeks and months make great sacrifices to leave the UMC, the Wesleyan witness will continue.
In some ways, it will be difficult to live out that witness because we must still live out our covenant. We must be like Christ, who wept when His covenant people rejected Him. By God’s grace we must forgive those who have done great harm to us. We must live out our covenantal promise to pray for them. Pray that their hearts are softened to the gospel, and they repent. If this happens, then someday, we may have a true unity with one another. Until then, we can take heart from the final words of Wesley himself, “The best of all is, God is with us!”