You Can Take the United, but I'll Still be Methodist

This week the United Methodist Church, in which I am an ordained pastor, gathers elected delegates from around the world for its quadrennial gathering called the “GeneralConference.”  This year’s meeting is in Portland, Oregon, and the delegates may well define the denomination in a way that requires me some day, as a matter of principle, to separate from it.  
In a blogpost last week Bishop Scott Jones made it clear that many General Conference delegates are prepared to throw down precisely this gauntlet in Portland. Of pastors like me, who have presided at same-sex weddings, Bishop Jones wrote: "They are violating the rules of a church they have freely joined when other, similar churches offer acceptable ways of pursuing their calling. If I ever get to the point where I cannot in good conscience obey the key aspects of our discipline — and I pray such a day never happens — it will be time to surrender my credentials as a United Methodist bishop and elder and find some other way to follow Christ.”

I consider the challenge a principled one, and it merits a principled response. So let me say that what Bishop Jones is proposing resonates with me at one level: indeed, I sought ordination in the United Methodist Church, and if I can neither hope to change nor abide the demands of this ordination, it makes sense to me that I should withdraw from it. But Bishop Jones is mistaken if he thinks I would withdraw to another “similar” church.  I am not Episcopalian or Congregationalist or Unitarian. I am Methodist.

I got my Methodism from my Sunday School teacher, Martha Bullock, and from my grandmother, Marian Smith, and from other saints who would have walked out of their beloved churches before they would have allowed for someone else to be thrown out.


I trace my spiritual lineage back to generations of Methodists, who undertook efforts of every imaginable kind in pursuit of what the church's social principles call "social justice" and what the church's mission statement calls the "transformation of the world.”   Many of these efforts, by the way, sought to reform and change the church, the boundaries of which have never been, and are not now, contiguous with the kingdom of God.

I trace my Methodism to John Wesley, who declared "the world is my parish" and who resisted constraints that the Bishops of his church, the Church of England, attempted to impose on him and his followers.

I have no doubt that if my ancestors were to be transported from across the generations and plopped down in Portland this week, many would be taken aback by proposals allowing for the celebration of same-sex weddings and for the ordination and appointment of people who openly affirm their sexual orientations as other than heterosexual (not that my ancestors would understand what all that means).  

But many of my ancestors would also be shocked to learn that the church now ordains and appoints women and people who have been divorced.  Many would be shocked that spousal and family needs are considered in the appointment of clergy, and that many pastors serve what amount to long, settled tenures at local churches. Many would be shocked at the salaries of clergy (perhaps, especially, Bishops).  Many would be shocked that a global gathering – convened once every four years for ten days in a convention center – is considering going into the business of telling Annual Conferences of duly ordained pastors and elected lay delegates who they can and can’t ordain.

Still, given all this, I appreciate that the General Conference has the power and authority to define the terms of ordination in the United Methodist Church.   But it does not have the power and authority to define my Methodism for me. 

Today my Methodism is most informed by friends and colleagues who are working to make disciples of Jesus Christ and transform the world in the unique and challenging environments of Southern California and the San Diego/Tijuana border region.  (These contexts are very different from Kansas, where I lived as a child, where my parents and grandparents were born and raised, where Bishop Jones now presides).

Most immediately, I get my Methodism from our weekly gatherings of El Faro: The Border Church.  Each Sunday afternoon we gather at the historic border meetup place called Friendship Park, and, mysteriously, we transform the US-Mexico border wall into a communion table, serving people simultaneously in both nations.  

The humble community we gather at El Faro each Sunday has never been owned and operated by the United Methodist Church.  I have never been compensated by the UMC for my leadership of El Faro. (For the last ten years I have earned my living by writing, teaching, consulting and working in appointments “beyond the local church” that were unaffiliated with the church.)  And yet this is the community where I am struggling and striving to “work out my salvation.”  This is the community where I am seeking holiness – my own and that of the world around me.  This is where I am still learning what it means to be a good Methodist.

Most of my friends who gather on the Mexican side of the wall at El Faro each Sunday have been deported to Mexico by the United States government.  They are not United Methodist - a few belong to the independent Iglesia Metodista de Mexico, but most have no formal church affiliation.  I guess you could call them “ecclesiastically undocumented.”  Perhaps the delegates at this week’s General Conference will set me on a course to become undocumented in this way, too.

As I consider this prospect, I take great comfort in remembering where I get my identity as a person of faith and a follower of Jesus Christ.   This year the delegates at the 2016 General Conference of the United Methodist Church may define the “United” right out of me.  But should this come to pass I will still be a sheep of  Jesus' fold, a lamb of Jesus' flock, a sinner of Jesus' redeeming ... and I will still be Methodist.