United Methodist News reports on the latest conference by The Wesleyan Covenant Association:
The denomination’s Judicial Council, meeting last month, ruled that several parts of the Traditional Plan violated the church’s constitution. However, the Rev. Keith Boyette, the association’s president, said the plan will be brought into conformity with Judicial Council Decision 1366.
The association also supported a proposed gracious exit that would allow congregations and institutions wanting to leave the denomination to leave with all their property and assets following the adjournment of the Feb. 23-26 called General Conference.
I see many United Methodists on social media celebrating. It would seem the one-two punch of a “breakaway” conference and their supported Traditionalist Plan being declared mostly unconstitutional has moderates and progressives declaring victory and ready to ride into General Conference 2019 confident in the One Church Plan for unity.
This post will hopefully remove that complacency. Much to the dismay of many of their fans, the Wesleyan Covenant Association is not trying to leave and start a movement anew. It is a scheme to leverage money and people to take over The United Methodist Church.
Money bigger than Numbers
According to their own reporting, the Wesleyan Covenant Association claims a membership of 125,000 people found in 1,500 churches. To many that is a small number. But the number bears an outsized influence on bishops and annual conference leadership when they fear each member might take their church with them to a new denomination.
For example, let’s consider the WCA Leadership Council and presume they reflect their congregations enough to bring their churches with them to a new denomination. The combined property and assets of the WCA Leadership Council’s local churches is valued at ~$230million dollars (after subtracting their debts), and their combined apportionment is just over $4,000,000 dollars (of which $389,000 was not paid, almost 10% of the apportionment illegally kept from the denomination’s shared missions and ministry). That’s a sizable chunk, but moderate in scope compared to the Top 100 megachurches that pay an average of $1million each in apportionments.
To be willing to shamelessly (whoops, I meant unashamedly) withhold money from the UMC is evidenced by the location of the Conference. They held this conference at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church, which withheld their apportionments for years and which thumbed their nose at the episcopacy to find their new senior pastor. The message is clear: be prepared for this same type of violations of the Discipline on a wide scale in 2019 (and indeed I am hearing reports of churches withholding apportionments for 2018 as well). So even if they don’t leave the denomination, withholding apportionments is a time-worn practice of this type of church.
The WCA is wielding influence beyond their numbers because the Institution knows their members could translate into real dollars taken from shared ministry and missions.
Removing Barriers to Exit
While many annual conferences are doing risk analyses of scenarios where their largest churches leave, for the delegates, it does not matter if the WCA can wreck United Methodism (by taking their money from The UMC). It only matters that they are ready to.
Whenever a church leaves, they are truly on their own. One story that was shared recently was that a church that left one of the Texas conferences fired their own breakaway pastor within the first 2 years. Going alone had a negative effect on the pastor’s tenure and the church’s desire to retain them. Losing access to appointable clergy has a negative effect, no matter how many qualified non-denominational pastors would be available.
Instead, with the WCA, now there is a network to join. A network that (if Asbury UMC in Tulsa, Oklahoma, joins them) will already have a seminary housed in one of their churches (and the WCA council has a ton of Asbury grads on it already). And various other benefits of being part of a separatist association.
So in a sense, the WCA has solved one of the problems of leaving the UMC: there’s already a container for smaller churches to join, not just megas like Orchards in Tupelo that can sustain themselves. By continually removing the barrier to exit, the institutions increasingly have to sustain themselves without these churches. The formation of a fully-formed denomination ready to go weighs heavily on the GC delegates.
But The Prize is still obtainable.
It sounds like with their preferrred plan severely limited, and with the money and the momentum to leave, one could assume the goal is a new breakaway denomination and United Methodists should just let them leave.
That is the worst assumption one can make going into General Conference 2019.
The goal of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, as far as United Methodism goes, is to make the denomination so intolerable to progressives and moderates that we leave the denomination. That’s the purpose behind the Traditionalist Plan, submitted by one of the WCA Leadership Council members, as we’ve previously reported.
The goal is accomplished by using the above threats of loss of income (the cost of which may be too much for entire conferences to bear), alongside a threat of loss of influence in Africa (though I haven’t seen many African churches turn down relationship with American churches, as many LGBTQ-friendly ones have deep relationships) to encourage the Denomination choose to kick out the other side. They ask delegates whether their gay nephew is really worth losing all the Traditionalist money.
The prize is ownership of United Methodism, which despite its myriad problems is still an unfathomably valuable institution. United Methodism owns an incredible amount of real estate, hospitals, academic institutions, churches, offices, conference centers, retreats, camps, nonprofit and for-profit entities, and the incredible controlled wealth of the United Methodist Foundations. Not to mention WesPath. By purging progressives and moderates, they will lose some churches and conference centers and perhaps entire Annual Conferences, but they will retain ownership of all of the rest.
The time is now for such a takeover. President Trump has initiated a backlash against LGBTQ people that will be reflected in the General Conference delegations, reversing years of hearts changed towards inclusion as now delegates can be “unashamed” in their opposition to LGBTQ people. And with all our resources on a single vote rather than spread out over many interests, the stakes are high indeed.
Not a Movement. Insurance in case the threat loses.
All of the above should add up for you as it has for me: The WCA is not a movement of churches to form a new denomination, ready to leave. All these efforts are a huge insurance policy in case they fall short in taking over United Methodism and casting the progressives and moderates to the outer darkness.
I believe the vast majority of the 125,000 members are hoping for a new denomination and do this work diligently. For sure. But the leadership, molded through decades of efforts through the Good News underground magazine, the IRD’s Fox News-style reporting, and overall opposition to bishops, are utilizing these numbers and momentum to leverage their preferred future for United Methodism.
The amount of work and efforts by the WCA will not be wasted either way, but the GC delegates should not be fooled as to their purpose. And I’m sure a lot of WCA adherents will be disappointed if they prevail in 2019 and then they are stick in a church that is more of the same. A “Confidence” game indeed.
Your Turn
If you care about a future with hope, do not sit back and rest.
- The Traditionalist Plan is very much a threat to a United Methodist Church for 2019.
- The Wesleyan Covenant Association is very loudly opposed to any step towards inclusion in 2019.
- The long arc of over 60 years (and 30 ones as the majority voice) of anti-institutional work has come to a final moment of fruition, and it isn’t just to get out of Dodge.
This is not over. Big Tent Methodism will not prevail on the wind of its own sails. And now delegates have cover from the WCA and the US President to be “unashamed” of their opposition to LGBTQ people that they previous hemmed and hawed about. Every delegate and every conversation matters to overcome this powerful group’s money and fearmongering.
The future is yours.
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing on social media.
Sooo. Adhering to the strict letter of the law (BOD) is important for pastors who feel compelled by Christ’s mandate to care for those on the margins (LGBTQ), but not so much in the withholding of apportionments and the appointment system. I’m really tired of all this pick and choose baloney.
Yupppppp.
You kill me Jeremy! For 2 years I have been telling you that we would like to reform the UMC so we are living within our BOD. You have been saying we’re evil because we’re lying about starting a new thing. Now you say we are evil because we are lying about starting a new thing when we really want to stay and reform the denomination. Here is a radical thought for you. Perhaps we are doing exactly what we say we are doing. Perhaps we are preparing for whatever happens at in St. Louis because we want to live out our faith with integrity? #notlying #notevil #preparedforwhatever
I hear you Beth. I think this dude projects his own thought processes on to the WCA. He is making this all about control and money. It’s like he’s got a one track mind.
Jeremy, you are going to lose your soul caught up in all of this muck raking. Quit demonizing dude and listen to others. Quit trying to make folks in the WCA to look like the most terrible people in the world.
I’ve said the same thing for 2 years: schismatic and leveraging schism both look the same until the end. Here’s my category description from December 2016:
Your problem, Jeremy, as well as a lot of other Lib/progs that I have encountered is that you view the church and its disagreements the same way that you view national politics. You think that if you win the election, that the other side will just have to live with whatever the majority decides . . . the way that it is a national election.
But the church is a voluntary association. It is not something that we are forced to live in but something that we choose to live. When I was deciding what church to serve as a pastor in, I looked at the doctrine and polity of the UM church that I had grown up in and said in my heart, “This is what I believe and I think this is a good way to be the church.” If the UM decides to change the doctrine/ church in a profound way, I can simply DECIDE that, “Nope, that is not what I believe in nor how that I believe the church should be. I refuse to be a part of this.” And so, I leave and go somewhere else where my conscience can be clear.
What a bunch of libs/progs and the UMC bureaucratic crew would like to do is say, “No, you have got to stay! We will take away your buildings and your retirement! We will strong arm you to make you conform to our rules!”
You know what I say to that? Screw you and your control freak mentality! I can walk away and God will bless that decision . . . more than all these folks who don’t have the guts or the faith will ever know.
Everyone in the WCA has consistently said that they want an “Exit Option” for those who cannot abide by the agreement upon covenant/ BOD. But no . . . the control freaks don’t want that. You want to force people to go against their conscience (which is sin!) and make them pay them apportionments because God knows, paying your apportionments what makes you a good United Methodist (sarcasm).
So, tell me, Jeremy, are you for an exit option? Do you view the church as a voluntary association? Do you think people should be forced to violate their consciences? My guess would be based upon who is in control of the UMC . . . and that’s sad.
1. The church is not a voluntary association. It is a government and it functions like the government. It’s current incarnation reflects the three branches of government in the USA. Our predecessors created us like this and that means we operate in the church the same we do in politics, some bad, some good.
2. If we let those who opposed women leave in 1956, or those who opposed African-American pastors leave in 1968, then those hearts would not have been changed to the gifts of women clergy and Persons of Color as pastors. Those are good things, I’m certain we agree, and more Methodists today approve of them precisely because we were bound up together and the minority position was not allowed to leave. Same with the LGBTQ debate: it is better for you to stick with it in the long run so your soul isn’t harmed by the exclusion felt in your heart. Despite our rhetorical conflict, I hope you know my heart is 100% in this place of knowing it is good for you to have your heart changed like mine, but unlike your control freak allegations, I’m not dictating how long it takes. Nor does the One Church Plan or Simple Plan.
The idea that you change minds by forcing them to listen to your arguments over and over is bogus. Sometimes people change their minds if they persuaded by arguments. And sometimes they get fed up with folks shoving the same old tired talking down their throats and say “Enough is enough.” If you think that traditional folk are just going to suddenly accept the same old tired arguments and Be good little United Methodists, then you are living in la la land.
But will that deter any of y’all control freaks? No. You are just going to keep trying to control the conversation with your little word games and such. That’s what control freaks do.
And for the nature of the church – even if the church has been set up like the US government, that doesn’t mean that it functions like the US government. Folks do not walk out of the US when things do not go there way. People can and do walk out of UMC churches . . . It happens all the time.
You are right. People don’t change their minds that way. But people who love their church changed their minds about female and minority clergy because they got one as a pastor. Does that happen in a call system? No. Only an appointive system where they are forced to by a bishop.
I am grieved that you lament the thousands of hearts changed to be more inclusive of women and African Americans. That only happens because of an appointive Connectional system—the one you call “control.”
No, it does not. Do you think that the UMC is the only one to allow women in ministry and to have African American leaders/ preachers? No. You know that. Females and leaders of all colors are abundant in the charismatic stream of Christianity, you know, the one that Wesley was a part of.
I do not lament the women or people of color who have become a part of leadership in the UMC. Don’t try to put words in my mouth or make me into some kind of crazed fundy. Screw you for trying to do that. You do that to everyone who disagrees with you. You just try to play games with words. Do you know who else in the Bible did that? You know.
But you keep playing your little “control freak” game. You keep putting words in people’s mouths . . . trying to “control” the flow of the conversation. You and all the rest of the UMC “control freaks” have fun living as kings without a kingdom.
You’ve made my point. Outside the UMC there were female and minority pastors. Inside there were not. We listened to both voices when we made those decisions and they ended up being the right ones. Nowadays there are LGBTQ pastors inside and outside the church. Only in the rear view will we know if that was the right call to allow them on a limited or global basis.
Such strong language! I said you lamented the command system that placed them, not their existence. We both celebrate them but—and this is the key—we celebrate them because of the Connectional system. Not that it was an evil empire that pppressed them, which it was for a while, but then it became the very system that placed them and transformed hearts.
You can’t have one without the other in this Wesleyan tradition.
I didn’t make your point at all. Other denominations came to the conclusion of allowing female clergy and never, ever forbid people of color because they believed the Gospel message and held to the authority of Scripture. Check out the history of charismatic congregations/denominations. But you already know that, don’t you.
I’m not going to argue with you anymore because it’s like futile. Folks throughout the UMC are sick of leaders in the denomination taking a stand on neither side of the issue. I actually respect you more for being straightforward in your beliefs. I don’t see how that you stay in a denomination that you feel oppresses a minority. You can tell yourself that you are making a difference but you know that the acceptance of sexual behavior between two people of the same sex is not much more accepted in the UMC today than it ever was nor the global church.
You made a vow to uphold UMC doctrine and polity and you are not doing that. Neither is a minority of the UMC. And there are basically no repercussions for this. The UMC is broken and it has been broken by people who do not keep their vows or abide by the connectional system. You can laud the connectional system all that you want but your actions speak louder than words. Make no mistake about this, when the UMC dissolves (however that happens because it will . . . we have not addressed the main problems because of our fighting over this one issue), know that the WCA and the traditionalists who sought to maintain the doctrine and polity of the UMC were not the problem. But you already know that, don’t you?
If I could give you a gold star (up to the screw you) I would. Yes, folks belong to churches and denominations volunteer or out of god given conscience. If the churches over one’s objections why one must stay if they feel it is wrong. Even the Roman Catholic church stopped burning heretics after a while.
In the corporate world, if members (clergy & delegates to GC) of a corporation take their assets and property, including their clients (donors), and start their own corporation using said assets (including donors), that’s called conversion. Guess what? Though the church is a non-profit, it is still a corporation. All that the UMC needs to do is go after the individual clergy, delegates of GC and church Board members personally in a derivative lawsuit and they’ll change their tune. The property clause is a hell of a thing!
Fascinating! I had no idea!
Your statements tell a lot about who you think about things. So, you want to sue people who refuse to be a part of a system that says that lives by a covenant but then refuses to live by it?
Do you think it is O.K. for Christians to sue other Christians? The WCA says that it is perfectly O.K. with congregations leaving the UMC with all of its assets. They apparently do not want to oppress people because of what they believe and sue each other like a bunch of pagans! I don’t know if you know this but it is WRONG for Christians to sue each other!
You can make all the analogies you want between corporations and the church but the church is NOT a corporation. It is the body of Christ and it is not held together by legal wrangling but by love, shared doctrines, beliefs, etc. Such talk makes me sick
If someone truly believes that they cannot stay in the church and be reconciled, they are to be treated as a pagan and a tax collector. (Matt 18:17)
I’m not sure about that idea that the UMC is a corporation. I heard recently that Jurisdictions might be, but that the denomination might not be an entity like you suggest. Name for me the officers of said corporation? We are a 501c3, but not sure beyond that.
This is an insightful article the influence of which is being damaged by something you might think unimportant: the TYPE FONT it is being displayed in.
The current vogue for lighter weight reader fonts has been carried to an extreme on many sites, including this one. Please ask your web manager to HAVE MERCY on your post readers by increasing the formatted reader font weight.
These decisions matter.
Indeed, I find Aerial 10pt to be the Font of Many Blessings. 🙂
Jeremy, thanks for your continued efforts to address critical issues. I am sorry that some of the replies to your postings lack the civility that I think we all need to have.
With regard to vows to uphold doctrine, I believe it was Gandhi who said something like — my commitment is to truth, not consistency. What a shame if we are afraid to challenge doctrine. Overwhelming medical evidence shows that for most homosexual individuals, sexual orientation is not a choice. Overwhelming counseling evidence shows that for most people (yes, not all), reparative therapy does not work and is often harmful. Surely such new knowledge suggests we should be careful when we base doctrine on a few scriptural passages that appear to address abusive sexual behaviors.
So writing into law a greater ability to enforce the current rules of the BOD, rules that clergy promise to uphold upon their ordination, rules that bishops promise to uphold upon their consecration, is “taking over” the UMC? Seriously? When I read that bit, I could have stopped there. But I didn’t. Sadly, it didn’t get any better or more honest.
What about the Covenant to pay our apportionments, which many Conservative Churches refuse to do?
As a lay member of the UMC, this discussion is frightful. Thank you Tom Deever for a small but powerful voice of reason in the dark wilderness of this discussion.
Receive both the RMN and WCA feeds daily. My, my — issues that are not! Jeremy, I have believed that the prize is the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus (nrsv), not ownership of the UMC. What was I thinking?
Have ridden this beast for twenty-odd years in the local parish and on the conference floor. Please believe me when I offer: argument and attempted persuasion are futile. Since the full embrace of text criticism in the late 19th, the definition of “a close reading of scripture” has morphed. It is now a hermeneutic of doubt, not faith — 180`– Full stop.
Why is Christian conference not around true matters: the sovereignty of God, the authority of scripture and the divine nature of Jesus? It seems to me reality is, was and will be found in this array. New in each generation!
He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself (nrsv). Rejoicing over here!
Yours in Christ,
Margot
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