Why GMC Needs to Bag on UMC
Many United Methodists resonated with Rev. Andy Bryan’s sentiments when he posted the following.
Some have responded to the distinction between conformity and diversity in each denomination. Some have responded to his validating the values of another denomination. What is most provocative to me in what Bryan says is the last paragraph. Let me try to take his statement and turn it to a question:
“Why does the GMC need to bag on the UMC as they disaffiliate?”
Fist of all, is it true such action is being done by GMC leaders? I don’t want to spend time talking about the national voices such as Chris Ritter, Rob Renfroe, Jay Therrell, Walter Fenton, Keith Boyette, Carolyn Moore or either Watson (David or Kevin). You can read about the special interest groups helping the GMC such as Good News, Wesleyan Covenant Association, Institute for Religion and Democracy, UM Action, Confessing Movement, etc. I want to just highlight these past couple of months in my own Annual Conference. Here are just a few examples from my peers (2 men and 2 women), who feel a need to speak disparagingly of the UMC. The very denomination which prayed for them, affirmed their call, ordained them, and gave them a place of leadership. It is a lot of reading, but if you click on the image to help read.
And so, yes, even in an Annual Conference that is considered to be friendly to the GMC (here and here) is not immune to GMC leaders creating strawmen. But why?
It might be because the Bible tells them so. Or at least how it is being interpreted.
Deuteronomy 13 may not be in your daily devotional reading, but it is worth reading. While the whole chapter speaks to this matter, let us just look at these verses:
6 If anyone secretly entices you—even if it is your brother, your father’s son or your mother’s son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend—saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’, whom neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7any of the gods of the peoples that are around you, whether near you or far away from you, from one end of the earth to the other, 8you must not yield to or heed any such persons. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. 9But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 11Then all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do any such wickedness.
In these verses we read the warning that if you think there is a false prophet in your ranks, even if it is a family member, you must remove that person from your ranks.
Much of the GMC leadership talk about how the UMC they once knew is now no longer. That the UMC is teaching or preaching things about God that these leaders feel “neither you nor your ancestors have known”. Many in the GMC might say, “I am not leaving the Methodist Church, but the Methodist Church left me.”
The fancy theology word for this is that the GMC feels the UMC has gone “apostate". The charge of an apostate means that the charged has abandoned certain fundamental principles. The apostate charge shows up all over the place in its more direct and indirect forms. One of the most direct examples is from a letter written by my former Bishop (here).
I reject the premise that the UMC is apostate.
The one making the apostate charge assumes the ground they stand on is the “true” ground. The GMC uses words like “Orthodoxy” and “Traditional” and “Historical” and “Faithful” to suggest their “true” ground. Simultaneously, GMC leaders use illustrations, rumors, fear and straw to suggest others are on “untrue” ground. While standing on “true” ground, GMC leaders see UMC lay leaders, preachers, bishops, and groups with suspicion. Rather than trying to understand the one one on the “untrue” ground or have compassion to walk with those who you feel are walking in darkness, GMC leaders accuse the UMC of being apostate. And, as the Bible says, one must “not yield to or heed any such persons”.
And why should you yield to an apostate? The apostate is a problem and a threat. So it makes sense to not yield or heed to any such persons. In fact, it would be immoral to yield or heed. So there is a need to destroy such a threat. The GMC needs to bag on the UMC because the GMC leaders feel the UMC is apostate and a direct threat. Treatment for apostates are clearly laid out in the Bible: “Show them not pity or compassion and do not shield them.” Destruction of the apostate is not taken lightly and leaders of the GMC know they cannot expect the average lay person to embark on this task, so the leaders are “shall be the first against them (to destroy or tear down), and afterwards the hand of all the people” will be able to join in.
To be very clear, NO ONE IN THE GMC IS CALLING FOR VIOLENCE AND DEATH OF ANYONE IN THE UMC OR VISE VERSA. Rather than a violent and bloody stoning of the apostate, todays leaders are engaged in virtual stone throwing, fear mongering, straw men making, finger pointing, gaslighting and blame shifting.
It is of note that the GMC does not bag on the Lutherans. Nor the Presbyterians. There is no dunking on Catholics or Pentecostals. Not a peep about non-denominations or Baptists. There is no need to talk about any other denomination - even those that there are fundamental differences with (such as the Reformed tradition). The GMC needs to bag only on the UMC because the GMC needs to affirm that the UMC is apostate to justify leaving. And this is why the bagging on the UMC will not stop - even after 2024. Every thing that the UMC will do is read through the eyes of the GMC leadership as a threat - even when it is not. Generous actions of the UMC toward the GMC (such as waiving the cost of unfunded pension liabilities that are required by the Discipline for disaffiliating churches) are dismissed. Any UMC leader fighting for unity (which Jesus says a lot more about than about sexuality) is given the apostate label of being an anti-Methodist. Any Bishop who is working to faithfully work for the unity of the church (as Christ commands in John and the BOD lays out as a role of the Bishop) is seen as oppressive as Pharaoh.
I understand that it has to be difficult to disaffiliate from the UMC and go to the GMC because, by in large at this time, we basically the same denomination. We each love Jesus. We each affirm the creeds. We each have our faults. We each are full of sinners. We each have bishops. We each have clergy. We each can have clergy that are celibate homosexuals. Of course there are differences, GMC clergy are hired and fired by the local church and GMC bishops do not serve for life. But these past several months has shown me a very fundamental difference between the GMC and the UMC - how the leaders deal with those found to be distasteful, problematic, or apostate.
Like Rev. Bryan, I too understand the need for people to follow the call of God into a new or different community of faith. I understand that the UMC is not the only church that God had in mind. I also understand the value of the GMC and what it can do as a body. I pray and wish it well. I trust that the GMC leaders will shepherd faithfully. As one who has been on the receiving end of the GMC’s treatment of the apostate, I pray that no member of the GMC will ever be considered as such.
You Shall Have No Other Gods BEFORE Me?
For those us who do not know the first of these ten, here is a refresher from Exodus 20:
Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
Peter Rollins pointed out that the first of the 10 commandments can be read at least two ways. The first way to read this is as the people should not have any gods in the presence of the living God. It is interpreted as a directive as abolishing any other god from our lives.
However, there is another way to read this commandment: You can have other gods, but they shall not come first.
In this way the commandment suggests, “you can have other gods but they have to stand behind the living God. In this way we shall worship no other gods before the living God.”
In practice, the more we worship something the more we draw closer to that thing, just take a standard Christian worship service. The hope in this setting is that we would draw close to God in our worship. The one who worships and draws close to the living God will begin to see only God. That is how worship “works” and changes our lives.
Drawing close to that which is worshiped not only gives us the eyes to see, but it also blinds us to anything outside of the object of worship. For instance, if we worship fame and celebrity, we will begin to look at what can bring us those thing while ignoring (become blind) to the things that imped the fame and celebrity status we worship.
God knows we are driven to worship and that we often choose idols that lead us to death. And no matter how hard we try, even the most devout person will be temped by idols. God’s wisdom and cleverness shines through by saying in this commandment - “Look, I know you are not going to give up your idols, in fact you can keep all your other “gods”, they do not bother me, but do not have those gods before me. Worship me first.” And when we worship God first, when we draw close to God, then even if there are other idols we will be unable to see them and worship them.
Every parent knows this when it comes to feeding children. Parents know that kids will usually always be tempted to eat desert. Some parents might say, “before you eat desert eat your healthy dinner first and then wait ten minutes.” In this way, the child is likely to eat less desert since they are full from the meal or they have forgotten after ten minutes. Other parents make the prohibition of not eating any desert at all. And, if the Bible has taught us anything it is that the prohibition actually generates additional desire for the thing that is off limits. One might imagine we would be in a different place if God said, “Adam/Eve, you are free to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, but before you do, you must first eat from every other tree.”
Maybe since the misstep with Adam and Eve, God pivoted and said, “you shall have no other gods before me.”
Now, it is our turn to pivot our worshiping habits.
Guitar Amps Helping Us Understand the Bible
I have a friend named Lance. He also is a United Methodist pastor. He is a polymath.
Of the many gifts, graces and skills this guy has, he has the ability to play the guitar. He says he is not very good, but I cannot play the guitar and so to me it sounds like he can shred (I think that is the correct term). Anyway I was asking him a slew of questions about his new guitar when he began to talk about amplifiers, AKA “amps”.
I assumed that an amp receives the electrical signals from the guitar and then just makes those signals stronger so those signals can be fed to a speaker which allows the sound to be heard. This is not exactly what happens. Apparently (and I confirmed this with another friend who is a professional musician named Jackson) the amp is like a second part of the guitar instrument. The amp is a filter to the sound from the guitar. If I plug one the same guitar into different amps I will get a different sound. The sound is still coming from the same source (the guitar) but the sound is being altered by the different ways the different amps are created. When I heard this, I could only think of one thing,,,
The Bible.
The Bible is like the guitar. God is like the musician who uses the instrument called the Bible to communicate with humans. Each human is like a different amp. Each human receives the words and signals from the Bible. Because each human is different and is made just a little bit different from other human beings. The way that human understands and talks about the Bible is a modified by their experiences and their make up.
The amp can try really hard to stay as true to the guitar, but it just is not possible to do a one-to-one replication of the sound. The amp distorts the sound. But that does not mean the sound is bad or not reflective of the intent of the musician. In fact many musicians make the choice to play in a way knowing that sound will be distorted. Distortion of the sound is desirable because the point of the musician playing the music is harmonize with others.
God gives us the Bible and when we read the Bible we distort it, and God knows it. God’s goal is not a one to one replication. God’s goal is to make music so that the Lord of the Dance can lead us all. The Bible, like an electric guitar, cannot be heard on its own. It needs amps and speakers. But the amp cannot amplify nothing, it has to be connected to a source. Humans cannot amplify much of anything, we need a source in order to hear the music.
If you have read anything on this blog for any amount of time, you may see this metaphor and it’s connection to the United Methodist Church. Anyone who reads the Bible without an amp is not making any music. And anyone who is making music is making interpretive decisions on how that music sounds. The assumption that some people read the Bible without any interpretation are actually not reading the Bible. They are playing a guitar in a way it was not intended to be played.
No wonder so many people are turning from Christianity. We are using the Bible in a way it was not intended by God to be used. And so, let us read the Bible well. Let us play the music so that it becomes a song for the Lord of the Dance to lead us in.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.