UMC Next: Day One

The first day of UMC Next was characterized by worship, testimonies, and discussion. I am so grateful to the congregation of the Church of the Resurrection for hosting this time together, and for those throughout our connection who serve on the convening team. With only weeks to prepare, volunteers have assembled nametags, provided documents, arranged for catering, designed worship, and organized our time together. Although participants paid a $50 fee to cover some of the expenses, I know COR has provided substantial funds to make this possible, and for this I am grateful.

Just a constant reminder of the Holy Spirit present at COR!

For those who are interested in getting a sense of what is going on through selected quotes from speakers, I invite you to follow #umcnext on Twitter. (For those who are new to Twitter, you can click "latest" on the top of the screen to get the latest tweets on top if you want to check it throughout the day.)

Here are a few highlights from our first day.

The Convening Team introduced 5 priorities for our time together:

• We will not accept the Traditional Plan approved at General Conference
• We are committed to being a church of justice and inclusion for all people
• We call for the elimination of the incompatibility language and restrictions and penalties in the Discipline regarding LGBTQ persons
• We are committed to a Wesleyan vision of Christianity that passionately embraces both the evangelical and the social gospel as we seek to follow Jesus Christ
• We believe this vision is the path to a hope-filled future for the United Methodist Church

Desired outcomes for our time together, as defined by the Convening Team, are:

• To bring together a diverse group of church leaders from across the U.S. to strategize together about the future of the Methodist movement
• To respond with some urgency to the actions of the 2019 General Conference and the adoption of the Traditionalist Plan
• To develop and share strategies for resisting the enactment of the Traditional Plan and/or energize a new movement in the Wesleyan tradition
• To develop next steps for individuals, congregations, and annual conferences to take action between now and the 2020 General Conference 

Other than this, there is no pre-determined plan for moving forward. Rev. Adam Hamilton made it clear that we are not convening to hear about a plan that has already been formed, but rather to seek to engage in spirit-filled conversation and discernment to determine the best course for our denomination.

Following a time of worship and some powerful testimonies, we moved to table discussions. Work had already been done to place people at tables so each table had broad diversity. My table has 8 people. Among these (and allowing for overlapping categories) are: two African-Americans, one lay person, one local pastor who does not have a seminary degree, one gay man, one woman in a same-sex marriage, two young adults, one who works in campus ministry, one deacon who serves a church with a trans-gender senior pastor, 3 men and 5 women. Each person comes from a different part of the country, as far west as Montana and as far east as New Jersey. I think the team that organized tables did a pretty good job at achieving diversity!

We were given time to discuss our choice of three questions:

1. What renewal of the church excites you so much that you would support and work toward it? A new idea? vision? possibility? way of being? organization?
2. What do you want to continue in the next phase/expressions of Methodism?
3. What would a successful transition to the next Methodism look like for your congregation/conference/group?

With 78 tables (including 2 bishop tables), there were a large number of responses generated to these questions. We should have a summary document of these answers tomorrow. I'll try to highlight some of the comments I heard at my table and in the reporting time that followed:

• A great sense of injustice in the aftermath of GC2019, coupled with guilt that by remaining in the UMC, we are complicit in this.
• A call that the UMC has failed to keep the vows we take at membership "to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves."
• A reminder that this is not just about equality and inclusiveness for LGBTQ+ individuals, but for all who have been and still are oppressed within the UMC - including, but not limited to, people of color and women. Fighting for inclusion is not new for African Americans and women, for example.
• As Wesleyans, we are called to Do No Harm. We are doing harm, and this has to stop.
• There is a tension between a sense of great urgency and a need for individual churches to have conversations. Some churches are ready to leave now; others identify as progressive combatibilists and will need time to decide if they will stay or leave; many haven't even had the first conversation, so need to determine where they are
• We need to claim and lead with our Wesleyan roots (including: open Communion table, personal and social holiness, prevenient/justifying/sanctifying grace, and commitment to social justice), which are tied to theology, not structure 
• A call for a new Methodism; achieving a "good divorce" with the help of a mediator

I think we did a pretty good job of getting the conversation started today, and look forward to seeing where this leads us tomorrow. From what I heard at my table and in the reporting time, many people here are convinced that our denomination is broken and cannot be mended without a separation.

Of course, throughout all of this, I am always asking: What might this mean for our congregation? It is far too early for me to begin to answer that. Right now, we have an opportunity to listen to many voices who have not always had an opportunity to speak. We also have an opportunity to reflect, to pray, to ask questions, and to imagine what something different looks like. While there is a sense of urgency, there is work that must be done before we can even describe what new thing we imagine.

I want to thank all of the members of my congregation who have taken the "sugar packet" survey. We've had 110 responses so far, which is amazing! I will eventually share the results: however, I would like to have as many members as possible take the poll, first, which means that we will need at least one Sunday to invite people who don't frequently check their email to learn about it. 

Finally, I'd like to share some of the quotes I heard today that struck me as important:

• Our charge is not to do less harm; our charge is to do no harm.
• Harm is different from discomfort. The appropriate response to harm is to stop and try to repair those conditions. We need to call to the center the harm that has been done to marginalized people.
• Grace is not the same as pleasantness. Nice people are not always gracious people. Grace requires forgiveness and repentance and calls us to repair harm.
• Be mindful of whatever privilege you have, and pay attention to how much “space” you are taking up.
• Maybe, just maybe...God has something to say to us this day. Our hope is in nothing less than Jesus Christ.

And then there's this little gem:

• Clergywomen in the UMC make $0.84 for every $1.00 that clergymen make.
• This was reported by the Commission on the Status and Role of Women for 2015.
• That same year, COSROW reported that in the Central Texas Conference, clergywomen made $0.74 for every $1.00 clergymen made. (We have some amazing clergywomen leaders in our conference. Does this sound unacceptable to anybody else?)

On that note, and with great hopes for our future, good night!