Wesley United Methodist Church, Orange TX

Reverend Moore’s thoughts on the Separation Protocol. I too am a follower of Christ before I am United Methodist. I thank the UMC for all that it has meant to me past, present, future. This an article posted on the Wesleyan Convenant Association’s website.

I have been on social media enough in the last few days to know that the latest plan for denominational separation along theological lines is not without its detractors. I’m not among them. This agreement comes to me as a deep relief. For several years I have worked as a member of a much larger group toward some kind of resolution. I realize just how much time, energy, prayer, and even compromise – poured out on all sides of our current divide – it took to get here. I’m breathing a sigh of relief and praying for the passage of this protocol at the 2020 General Conference. Let me share why.

Without context, the headlines in the national media might seem harsh and this plan to separate may come as a surprise. But for many who have been on this journey for years, this represents a significant and hopeful step forward. Most headlines last week led with the idea that the crux of the crisis is a disagreement over our sexual ethics, teachings on marriage, and the ordination of LBTQ+ clergy. I want to emphasize that the crisis in the UM Church does not rest on just these issues. Others agree. In a recent essay accurately entitled, “The Sad, Necessary Division of the United Methodist Church” David French writes:

“The secular media will cast the divide primarily in the terms it understands—as focused on “LGBT issues” – but that’s incomplete. The true fracturing point between Mainline and Evangelical churches is over the authority and interpretation of scripture. The debate over LGBT issues is a consequence of the underlying dispute, not its primary cause… there is a strain of Protestant Christianity that views the Bible as valuable but not infallible or inerrant. Evangelical Christians, by contrast, strongly dissent from that view.”

That seems an accurate statement to me. Our divide has been forming for years over multiple issues that are very real and very deep. They strike at the fundamentals of historical Christian orthodoxy. How we interpret scripture and relate to the person and work of Jesus Christ is at the headwaters of this crisis, but it is also important to note that our inability to hold one another accountable where we disagree only exacerbates the problem. When some of our leaders are unwilling to hold us accountable to the time-honored way we make decisions at our General Conferences, the result is a kind of disorder and dysfunction that is excruciating.

The hard reality we must admit today is that while we traditionalists have won votes at General Conference, we have not really held the line of orthodoxy within the UM Church. While we are thankful for the reaffirmation of our teachings, some of our American colleagues openly resist what we have reaffirmed. With no theological or ethical accountability and no will among many bishops to establish accountability, there is no line left to hold. Most of us – from across the theological divide – recognize we can no longer go on this way.

Some would implore us to stay in the current situation and keep voting for traditional values at General Conference, as if we might eventually wear down our progressive colleagues and compel them to leave. I have zero faith in that eventuality. A colleague in my conference who serves on the board of a progressive movement within the UM Church told me without blinking an eye, “We will never leave.” And I believe her. Why would she? With accountability on these matters gone – and it is – her approach is working to a degree; it is a functional response. So, we frustrate her sincerely held views on very important matters, and in return she and colleagues in her theological camp frustrate our sincerely held beliefs. This is not a healthy dynamic for a supposedly united church.

Friends, let’s support this protocol. Let’s get ourselves out of an Egypt filled with conflict and bitterness. The protocol might not be the promised land, but once we are out of the Egypt we are living in, we traditionalists can participate with the Holy Spirit in building a vital and fruitful movement that reflects our faith and the faith of our fathers. Our ground – the ground I want to be standing on – is on the other side of separation, where we can make choices from a place of strength, and without the anarchy we live in now.

Please pray for our UM Church. These are hard days for many people. I sense the anxiety among my clergy colleagues and cannot imagine the stress our bishops must be carrying. There are so many more questions than answers for how this will play out structurally, so they have great responsibilities on their shoulders. If we can manage this well, however, our effort will be historic. We are all praying for a better witness than what we have had.

We grieve the pain of so many in the UM Church who really do not want any kind of separation. We hear the words of Jesus who said of divorce in general that Moses allowed it only because of the hardness of our hearts. “But this wasn’t so from the beginning,” he said. If you have ever been divorced, you understand that sometimes the thing we want least is also the only option left. And sometimes that thing represents hardness. We grieve the public witness of irreconcilable differences, and I grieve my own shortcomings and the things I do not even know that I do not know. It seems right to approach anything like this with deep humility, understanding the impact it can have on a lost and hurting world.

The UM Church is my tribe, and I will be sad to separate from it. But before I am a United Methodist, I am a follower of Jesus. I will preach the faith of our fathers – a faith that billions have lived and died for. I will not step back from that Gospel. It is life to me. It is life to us. It is our hope and our peace.

The Rev. Dr. Carolyn Moore is the founding and lead pastor of Mosaic Church in Evans, Georgia. She serves as the vice-chairwoman of the Wesleyan Covenant Association Council.

Reverend Keith Boyette is president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and he wrote this article. Remember that General Conference in May will be the time when decisions are made (or not) about the path forward for the United Methodist Church. Plans (More than just the latest Protocol Plan) are out there but will not be official until one of them is voted on in May.

This year, The United Methodist Church is 52 years old. Of course, the Methodist movement, currently composed of approximately 80 distinct Methodist denominations worldwide, is much older than that. The UM Church was formed from the union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1968. Methodism, as with all parts of the Christian family, has experienced its share of divisions and reunions over its more than 225-year existence as a global movement.

For 48 of its 52 years, the UM Church has known ever-increasing levels of conflict regarding the authority and interpretation of the Bible, and the church’s doctrines and ethics. The presenting debate has focused on our sexual ethics, our definition of marriage, and our ordination standards. That debate has become more heated and polarizing with each passing year.

The thought of amicable separation was first discussed at a General Conference, the quadrennial legislative gathering for the UM Church, in 2004 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the 2012 and 2016 General Conferences, leaders of various constituencies in the church met to discuss whether it was time to separate. Each time, we opted for legislative conflict over dealing directly with our irreconcilable differences. In 2016, a diverse group of leaders asked the Council of Bishops to lead the UM Church toward separation. Instead, the Council of Bishops recommended the creation of a Commission on the Way Forward with a charge to find a way to maintain institutional unity despite deep and growing conflict. The General Conference ultimately authorized the Council of Bishops to create their proposed commission.

The Commission on the Way Forward presented three plans to a special General Conference in 2019. The Connectional Conference Plan, which received virtually no support, would have created three theologically distinct conferences within the UM Church, each having a different teaching on the issues involved in the impasse. The One Church Plan would have empowered annual conferences and local churches to make their own decisions on the definition of marriage and ordination. And the Traditional Plan would have the UM Church reaffirm its historic position on ordination and marriage, and enhance accountability.

The 2019 special General Conference narrowly adopted the Traditional Plan by a vote of 53 percent. In the weeks that followed, resistance and disobedience to the order and discipline of the UM Church multiplied. Leaders in many of our annual conferences in the United States issued statements decrying the passage of the Traditional Plan and some plainly stated they would not enforce it. We are now a church bitterly divided and so this year we are set up for another contentious and harmful General Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota unless we can write a different narrative.

As the debate in the UM Church progressed, three constituencies emerged along a continuum – (1) traditionalists who have a high view of Scripture, its authority and interpretation, and who uphold the church’s historic definition of marriage and ordination standards, (2) centrists, who also claim to have a high view of Scripture, but believe competing teachings on these matters can co-exist in one church, and (3) progressives who, as a matter of justice, believe the church must liberalize its sexual ethics, it teachings on marriage, and its ordination standards.

Two significant responses resulted from the 2019 special General Conference. First, the distance between the progressive and centrist positions nearly disappeared. Many centrists have now adopted the position of the progressives. Second, prior to 2019, traditionalists were arrayed along a continuum between traditionalists who were leaning into the UM Church (those who wanted to continue to work for upholding historic Christian teachings and practices within the UM Church) and traditionalists who were leaning out of the denomination (those who saw the toxic nature of the battle, the increasing inability of church leaders to maintain good order and discipline, and all the harm it was doing to local congregations and the denomination). After the 2019 special General Conference and the ensuing resistance and disobedience, more traditionalists moved to the leaning out part of this continuum. These two responses – the coalescing of centrists and progressives and more traditionalists now leaning out of the denomination – simply reemphasized the deep fissure within the church.

The mediated negotiations began in this environment. Bishop John Yambasu from the Sierra Leone Episcopal Area in Africa and Bishop Christian Alsted from the Nordic-Baltic Episcopal in Europe invited traditionalist (myself included), centrist, and progressive leaders to participate in a conversation aimed at resolving our church’s decades long dispute. Traditionalist leaders participated because of our desire to end the conflict and create a healthier and more hopeful future for traditional laity, clergy, and churches.

For the first time, the mediated negotiation brought together leaders of every major advocacy group associated with the constituencies involved in the conflict plus bishops (eventually including Bishop Ken Carter of the Florida Episcopal Area and president of the Council of Bishops and Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey of the Louisiana Episcopal Area and the council’s president-elect). International leaders (three additional bishops and one clergyperson) also joined as the negotiations continued. And very importantly, Kenneth Feinberg, the internationally renowned attorney, offered his services to facilitate the negotiations. Eventually, after several sessions, a group of 16 participants arrived at a comprehensive agreement called the “Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace through Separation,” a proposal we all hope will end the conflict in the UM Church. A FAQ was also prepared by the group.

Some have justifiably asked, “Why are the traditionalists the ones tasked with creating a new Methodist church, while progressives and centrists continue as the post-separation United Methodist Church?” The answer is simply, “Progressives and centrists are not willing to leave the UM Church.” They will not do so voluntarily and the process of forcing them to leave would require numerous church trials that would distract from the church’s mission, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, ruin the church’s reputation, and all with no assurance of producing the intended outcome. Progressives and centrists are prepared to remain in the UM Church even if the conflict escalates. Traditionalists could of course dig in their heels and say, “We are not leaving either,” but to what end? It would simply perpetuate a fight that now threatens the health and vitality of local churches and the denomination’s very existence. Thus, if we traditionalists truly want this conflict to end, then we are the ones who have to separate.

The protocol agreement announced on Friday, January 3, is not a perfect document. Nothing in the document has exactly the terms I would have chosen if I had been the sole author. And of course, the document is not exactly what the progressives and centrists wanted either. The entire document reflects significant compromises made by all parties to reach an agreement which each of the signatories have committed to support despite painful compromises. For the first time in this long, torturous journey, all of the constituencies have agreed to the terms of a separation. We can argue over a specific provision here or there, and to be sure we did argue about many things. In fact, we argued for nine, long contentious days. People can of course critique the results, but they cannot deny that for the first time a plan has been proposed and endorsed by centrists, progressives, and traditionalists — with the support of prominent episcopal leaders from Africa, Eurasia, the Philippines, and the U.S – that would end our long and now destructive conflict.

The most important part of the protocol — by far in my estimation – is that every local church that decides to join a new Methodist denomination could do so with the full ownership of their buildings, real estate, and assets free of the UM Church’s trust clause. If you do not understand the value of that provision, then I encourage you to talk to traditionalists who were formerly part of The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the Presbyterian Church USA. They will explain to you the trauma of spending tens of thousands of dollars litigating for their property and assets only to lose them in the end.

I will have more to write about the “Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace through Separation,” but for now, each and everyone has a choice to make. We can choose further conflict and uncertainty, or we can support a plan that frees us to be the church God desires. For now, I appreciate your prayers, the many messages of encouragement, and even the messages that have challenged the protocol and my efforts on your behalf. I am praying for all of us as we move toward General Conference 2020.

The Rev. Keith Boyette is president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and an elder in the Virginia Conference of The United Methodist Church.

• Isaiah 42:1-9  •
• Psalm 29  •
• Acts 10:34-43  •
• Matthew 3:13-17

• Jeremiah 31:7-14 or Sirach 24:1-12  •
• Psalm 147:12-20 or Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21  •
• Ephesians 1:3-14  •
• John 1:(1-9), 10-18

Happy New Year! God’s Blessings to all. Staying in His word will give each and every one of us strength to hold fast to His teachings and will allow each of us to be a witness to His love for all.

• Ecclesiastes 3:1-13  •
• Psalm 8  •
• Revelation 21:1-6a  •
• Matthew 25:31-46

Happy New Year to all. May God Bless You and yours throughout this New Year.

• Isaiah 9:2-7  •
• Psalm 96  •
• Titus 2:11-14  •
• Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)

• Isaiah 7:10-16  •
• Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19  •
• Romans 1:1-7  •
• Matthew 1:18-25

• Isaiah 11:1-10  •
• Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19  •
• Romans 15:4-13  •
• Matthew 3:1-12