Tag: Global Methodist Church

Unity in What?

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 4 Comments

Acts 9:31 (NLT)

The church then had peace throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, and it became stronger as the believers lived in the fear of the Lord. And with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it also grew in numbers.

By Chuck Griffin

I have been in professional ministry 20 years this year, including my time as a licensed pastor while in seminary. I keep wondering what it must feel like to experience a church at peace.

The ridiculously named United Methodist Church is in great turmoil, of course, having argued over scriptural authority for decades now. Yes, I know, liberals describe the dispute as being about the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the ritualizing of same-sex marriage. The deeper problem, however, is that a significant part of the UMC does not treat the Holy Bible as the primary rule and authority for faith, morals and service.

If you don’t think there’s an underlying doctrinal problem, just watch how our denominational divide will broaden in the coming months as the national debate over abortion grows.

A flimsy “unity” bandage offered by progressives and institutionalists is supposed to bring healing. They apply it with assertions that we are better together than apart. Their message begs a question, however: Unity in what?

As best as I can tell, the answer is unity in the preservation of an institution that began shrinking in this country from the moment it formed. This shallow call for unity comes largely from those who benefit financially from the institution’s ongoing existence: its administrators, the pastors of large churches lacking sound doctrinal moorings, and liberals desperate to maintain their financial connections to conservatives’ more dedicated giving commitments.

I saw deep, true unity last Friday and Saturday as the Wesleyan Covenant Association held important annual meetings near Indianapolis. Despite the large numbers of people involved, the work was handled seriously but swiftly, and the worship was driven by a Constant Joyous Presence.

All that happened for a simple reason. We had unity in our understanding of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, an understanding derived from that primary rule and authority for faith, morals and service I mentioned earlier. You see, when conservative Methodists are together, they can say words like “resurrection” and “Jesus Christ is Lord” and know no one is off to the side redefining core Christian concepts to suit a personal agenda.

It was, I think, a taste of what is to come in the Global Methodist Church, which the WCA has helped establish. We will have earnest debates about polity and procedures in the GMC, of course, but we will have an advantage. We will all be working from the same doctrinal foundation, rooted in fear of the Lord—not cringing fear, but heartfelt awe and humility naturally experienced in the presence of one so holy, powerful and loving.

I so wish the path to the GMC could be easy for traditional Methodist churches. It appears less and less likely that it will be, with bureaucracy and worldly stratagems filling the hearts of those who could make it easy. I wonder if they remember what it was like to be young men and women who went to seminary because they were so overwhelmed by God’s incredible life-giving grace.

As traditional Methodists, we have some difficult decisions to make in the next few weeks. Do not despair, though. Trusting in the Bible’s promises, we will be encouraged by the Holy Spirit. And one way or another, we will inhabit a new expression of Methodism, one at peace with itself and ready to engage with a broken world.

Dear Lord, may the Holy Spirit guide us moment by moment, and may we all remember those first hours where we followed you as Savior, receiving your grace and submitting to you without concern for money or position in this world. Amen.

Seeing the Dawn

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

By Chuck Griffin

Today is a special day. First and foremost, it is the third Sunday in this wonderful season of Easter.

The lectionary gospel reading for today is actually my favorite Bible story. Found in John 21:1-19, I will be preaching on it this morning, as will many of my colleagues, I am sure.

It is a story of redemption and renewal, and it also is a reminder that as we follow Jesus Christ, we may encounter hard times. Christ meets us where we are, however, and bathed in His power, we build on each other’s works until that day when we stand before our Savior.

If you are reading this before worship and you’re not sure whether you’re going, get up and go. Immerse yourself in what you should be offered today and then offer yourselves back to the Lord.

Oh, and by the way, as of today, the Global Methodist Church is now an official denomination. We do not yet know how many hoops we must jump through to get there, but I know a lot of us are ready to get jumping.

We will figure it out, and as we do so, let’s cling tightly to the peace the resurrected Christ offers us.

On a Sunday Morning Sidewalk

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 1 Comment

Matthew 28:16-20 (NRSV)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

By Chuck Griffin

As we make our way through Holy Week, I’m struck by how often I’ve returned to a theme in my preaching during Lent. I have hoped that we are all reflecting on how well we fulfill the Great Commission, that basic duty all Christians have.

It’s always important that we find winsome ways to tell people about Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Every new generation needs to hear this truth from a previous generation. The task seems especially relevant now, as we begin to consider how a post-pandemic Christian life should look.

Most of the folks who read these LifeTalk devotions on Methodist Life are traditional Methodists, and right now, these people are probably at least a little interested in a big change that is coming, the launch of a new Methodist denomination that will adhere to traditional Christian doctrines. The preservation of these basic Christian concepts is important.

I will make a prediction, however. If we don’t resume fulfilling the Great Commission in a powerful way, a new denomination will prove to be irrelevant! All it does is give us a solid foundation as we begin to fix our biggest problem, which is the unwillingness of most American Christians to find ways to share their faith with others. A huge shift in our attitudes still has to occur.

It is my sense that a lot of us simply don’t know where to start. Having existed with Christianity as our cultural baseline for so long, even elderly Christians have lived most of their lives without having to think much about what it means to share the gospel—to evangelize. Up into the late 20th century, you could build a church building, and people tended to come. Talking about Jesus Christ as Savior was the province of the preacher and a few talented Sunday school teachers.

I want to offer Christians a simple target audience for our message of love and hope. These people are unlikely to enter our buildings on their own. But they are lost, spiritually crushed and confused, and thanks to God’s unrelenting grace, they are beginning to sense they need a change.

We can find them in all sorts of places. It helps to have a guide to go by, however, a way to imagine them so they are easier to see when we are out in the world. I think I’ve found such a guide in an old song.

Back in the late 1960s, Kris Kristofferson wrote a song called “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” A lot of people have recorded it over the years, but Johnny Cash took it to No. 1 in 1970, winning the Country Music Association’s award for Song of the Year.

I’ll simply offer you a chance to listen to it:

It’s raw, of course, and in it I hear the cry of a person who feels the stirring of a vague memory of what is righteous, along with a poorly understood desire to return to it. In a sermon a few weeks ago, I compared the moment to the pigpen revelation the wayward boy has in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Hurting people today may be in superficially different situations than they were in 1970, but I’m guessing their unspoken desire for caring people to come out on the sidewalk and lead them home hasn’t changed.

Let’s learn to be those caring people again.

Lord, as we pray so often, give us eyes to see and ears to hear. We also could use a dose of courage, the kind that allows us to leave our comfortable circles and go to the places where we can offer hope to those in need. Amen.

Scripturally Gentle

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 1 Comment

Hebrews 10:10-18 (NRSV)

By Chuck Griffin

As Christians, we’re always trying to fully absorb the idea that God came among us in flesh to save us from the deadly power of sin.

With the Christmas season drawing near, I also couldn’t help but think of the humble birth of our Savior, cradled and softly placed in a feeding trough as his first bed. There is so much tenderness in that scene, a moment of beauty in the midst of what too often is a horror story, the ongoing story of people disconnected from God.

As traditional Christians, we so want to focus on the beauty of salvation, but we simultaneously want to be vigilant against the damage sin has wrought and continues to cause. The world has trouble understanding the nuanced message we offer; even followers of Christ sometimes struggle with how to offer that message.

At the extreme edges of our faith, some want to ignore the danger of sin, while others legalistically limit the possibilities of grace. Both edges can at times exhibit a surprising amount of anger.

To be successful in our basic mission, traditionalists need to carry with them an attitude rooted in how God is at work in the world. A phrase popped into my head recently: Scripturally gentle. Like Jesus, we need to be scripturally gentle, openly discussing the terrible danger of sin while preaching the power of grace.

It is not judgmental to share with others the warnings God has given us about certain behaviors. Those biblical revelations from God about what counts as sin need to be declared for all to hear. These should be gentle declarations, however, tempered constantly with the Good News that God offers redemption from sin through Jesus Christ.

Jesus gives us great examples of how to live as scripturally gentle people. One of my favorites is in John 8:3-11, the story of the woman caught in adultery and brought before Jesus. In short, there is sin present in the community, and the legalists want to use the situation as a harsh test. Jesus reminds those present that they all are in need of grace, and the woman’s would-be executioners drift away. Jesus then says to the rescued sinner, “Go your own way, and from now on do not sin again,” pointing her toward a process Methodists call sanctification.

The traditional Methodism I discovered and fell in love with as a young adult has long been filled with scripturally gentle people, setting it apart as a movement within the Kingdom of God. This middle way will continue, even if it has to happen under a new denominational name.

We offer the world an attractive, biblical way to live in faith, and God will bless this approach until the day we see Christ in full.

Lord, thank you for guidance and grace. May the two work hand-in-hand in our lives so we can become holy responses to your great gift of eternal life. Amen.

Essentials for Success

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 4 Comments

During this Sunday’s sermon, we will return to the theme of the Lord as shepherd, probably most familiar to us in Psalm 23. The sermon will be available on Holston View United Methodist Church’s website.

Today’s preparatory text:

Mark 6:34 (NLT)—Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.

By Chuck Griffin

When I first established the Methodist Life website, I had two basic intertwined purposes. One was to provide Wesleyan meditations through the “Life Talk” blog, and the other was to create a space for basic small group information. Both, I hoped, would encourage deeper, more communal discipleship.

The Rev. ‘Debo Onabanjo’s Monday LifeTalk contribution, combined with my preparatory work for this Sunday’s sermon, caused me to think about the basics of living as Methodists once again. Most of us are aware there are big changes coming—in a little over a year, we hope to see the activation of a denomination firm in its support of traditional Methodist principles.

As we consider our verse from Mark today, I want to reassert something, a forecast that frankly has annoyed or perplexed at least a few of my fellow conservative Methodists. This impending division, and all the strife surrounding it, will prove useless if we do not become a different kind of church than the UMC currently represents.

It is not enough to say, “We are traditional,” and then think everything is fixed once we’re operating under a new name and logo. Like the excited but confused crowd waiting for Jesus’ boat to arrive, we have to relearn how to hear the one true shepherd’s voice and function as a unified flock.

Early Methodists were good at this. First, they took the Holy Bible seriously, intelligently approaching it as the inspired word of God. They let it guide them in their understanding of the earliest church doctrines, and then they did their best to live their lives according to those principles. In particular, they met in small groups, holding each other accountable regarding their regular engagement with God and their pursuit of holiness.

Let’s remember that the current United Methodist Church already is traditional—on paper. If we were still living as people of God’s word, bound tightly in communal accountability, no changes would be required to our Book of Discipline. I believe we would be a force against the creeping secularism infecting parts of the global church today.

In a new denomination, we still can be such a force, but we who call ourselves traditional Methodists have to understand that most of us fail to live according to the Methodist model, at least in America. (We have much to learn from our more communal brothers and sisters in places like Africa and Asia.)

How many of us are truly immersed in God’s word, treating the revelations there as a life-or-death matter? How many of us find ourselves committed to a properly organized Christian small group, one determined to reach lost sheep and grow its members into reflections of Jesus Christ’s glory?

Restless sheep, gather into flocks to listen to the shepherd’s voice. Listen intently, as Christ still has great compassion for us. He will teach and guide us, and we will move as one.

Lord, as you do new works through the movement called Methodism, keep us rooted in your very biblical truths about community and holiness. Amen.

Important News Item

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

I’m very excited to share some news with LifeTalk readers this morning. The name and look for a new traditional Methodist denomination has been announced.

The news release can be found here. The name of the denomination, not yet activated, is the Global Methodist Church, and here is its very Trinitarian logo:

As the news release makes clear, the denomination is not active until the United Methodist Church holds a General Conference and approves formal separation. It also could become active if a current agreement outlining the details of separation loses support of the progressives and centrists who worked with traditionalists who crafted it.

Because of the pandemic, the General Conference that was to be held in 2020 has now been moved to 2022.

Let’s be in prayer as this well-developed effort continues to take shape.