by Bob Phillips

OK, it’s been a rough, joyous, frustrating, invigorating year for the sinner-saints of the GMC. Many experienced a relatively smooth process toward disaffiliation, seasoned with bishops and conferences who embodied grace and vision. Most experienced understandable but manageable resistance during the process, prompted by the system’s pain over separation and occasionally by plain carnal nastiness. A few ran up against bishops and conference leaders who mixed the DNA of “The Dread Pirate Roberts” with Mafia-level extortion demands and all the social graces learned from World Federation Wrestling. That was the year that was.

Lessons in style and substance beckon the GMC into its unfolding future. I offer the perspective of resolutions…remembering a recording I heard long ago of the opening message at a Catholic priest retreat in which Bishop Fulton Sheen merrily asked, “Can you recall a single resolution you ever made at any of these retreats that you actually kept?” The response was a room awash with honest laughter. Point taken and caution noted!

Resolution 1: Break the rear-view mirror.

Marlene Dietrich said, “Once you have forgiven your man, do not reheat his sins for breakfast.” If St. Paul has more authority for you, consider his words to the Philippians, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead…” There is a reason the windshield is larger than the rearview mirror. Wean quickly off UM conference snacks, goodies, and gossip. If you are out of the UMC, release negative leftovers to God and move forward. As Jesus said, “Remember Lot’s wife,” and recall his teaching about being the salt of the earth was not imitating the backward gaze of Mrs. Lot.

Resolution 2: Own up to confirmation bias.

Let those without sin cast the first blog. Denial is a spiritual snake that can strangle the GMC in its crib. For example, face it, a fair number of the 3,000 churches that have aligned with the GMC are at or near spiritual life-support status. Faith, grace, and hope can empower the believer or the local church to face difficult facts and make honest, tough, and Christ-led decisions about next steps. Let others continue to scrub “inconvenient truths” out of official news and web sites. Stopping spin in its tracks is the way to navigate within God’s will.

Resolution 3: Keep Jesus and worship-love-witness central.

Recently I was on a large zoom call where a religious leader from “another” denomination talked passionately for 20 minutes about the need of the church to pursue justice, inclusion, welcome and other virtues. At the end of his passionate talk, I realized he did the entire 20 minutes without a single reference to Jesus. Conservative folks who turn Jesus into a verbal rabbit’s foot or magic charm likewise are missing the point, the One who is THE point! Find specific, practical, and measurable ways to implement, enhance and expand the lived faith of a church in which worship, love and witness are more than a slogan or the stuff of sacred bumper stickers. “Here is how we are loving extravagantly beyond what we did last year.” “Here is a new situation in which our witness calls for a boldness never before expected by or of the church.” Let Jesus lead and buckle up.

Resolution 4: Barbecue sacred cows.

Leadership/change guru Peter Drucker would ask secular or religious organizations seeking his wisdom, “What have you stopped, cancelled or quit because it isn’t advancing your core mission?” Sometimes you do have to burn down a village (of moribund traditions) to save it as a dwelling place of dynamic spiritual life. Who is coming to Jesus or walking in deeper discipleship with Jesus because the church does X? If the response can muster no measurable facts or the replies generate breeze from all the spin, time to fire up the grill for a barbeque. And…every church has stuff that belong on the menu.

Resolution 5: Practice “Semper Gumby.”

The Marine Corps motto is “Semper Fidelis” (always faithful), to which many Marines add the real-world addition of “Semper Gumby,” always flexible. Something is going to be overlooked, pristine plans will devolve into a goat rope, numerous areas will have more churches in need of clergy than have available clergy. The infatuation and honeymoon periods will give way to a grittier, and godly, reality. Those who have entered combat know the wisdom that the first casualty always is “the plan.” Expect it, accept it, roll with it, and let faith in the risen Christ lead forward toward victory rather than into the paralysis of perfection or, worse yet, a micro-managed pastoral prissiness where everything must be “just so.” And level with folks about messiness (see #2 above)!

Resolution 6: Salt to season the food, not to poison the soil.

I return to James in the King James, “The anger of man doth not work the righteousness of God.” Hebrews warns us, “Let no root of bitterness take hold.” Anger, curved inward toward the self, curdles the milk of the soul and drain the zest and tastiness of life, even life in Christ. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, feisty daughter of Teddy, once observed of a certain politician, “He looks like he was weaned on a pickle.” The legacy church will come around to a Methodist mitosis view of reality. Spiritual cell division begets life and a future that resistance to change ultimately cannot…resist. Name-calling, impugning motives as a matter of public policy, actions clearly rooted in spite, none have a seat at the table of the redeemed. Continue to surrender the real hurt and memories of unfairness to God. “Do good” to those who seek to do not-so-good to us, and find freedom. Become salt that savors rather than poisons. What is that prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we…?” You know.

Resolution 7: Walk the ‘Wesleyan way,’ not ‘Plain Vanilla way.’

Many disaffiliated churches are one generation away from extinction as a beacon of vibrant Wesleyan evangelical Christianity. Without consistent, coordinated, and accountable connection with the Wesleyan distinctive, spiritual inertia will default into a Protestant church formed by American cultural assumptions. What is “Wesleyan?” Try a vision of the sacramental life (communion as more than a sacred snack and infant baptism as a witness of real grace) …the full ministry of women…embrace rather than fear of science or ecumenical cooperation…preaching for conversion of souls and for justice…a fully inspired and authoritative Bible and affirmation of the return of Christ without insisting on single answers derived from 19th century non-Wesleyan theology. Other churches claim to have sprung up in a community, like Athena from the head of Zeus, full grown and armored, with no theological heritage other than the Bible, from 33AD straight to the door of your local village. Wesleyan Global Methodists are part of a communion of saints that stretch through the centuries, that bless and inform and chastise as needed for faithful discipleship. We have a name that befits a blessed heritage. Claim it.

Bob Phillips

Degrees from University of Illinois, Asbury and Princeton Seminaries, University of St. Andrews

Graduate of Senior Executive Seminar on Morality, Ethics and Public Policy, Brookings Institution

Captain, Chaplain Corps, US Navy (ret)

See Bob’s work on Methodist Mitosis in Methodist Review.

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