by Bob Phillips
2024 was the watershed year for the Methodist mitosis that birthed the Global Methodist Church. The denomination formally came alive in May 2022. The US government, through the IRS, recognized it as a legitimate religious body for tax purposes later that year. The Department of Defense recognized it as a legitimate faith group to endorse chaplains for military service and Federal chaplaincies in early 2023, in record time for such requests. In San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2024, the Convening General Conference adopted a final version of its Book of Doctrine and Discipline, effective January 1, 2025, for the 5,000 plus GMC congregations spread throughout the world. That number will grow through the new year, inside and especially outside the United States, though nearly all as transfer growth.
The number of GMC congregations and/or membership currently exceed, in the US, those of the Free Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Church, the Evangelical Free Church, the Cooperative Baptists, the Anglican Church of North America, the Pentecostal Church of God, The Mennonite Church, the Free Will Baptists, The Presbyterian Church of America, the Christian Reformed Church, the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians, and Vineyard, among many others. For a denomination whose very existence “some” refuse to recognize, the GMC is doing a spectacularly lousy job of playing dead.
Yielding to cliché, 2025 offers ‘challenges and opportunities’ for this newest expression of Wesleyan Christianity. The challenges reflect the shadow sides of the opportunities that arise from sowing Kingdom seed with a fresh vision. Consider the following four examples.
1. Essentials
First is the opportunity/challenge of walking the line between fixed convictions and flexible opinions. The renewed and passionate commitment to a consensus evangelical Wesleyan faith is commendable and overdue. The work of the various GMC Board of Ministry members to tease out the core from the optional in the theologies of various clergy candidates will be hard but necessary ongoing work. GMC congregations have the rare opportunity to revisit and reboot their culture of faith and practice, consistent with the refreshed Wesleyan DNA of this movement.
This is not a criticism, but the fact that nearly half of disaffiliated churches opted out of any Wesleyan connection, and many went totally independent suggests theirs was a more general conservative/evangelical identity rather than a traditional faith and notion of church define by crisp historic Methodist distinctives. 2025 beckons toward revisiting the meaning of lived Wesleyan Christianity for the children of John and Charles.
The world needs this fresh and updated restatement of historic, orthodox Wesleyan Christianity. The movement embraces a biblically solid sacramental faith and worship, the full authority and inspiration of scripture, the call to conversion and Spirit-empowered discipleship (embodied in Christian Perfection and sanctification), the role of women in all levels of leadership, recovery of the passion for evangelism and, in Wesley’s words, the “saving of souls.” The world is ripe for a Wesleyan way that graciously but firmly insists on discipleship with service rather than the cheap grace cultural norm of ‘membership with benefits.’
The challenge(s)? One is finding the balance between essentials and non-essentials in GMC teaching and theological education. How will graduates of schools not on the official approved list be handled, evangelical schools like Gordon Conwell, Trinity Evangelical, and significant theological centers such as Duke or Princeton? Our fundamentalist colleagues have a simple approach: if a man (no women allowed) isn’t a graduate of Bob Jones, Liberty Baptist or a similarly ‘safe’ school, the door to service is shut. GMC leadership rightly is aware of the damage that a theologically squishy education can do to students, churches and denominational integrity. What often passed for a reasonable “Methodist middle” theological approach was in fact more of a “Methodist muddle” lacking clear convictions. Balancing this and related concerns over muddled and contradictory notions with Wesley’s “Catholic spirit” and historic openness in non-essential matters remains a work in process. Teasing out the difference between what one must believe or do from what one may believe or do will be part of the ongoing maturing of the GMC identity at individual, congregational and conference-connectional life.
2. Trust
A second opportunity/challenge is in the nurture and flourishing of trust. The UMC 2010 “Call to Action” denominational-wide study revealed a profound and endemic lack of trust among bishops, bureaucrats, clergy and laity. The issue could be expressed in terms of distrust of motives, intentions, competence, or basic beliefs. No organization, sacred of secular, can thrive in the short run nor survive in the long run with the anvil of trust deficits around its neck. Thus, when GC was pushed back to 2024, trust was the first casualty, and the Global Methodist Church was officially launched precisely because of the lack of trust as to motives and honesty. When local churches remained in the UMC with the promise that if their conscience was violated by GC2024 action, they would be permitted honorable separation, only to have that promise broken, trust was destroyed beyond the power of rationalization or excuse.
Singularly lacking in these events or the DNA of leadership was the trust-nurturing presence of honest apology. Yes, the demand for public apology can be a tool of manipulation and leverage. Yes, apologizing for the actions of dead Methodists for the unjust treatment of oppressed groups a century or more ago can be both sincere (that ‘evil dead’ Methodists did this or that) and yet painless to those living in the here-and-now, ‘virtue signaling’ both obvious and annoying. When an organization grows and affirms leadership that is willing to acknowledge missteps and mistakes, and to offer honest apology when wrong has been done, trust can flourish.
To cite a recent secular example, when former President Biden promised he would not preemptively pardon family members and then did so, trust was a casualty. When President Trump promised he would take January 6 rioters convicted and jailed for violent actions such as beating Capitol police on a case-by-case basis and then pardoned all without distinction, trust was a casualty.
The GMC must do better. Transparency in the creation of policies and setting of priorities is a must at all levels of church, conference and denominational life. The highest ethical standards must prevail at all levels of decision-making and the exercise of leadership. 2025 is the year all will know what the membership count of GMC churches really is, with total confidence that no one is ‘cooking the books’ or spinning data to overstate the case. If there is any discovery of GMC-aligned persons engaged in violence or deception (in Africa or elsewhere), such must be confronted immediately and appropriate public apology offered, together with decisive corrective action. If there are GMC local examples of unethical or unchristian words/acts aimed at any other denomination, “fess up,” fix it up, and do what is needed to restore integrity. Such responses and initiatives nurture confidence that the GMC ‘system’ is worthy of trust.
3. Reproduction
A third opportunity/challenge is to grow spiritually reproducing disciples. The fresh approach of the GMC toward Wesleyan Christian discipleship harkens back to “the recovery of lost certainties.” These were the former times where core Methodist beliefs and life disciplines were widely assumed as binding truth and guidance for any with the Methodist name. Through empowered laity, nurturing a bottom-up vision over institutional top-down fiat, the GMC culture can recover the power of a class meeting faith, the ‘inward witness’ of a religion of head and heart.
The GMC envisions a shift to a culture where leading people to the foot of the cross becomes a new norm for laity and clergy alike. When the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of a nation falls below 2.1, population ageing and decline become inevitable, with results ranging from a declining workforce to systemic loneliness and disconnection, especially within the generation that did not reproduce, confirming that what one does not sow, one will not reap. In 2023, according to UMDATA.org, it took 168 United Methodists in the US for each profession of faith, a statistic boding a bleak future. Shrinking, ageing congregations ironically are the areas of greatest statistical “growth.”
The GMC can default into a similar outcome for the US church, unless it “speaks the truth in love” to congregations that have no biblically grounded and Spirit-inspired culture of outreach to those who “know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ…”read the balance of 2 Thessalonians 1:8-10 to see how that turns out. Adopting a new name and modified structure while accepting a version of church that lacks the passion or the tools to evangelize or reproduce is a dead end, no matter how orthodox the creed. The opportunity for a multiplication-Methodism is found in the GMC call for membership that becomes increasingly synonymous with active discipleship. “Grace” and “accountability” are neither oxymorons nor enemies, but mutual enablers as one goes onto perfection, most especially moving toward perfection in love.
4. Evangelicalism vs. Fundamentalism
A fourth challenge/opportunity is presenting a vibrant evangelical Wesleyan way as an alternative to culturally defined and politically dominated fundamentalism. Sarah McCammon recently wrote,The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. She identifies numerous qualities in “evangelical” churches that turn off most younger adults and have caused many to depart the church, and often the Christian faith. Gallup and Pew pol research confirms many of her specific reasons for younger adult and ‘cradle Christians.’ However, as she ticked off the sins of the church, I realized she was not talking about evangelical Wesleyan Christianity. She was denouncing American Protestant fundamentalism and had hopelessly confused the two. For example, in the Wesleyan way science and higher education are not sworn enemies of faith, women are not denied leadership in the church, ungracious and resentful views of other believers is not a norm, and faith is not married to right-wing (or left-wing) politics. The LGBT community is not “hated,” racism is not quietly condoned, and a premillennial dispensational view of the Second Coming that numbs a passion for social justice is not on the GMC menu.
That book was a powerful reminder that many are clueless, and not just young adults, about the core beliefs and practices of Wesleyan evangelicals, which has been muddied by confusion with popular fundamentalism. If McCammon, who reports on religion for NPR news, can wildly misunderstand the differences between an historic American evangelical faith and the fundamentalist church in which she was raised, others easily can and are following her down that rabbit hole.
This is not new. The early 20th century Southern writer, Ellen Glasgow, was raised in a strong Christian faith but left the church as a young adult, commenting on her active Christian father that, “In all his life I never once saw my father commit a pleasure.” Point 2 is a reminder that the willingness to acknowledge foul-ups and amend unhealthy ways plough the ground for trust, and the GMC at all levels at various points will not live up to its ideals. That said, knowing and embracing those ideals with passion is a start. If the worship times at the Costa Rica General Conference was any hint, a lively faith in which “the joy of the Lord is our strength” beckons to a life of discipleship where holy and Christ-loving ‘pleasure’ is committed on a regular basis!
A positive statement of those Wesleyan core beliefs absolutely can gain a hearing and reach many who are distrustful of stereotyped ‘conservative’ Protestant churches. Stated winsomely and practiced faithfully, the Wesleyan evangelical way can find much open field running for connection and the conversion of a spiritually wary and jaded generation. The hunger for a loving Savior and a risen Lord runs deep. To be clear, faithful churches will take their share of the slings and arrows of outrageous innuendo, since “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). As the GMC preaches, teaches and lives a gracious and constructive Wesleyan way, the church can establish a solid beachhead to reach a jaded and skeptical generation. 2025, in short, can be a very good year for the Kingdom indeed!
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.
People Need Jesus 
Alas, in my experience pastoring churches in Texas there has been a fair amount of fundamentalism, particularly in thinking that YEC is the only Christian way to read the Bible on creation and dispensationalism the only biblical way to think of cosmic eschatology. Of course, in this part of the country many are at least half baptist to begin with, and in those circles those views predominate.