Personal Remarks and Action on the United Methodist General Conference in Charlotte, 2024

I committed to becoming a United Methodist at Saint Andrew By-The-Sea UMC on Hilton Head Island, SC in the year 2010 after having been a member for a year and realizing I was called to ministry as an Elder in the general church. Having been reared in the Assemblies of God, I had Wesleyan DNA but had never read John Wesley’s sermons, writings, or notes; so I began to read and realized I am a Methodist having both the rational and enthusiast impulses (including the more charismatic leanings that spilled over into the Pentecostal movement). Because the AOG did not engender nor necessarily encourage higher academic pursuits at the local church level, Methodism gave me a place and I backed up historically for personal and communal ecclesial commitments after careful study and prayer.

In the differences and through Bible study, I shifted from my inherited believer only baptism towards baptism of infants realizing that the book of Acts contains accounts of whole households baptized together and read the church fathers commitment to this particular form of God’s prevenient grace. I fell in love with evangelism seeing God reaching out to all people in all places at all times. Methodism awoke that impulse within me and I am thankful. I also shifted from a congregational form of polity to episcopal (supervisory) form of church governance and that was a natural move. I have always felt that accountability and a line of command is good when done not from a place of power but from a system of equals seeking to be saints but for those who had extraordinary wisdom, those seeking that wisdom and experience could rely on the District Superintendents and in a more distant but important way, the Bishop.

The other components of my Christian identity did not need to shift at all because at the heart of John and Charles Wesley’s movement was the central core of spreading “Scriptural Holiness across the land.” As long as the scriptures (containing all that we need for salvation) were upheld as the benchmark, and there containing the revelation of God within, the discernment of communal discipline would be sound. In reading the Book of Discipline of 2008, I read a good document and I agreed by it to abide and teach. I learned Methodist History, Polity, and Theology and fell in love with God more deeply through an intensive five years of ordination (I had already received my Masters of Divinity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, so my journey to ordination duration was cut in half). Working through District and Conference Board of Ordained Ministry, I soon found that my choice for online Methodist education was looked down on by many (Asbury Theological Seminary) and there were barbs that highlighted to me there was discord in the body. I’ve learned since despite my naiveté that all bodies have discord of some sort but it is a matter of how much that makes all the difference. The United Methodist Church I was joining was embroiled in a 50 year long battle over human sexuality and the traditional view of marriage, sexuality, and ordination. There was a status quo with progressive views held but hush hush in the more traditional South Carolina Conference. My eyes were opened and I had to dig deep to understand the history of why it was such a large issue.

Many who have lived in the politics of the United Methodist world know all the issues and history of these battles that would come to a head at each General Conference. My first General Conference was the 2012 and then I prayed over the 2016 GC. The disfunction over these issues was increasing and disobedience to the discipline was increasing with visibility and national reporting. I had folks coming to me to ask my opinion and I honestly spoke about where I stand as a newly minted United Methodist minister, having been made a Provisional Elder in 2015 and having been granted full ordination in 2017 by the hands and prayer of Bishop Jonathan L. Holston of the South Carolina Annual Conference (I am still proud that I made it through the fires of ordination by the way – it was intense and refining as it should be). In discerning the Holy Scriptures and serving a new charge in Ridgeville with three churches, we held town halls and I explained where I stood as pastor and where The United Methodist Church stood. I really didn’t expect that The United Methodist Church would bifurcate and the now called “Traditionalists” would leave to form the Global Methodist Church on May 1, 2022 two years ago. I felt that the traditional scriptural teachings on marriage and human sexuality would be debated, disobeyed, but the Discipline would stand and I would be able to teach with proper order. Others in the congregations disagreed with me and their skepticism has been proven right. That charge has since left The United Methodist Church and is now united with The Global Methodist Church with the pastor that followed me when our Bishop moved me to North Charleston UMC in 2021.

I’ve now spent three wonderful and good challenging years as the pastor of North Charleston United Methodist Church. This church lives into some of the best values of following Christ and their concern for the community has allowed me to be an evangelistic preacher. We’ve grown the church together and solidified the leadership and the facilities have been renovated in an ongoing process that took some grit and fortitude. God has worked through our mutual love for each other and those who live in our community. In these years I’ve known that about 1/3 of the congregation disagrees respectfully with my traditional teachings on marriage and human sexuality. I love them regardless. I know that about 1/3 of the church is still working out their views on all these things. Many aren’t at a place where they want to make definitive statements and I’ve felt that I’ve been able to speak into that space. Then we have about 1/3 of the congregation that has been in alignment with me and I’ve comforted them as we build up a local church for Jesus Christ but mourn the trajectory of the greater denomination. I’ve loved no one differently. Christ is for all of us and wants us to learn and grow into perfection together.

The part of this that is so painful now is that The United Methodist Church at the 2024 (delayed 2020) General Conference in Charlotte has made proclamations on marriage and human sexuality that are not aligned with the revelation of God contained in the Holy Scriptures. I’ve seen pastors online celebrating that marriage can now be between “two persons” rather than one man and one woman in monogamy. I am for the rights of all people in a liberal Democracy to choose their own path and discern how they live their lives, but I also as a Christian minister (and someone formed by the tenets put forth by John Wesley himself in the making of a revival movement of Methodists), I have a scriptural mandate to tell the world and even my church when they are wrong. Jesus himself in Matthew chapter 19 affirms the Genesis account of what marriage actually is and it is given by God as a particular form. I’ve also seen well known people in the methodist world sharing that marriage in the Bible is not uniform citing examples of polygamy, incest, among others. Unfortunately these people are deceived or are purposefully deceiving others into thinking that because something is recorded in the Bible it is actually prescribed by God. We certainly do not affirm Jezebel’s actions of killing the prophets as God’s will simply because it is recorded. Those things which are described are not necessarily prescribed or given as admonishment for us to do likewise. In all accounts of polygamy or other forms of marriage described in the Bible, there are consequences. Many living in those arrangements are not bad people, but there is no “Thus sayeth the Lord” or an act of law that brings the institution into effect. As far as I have discerned from my reading and learning of the scriptures, nothing has repealed the Genesis account setting up that a man and woman leave their father and mother to be united as one for the formation of a new family and the cultivation of the earth as stewards. We ought not leave that institution or amend it according to the spirit of the times.

I realize that puts me in a minority in The United Methodist Church and perhaps in the culture of the United States as well. I am a subset of people that love and welcome all and respect the dignity and rights of all people to make their paths, but also stand and preach the Word of God in all its original intentions and prescriptions. Because this sets me at odds with the Book of Discipline, I will be making decisions accordingly in the coming months. I’ve discerned that my path is now diverging and I’ll be joining The Global Methodist Church which continues to uphold a Discipline that may not be perfect in polity (it is still a work in progress) but that the doctrines and teachings will continue to contain and maintain the boundaries for marriage and human sexuality that are still in force from the ancient days to Jesus Christ alluded to by the Apostle Paul and upheld through the millennia until this current time. I do not accept that the Holy Spirit is prompting these changes but rather the Spirit of this Age is at work in the body of Christ.

I will continue to pray for The United Methodist Church and all who continue to be nurtured within it though I cannot any longer remain in the UMC covenant (BOD) myself. I do not believe that institutions are infallible and in that I am a continual Protestant with a penchant for critical reflection on our communal commitments in society. As I walk in another direction I do not look away with bitterness or any sort of malice to those I love and have served. We can disagree and move on, though I do hope everyone will read the entire corpus of scripture, seek a posture of learning from the Holy Spirit, and discern the path forward carefully. There always are a set of elite people to set themselves up to speak for all the people. In the times of Judges there were good governors and bad governors but the phrase “people did what was right in their own eyes” developed in the phases of righteous and unrighteous judgement. We always have a choice to do what is right and we don’t always have to agree with those who govern us. In my case, as a minister of the Gospel, I have a higher commitment and responsibility and so I cannot uphold the Discipline as it will now be printed with a slew of items (marriage, relativity of truth to pastor/church, avenues of abortion, among others). I painfully submit that I cannot continue with this body.

To those who spoke into my life and formed me who walk a different way, I pray for God to guide and direct you. I do hope someday the rift will be mended. God in His infinite mercy sees farther than we can during our short lives. To God be the glory, forever and ever. Amen.