What Have We Done, and What Can We Do?
Tragically, I can’t source this; if I recall correctly, it was part of a tweet from someone involved in our denomination’s General Conference meeting currently in Portland.
It’s one of the saddest things I’ve encountered in a very long time, and yes I encounter a lot of sad things —
I love my church,
but my church doesn’t love me!
What have we done to let it get to this point, what can we do to recover?
joescheets 
I agree as a lifelong United Methodist.
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I agree as a lifelong United Methodist!
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Yup, Larry, exactly. And I believe that most of us in the UMC are looking for a solution to this situation. Join us in praying and working in that direction, and please let me know what would be helpful. Message me if you’d like. Please. And thank you in advance.
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Glad I don’t feel that way about my church! I’ve felt many years of love and support from my church. And pray that continues!
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Good, good! And let’s do keep everyone involved in our prayers, and let’s do move towards an appropriate solution.
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That is a hard statement. Sadly, I will say that I experienced it in South Carolina with the first Methodist church I attended. There was an incident where I needed my church and pastor more than ever and they turned their backs on me. The judgement was bad enough, but the desertion of the people I loved and were my only community in that awful place. God opened a window when I started church surfing and the congregation at Boone Hill United Methodist Church had welcoming arms and small groups. My small group was terrific, between the Bible study and the close community pulled me through about a dozen tragedies and illness in an eight-month period and without them I shudder to think. I do know that I told someone that I just worry, if the other church’s behavior had been directed at a new believer or someone without a bedrock under their faith, what havoc it might have caused.
It is a sad commentary, but I wonder if the temperature of hate in the world right now, in imperfect people, even imperfect Christians, isn’t transferring and infecting even out congregations.
Much of this is just me thinking out loud. Going back to my second experience, one I have been looking for since returning from South Carolina is the small group experience. What could be a boon to our Methodist congregants might be a return to John Wesley’s core of the small group emphasis. It is breeds a familiarity and intimacy that sweetens the Word and for me, my own communion with my Lord & Savior. More of that stuff I never knew I needed it when it was building.
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Like I mentioned in a private exchange yesterday, that’s absolutely horrible, Nanette. And I completely agree with you about small groups as a vital part of our Wesleyan heritage; when we lose that, we’ve lost much nourishment.
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I miss it terribly.
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I miss it terribly!!
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