BONUS BLOG: a new & improved umc even a possibility?

From John Meunier, with his graciously expressed permission —

I want to offer a thought that I realize is not popular.

The United Methodist Church is attempting — or claiming it wants to attempt — to do something that it incredibly difficult. Indeed, I’m not sure any protestant church has ever pulled it off. We say our goal is to become a vital denomination while making space for people who disagree very deeply about questions of morality and justice.

We cannot do that by accident or by fiat. It will require a kind of theological imagination that we’ve not yet been able to muster and practical peacemaking skills that we have failed to develop for the last 50 years.

The battles of 2019-2024 (and before) have been waged with all the tools of secular politics. The wonderful atmosphere everyone describes at GC 2024 came about because one side won the political war and the other side retired from the field. But the deep distrust and deep divides at the ground level and among the rank and file of United Methodists remain.

To move beyond war, we are going to need to have inspired leaders who can see and imagine a peace and unity that is unlike anything anyone in the UMC has known for their lifetimes. Unless our plan is to sink into a tepid pluralism in which everyone has their own theology and the name “United Methodism” has no meaning, we are going to need to construct an ecclesiology and a theology that a broad range of people recognize as distinctly Wesleyan and also makes room for deep disagreement over what constitutes sin and righteousness. Even describing it in this short post feels like describing an impossibility — a circle with four corners.

It is challenging for me to imagine such a church existing. Everything I know about vital organizations requires a kind of unity of vision and purpose that feels impossible to construct out of shattered fragments we have right now. Everything I understand about church renewal involves a clarity about identity that I cannot see among us right now.

To get the kind of renewal that people are talking about usually requires eliminating disagreement and dissent. We claim to want to become a church that holds disagreement in its bosom but also becomes a vital and growing force for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I can’t imagine how we can do those two things at once. We need leadership and inspiration on an order we’ve never known if we are going to do this.

The alternative to doing this hard work, of course, is some form of decline and internal warfare. This is the path of the last century. It is the way that leads to destruction.

— What say you?