(photo by J.B. Forbes)

It was a very painful day. Some of us agreed that it felt like there was a spirit of death in the place, no matter where people stood in their convictions. And I felt complicit in it.

The day started with worship, during which we prayed words together that ushered me into a deeper conceptualization of the faith by which I long to walk:

Faith can be cloistered, an in-house debate
An object to study, a reason to hate
Faith can be closets with things put away
A good bit of talking with nothing to say

But when faith is a lifetime instead of a day
A constant rebirth, not a token to pay
If faith is the worldview beyond the decree
Then nothing’s outside what the faithful can see
No, nothing’s outside what the faithful can see

As we offered those words in unison, it was a moment of personal repentance for me, an opportunity to carry to the cross my tendency to reduce discipleship to a matter of debate—a fresh chance to lay at Jesus’ feet my “good bit of talking with nothing to say.” I quietly prayed that this Christ-follower (and Christ’s church) would become more passionate about seeing faith as a lifetime journey instead of an episodic paying of a spiritual token.

The General Conference spent the entire day engaging in its work as a LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE. This requires just a moment of procedural explanation. In the work of a more typical General Conference, the delegates are divided into several smaller legislative committees. Each one of these smaller committees is assigned a variety of petitions categorized under a particular ministry area (Church and Society; Higher Education; Faith and Order; Discipleship; Financial Administration; Global Ministries; General Administration; Local Church; Superintendency; etc.) The purpose of each legislative committee in a typical General Conference is to review and refine the legislation assigned to it and then to make a recommendation to the entire General Conference which would then take final action on the legislation.

In this special called session of the General Conference, since all of the legislation is somehow related to deliberation about the denomination’s Way Forward, the decision was made to have just one legislative committee to which all of the delegates would be assigned. In other words, the plan was for the entire General Conference to become a legislative committee for a designated period of time, so that all of the delegates could work on refining the legislation and then vote on what legislative recommendations to carry into the plenary session.

Today, the General Conference engaged in its work as a legislative committee, addressing all of the legislation entrusted to its care. The deliberation and debate were frequently difficult and, at times, excruciatingly painful. The delegates, some with extraordinary vulnerability, all with passionate conviction, shared their stories, their hopes, their fears, and their perspectives, all for the purpose of determining legislative recommendations that will demand final action at tomorrow’s plenary session.

Here is where it gets painful.

As a legislative committee, delegates ultimately took the following actions:

• Supported the Traditional Plan—meaning that the Traditional Plan (which both maintains and intensifies the denomination’s current ban on same sex weddings and ordination) will come to tomorrow’s plenary session for final vote
• Opposed the One Church Plan, the Connectional Conference Plan, and the Simple Plan, all of which would have removed the Discipline’s current language related to homosexuality and created safe space for a wide variety of convictions within the denomination  (There is a chance that the One Church Plan might find its way into tomorrow’s plenary session, but this will require the approval of a minority report, which is an uphill battle in this case.)
• Supported two disaffiliation proposals which would institute a process by which United Methodist churches could leave the denomination with their property
• Requested a ruling from United Methodism’s Judicial Council on the constitutionality of the Traditional Plan (about which delegates should receive information tomorrow)

What am I able to say about all of this by way of personal reflection? Not much at this point. I am weary and burdened—even broken—tonight.

Many traditionalist United Methodists view today’s legislative actions as a necessary preservation of what they believe to be a timeless Biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality. (I am praying, however, that their hearts will not permit them to rejoice, given the devastation that others in the denomination are experiencing.)

I also realize that many people in the United Methodist portion of the body of Christ are weeping tonight. Weeping because they no longer know what their place is in the church. Weeping because they feel isolated, excluded, abandoned, even demonized. Weeping because they believe that Jesus is walking with them but that his church isn’t.

All evening long, I have been reaching out to people in my life who most likely experienced today’s legislative actions as something hurtful. I encourage you to be attentive to those same people in your life. They are there, after all, probably somewhere nearby, hurting and uncertain, wondering if you see them—really see them—and wondering if you really care.

I am not inviting debate with this post (since there has been enough of that already). I guess more than anything else, I am inviting your desperate prayer for the United Methodist tribe. Irrespective of your theological stance, allow yourself to be heartsick, tearful, and undone by the anguish of a church that is fractured but hopeful; broken but beautiful; sinful but messily and awkwardly sanctified.

(photo by Paul Jeffrey, United Methodist News Service)

Sunday morning worship at General Conference today was richly evocative and unsettlingly thought-provoking. Bishop Kenneth Carter, President of the Council of Bishops, preached in a manner that built a creative bridge between the Biblical imagery of transformation and the present challenges facing United Methodism. Bishop Carter began the sermon in this fashion:

If you take a moment to look around the room, it will become clear to you very quickly that your story is not the only story…The good news is that God has a story too. It is the story of a God who salvages what we have discarded and redeems what we have labeled unclean…God’s story is about creation.

Bishop Carter went on to share his personal memories of how the churches that he served became contexts of reconciliation that bore witness to God’s ability to create astonishing unity amid stark diversity:

Some of the most conservative and progressive people I have ever known occupied the churches I served as a pastor. They sang in the choir together. They cared for the homeless together. They served on committees and studied the Bible together…And when they disagreed on the interpretation of Scripture (imagine that!), they looked for the heart of the person with whom they disagreed, reminded themselves of their shared dependency upon the saving grace of Jesus, and stayed together…Can God do this again? Can God abolish the dividing wall between two communities? Could these be three days during which Jesus might resurrect us and lead us into new life?

The cynic (and I can be one of those if I am not careful) might conclude that Bishop Carter was simply priming the pump for a conversation about the One Church Plan, which is the “Way Forward” plan endorsed by the Council of Bishops. But I experienced the sermon as something much deeper than a homiletical argument for a denominational plan. The sermon spoke a Biblical truth into my consciousness that I desperately needed to hear this morning—that the scandalous grace of Jesus has a way of keeping people together and connecting hearts across a variety of divides.

Bishop Christian Alsted, who serves as Bishop of the Nordic and Baltic Episcopal Area of the Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference, presided over the morning plenary. Bishop Alsted wisely and pointedly reminded us of the nature of our gathering:

This is not a football arena over the next three days [referring to the fact that we are meeting in the arena where the then-St. Louis Rams used to play]. No, for the next three days, this is Church, and we are a community shaped by the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

The rest of the morning was devoted to a presentation of the three denominational plans developed by the 32-person Commission on the Way Forward. As part of its presentation this morning, the members of the Commission reminded the delegates that the Commission’s role “was not to pick a winner or to choose a side but to explore new possibilities that magnify the United Methodist Connection.”

The three plans, already familiar to many of the people reading this post, are these:

The One Church Plan (the values of which are a generous and flexible unity, a contextuality for missional vitality, and a durable honoring of the connectional nature of United Methodism)

The Connectional Conference Plan (which is the most structurally complex of the plans but also the one that frames our future in a theology of connectionalism that envisions a “big tent” with smaller tents within it)

The Traditional Plan (which is built upon the values of unity in doctrine, consistency in practice, and an intensified accountability)

Following today’s lunch break, Bishop Hope Morgan Ward, Resident Bishop of the Raleigh Area, led the General Conference in a prioritization process, the purpose of which was to assist the General Conference in determining the order in which delegates will address the numerous legislative petitions. In this prioritization process, the 70-plus petitions were grouped based upon their content and purpose. Each “bundle” of petitions was then voted on by the delegates as being either “high priority” or “lower priority.”

The prioritization process resulted in the following “top five” legislative priorities for this General Conference:

1. Pension liability petitions from Wespath (United Methodism’s pension and benefits agency)

2. The Traditional Plan (and its related petitions)

3. A proposed disaffiliation process (i.e., a means by which to exit the denomination)

4. A second proposed disaffiliation process

5. The One Church Plan (and its related petitions)

Voices from around the Connection responded to this “top five” list in different and important ways. Some lamented the fact that a concern for unfunded pension liability, as institutionally significant as that issue might be, would top the priority list. Some celebrated the high position of the Traditional Plan, believing that this indicates a majority support for the plan’s emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy. Others lamented that the Traditional Plan was prioritized so highly, believing that its place on the list signals a continued and institutionalized injustice against the LGBTQ community. Still other voices expressed concern and sadness that two disaffiliation plans made it into the list of top five priorities.

Personally, I am uncertain of what it all means. Perhaps I am still processing and pondering the way in which the dust is settling after a long and demanding day. What is abundantly clear is that hope and heartbreak are breathing the same air at General Conference, as are traditionalists, progressives, and centrists. We are a complicated, messy, global, often-divided, and strangely beautiful tribe. I long for an authentic and durable unity that reflects a shared subordination to the Lordship of Jesus and yet remains expansive enough to avoid both theological myopia and institutional idolatry. Our corporate vision for such a thing, however, remains painfully elusive.

Having cared for the pension liability petitions this afternoon, we will turn our collective attention to the Traditional Plan tomorrow morning following worship. I anticipate the kind of extensive deliberation that ushers the delegates through the complexities of parliamentary parlance and into the vulnerable territory of differing Biblical interpretations and disparate theological convictions.

As I prepare for tomorrow, I am thanking God for the way in which this long day ended—with a time of joyful interaction and bread-breaking, shared by most of the people who are here from Western Pennsylvania (delegates and volunteers, visitors and prayer warriors). These precious souls have taught me more about faithful discipleship than they will ever be able to understand. Their voices tonight reminded me sweetly…

…that Jesus is still saving the world…

…and that our United Methodist tribe is worth the sometimes-devastating struggle.

Tonight, that is enough.

Words are flowing freely and in many directions as we move into the 2019 General Conference.

Words of hope.

Words of anger.

Words of conviction.

Words of fear.

Words of unity and separation; of solidarity and schism; of galvanization and gracious exits.

Words.

I have no more words to offer, which is perhaps best. Even my prayers at this point have become wordless sighs of intercession for a church I dearly love.

So, in this blog post, instead of prosaic words, I offer something far less practical.

A song.

It is a song about faith, at its worst and best. Perhaps more descriptively, it is a song about the transformed perspective that Jesus makes possible.

I am singing the song quietly these days, in the hidden chambers of my soul, somewhere beneath all of my words. I hope that the song becomes something like breathing for me throughout the days of General Conference, so that I will be inclined to discern more windows than walls, more rebirths than tokens.

Here is the song, feebly offered. I pray that it is an encouragement to you.

Window
(Words and music by Eric Park; Performed by Tara and Eric Park)

Faith can be nothing but a means to an end
A ticket to heaven, a creed to defend
Faith can be curtains behind which we hide
A withering tree with no forest beside

Faith can be shallow when depth is required
A bed to crawl into when souls become tired
Faith can be awkward, an out-of-tune hum
A lifeless equation that leads to no sum

But when faith is a window instead of a wall
A lens to look through, not a speech to recall
If faith is the forest instead of the tree
Then nothing’s outside what the faithful can see
No, nothing’s outside what the faithful can see

Faith can be cloistered, an in-house debate
An object to study, a reason to hate
Faith can be closets with things put away
A good bit of talking with nothing to say

But when faith is a lifetime instead of a day
A constant rebirth, not a token to pay
If faith is the worldview beyond the decree
Then nothing’s outside what the faithful can see
No, nothing’s outside what the faithful can see

Faith is assurance of things we hope for
Faith is conviction of things we can’t see
Faith is the journey our ancestors died for
Faith is the pathway to wisdom

Faith can be nothing but a weapon to wield
A rope that is fraying, a very thin shield
Faith can be strident when love is desired
A license for judgment that’s long since expired

But when faith is a window instead of a wall
A lens to look through, not a speech to recall
If faith is the forest instead of the tree
Then nothing’s outside what the faithful can see

And when faith is a lifetime instead of a day
A constant rebirth, not a token to pay
If faith is the worldview beyond the decree
Then nothing’s outside what the faithful can see
No, nothing’s outside what the faithful can see