The Aftermath of the United Methodist General Conference with Drew McIntyre | Episode 187

What happens when a historic denomination faces a seismic shift? Join us as Drew McIntyre, our returning Methodist guest, unpacks the significant developments from the recent United Methodist General Conference in Charlotte. We explore the groundbreaking rescinding of language that restricted LGBTQ clergy and marriages, and Drew offers keen insights into the potential impact and historical context of these changes, including the consequences of the now-expired legislation that facilitated church disaffiliation.

Amidst these sweeping changes, we tackle the structural complexities arising from the schism within the United Methodist Church and the inception of the Global Methodist Church. How might the loss of diverse voices and perspectives shape the future of both denominations? Drawing parallels to political divides, we reflect on the potential for new ideological conflicts or, conversely, the possibility for renewed missional focus.

Show Notes:

Drew's Articles at Firebrand Magazine

Theology of Black Lives Matter-Episode 165

Faith In the Comics-Episode 134

The Antifragile Church- Episode 106

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[0:00] Music.
[0:36] Hey everyone, welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested at the intersection of faith and our modern world. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. If you're someone that looks at the world with the day's news in one hand and the Bible in the other, this is the podcast for you. Now, if you want to learn more about who we are as a podcast, listen to past episodes, or donate, you can check us out at churchinmaine.org. And you can also visit us on Substack. We're at churchandmain.substack.com, where you can read related articles. You can subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app and leave a review.
[1:19] That really helps others find this podcast. So, today's topic is the aftermath of the United Methodist Church after its general conference held last April and May in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, past general conferences, which usually take place every four years, have been marked with a lot of acrimony, mostly because of a policy initiated in the early 1970s that that prohibited LGBTQ persons from becoming pastors or even getting married.
[1:58] During this year's General Conference, the ban on ordination of gay clergy, as well as that ban on marrying same-sex couples, were removed. In addition, the social principles of the United Methodist Church were revised and updated, and that included removing a 1972 statement regarding homosexuality as inconsistent with Christian teaching. Now, both of these changes were monumental. The United Methodist Church are basically the last of the mainline Protestant denominations in the United States to remove bans on LGBTQ persons in the life of the Church. Now, in the scheme of things, and also speaking from a very personal viewpoint, I think all of this is a good thing.
[2:48] But like anything in life, there are always costs to any decisions, and there are challenges facing the United Methodist Church. In fact, there are going to be challenges facing both the UMC and the Global Methodist Church. This is the new denomination that began last year, made up of former Conservative United Methodists who left prior to the 2024 General Conference.
[3:17] To talk about all of these changes and what are the results, what will be the results, I talked with frequent guest and resident Methodist, Drew McIntyre. Drew is the pastor at Grace United Methodist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. He's also one of the hosts of the God and Whiskey podcast. So in this episode, we talk about the dangers and challenges that both the United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church face in the aftermath of all of these massive changes taking place. And what the future holds for both so let's listen with this chat with Drew McIntyre.
[4:01] Music.
[4:37] Well, hey, Drew. It is good to have you back on the podcast. It's been a while. Hey, Dennis. It's good to see you. It has been a minute. I hope you're well. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. So, of course, I wanted to have you here, since you are the regular Methodist that I talk to, to talk about what happened at the United Methodist General Conference that finally happened in Charlotte in late April, early May. And so, I think first off is kind of just to talk about what happened. And I know that people have kind of referred to it as like the three R's. And I hope I'm going to get this right.
[5:17] Regionalization, revision, and rescind, or something to that extent. I've probably fallen short about that. Yeah, I think you're very close, I think.
[5:28] Yeah, that was sort of the slogan that was going around before General Conference. And I think pretty much all those things happen. So yeah, I will say now, if I'm your conception of a regular Methodist, then I'm sorry, regular is not one of them. So that's okay. But yeah, the, I mean, the, the short version in certain terms of what happened, obviously the big sort of headline piece is that the language that's been in the discipline since 1972, since the first, you know, outside of the communion conference in 68, since the first official general conference in 72, language restricting gay folks from being clergy and restricting clergy from doing weddings for gay folks has been rescinded and has been removed.
[6:20] The language around marriage has been changed to, you know, two people, to either two adults of consenting age or a man and a woman. So that's been removed.
[6:31] Of course, those were the big headline points. The other significant things that were done is we passed our side of an agreement for full communion with the Episcopal Church. church. We voted to give sacramental authority to deacons, which if you want a spicy take, I have opinions about. Oh, as you were saying that, I was like, ooh, I think I need to talk to him about that one. Yeah, we could talk about that some too. And then regionalization, which is somewhat nebulous in terms of what it means, but essentially if it passes at the annual conference level would give the United States in particular, more freedom to make decisions just for itself without having to make general conference be only about U.S. matters, as it too often is. So all that's fair game for whatever you want to take that next. Okay.
[7:27] Well, you know, I think obviously the kind of big one has been on policy regarding LGBTQ persons. How do you think that that is going to go moving forward? And, you know, with the church and all of that, and I know we'll go into a little bit more about an article that you wrote, kind of somewhat related to this and related to the schism that is happening currently. But what...
[7:59] What is your take on that? Yeah, you know, I think most of the fallouts already happened in terms of disaffiliation. You know, somewhere around 25%, I think, of a church that's disaffiliated. A large number of that have gone to join the new denomination, the GMC, the Global Methodist Church. Many remained independent or joined, a few joined some other networks or denominations. For instance, the first appointment that I served here in Western North Carolina, that church went disaffiliated and went GMC. I have a lot of friends that did, people I love and respect. So it's not a good guys, bad guys thing in my book. So I think most of that fallout's there. Now, what you did hear about is, at least anecdotally, I heard a lot of situations where clergy and or congregations in the last couple of years, when disaffiliation was on the table, they said, let's wait and see what happens at general conference before we make any decisions.
[9:04] Now, general conferences came and went. It's not clear if they're going to be able to exit at this point. Because I think a lot of the rhetoric from bishops and others has been like, we're past this now. And if you're in, you need to be all in. So if churches exit at this point, I don't think it'll be in the same terms as before, where there was a relatively gracious option for exiting with property and things like that. It may be more like the Anglican or the Episcopal split where you can leave,
[9:34] but you're not taking your property. You can go wherever you want to, but we'll see. I I think that'll vary bishop to bishop and conference to conference. Why do you think that that window has closed? Well, so there was a, there was legislation, uh, five, three, there was official legislation from the previous general conference that had allowed for that. And that, that expired first of the year. So that, Oh, okay. Initially, that window is gone. Now, it can still happen, but it's much more difficult than with that legislation was in effect. The other piece of this worth noting, just because it's an odd historical fact due to COVID, is that technically the general conference that just happened in May was the postponed 2020 general conference because of COVID, which affected all the things. So technically what we're talking about is the 2020 General Conference that was held in 2024. Yeah, it sounds like a Simpsons episode.
[10:34] Actually, this entire year feels like a whole Simpsons episode.
[10:39] So you actually wrote an article that has yet to appear, but hopefully will appear soon, in Firebrand Magazine about kind of what's been going on as this split has been happening, and what are kind of the dangers of it. I think that there has been, especially as this general General... Sorry, that's my denomination. General Conference has ended. I think especially, let's say, from the... I guess you would say from the progressive side, this has been good all around. And I think, obviously, personally, I think in some ways it has been. But there are always downsides to everything. So... Could you kind of take some time explaining your article, explaining what are the downsides to both sides as they go their separate ways? Yeah. You know, one of the things you can think about it in terms of is the law of unintended consequences, right? Any large-scale change, it's unlikely that all the outcomes from it are going to be entirely positive, right? It doesn't mean they're not going to be positive on net. that. But I think to think through what are the possible upsides and downsides of whatever change we've got going on.
[12:04] So yeah, I've drafted a piece that I think will appear in Fibrand. If not, I'll put it somewhere else. But a couple of years ago, Jonathan Haidt, who I'm a big fan of, I think we've talked about John Haidt before. I think we both like his work. You probably saw this piece. It was called Why the Last 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. Brilliant piece, you know, one of his really big Atlantic pieces. And one of the concepts he talked about in that piece was what he called structural stupidity. Um, and it was his language for what, for instance, the humanities have experienced, you know, in, in academia, where any, any field, any endeavor, any organization.
[12:45] If, if everyone on one side leaves, what you're left with is structural stupidity, right? If there's no one around, if there's not a critical mass of people that can throw in a question, that have a different perspective, then you're likely to just be repeating confirmation bias over and over again within your own little huddle. So he called that structural stupidity. So we have that on the right and the left. The more isolated you are from the other side, the more likely your institution or organization is to be structurally stupid.
[13:17] So I raised the question about this in my piece to say, you know, now that there has been this schism in the UMC, we have a new UMC and now the GMC, is there a danger of structural stupidity following that? What does it look like for, you know, a mainline denomination that is center left, you know, depending on what part of the country you're in, to now no longer have a critical mass mass of those folks among you who are really into the Bible and really into evangelism and care about doctrine and these things, I think there could be some negative consequences to that. All the people that care about old-fashioned evangelism have now left. I'm not sure that's a net gain for us. On the other hand, too, if you're the GMC, what does it mean if now the the folks who are more worried about outreach and loving neighbors and, you know, works of justice and mercy.
[14:18] What does it mean now to not have those folks among you? And so I think to me, and people can obviously disagree with this, the danger then for both groups is just becoming sort of a, you know, a baptized version of the DNC or the RNC, depending on which side you're on. And so that's kind of the question. And both of those political parties are pretty much steeped in structural stupidity these days. Yeah. I, this sounds like it's not going to relate, but I promise it does.
[14:48] There was a, it came out in the last few months on Netflix, a documentary docu-series about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
[14:56] I don't know if you watch any of that or you're familiar with it. So I would encourage, it's worth watching at least part of it. The, it was divided into three parts. the third part of which was about his kind of personal life and his political career and the one of his political career was fascinating because he was a republican governor in california who hired a democrat as his chief of staff and his whole approach was i'm going to work with democrats because i'm in a largely blue state and we're going to get things done for the people and it just seemed you know this is only what a decade ago yeah it seems so foreign to our experience right now you know i'm watching this i'm like wait a minute is is arnold like the most mature republican left in the party right now like he might be if he was if he was you know active he would be very unusual he well he'd be probably run out of town like a liz cheney or something but that's a maybe a different story but just you know how to your point about structural stupidity, how much more separate we are now than even a decade ago, politically,
[16:01] and I think that also flows into the church as well. Because I have friends on both sides of this, in the UMC and GMC.
[16:11] By and large, there's a danger, I would say, of operating out of caricatures of the other side. You know, we reduce the – you ever see the TED Talk called The Danger of a Single Story? That whole concept that we tend to have a single story about if you're an evangelical, here's all your beliefs and everything that you're about. Out if you're a liberal progressive here's you know all the you don't believe in the bible and yada yada um i think we did a lot of that for years and resulting where we're at and don't get me wrong i'm i'm one who said a while ago that i think the schism was needed and necessary.
[16:54] Um you know at a certain point but that doesn't mean it's all it's all good things from here on there there were lots of lots of reports you probably saw some of this uh after a general conference where people were talking about how the spirit was so different and it it seems so unified and it was all sunshine and care bears like well yeah because all the people that disagreed have you know depending on your perspective either been ejected or left.
[17:25] So i'm not sure we should be spiking the football on that that's not a huge victory you just you know yeah there was a church split and one side left but that doesn't mean that you won something it was yeah i i did see that and i kept thinking that all the time i'm like oh this was so wonderful the spirit is moving i'm like but the other guys are gone that that's why it was so easier it's you know i i don't know it's just it's interesting how people are going and talking And I think there's a real, a real question as to whether, you know, and I say this on my piece, hopefully this will be a time where both the GMC and the UMC, you know, without this particular fight on the table can have some missional clarity and really, you know, do some kingdom work and move forward. Yeah. What I hope doesn't happen is that we very quickly find, you know, new lines to draw and new fights to have to divide us. I hope that we instead focus on what we can get done together as opposed to just what's the next ideological conflict that we're going to have to break ourselves in half over. I don't know. We're going to see. But, yeah, there was a little bit of kumbaya, I think, that was somewhat naive. leave.
[18:43] And to my knowledge, now let me be very clear that I did not, for the first time in a while, really, I really didn't pay close, close attention to General Conference. Part of that is because since the last General Conference, I have two kids and I just have other stuff to do. I can't just watch the computer all day. It was in Charlotte, which is like an hour and a half away from me. And I meant to go there for a day or two, but I had a kid who was sick at one point. I had car issues. I just didn't make it down.
[19:12] That said, to my knowledge, there was not – I think what would have been appropriate to see and nice to see is some lament over what happened, some sense of loss. I didn't see that.
[19:29] There's also been no sense of responsibility on behalf of the leaders, anybody. You know, as a local church pastor, if a quarter to a third of my church walked out, there'd probably be some conversations that would have to happen. There'd be some inquiry. There wasn't, you know, a lot of this was, well, the tenor was like, well, the bigot's left. So now we're all good. There's no sense of ownership on the parts of leaders, to my knowledge. If you saw Will Willimon's piece in the Christian Century, that was very much kind of what I was thinking of. Oh, okay. It was just, it was all them. All right. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things that I would like to talk about because I read that piece.
[20:22] Will Willimon is interesting because he, there are sometimes his, he can say things that I totally agree with. He's totally on target.
[20:28] And sometimes I'm sitting here going, what the hell are you talking about? And the article in the Christian Century was very much, what the hell are you talking about? Because there wasn't much sadness. It was kind of more like our side won. And it was just, you know, those bad folk over on the other side that, you know, well, we don't really need them anyway. And I, now granted, I don't necessarily, wouldn't probably, if I were a Methodist, agree with that other side. But it just didn't feel very Christian. Yeah. To be honest, to be blunt. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, I went to Duke and he's very much a Dukie in various ways, still teaches there. And it's always been interesting to me how aggressive pacifists can be.
[21:23] Yeah. Yeah. You know, in that, if anything, in that piece, he was like, we let them get away too easily. This should have been, you know, much harder and much more high cost. And I really, I don't know. It's interesting. I don't want to, I think we talked about this on a previous podcast, but there's, I think Will's had an interesting trajectory from this sort of, you know, resident alien to this resident institutionalist of like, you know, everything the UMC does must be great because I put on a, uh, an Episcopal, uh, outfit. I, yeah, that was, I don't know if Will's in his like old man yelling at clouds phase days. I just didn't think there was much grace in that. No, there was just no grace. I was quite surprised and saddened by that article. Yeah, I was much more, the bishop that used to be a North Carolina conference, who's now in Kentucky, and his name's escaping me, I can picture his face.
[22:24] He got almost called out in his annual conference for being too gracious. And in their annual conference, he came out and said, you know, people have told me I'm being too gracious that I'm, you know, we're letting too many churches go that we shouldn't be doing this. And his comment was, I didn't think there was such a thing as being too gracious. And I just think that that approach is much better.
[22:50] But why do you think that there is that sense of no grace? I mean, I, I, I share this sometimes you, um, Back in the maybe 90s, especially when, and I was at that time still a Baptist, and they were going through a lot of stuff over sexuality. And sometimes the church would have a vote on this. And if it were positive, someone would almost always to a point say, now we have some healing to do. There was a concern about the body.
[23:26] And it seems like today it's more like well don't let this let the door hit you on your ass on your way out and i'm like well what happened i mean how why have we changed yeah yeah well to your point the the sort of that's the sort of pastoral work you would expect in a local church that went through a split right but it doesn't seem like there's much desire to do that at scale um which which, you know, to me, it wouldn't have been a bad idea if we began general conference with a day of, you know, prayer and fasting or something like that. I don't know. You know, I think there's a mix. I think there's a mix of some of it is folks that are, let's say, very social justice oriented. How do you want to describe that? Who they really, you know, there's a sense of righteous indignation there of, you know, the bigots left and we won. There's some of that, some of the language that, you know, people have used to describe the people that left has been troubling as someone that knows and loved a lot of those folks. So some of it is ideological in that sense. And then there's also, I think, a strong sense, even among colleagues of mine who are not, they would be, you know, progressive on sexuality, but they're not super left wing. There is this sense of like.
[24:43] Protecting the institution of, you know, these are people that were kind of, you know, attacking our, our mother, so to speak, our mother church, I guess. And anyone that would challenge that they need to be sort of, they deserve to be kind of shunted aside. So I think some of it was, was ideological. Some of it was, was institutional.
[25:03] There's a piece I keep telling people about, are you a C.S. Lewis fan? I don't know if you've talked about C.S. Lewis before.
[25:10] Yes there's a a little it's i think it's a talk he gave at a college that i just came across in the last year and blew my mind and it's called um the inner ring you've read that no look it up put a link to it in the show notes or whatever it's a it's a it's like a college talk so it's it's a fairly quick read it's not a book um it's really really strong and what he's describing in And that is the inner ring being our innate desire to be sort of in the inner circle, the inner ring of whatever organization we're a part of, right? And he says at one point that the easiest way for a good person to become a bad person is the desire to reach that inner ring, okay? OK, and it's, you know, much like Screwtape Letters or Great Divorce, what you see in that piece is just his strong sense of human psychology, you know, of how how driven we are by the things that are not good, which Lewis is so, so good about.
[26:13] But one of the things that occurred to me after reading that piece was how much of the schism that the UMC has just experienced was driven by these dynamics. What I mean by that is I know anecdotally, personal narratives of a lot of people that went in GMC, and part of their story is the inner ring never accepted me. You know, I never was able to get ordained despite going to a good seminary, despite doing good ministry. They never let me in.
[26:44] I served a large church in the conference and grew and did powerful ministries. But because I wasn't liberal, I was never recognized by the conference, right? right, stuff like that. So I think a lot of the people that were left, yes, there was theological stuff. There's also this sense of like, they knew they were not wanted or at least felt that they were not wanted for a long time. They were never able to get into that inner ring. Okay. I also think a lot of that sort of aggressive defense, that wagon circling, like, like the Willimon piece in some ways was driven by wanting to protect that inner ring, right? There's a, there's a threat. There's a threat to, to our blessed mother or whatever. There's a threat to this inner ring. And so you saw lots of people rushing out to kind of defend it. And I understand kind of both perspectives, but I do not find myself in the inner ring, nor do I find myself glad that those folks left. So I think I have some perspective on that. But read that piece by Lewis. I felt like for any church or organization, there's some powerful insights. But I thinking about it, thinking about this split through the lens of that piece, I found helpful because there's a whole lot of people who left who were just never able to to break into the UMC in a real way. You know, people I knew who were doing good ministries, but could not get ordained or would not get recognized.
[28:11] Whereas if you were the son or daughter of the right person, you were in like that. You know, one of the unspoken secrets of UMC is nepotism, but that's probably a different podcast.
[28:25] So one of the questions I have is, what do you think are some of the dangers that the global Methodist church or those that left are going to face in the near future? If, you know, we're kind of dealing with kind of the triumphalism among the UMC, what's the GMC dealing with? Yeah, I, you know, it's always dangerous to speculate because you're not, for a group that you're not part of, but I do know a lot of those folks and consider them friends still. Have they still considered me a friend? You know, I think the two best analogies for this, parallels to this, are what's been happening in the SBC and what's been happening in the ACNA.
[29:13] And in both of those, what you see is rifts over Reformed theology. In particular, that comes to a head on questions of women's ordination and biblical interpretation. So I think I say this in the piece, but that, you know, There's been an unfair assumption on the part of UMC folks that the GMC was not going to support women in ministry, and that's clearly been not true. There's significant, amazing female leaders in the GMC. What I do say in the piece is that there could be a danger of, from below, from the laity, a desire to get rid of women's ordination. You know, I could see a fundamentalist street coming up from the ground floor, as it were, or, you know, significant megachurches in the GMC that do not and will not have women in leadership because it's more, you know, it's more congregationalist in polity. So you could see that. But officially, you know, they're very strong, I think, on women's ordination.
[30:20] There's an ongoing debate in the GMC over inerrancy. There was just a piece published today by Firebrand, in Firebrand by Ken Collins, addressing this kind of question. There's been an ongoing kind of debate about that. I think that's a significant question. And I think questions over sacraments are going to be divisive because you've got a conglomeration of high church and low church folks in the GMC. Um but i think the the probably biblical inerrancy or biblical you know how do you what's her doctrine of scripture and stuff around um women's ordination aside aside from that again more from the bottom up than top down um especially given i want to say this gently you know the gmc is brand new they're kind of building the bridge as they walk across it initially at least what I've observed in North Carolina is that the standards for ordination were, the bar was pretty low initially to kind of let people in. And so you've got, I think, more of a chance in that of ideological clergy coming in of, you know, I don't know.
[31:37] I'll put it, I'll say this, This isn't so much ideological, but in my town, there's one particular large GMC church that, at least according to the Facebook post I saw a couple of days ago, is like actively teaching the rapture.
[31:54] Now, is that the official position of the GMC? I don't believe so. Is it a Wesleyan belief? Of course not. but because of their looser structure where bishops have less authority, is there going to be an ability to reign in large churches that do go off the rails in things like that and things like, you know, baptizing infants, rapture, stuff like that, that to me smells, you know, among many reasons, I'm not, I'm not GMC because in the South, sometimes the line to me between like a free will Baptist and a conservative Methodist is pretty thin. And I'm seeing some signs of that in the GMC. Now, are there in the UMC, can you go to the right places and find signs of Unitarianism? Of course. So let's be fair. It's all involved. But there's certainly dangers on, again, structural stupidity when that balance is gone. What are the dangers? There's a danger of the UMC, I think, going too far to the left and of the GMC going too far right, UMC going too far left. Who says what's too far, that's of course up for debate. But if everyone that would disagree with you is gone, I don't know where the ballast comes from, you know?
[33:19] So that kind of brings on then what is gonna, what do you think could happen, and this is probably, you're probably on more solid ground on this one, but what do you see happening in the UMC? And especially, what do you see happening, because there are still churches and people who have differing beliefs that may not be the popular one. So, what do you see moving forward? Yeah, right now there's….
[33:50] There's a lot of effort to make sure local churches and laity know that, you know, clergy can marry who they want to. No one has to marry gay folks. They don't want to. Churches don't have to host weddings for gay folks if they don't want to. You see that, especially in the South. You're seeing a lot of that, like, emphasis because they don't want to lose more churches. And it's not that it's not true. I do wonder how long that will be true for, you know, either practically or juridically. You seem like in the Episcopal Church had that rhetoric for a while, but I don't think that's really, there's been cases that have tested that. Or at a certain point, if you're not willing to, I'm not sure you're going to be welcome. Well, in the Presbyterian Church right now, there is a controversy because they're getting ready to have their General Assembly and one of their overtures that are coming up is from the Pacific Northwest, there's a lot of fear that how it's written.
[34:54] More conservative PCUSA folk may have to... Basically, when it comes to same-sex issues or issues concerning gay clergy, that they would have to toe the line. And so there is, you know, others would say, no, that's not how it's written, but it has a lot of more evangelical Presbyterians concerned. All six of them who were left? Yeah.
[35:23] Yeah. And, you know, I think there's a legitimate question there in terms of if, you know.
[35:30] You can't both say we're on the right side of history and this is the just way to approach our ministry. And if you disagree with that, it's okay, right? There's a sense in which it's not coherent to say both of those things at once. So I think it's a fair concern and also fair for, you know, if you think that's the right thing to do, fair to say, like, if you're going to be on this team now, this is what we do. And if you don't like it, you should, you know so i think that's a fair question i think you know my and i say this in the piece my hope is that having spent so much of our time and energy having this debate the last few decades in the last decade and a half in particular that now we can really refocus on on mission and discipleship and things of that nature um my fear is that we're just going to find something else to fight about we're going to have the next cause it's going to be divestment um it's going to be you know you you've talked about ministry with lgbt folks but really this legislation that we're talking about has really only been about gay and lesbian folks um there's really not been official legislation about um you know trans identity and that kind of stuff i wonder if that could be a debate that's forthcoming um because really thus far um it's just been about gay and lesbian you know couples and ordination and stuff like that i I think there was a general conference that took up something about.
[36:59] About trans questions and it actually didn't pass, but I don't think we have much of anything official on the books about that at all.
[37:06] I wonder if, you know, down the road, you're going to see challenges around, you know, polygamy, things of that nature. I think it's possible. We're living in an interesting world with that stuff right now where, you know, that's becoming more and more accepted. So I think, I think it was in the PC USA, where their next big fight was over divestment from Israel. Yes. I could see some of that on the horizon. So, you know, my hope would be back in 2012, there was a big push to restructure the church, sort of try to make it less top heavy and redirect more resources and attention to the local church. I think that's still needed because we're certainly having to live with budget cuts. because of everything that's happened. But I'm not sure... But I fear the system is still committed more to...
[38:08] The system than the mission, if that makes sense. You know, the danger of every organization is becomes committed to the, the reification of the organization rather than the mission of the organization. I hope this will be a time for us to reassess that and really take seriously. Okay. If we're going to be, you know, a mainline denomination that is trying to be both evangelical and progressive in some ways, we say we want to make disciples, but also be open to gay and lesbian folks and LGBT folks, what does that mean? Because so far, as you know, the rest of the main line, when they've attempted this, has not done well. So can we take a hard look at ourselves and say, okay, yes, we're going to be open now to gay clergy and, you know, and we want to be, we want to celebrate that. But then also, how do we still make disciples and grow churches and do ministry in 2024.
[39:02] That's where I hope we go. Yeah, I mean, I think two things. You know, one of the things, I mean, I've never been a big fan of the whole phrase, right side of history. Yeah. And for the simple reason is that it strikes of hubris. It's not, it doesn't talk about humility at all. And I think that one of the marks of a Christian should be humility. That we don't know everything. And, you know, personally for me, when I came out some 30 years ago, I had the belief that I might be wrong, but I have to rest on the grace of God on all of this. And I don't see that sense of humility. There's a kind of sense that I know I'm right. And I think it's one thing to know that you're right, but not to the point of kind of I'm therefore you're bad kind of attitude. And that to me has been troubling because I think then it doesn't allow for you to live with others who may disagree with you because then you see them as a threat. Yeah. And not as fellow Christians or even people that you can reach out to. And I say that even to those, to conservatives on the other side who.
[40:26] Can't for some reason reach out to progressives and have all of these kind of fearful view of progressives. Yeah, you know, I think the hubris piece is important. And, you know, people know when you look down on them, right? People aren't stupid. And so I should have mentioned this in terms of Fallout, but like one of the things we're seeing is that we're seeing now some entire conferences in Africa
[40:52] wanting to pull out of the denomination following general conference. So you probably saw, if your listeners didn't, the Ivory Coast Conference voted to leave. It's a million people and one vote. There's reports of others that are wanting to leave. How that will actually work, I'm not entirely sure. But we're going to be both a more diverse church and a less diverse church after this in some interesting ways.
[41:21] And I think to your point, you know, where progressives, I think need some of that humility. So to, so to conservatives, you know, because it's, it's one thing to say when I, when I read the Bible, I really can't square gay marriage with that. And this is how I read scripture and I wish it were otherwise, but that's, that's where I land. That's where I think the spirit's guided me. I know a lot of people like that, but then there's also these folks that have just, you know, have way too much caffeine and cable news. And it's like this identity for them that they have to be against this to function. Like their whole Christian identity is being afraid of drag queens or something. Like, you know, there's no humility there. It's all like, and you know this from our politics, right? Everything is either, it's all Gnostic or it's all Manichean, right? It's either pure light or pure evil. There's no like room for questions or curiosity or anything. Thing. It's you're one or the other. Um, and I, I think curiosity and humility would go a long way and in all these discussions, and maybe we'll discover some now that we're going to have to with fewer people and lower budgets.
[42:29] Hmm. So where do you see your own future kind of within the UMC and in the next few years? That's a good question. I'm at a church I love right now. Um, I'm at, I'm at a church that's absolutely phenomenal. Um, we're kind of a small downtown church that does a lot of ministry, a lot of young people, a lot of bunch of babies. Um, it's a, it's, it's an unusually young church for a, for a small church. Um, but it's also not, not an all one side church. I, when the Sunday day after general conference concluded, I said, kind of reiterating what our bishop had said about the denomination, about the conference, I said about our church, like, we're a purple church.
[43:08] We have people here that are more progressive, people here that are more conservative, and we're all going to be a family together and do ministry together. This is what our, you know, we stated our mission statement as our congregation, which is to embrace all people with God's love, to empower disciples to follow Jesus, and to engage with our neighbors as servant leaders. I said, wherever you're at, left, right, or center, that's our mission. We do have gay folks in our church and on our staff. We also have more conservative folks in our church, and we want everyone to feel welcome. And I will say that the piece you said about humility, I see that even in my more progressive folks in the congregation, because they want to be in community with everybody. Um, and same thing with my more conservative folks. So, um, I'm very happy where I am right now. I do. Um, I worry about, you know, I've always thought of myself as a centrist.
[44:04] But what is a centrist if, if the other side leaves.
[44:10] Like, are you, are you the, are you the fundamentalist in your denomination because you're a moderate? Like I'm a little bit worried about that. Mm hmm. Welcome to my world. A moderate Disciples of Christ might be secretly a fundamentalist. Yeah. A gay moderate Disciples of Christ. That makes me actually a unicorn. Right. You're gay and black, but you're the fundamentalist moving into the liberal denomination. Yeah. Yeah, so in terms of how I'll fit in the denomination in 10, 20 years, I don't know. What I've found for myself is that the more I focus on the local church, the happier I am and the better my energy is spent. Because there's one thing I've realized is that I can't control a whole lot of what happens above me. No one cares. And that's OK. You know, I have my other interests and things of that nature. I suspect there will still be a place there will still be a need in our congregations for someone that's not too far left or too far right.
[45:22] Someone that, can really relate well to people on the left and the right, which I do. I think, you know, I was at my first church, which is now GMC for seven years. I've been at this church. I'll be starting my ninth year next month. So I, I, I get along with everyone, try to love everyone. And I think, I think, I think I'll be okay in that regards, in terms of local church. I don't think I'll I don't think I'm gonna get anyone's list in terms of, you know, denomination of leadership, but that's okay. I'm happy with that. I'd rather, you know, I have academic interests and things of that nature. I do have, and maybe this will be a separate conversation whenever it, I have a piece in the most recent Wesleyan Theological Journal based on a paper I gave at the conference last year about Methodist identity. And I try to make the case, drawing on Moon Knight. Are you a Moon Knight fan? You know, the Marvel character? I'm not, but I think I remember hearing you talking about this. Yeah, yeah. So I made a case using Moon Knight.
[46:24] To talk about Methodist identity as something like through the lens of dissociative identity disorder, what used to be called multiple personalities, trying to make a, trying to give an image for how to think about all the different ways, all the different strands of Methodism, all the different visions of Methodism. So this question of Methodist identity is kind of big, I guess for me right now. And how do we, how do we have a spacious, you know, vision of that, but also have some boundaries to that. I think it's tough. I think the danger is either a too narrow definition or, you know, as one of my mentors once said, you know, when people talk about big tents, the only thing that belongs in a big tent is a circus. If you don't have any boundaries, it's not going to stay up. So, so I have, there's some interesting question marks, marks there in all of our traditions. You know, there are different visions of what that is. And what is it? Alistair McIntyre said that a tradition is a long-term argument over time.
[47:28] Uh, so that's, that's ongoing in my world as it is, as it is yours. Um, but I'm, I'm hopeful that with this argument, you know, I do think what's different about the UMC as opposed to the rest of the mainline denominations is that at our, at our core Methodism, you know, has always been evangelical going back to John Wesley. I know that's a loaded term for people, but in the 18th century, 19th century British evangelicals, British sense of the word evangelical.
[48:03] So there's DNA there that we can draw on, but people have to be able to see evangelical as something more than, you know, doing good deeds in the world. Like at the end of the day, we want people to experience the reign of God and know Jesus Christ as Lord. If that's not part of your vision of being evangelical, you're probably not actually evangelical.
[48:29] But we have some possibilities there. So we'll see. You know, what's the term? Was it Franklin said, a democracy if you can keep it? You know, we have our new denomination now. Let's see if we can keep it. We'll see. All right. Well, Drew, if people want to follow you, where can they find you? Yeah, you can find me on Facebook. You can find me on Twitter, at Drew B. McIntyre on Twitter. And look for my writing on Firebrand in particular. That's where I do a lot of my popular writing nowadays. If you want to look me up, I've got a couple of journal articles in the Wesleyan Theological Journal. And yeah, find me. I'm not the professional wrestler. There is a professional wrestler whose name is spelled the same way, who's Scottish. I like to say that he has better abs and I have better hair. Not that Drew McIntyre. Thanks for the conversation, Dennis. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. You're welcome. All right. We'll talk again soon. Sounds good.
[49:32] Music.
[50:04] So, what do you think? Like, what is the future of Methodism in the United States, both in the United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church? I'd love if you would drop me a line, and you can do so by sending an email to churchinmaine at substack.com. Um, also I will put in the show, um, show notes, basically a link to Drew's past articles in, uh, Firebrand magazine. His newest one is not available yet, but, uh, the link should get you at least to the listing of his articles. And when that new one shows up, it will be there. So I do, and I do hope that you will read it once it is available.
[50:51] Um, also wanted to let you know, please consider if you can to donate and you can do that in two ways you can do that via venmo and you can give whatever amount you want from a dollar to a hundred dollars by going to at church in maine pod all one word and you can also donate via tip top jar that is a new app that's available for people who want to leave tips again leave whatever amount you would like and to do that go to the link that is in the show notes or tiptopjar.com backslash electric person, all one word.
[51:32] Either way, your donations really help to keep producing episodes like this one and whatever you can give would be very helpful. Thank you very much in advance. As I said at the beginning of the podcast, remember to rate and review if you ever you have the chance and you can do that on your favorite podcast app, consider subscribing so that you get these podcasts immediately when they are available. And also consider passing this episode along to family and friends that might be interested. Also, if there's any topics that you would like to hear, I'd be interested. I won't promise that I will do an episode, but I'd like to hear what people are interested in. Again, Again, you can send me an email at churchinmaineatsubstock.com, and I would be willing to take a look at it. So that is it for this episode of Church in Maine. My name is Dennis Sanders. I'm your host. As always, I just say thank you so much for listening. It does really mean a lot to me. Take care, everyone. Godspeed. And I will see you very soon.
[52:44] Music.