Three options for the UMC

The United Methodist Church is full of potential. It is a truly international church, with membership in the United States at 8 million, and membership worldwide at something over 10 million. It relates to other Methodist bodies both in the U.S. and abroad through a wide sense of connectional identity. Even though it is autonomous from these bodies, it shares a sense of history and identity with them as arising out of a small movement that originated almost 300 years ago in England. The UMC's theological heritage is strong, rooted as it is in personal piety, social holiness, and a commitment to pursuing justice and compassion in the world through evangelistic outreach. Its capacity to reach countless souls through zealous witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ is huge.

But like any such body with great positive potential, the flipside of that potential is the potential to fail in its mission. And in that sense the UMC is like so many mainline churches in our culture. It stands at a pivotal point in its history, when it must make a decision about whether it wants to accept the Holy Spirit's desire for renewal or else fade slowly into obscurity.

I see three possibilities for where we might head from the present, and I mean today: April 2, 2007. They are:

1) A Slow Death: We could continue the decline that has occurred in our denomination for over three decades. We could continue to practice that lukewarm faith that has resulted in a diminuation in the successful pursuit of the mission given to us by the Holy Spirit through Wesley himself: to save souls, to make disciples for Jesus Christ, to spread scriptural holiness, and to reform the nation (or, you might say, the nations). Continuing to decline in this way doesn't require a single thing from us. We just have to keep doing what we're doing. And what we are doing is acting like 'being the church' is just living comfortable, consumerist lives that assume that God's work in the world will happen apart from the committed discipleship embodied in Scripture's call. Pastors can keep going about lukewarm ministries, concerned more about the state of the pension system than about the radical call of the gospel. Laity can keep going about their nominal participation in the life of discipleship, treating their membership in the church as nothing more than the socially respectable thing to do. In short, we can keep ignoring the principle call of Christ, which is the salvation of the world (with the holistic sense in which Wesley understood that term).

2) Leaner and Meaner: Or, we could allow the wheat to be separated from the chaff over the course of time, until the church is small enough that the only people who actually fill the pulpits and pews are the ones who are truly Wesleyan in their appraoch to the faith. This would mean a much smaller church, more like the early Methodist movement than the large denomination of the present. Such a development may seem far off, but it really isn't. At the rate we are going, by some estimates, membership in the UMC will be only 1 or 2 million in the U.S. by 2040. That's 25% or less than what it is right now. And truth be told, that might not be entirely bad. It is possible that a smaller, leaner, and more committed church could be a more effective witness to Christ's salvation than the large, lumbering denomination we know in the present. It would certainly allow for the church to be more committed to its mission and historical identity, but it would also sacrifice the breadth of its reach in favor of a greater depth of discipleship for those who remain. One interesting aspect of this second possibility is that it would make the United Methodist Church more international in its character more quickly, which, again, might not be bad for the church as a whole. Anyone who has experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in the so-called "Third World" knows that Christians in those areas (and here I am thinking specifically in terms of the Global South) tend to be more serious about their faith, on the whole, than Christians in Europe and the U.S.

3) Radically Renewed: The third possibility is that the church could learn to embrace its heritage and historical identity in a way that allows for the Holy Spirit's renewal of the whole of Methodism as it is embodied in the UMC. In this possibility, the church would experience a great increase in all aspects of its witness and mission. Anyone who reads this blog knows that the increase I mean is not primarily about numbers, although I believe that an increase in commitment and understanding of the gospel will surely lead to a reversal in our numerical decline. This third possibility would see a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the People Called Methodists, to the point that men and women, boys and girls, young and old alike would be empowered to pursue their personal discipleship in the context of a renewed community of disciples. We would stop arguing about those doctrinal questions that divide us the most, because we would realize that they are really more about American culture than about Christian discipleship. We would treat the church as the community where we find our identity rather than the place we are obligated to show up for one hour each week (or less). We would come to understand ourselves as Methodists because God called a people known as Methodists into existence for a very specific purpose: to pursue the evangelistic love of God and neighbor in a way that truly represents Christ's saving gospel to the world.

Some might say that options 1 and 2 are much more likely than option 3. Perhaps so, according to the ways of the world. But then again, it is exactly our captivity to the ways of the world that has gotten us into this mess in the first place. I have a friend in the Th.D. program here at Duke who says that the primary work of the Christian in the world is to learn how to pray. I agree with him, as long as we consider that 'learning how to pray' is that work where our entire lives are clothed by the understanding of how to live as this community called the church, constituted by the call and presence of Jesus Christ.

When John Wesley was asked how one defined a "Methodist," he responded by offering a list of qualities that most people would attribute to any Christian of any time or place. But then he added that what distinguished a Methodist from the great mass of Christians was that the Methodist was the one who truly practiced his faith, in all aspects of his life.

We can be such Methodists again. God has not left us. The only question is whether we will repent, recommit, and return to the calling that God has given us from the beginning of our history as a church.