“God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God…We haven’t received the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit so that we can know the things given to us by God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10,12)
Today someone may hear the Good News for the very first time. And today someone may hear the Good News for the very last time.
We are coming through trying times in our congregation and, as Pastor Jane Duffey preached earlier in August, we are “braving a new wilderness” in the Church.
I believe that when we gather for worship or fellowship or discernment about disaffiliation, what’s at stake is that we are seeking a spiritual home with feelings and memories and wondering, Can I belong here? Some of us are listening for how God’s Word is handled and presented in worship and by the preacher. Some of us may hear a call to repentance and find the room to change that God has been providing for us all along. Some of us may not even be able to say why we are here as we carry great grief and deep questions into this sanctuary.
What we discover time and again is that in this house of prayer, this Body of Christ, we imperfectly hold wisdom and passion, follow Jesus, love our neighbors, and seek God’s guidance in the Word and God’s presence in the Holy Spirit.
On Sunday, August 27, we took a straw poll after worship about whether to remain in The United Methodist Church or to disaffiliate. After The Way Forward question-and-answer document from the Leadership Board, two Town Hall meetings, a financial report from our Treasurer, and countless scattered conversations, membership inquiries, phone calls, email threads, text messages, and letters through the US mail, 94 votes were cast:
56 (60%) votes to remain United Methodist
38 (40%) votes to Disaffiliate
Per our conditions for the vote, the Disaffiliate choice needed at least 60% for the disaffiliation process to continue. So, we remain a United Methodist Church and the disaffiliation process is done.
We have learned more about the relationship of who we are and who we think we are in this process. In some ways, this is a natural and continuous discovery process. It is a type of ongoing revelation. But our journey of considering staying United Methodist or disaffiliating is filled with soul-searching grief and will continue to unfold in the coming days and weeks and months.
In his book, The Active Life, Parker Palmer writes: “There is the experience we commonly call disillusionment, when a trusted friend lets us down, an institution we had relied on fails us, a vision we had believed in turns out to be a hoax, or—worst of all—when we discover ourselves to be less than we had thought. Many of us try hard to avoid such experiences, and when we are in the midst of them we go through a kind of dying…As our illusions are removed, like barriers on a road, we have a chance to take that road farther toward truth.
God’s revealing work through the Spirit will keep us going into a future filled with hope and disillusionment. So we can join the Psalmist in affirming as a Body of Christ: Make your ways known to us, Lord; teach us your paths. Lead us in your truth—teach it to us—because you are the God who saves us. We put our hope in you all day long (Psalm 25:4).