I Am Not Afraid

“Don’t fear, because I am with you;
    don’t be afraid, for I am your God.
    I will strengthen you,
    I will surely help you;
    I will hold you
    with my righteous strong hand.”  (Isaiah 41:10)

I had other plans for my return to blogging after an accidental 3 week break (thank you for your patience – work has been… crazy). I was going to address the spiritual reality present in the Super Bowl commercials for one (now watch for that in the upcoming Arkansas United Methodist Magazine). But God keeps interfering with my plans.  God keeps putting people in my path who keep asking me the same question. So I have decided I have to deal with that here. Then maybe I can just tell people, “Go read my blog,” and get on with writing other things.

So the question comes up when I am sharing about my upcoming Gospel Discipleship books. I explain that the project proclaims that there are 4 ways of understanding discipleship according to the 4 Gospels, and that people tend to resonate more strongly with one of those understandings than others. Churches also tend to have a dominant type.  And, it also appears that denominations have types too. Methodists (at least in the US), if I can extrapolate from my sample so far, are a Lukan denomination, which means our discipleship revolves around building meaningful relationships. Our secondary type looks to be Matthean, which is discipleship centered around action. 

After I share these insights, person after person has asked me this question: “Has all this given you any insight into what will happen to us in May?”  Then they sort of laugh, as if there was any chance that such a thing would be possible.

And then I say, “Yes, it has.  I am not worried.”

That is usually when they look at me like I have lost my mind.  And then they want to know why in the world I would say something like that. So here is why.

We are a Lukan-Matthean denomination. If we only were made up of Lukans and Mattheans, we would have never started this fight. Why? Because a Lukan’s highest value is the preservation of community. And one of a Matthean’s highest values is a preservation of church. Neither one of those populations values an issue or moral stance over community and church. This generic assertion holds true when I am on the ground working with individual churches and listening to them narrate how they feel about their church and how they understand discipleship. All this fight has done is disturb our community and threaten our church. And Lukans and Mattheans are sick of it.

If we are a Lukan-Matthean denomination, though, then how did we get in this fight? Easy. We have Markans and Johannines amongst us. One of the highest values of Markans is a recognition of people gifted/created as they are. Another high value of Markans is moving with change. Johannines, on the other hand, tend to have a high value on tradition. Often this shows up as moral traditions.  There was our bang. Our Markans and Johannines have dragged the Lukans and Mattheans into this fight. And I say that as someone who somewhat schizophrenically tests as Markan-Johannine.  Please do not ask me to dig into the internal turmoil that is my life right now.

Anyway, General Conference is going to be made up of all of these voices, because all of these voices are present in our church. And it is possible that one of our non-dominant types will have sway. This is especially true because I do not assume that Methodists in other parts of the world would be an equivalent type. One of the great strengths of Methodism in my opinion is that we are a big tent, and we do invite so many to the table (very Lukan, by the way). And sometimes the loudest voices get the most attention.

But as the fight makes it way down, well, I actually don’t think it will make its way down. It may make it to Annual Conferences, but my money bets that there will not be a clear enough majority for significant change to occur, because Lukans won’t want to risk change because it is too disruptive of community, and Mattheans won’t want to change church. But if it does make it to the Annual Conferences, and then gets pushed to the local church, I just get the sense that most of the local churches will do nothing about it. They won’t vote to change, and they won’t vote to leave. It is too contradictory to who they are.

I think what we will start to see is more and more remembering who we are. As a Lukan denomination, this ridiculous place of trying to stand in two places at once, trying to be inclusive and exclusive at the same time, was exactly honestly the stance that Lukans wanted to make. Because of course Lukans want to make everyone welcome, so of course they want to be as inclusive as possible. What people too often forget, though, is that welcome extends to people who want to be exclusive. Lukans welcome ALL. And so Lukans make space for all to be welcome. Which means in order to be fully inclusive we have to make room for people who would exclude. No surprise we legislatively look so confused. But in reality the gray stance is exactly who we are. Black and white hard lines – that is not us. Holding hands across the aisle – that is us.

You may wonder if Lukans have forgotten that there are people behind these issues, people who are being excluded in our legislation, but they will tell you, oh no, they have not forgotten. They just also remember that there are so many people, people who all have various perspectives and understandings of human sexuality. All of them are important voices at the table. Lukans hate that hurt is happening, but they recognize it is happening every which direction. The average Lukan feels like they are being as welcoming as they can be in what is clearly a messy, painful, transitional moment in life. This is not an ideal situation; it is a real situation instead. And Lukans will not be forced to choose between their people. They will choose them all.

So when all is said and done, no matter what General Conference decides, my feeling is that the vast majority of UM congregations will just go on doing church like they always have.  Oh, we will lose some. I can probably predict who, based on understanding the dynamics of these types and how that manifests in different contexts (and don’t assume it will be all our Johannines and Markans - there is more at work with everyone in these type understandings). An overall guess is that we will lose up to 20%.  That will be deeply painful, for Lukans and Mattheans both. But the majority of their community and church will be intact.  And that is what they want most.

We are in for loss.  Actually, we are already there. We are in for some pain. Actually, we are already there.  But I also think the majority of us have reached the breaking point of tolerance for such things. But that does not mean the result will be departure. No, it is more likely that it means digging heels in and staying no matter what. No legislation can take away our people and our church, and deep down we really know that. Lukans stay. Methodists are Lukans. Methodists will stay.

And so, I am not afraid. On the other side of May, there will still be disciples to make. And there will still be Methodists to do it. A whole lot of us.

Thanks be to God.

Photo by bhuvanesh gupta on Unsplash