Unity On the Cheap Side

I believe we have cheapened Christian Unity in the United Methodist Church by departmentalizing it and defining it by petty causes, crusades and the words of men. We have taken Christ out of the center and replaced it with literally God knows what. Just take a look at what we spend time talking about as a denomination and you will se what we think unites us. If you sat on the conference floor(at least in East Ohio) for an day and watch and listen to the arguments and resolutions and took good notes, I think at the end of the day when you asked yourself, "What does any of this have to do with Jesus and loving Him with all my heart, soul, and strength in real life?", the answer would be, "Very little."

We are so worried about our words instead of THE WORD! We spend so much time worrying about what phrases are in our rules and by-laws. It seems so pharisaic to me. It's like we are so worried about what we think we forgot to stop and look for what God really thinks about things! I just don't see us taking time to submit ourselves to Christ for direction because we are so worried about getting our own two cents down on paper for resolutions and the discipline. Just take a look at how thick our discipline is! I really believe many of us know our discipline better then we know our Bible and I hear far more about the discipline when we are together than I do about Jesus. Sometimes I think we believe Roberts Rules of Order came from the Bible...like we made up a new book.."The Book of Roberts." I have looked and it isn't in there.

There are consequences for replacing Christ with other things. I have thought long and hard about it and I would like to throw out what I believe are a few of the things that are consequences for not putting Christ first. Number one has to be distrust. Our pastors (myself included), have a hard time trusting each other because we do not know if the other people we are supposed to be working with really have the same goals we do. In fact, we know they don't so we don't trust them. Jesus said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." (Mk 3:24 NIV) WE are divided by all of our agendas that may or may not really be about Jesus. If we really believed that the leadership of our church was most concerned about glorifying Christ and him crucified it would be the start of a revolution. But that is not what we see.

What we see are many of our key leaders moving away from Jesus as the center. A good example of this is Bishop Sprague. This Bishop of the United Methodist Church has gone to great lengths to spell out his basic beliefs in his book called, "Affirmations of a Dissenter." In print, he has clearly stated he does not believe in the orthodox substitutionary view of atonement. (pg.44) For those who may not know what substitutionary atonement is, it is the belief that the blood shed by Christ on the cross is able to justify us to our sins or pay for our sins. Bishop Sprague makes it clear that he does not believe the blood of Christ shed on the cross pays for our sins. He is clear he doesn't believe sins need to be atoned for. This can only be a stake in the heart of Christianity!

How can people who trust Jesus for their salvation follow such a person? Simply put, Christians believe these things and when the leaders of our denomination teach stuff like this how can we trust them? This is especially true when the other Bishops of our denomination are noticeably silent about it! By not dealing with it they affirm it, and the people in the pews see this and so do the pastors. It makes us question the trustworthiness of the people we follow who are supposedly safeguarding the theological integrity of our denomination. The foxes are guarding the hen house.