A New Church Is Born

April 23, 2018 is the 50th Anniversary of the birth of The United Methodist Church. It's the church in which I was raised. It's the church in which my father first, and later my wife, answered God's call to ministry. Flipping through some of my dad's sermons, I found one he preached just weeks after the 1968 merger that produced the United Methodist Church. Here's some of what he had to say about that union:

"Amid pomp, drama and color, the United Methodist Church became a reality at 9:49 AM on Tuesday, April 23, 1968 as two bishops joined hands over a cluster of symbolic documents. Bishop Reuben H. Mueller of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church and Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke of the former Methodist Church joined their voices in saying, 'Lord of the Church, we are united in thee, in thy Church, and now in The United Methodist Church.' Then, 10,000 persons filling the Dallas Memorial Auditorium exclaimed in one booming benediction, 'Amen!'

And so it was done. A new church was born. In the twinkling of an eye, you and I as former Methodists and former Evangelical United Brethren became the inheritors of a church. Off and on since 1802 there had been union negotiations between Methodists, Evangelicals and United Brethren. And then in this brief ceremony, 166 years of talking find a consummation."

The United Methodist Church was a product of the "ecumenical movement," and my father was quick to note that "[t]he word 'ecumenical' means the whole inhabited world. It means that all together we are one in Christ. It leaves no one out. Hence our subject this morning of 'Union with Unity.' You may have all the union you want, but it's all an empty sham unless that union is filled and flows over with unity. Church union without unity may be compared to the hollowness of what we call a 'marriage of convenience.' In true union, in true marriage, the parties must love each other. Love. That's what we're talking about, isn't it? We're all United Methodists now; that is a fact. But do we love each other? ...

Throughout the years of negotiations for this union, leaders on both sides were careful to point out that a new church was being formed. The product of a union, they said, would be a renewed church, not Methodist, not EUB, but entirely new. This assurance was probably felt to be necessary for the little EUBs, who may have felt a loss of identity from being swallowed up by a church ten times its size. This assurance probably was resented by some Methodists, who felt a certain smug complacency with their size and success. But, you know, somehow I always felt that this promise our leaders made us of a new church was something they couldn't deliver. They knew that, I'm sure, and so they meant it to us as a kind of challenge and not a promise. You and I make a new church by realizing our unity in Christ here and now.

Unity is a hard thing to come by even in this age when we talk so much about it and run around madly tying up unions. Still we are divided. All Christians cannot sit at the Lord's Table together; local churches cannot see their way clear to enter into group ministries; individuals within a local church can bicker and fuss and criticize and divide and paralyze. Too much ego; no room for love. Too much investment in self; no room for the mutual subjection Paul said was so necessary for a true marriage union.

Now practically speaking, how do we who are now united in the United Methodist Church receive this gift of unity that Christ offers us? Our differences, born in ego, can dissolve in our devotion to a common task to which we give our strength. Not just any task, but THE task - the only task worth our life's devotion - service to the King of Kings. 

Our sole purpose for unity within the church is to perform our ministry, our mission, our work in the world. Only as we plunge into that work, that mission, do we realize our unity. The 'church' does not refer to an organization; it is an action word describing a fellowship of people who are doing things, actively demonstrating to the world the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives. 

We get union by sitting down and talking about consolidating committees and drafting rules of order. We get unity by rolling up our sleeves and sweating and working together in our common mission.

Amid pomp, drama and color, the United Methodist Church became reality at 9:49 AM on Tuesday, April 23, 1968. Did it? That's up to us." 

From: "Union With Unity"
Scripture: John 17:6-21
Preached May 19, 1968
at Adams Shore Community Church
Quincy, Massachusetts

On Rainbows & Church Unity

Sometimes I pull an old sermon from my father's barrel and I find that it reads as though it were newly penned to be preached today. With Christians now so sharply divided over hot-button political, social and theological issues, these words that my dad wrote for his congregation in 1984 might as well have been meant for us over thirty years later:

"Too often we see partnership and unity in the Church replaced with factionalism and suspicion. An outsider observing us would wonder whether we consider it more important to be about our mission or to quarrel over issues such as female ministers in the Church, or whether we should use only male terms to refer to God, or conservative versus liberal theology, or the place of homosexuals in the church and its ministry, or many others.

Unfortunately, today in many people's eyes it is not enough to say you are a Christian. If you do, you will be pressed further to reveal whether you are a liberal or a conservative, whether you're straight or gay and where you stand on those issues, whether you're high church or low church, whether you're charismatic or fundamentalist or evangelical, whether you advocate a theology of liberation or feminism, whether you are part of a denomination or an independent.

Christians are preoccupied with choosing up sides over various hot issues and consolidating their strength to protect their own turf. This is a very serious challenge to partnership and unity within the Church; it is damaging to our credibility and our Christian witness before the world. In the days of the early Church it is reported that outsiders looked at the Christian fellowship and said, 'See how they love one another!' It seems today that our factionalism is more of a distinguishing mark than our love for one another.

Our partnership and unity as Christians comes from the fact that before the cross all of us are absolutely equal. The criminal and the PTA president, the unemployed laborer and the corporate executive, black and white, male and female, socialist and capitalist, gay and straight. Before the cross, the only thing that differentiates us is whether or not we have accepted God's forgiving, transforming love. All of the other stands we take on social issues, political issues, economic issues, moral issues are minor compared to the stand we take at the foot of the cross. The cross may have been on a hill, but at the foot of the cross the ground is perfectly level. No one stands higher than anyone else there.

Solidarity is often little more than an enlarged form of self-interest. Communities and churches that are made up only of 'birds of a feather' are not the fulfillment of the Gospel. We call Jesus the Light of the World, so it might be helpful to think about how light works. We know light by what it lights up, by the way it is reflected. Light is the perfect mixture of the full spectrum of colors. Most objects which the sun's rays hit will absorb some colors in the light and reflect others. We see only the colors that are reflected. Those colors, we know, are an outstanding variety of shades and contrasts -- never just one uniform color.

It is exactly the same with each different person on whom the Light of Jesus Christ shines. He shines on each one of us, and we each look slightly different because we each reflect slightly different parts of his light. And so, one of us under Christ's light is a fighter against social injustice, while another is zealous for personal conversion. One advocates order and dignity in worship, while another calls for freedom and spontaneity. One pushes for change, while another cautions us not to lose the value of tradition. Doesn't every human being color the pure light of Christ to some degree and in some direction? Should this always be understood as the tragedy of our imperfection? Or might it be a blessing of diversity, like a rainbow that in a sense opens up or unfolds the sunlight?

Through his cross, Christ revealed himself most fully as the Light of the World -- a light that at one and the same time enhances our differences and yet draws us together because it shines on all of us from one true source. We should not be frustrated with diversity and contrast in the Church. We must thank God for every new tint that shines forth to the world. None of us individually, but all of us together in true partnership, can reflect the pure light of God to a darkened world. This is the Good News we have to give: 'God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.'"  

From: "Toward a New Partnership in the Church"
Scripture: Philippians 1:1-11; II Corinthians 8:1-7, 9:10-15
Preached at: Paoli U.M. Church, Paoli, PA  (1984)