The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper, in a front page story on Monday, April 15, related the recent rift in the United Methodist denomination between the liberals and the conservatives. Last week’s “Hugh’s News & Views” was already written and in the mail pipeline when the newspaper report appeared, so an article—this one—that the story prompted had to wait until this week.
The first four paragraphs of the newspaper article capture the gist of the story. They were as follows:
“The United Methodist Church losing a quarter of its churches in five years is just the start.
“The proposed budget to the upcoming UMC General Conference—the denomination’s top legislative assembly, which meets every four years—is $23.8 million less than the last spending plan.
“The proposed budget recommends 17 fewer bishops, so that one of the denomination’s seven general funds doesn’t run a deficit. Meanwhile, the regional conference staff that those bishops oversee has already faced cuts and a consolidation of administrative duties.
“The upcoming UMC General Conference in Charlotte begins April 22 for a long-awaited and unquestionably consequential summit. The international delegation is meeting for a regular session for the first time in eight years, a time in which conservatives led an exodus out of the United Methodist Church following disagreements about theology and church policy, including dealing with LGBTQ + rights.”
Please note: The budget for the UMC calls for seventeen fewer bishops and a consolidation of their administrative duties. What if all Methodist bishops were eliminated? What if the entire Methodist hierarchy were dismantled? What if the United Methodist Church quietly closed all its church building’s doors, turned some of them into shelters for the homeless, and homes for the widows, the orphans, the neglected? What if the remaining properties were sold and the proceeds given to the poor? If the United Methodist Church folded in its entirety would that be the end of the Christian faith? I dare say no one would answer in the affirmative. The world could do without the Methodist Church and still have the religion of Christ. After all, we had Christianity and the church that Christ established for seventeen hundred years before the Methodist Church was ever conceived!
The Methodist Church arose in the first half of the eighteenth century out of the efforts of John and Charles Wesley to reform the Church of England. The Wesleys sought to bring a greater degree of piety to the cold, formal Church of England and to infuse it with stricter methods (hence, “Methodists”) of prayer, meditation, and ways of ministering to the poor, the imprisoned, etc. At first there was no intention to start another denomination, only to reform the Church of England (in America, the Episcopal Church). But another denomination was born when the first Methodist Society was formed at Kingswood, near the city of Bristol, England in 1739. But we had had Christianity and the church of Christ from the day of Pentecost (c. A.D. 30) as recorded in Acts 2!
I sometimes ask when teaching and preaching on church history what would happen if we started with the last denomination that was established, quietly closed it down, and moved back through history, closing down every protestant and Catholic denomination on the face of the earth? Would the closing of the most recently established denomination be the end of Christianity? Which denomination is necessary for the existence of Christianity? Can you tell me? Would the obliteration of all denominations mean the end of Christianity? Not at all! If every denomination quietly “folded up its tent” and went away, we could still have the church our Lord purchased with His own blood (Acts 20:28). All who had been members of a denomination could repent of their sins, confess their faith in Christ, and be baptized (immersed) into Christ for the remission of their sins, and added to the one church that Christ established (Matthew 16:18; Acts 2:47; Romans 16:16; Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 4:4). (Study also John 17:20-21; I Corinthians 1:10-13; Ephesians 4:1-6; et al).
Read and study your New Testament. Absorb the teaching of Christ and His apostles concerning the church. You will discover that the people of God are to exist solely as independent, autonomous churches, each under its own plurality of elders (also know as bishops, pastors [not preachers, but elders], shepherds), without any local, national, or international headquarters, and without any hierarchical structure (no conventions, conferences, synods, Presidents, ruling Bishops, District Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, or Popes, etc.). Apostolic Christianity and the original church was simple in its organizational structure. It was undenominational and non-denominational. It was produced by the preaching of the gospel of Christ and obedience to the gospel (Acts 2:22-47).
That same church exists today. “The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). Wherever that seed is sown/preached in its purity and obeyed in its simplicity undenominational Christians and undenominational congregations/churches of Christ come into existence. This is Christianity pure and simple. This is Christianity without the multiplicity of denominations (and the hierarchical systems necessary to sustain them) that came later down the stream of time, the first protestant denomination being the Lutheran, established in c. 1521.
Do I dislike denominational people? Do I dislike the Methodists? Not in the least! My paternal grandparents were Methodists and died in the Methodist Church. My father was sprinkled into the Methodist Church at the age of nine. One of his brothers preached for Methodist Churches in south Georgia for many years. But in his early thirties my father learned the truth about Christ and His church and obeyed the gospel. And he never looked back!
It is not the people who are members of denominations that I dislike. It is the system of denominationalism that I abhor (see Psalms 119:104; Romans 12:9) because it is not approved of God or sanctioned by the Scriptures. I wish the entire system, all the way from the Catholic Church with its multiplicity of unbiblical doctrines and practices to the latest protestant church that has been formed, could be dismantled and obliterated from the face of the earth. I wish that all the members of all the denominations could be brought into the one body/church of Christ on the basis of the Scriptures, bringing with them a high commitment to walk in the truth of God’s word (III John 4; cf. John 17:17).
Hugh Fulford