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Dear Asbury family,
This past Saturday, the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church met at the BJCC to worship and celebrate Holy Communion one final time with the pastors and delegates of 198 area churches who disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church. It was a Called Annual Conference session (watch on YouTube), and your four pastors and four lay delegates attended as representatives of our Asbury family. The eight representatives from Asbury sat with Pastor Greg Foust who was also in attendance. We all agreed that while it was a difficult and painful event, it was done in a faithful and respectful way by our annual conference under the leadership of Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett.
These 198 churches used a new paragraph within the United Methodist Book of Discipline (2553), which allows for churches to leave the denomination if they meet certain criteria and if they have a 2/3 majority of their membership approve the disaffiliation. The only valid criterion for a church vote is opposition to the current or potential language in the Book of Discipline related to human sexuality.
Following the December 10th Called Conference, there are 440 churches, including Asbury, that remain in the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. Reports say that of the 21 United Methodist Churches in North Alabama with a membership of over 1,000 members, seven have decided to disaffiliate from the denomination. Fourteen are either staying or are in discernment. Of those seven disaffiliating congregations, three will become independent churches, while one is joining a new denomination called the Global Methodist Church. I am not currently aware of the plans of the other three congregations.
In terms of what is happening with the remaining churches in our Annual Conference, some are in their own independent process of discernment, like Asbury. Other churches are in a conference-guided discernment process leading to a church-wide vote. Finally, other churches have decided to remain United Methodist awaiting the outcome of the General Conference in 2024, or have decided to remain UMC regardless of the outcome.
On a personal note, I have long-time friends that are no longer United Methodist pastors following Saturday’s meeting. It has been difficult, and I will do everything that I can to remain friends and fellow Christians with any disaffiliating pastors. Our bishop remarked that we came to the altar to receive Holy Communion as members of the same denomination, but we would leave the table of Christ as ecumenical friends.
As mentioned previously, Asbury is still in an independent discernment process, and we will offer every member an opportunity to help give us clarity with a church-wide survey in early 2023. Once the data from the listening sessions and surveys is compiled, it will be presented to the church council, which will vote on whether Asbury enters the conference-guided discernment process that leads to a church-wide vote. We do not yet know what our future holds, but we do know who holds the future.
In the meantime, Asbury family, I beg you to remain focused on Christ and his amazing and abundant grace. We can come together even in this time of uncertainty to marvel at what God is about to do again as God makes everything new...as God destroys fear and sin...and as God creates new life and a hopeful future that all begins with the birth of Jesus in the manger.
Do not distance yourself from the birth of Jesus! Join the shepherds and the magi. Come together and adore the Newborn King. And remember that God is always for us and never against us.
Amen (Let It Be),
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