United Methodist Church

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What’s in a name? Certainly not unity. As 546 of the 1,260 United Methodist Churches in Texas are splitting from the United Methodist Church as it has been known. The schism is the result of evil entering the church. The world entering the church and taking precedence over the Word of God. The separation is the result of the United Methodist Church refusing the authority of God and opting instead to follow what men and women say.

Evil has entered the church. Want to be inclusive? Evil has entered the broad stroke of professed Christian denominations and churches especially in America and throughout Europe.

Worldly writers, even pastors, and those professing to be Christians continue to break this down to two sides — either liberal or conservative when in truth it is the two sides of either thumbing oneself, understanding the whole Word of God. Which is clear and leaving no room for interpretation when it comes to male and female and marriage and sexual immorality and perversions. And bowing to the authority of God.

Belonging to the righteous in God’s sight by their faith and obedience to Him and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Or, all those arrogant, foolish, ignorant, and rebellious refusing the truth, turning the truth into a lie, preferring to obey and follow the authority of men and women even though they profess to know God and follow Jesus. Another lie. A most dangerous one to tell and live out.

Those are the only two sides to this. To everything. Either a person is truly transformed and regenerated, born anew by their faith and the Supernatural power of the Spirit of God to work in them and renew them — and this does not mean the mountains quake and tremble and when this happens a glow appears around the person and in the area they inhabit nor are trumpets playing and so on. It’s a change within the heart, within the mind, within that begins to be exhibited. Seen and heard.

And it is very clear when advocating and campaigning to institute, accept, elevate and approve of the sexual immoralities, the sexual perversions, and deviant behaviors, the debauchery, the abomination of homosexuality, and any sexual immorality ignoring what the Word of God clearly says in this regard — whoever does such evil is not, cannot be one of God’s people thus they cannot be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. A Christian.

Period.

Until and unless they would repent and come to see and understand and then live according to the Word of God and not the word of man or woman.

Period.

Ken Pullen, A CROOKED PATH, Tuesday, December 6th, 2022

439 Texas churches split from United Methodist Church as slow-motion schism continues

Monday, December 5, 2022

By Peter Weber

Reprinted from The Week US

Two of the four United Methodist Church regional bodies in Texas met over the weekend and approved requests from 439 congregations to disaffiliate from the second largest U.S. Protestant denomination. Most of the departing churches plan to join the breakaway Global Methodist Church, a more conservative offshoot that disagrees with a sizable portion of the UMC on same-sex marriage and homosexuality, among other issues.

In all, about 546 of the 1,260 Methodist churches in Texas — or about 45 percent — are on the way out of the UMC.

The Houston-based Central Texas Conference on Saturday approved the disaffiliation of all 294 of its 598 congregations that had voted to leave the UMC. The Northwest Texas Conference, based in Lubbock, gave approval to all 145 churches that voted to leave, or about 75 percent of its 201 congregations. The Central Texas Conference already green-lighted the departure of 81 of its 185 congregations, and 44 of the Dallas-based North Texas Conference, with 276 churches, are in the process of leaving the UMC.

Conservatives in the UMC scored a doctrinal victory at the denomination’s 2019 national convention, upholding bans on blessing same-sex marriage and the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” But the delegates also approved a mechanism for churches to split from the UMC and keep their church buildings, if they take certain steps before the end of 2023.

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed implementation of the plan for an amicable split, unveiled in January 2020, and many conservative congregations are unhappy about the delays. Before this weekend’s 439 departures in Texas, 13 UMC regional conferences had approved the disaffiliation of 1,314 churches, according to the denomination’s UM News service. “That disaffiliation tally still represents a small percentage of the more than 30,500 churches in the U.S.,” UM News adds, but the financial fallout is hitting the UMC’s budget pretty hard.

The schism is also “going to accelerate religious polarization because the mainline is going to be even more marginalized, and they were always the moderates,” Ryan Burge, an Eastern Illinois University professor of religion and political science, tells The Texas Tribune. “They have always been the counterpoint to evangelicals.”

“It’s a hard time to bring people together,” said Houston pastor Rev. Nathan Lonsdale Bledsoe, whose St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church is remaining in the UMC. “We really reflect the brokenness of the culture and the world.”