An open letter to members of OU and the Oxford community:
As many of you know, I attended the United Methodist Called Session of the General Conference earlier this week as an observer. A total of 864 delegates representing 12 million United Methodists from 132 countries spent three days of legislative work to make decisions around our global church’s stance on the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ+ persons.
I’ve never experienced anything like those three days. Yes, there was political maneuvering that mirrored anything we see in Washington, D.C. But more than that, there was my church family attempting to do the hard and difficult work of the church. Scripture never portrays church as an easy place. From its earliest days, the church has been a place of disagreement, arguments, fights, and dissension—just pick any of Paul’s letters and you’ll see that clearly.
At the end of the conference, by a narrow 53% to 47% vote, the delegates chose the Traditional Plan, which maintains the United Methodist Church’s current language and practice around marriage and ordination.
If you want to know more specifics, I can point you to places with that information. But that’s not what I need to share with you today. Many of you are worried and concerned about what this says about our church home, OU. Some of you are hurt and confused by the decision. What does this do to our unique congregation which has a breadth and depth that could not be captured by any of the legislative options which were presented to General Conference?
Here’s what I need you to hear and know: I repeatedly said before General Conference that OU would be OU when General Conference began and when it ended. And we are. We remain committed to being a church for all of God’s children. We remain committed to embracing all people—people with a deep faith and no faith; people with fears and doubts and questions; people who are young and old; conservative and liberal; gay and straight; black and white; and everything in between. This is who we are. At OU, we believe the church is a place that can be a sign and a symbol for the healing and reconciliation Jesus brings to our broken world. We have sought, and will continue to seek, to create a community where people committed to Christ can disagree about matters of sexuality (as well as many other matters) and also discover common ground in how we live out our faith together. This is who we were last Sunday. It’s who we are today. It’s who we’ll be tomorrow.
This Sunday we will gather at the communion table. When we invite people to communion, we remember that the table is not ours; it belongs to Jesus and at Jesus’ table ALL are welcome. And so we come with all of our differences but united in Christ Jesus.
In the weeks ahead, we will open places for conversation with each other around the work of General Conference. In addition to those conversations, on Sunday, March 17 (at 3 p.m.) Mississippi’s Bishop, James Swanson, will be with us to offer his thoughts and answer questions. And then on Monday, March 25 (at 6 p.m.), Bishop Ken Carter, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, will be with us to point us forward from General Conference toward our important work in front of us.
I’m praying for you, for our church, and for the larger church. And I invite you to join me in prayer.
Blessings,
