Heritage Will Remain a United Methodist Church

To Our LGBTQ+ Neighbors

This is a segment of Pastor Matt's sermon from Sunday, October 24, 2022, specifically directed to our LGBTQ neighbors. The sermon is from our Envision series, week 2: “A Loving Place.”

The sermon is based on 1John 4, in which the apostle John preaches a sermon passionately making the case that the loving actions we take—the words spoken by our mouth, actions taken by our hands, and paths traveled by our feet—are every bit as important as the thoughts in our heads, beliefs in our hearts, or prayers in our souls. The real measure of faith is that we live a life like Jesus.

“We are Heritage United Methodist Church, and that is what we will remain.”

— Rev. Matt Horan on Heritage's future as a part of the Continuing United Methodist Church

Video Clips of Topics Covered during Pastor Matt’s “Addressing the Letters” Presentation

Changing Minds vs. Changing Tribes

“I’m just here for the women!”
How Pastor Matt Became a United Methodist

Reading the Bible is Not an Exact Science

Pastor Matt Shares His View on LGBTQ Inclusion in the United Methodist Church

The United Methodist Church: Should We Stay or Should We Go?

Answers to Questions Received from Online Viewers of Pastor Matt’s “Addressing the Letters” Presentation

Where does Heritage stand?  Will we stay with UMC or leave and join the Global Methodist Church (GMC)?

Heritage is a United Methodist Church, and there is currently no official work being done at this time by your Administrative Council to consider exploring a move to the Global Methodist Church.  There are members of the church who would like for the Council to consider it, and the upcoming presentation about both the UMC and GMC on September 19th by our district superintendent alongside a pastor of a church which is leaving to join the GMC was scheduled at their request.

What is the deadline?

There is currently no deadline in place for churches to decide anything.  A church can begin to engage in a disaffiliation negotiation with the Florida Annual Conference Board of Trustees any time they choose, and I expect that, should they disaffiliate, the GMC would gladly receive them into the denomination–assuming that the church agree to abide by the GMC’s transitional book of doctrines and discipline.

The next General Conference, at which changes can be made to the Book of Discipline which governs a local church’s relationship with the United Methodist Church, will be in the Spring or Summer of 2024.

Do you personally believe that same-sex relationships are a sin?

This is a critically important question for churches to answer together.

The best I can surmise from studying the Scriptures is that the writers of the passages that address homosexuality (Genesis 19, Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, 1Corinthians 6, 1Timothy 1, and Romans 1) believed it was wrong for people of the same gender to engage in the kinds of sexual contact they were seeing at the time that they wrote.  These included acts that were a part of the worship of false gods, acts that involved children, acts of prostitution, and acts that were not consensual.  I believe each of these to have been sin then, and continue to be sin today, not to mention criminal!

The only model of marriage that the Bible seems to provide is between one man and one or more women.  There does not seem to be any mention of sexual practices between people of the same gender occurring in the context of fidelity to a committed covenant relationship.  

That said, just because marriage between people of the same gender is not mentioned doesn’t mean that they would have approved of it.  From what they did write, there are good odds that they would not have approved, especially considering the need for families to produce as many children as possible to populate the new nation of Israel, to inherit the property of their parents, and to indicate that a relationship had the blessing of God.

As far as discerning whether we should consider same-sex relationships a sin today, the issue requires our best Biblical studies work.  How will we decide on the best way to live in response to these ancient writings today?  Sometimes, what was written by these ancient writers to their ancient recipients bears the fruit of the Holy Spirit today in the same way it did back then.  Not stealing, telling the truth, not murdering anyone, etc. are all guidelines that make people better off regardless of the century that you’re in!  At other times, what they wrote to address the issues of their day seems to not bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, such as when they encouraged slaves to remain content in their slavery, required rapists to marry their victims, or reserving church leadership roles for men only.

I have done the best work I can to discern how to be faithful to these Scriptures, to consider them together by conferencing with others through the lenses of reason, tradition, and experience; and to observe which application of them produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. I have come to the conclusion that same-sex relationships should not be considered sin, and that if a church agrees together to offer same-sex weddings or have an LGBTQ person as their pastor, they should be allowed to do so.  Further, it should be the practice and culture of that church to offer training, counseling, and resources that would help that couple enjoy a lifetime of fidelity to one another in the same way they would for any other.

P.S. Why is this question so important? Many Christians say something like, “I’d be glad to have LGBTQ persons come to my church. They just can’t lead or get married.” A church can absolutely make this their official stance—in fact, it’s probably what most churches would say. However, this is not “full-inclusion” of LGBTQ persons. While this sounds welcoming and hospitable to those who are saying it, it does not feel that way to the LGBTQ person who is hearing it.

If a church decides together to become a community that is fully-inclusive of LGBTQ persons, it means that they have decided that their official stance is that they no longer see a same-sex relationship as a sin.

If the Book of Discipline changes, would you perform a same sex wedding?

The proposal by the Way Forward Commission in 2019, called the “One Church Plan,” is the model that most of those staying in the UMC seem to hope will be put in place in 2024.

Essentially, language in the Book of Discipline prohibiting same-sex relationships would simply be removed.  Then, it would be the decision of each local church Administrative Council to decide whether they want to offer same-sex weddings or to have an LGBTQ person as a pastor.

Should the Book of Discipline be changed, I will abide by the decision of Heritage’s Administrative Council.  If it was decided that Heritage would begin to offer same-sex weddings, I would ask that funds be budgeted so that the clergy at Heritage could receive training in how to offer premarital counseling that would meet any needs unique to same-sex couples, as our responsibility to prepare everyone we marry for a lifetime of fidelity to one another would continue.

So what from here? Will we have more meetings like this over the years for updates?

At the moment there is only one more meeting scheduled, on September 19th.  My hope is that this meeting will answer any lingering questions and allow us to press ahead to focus on accomplishing our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by investing our best energies in the next generation, caring for those in need in our community, and becoming a neighborhood gathering space where everyone would feel at home whether they’re a part of our church or not.

Should new information emerge that affects Heritage, we will communicate it using any medium the information might warrant. 

If we are trying to avoid tribalism in the church setting, it seems like a charged moment to invite a DS who’s staying and a pastor who’s leaving to share a stage. So why are we doing that?

That’s a good question, and to be fully transparent, I can’t claim credit for the idea.  I’ve tried to avoid the subject and keep us focused on the mission mentioned above.  However, some concerned church members reported to your Executive Team that (1) many church members very concerned about the issue of the including LGBTQ persons fully in the life of the church, (2) that there is a pervasive belief that information about the opportunity for Heritage to join the Global Methodist Church was being withheld from the congregation, and (3) that the information I shared on the church’s blog was made inaccurate and incomplete by my personal biases.  

In response, the Executive Team agreed to invite someone from both the UMC and GMC to share their perspective so that members at Heritage could decide for themselves whether they’d prefer to stay or begin the process of leaving.  Hopefully the result of the meeting is that it can be said that our leadership remained above reproach during this divisive season.

I don't think most people realize that if the church stays with the UMC, we are automatically progressive.

Not true.  According to the “One Church Plan” that will most likely be put in place at the 2024 General Conference, each church would be able to decide how to best accomplish their mission in their context.  Our Administrative Council would decide at that point how to address any requests we might receive to do a same-sex wedding, and whether it would help or hinder our efforts to accomplish our mission.  

It would sort of be like the federal government avoiding passing legislation that would make something a “states rights” issue!

Have other questions? Feel free to add them in the comments below!

Two Upcoming Events at Heritage to Answer Questions about the Future of the United Methodist Church

Dear Members and Friends of Heritage United Methodist Church,

As I wrote on our church blog a little over a week ago, I have heard from a couple different people that you are very concerned about the continuing conversations over the degree to which LGBTQ persons will be included in United Methodist churches in the future, and have many questions to ask about it.

I tried to compile all of the information I could scrape together about it for inclusion in the blog articles, and a few hundred people have taken a look at it. I hope it was helpful.

The feedback I've gotten from those who initially shared about your concerns is that the blog articles are biased and incomplete, and that there are still lingering questions.

I want people to meet Jesus Christ and enjoy a deepening, life-giving friendship with Him. That is my top priority, and I am eager for our congregation to focus upon it.

However, if there's something getting in the way of focusing on that, it obviously must be addressed as quickly as possible. Therefore, I have scheduled the following opportunities for sharing information in-person.

Sunday, August 21, 6:30pm

I will be holding an informal gathering in the church sanctuary in which I will share my own journey and thoughts on the issue of LGBTQ inclusion in the life of the United Methodist Church. One of the first questions I was asked in a "meet the new pastor" event when I first started at Heritage four years ago was where I stood on this subject, and if you were there you know that I responded without answering the question. I've never preached a sermon about it, and have not dedicated much administrative council time to it either, but the evening of August 21st will be set aside just for that.

It will also be a night during which I address my approach to studying, preaching, and teaching the Scriptures, as people have on multiple occasions said things about my beliefs regarding the Bible that are inaccurate. Perhaps offering clarity about that will be helpful to you as well

Lastly, I will stay there as long as necessary until I have answered every question you might have for me, regardless of how late into the night it might take us. You can stay as long or as little as you like!

Monday, September 19, 6:30pm

I've invited representatives from the United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church to come share and answer questions you might have about each.

Rev. Emily Hotho is the Gulf Central District Superintendent, and will join us as a representative of the United Methodist Church.

Rev. Brent Byerman is the pastor of Lake Magdalene United Methodist Church in Tampa, a large church that is in the process of disafiliating from the UMC and joining the Global Methodist Church.

Brent and Emily are gifted leaders and communicators, and will do a great job answering questions you may have. They cannot stay all night, however, so we will conclude this event at 8pm.

Both of these events will be livestreamed at heritageumc.com.

Please mark your calendars for these two nights, and share them with anyone you know that has questions or concerns about the future of the United Methodist Church.

Sincerely,

Pastor Matt

Your United Methodism FAQ HQ!

I’ve been told recently that there are many questions swirling around in the heads of many of our members and friends at Heritage United Methodist about the future of the United Methodist Church (UMC) regarding the degree to which LGBTQ persons will be included in the life of the church, and that there is a pervasive desire among those in our congregation at Heritage to hear more about it.

I’ve made it no secret that I’m a staunch advocate for us avoiding the whole thing like the plague in order to just focus our time and energy on making disciples and transforming the world. Having had no one ask me about it in months, I’d allowed myself to hope that we’d been successful in just not worrying about it. However, upon hearing news of a larger wave of concern, I’m taking their word for it, and am glad to help how I can to put people at ease.

I’ve scoured sources from all around to compile the admittedly massive amount of information that follows. I hope that, for anyone with a question about the future of the United Methodist church regarding the degree to which LGBTQ persons will be included in the life of the church, you might find an answer below.

There is a ton of content here. Do not feel like anyone has to read all of this! You don’t. It’s like the dictionary—read the parts you need, and skip the parts you don’t. If this isn’t a concern for you, skip it altogether!

Please remember that I’m glad to chat about this with you in person or on the phone or by video chat anytime! Please contact Pastoral Office Manager Pat Bluhm and she’ll set up a time for us to meet!

A Very Brief History of the Whole Thing

The issues of performing and/or hosting same-sex weddings, and the ordination of LGBTQ persons, have been topics for debate in the UMC for 40 years, but in recent years the debates have intensified.

Though the United Methodist Book of Discipline states that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” some United Methodists have seen this as a carryover of a requirement from another place in time, like others that we’ve discerned were contextual, specifically for their time period, but not applicable forever. Therefore, citing Scripture’s calls for justice and challenged by the sacrifices others have made throughout history on behalf of the marginalized, some pastors and bishops have followed their conscience instead of the Discipline, and officiated at same-sex weddings. The most prominent early case was that of Rev. Frank Schaefer, who officiated at his son’s wedding.

Those opposed to performing and/or hosting same-sex weddings and the ordination of LGBTQ persons expected that violators of the Book of Discipline would be punished accordingly. Found guilty and defrocked in a clergy trial, Schaefer’s punishment was later lessened by the United Methodist Judicial Council, and he was restored to pastoral ministry. Other pastors and bishops followed suit, with varying degrees of discipline for the violation of church law being applied. In the absence of uniform punishments being handed down, frustration grew among those opposed to performing and/or hosting same-sex weddings, and the ordination of LGBTQ persons. They saw it as an issue of obedience and church governance, while offenders saw the rule as unjust, and therefore felt called to action in the way Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break law. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. ”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."

People with varying points of view on the subject have disagreed on whether the application of Dr. King’s letter is pertinent to the issue of full LGBTQ inclusion.

In light of an increasingly hardened impasse, planning had been underway on how best for churches unhappy with the application of church law on this issue to leave the United Methodist Church for other denominations that do not permit same-sex weddings or the ordination of LGBTQ persons. The result was the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation. Rev. Alex Shanks came to visit Heritage a little over a year ago, and shared what was in the protocol, and how it’s implementation might unfold should it pass a vote at the next General Conference, tentatively planned for 2022. You can watch the video of his presentation here:

Since Alex’ Visit

When the time came to make the decision on whether to go ahead with General Conference in 2022, the Committee on General Conference voted to postpone until 2024. Their stated reasoning was that waiting would allow them to ensure coronavirus vaccination for attenders who would be coming from all over the world. The vote was apparently split along ideological lines, with those eager to pass the protocol and leave the United Methodist Church (UMC) preferring to press ahead with the 2022 date. There were accusations that the pandemic was used by those wanting to avoid a church split to impede the departure of churches opposed to performing and/or hosting same-sex weddings and the ordination of LGBTQ persons.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA), an organization formed in 2015 made up of clergy and laity who are opposed to performing and/or hosting same-sex weddings and the ordination of LGBTQ persons, pressed ahead with plans to organize a new denomination this past May rather than waiting for General Conference in 2024. It is called the Global Methodist Church (GMC).

Ahead of the May launch, WCA leaders scheduled a series of events at Florida United Methodist Churches open only to people interested in leaving the UMC. People debated the appropriateness of this on social media after the district superintendent of the Northwest District arrived to attend the meeting in his district and was refused entry. District superintendents across the Florida Conference then set up open meetings at which the future of the UMC could be discussed. When the May launch date arrived, communication from the WCA/GMC announced that over 100 Florida Conference churches would be joining and leaving the UMC. Eventually 14 churches applied for disaffiliation from the UMC at Annual Conference according to a provision added to the Book of Discipline in 2019, ¶ 2553, and it was granted.

The Clergy Session at Florida Annual Conference 2022

The Florida Annual Conference met June 9-11, 2022, at Florida Southern College, a United Methodist university in Lakeland, Florida. Each year the conference opens with the convening of simultaneous clergy and laity sessions, at which they conduct business unique to them. Part of the clergy session is to vote on the licensing, commissioning, and ordination of candidates approved by the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry. Heritage’s Betsy Hughes was approved by the Board as a licensed local pastor (not appointed, still in seminary), and Heritage’s Carey Stevens was approved for commissioning as a provisional deacon (appointed at Skycrest UMC in Clearwater).

It was good to see everyone, as we hadn’t had an in-person annual conference since 2019. However, so much had happened—many churches and pastors and laypeople had declared their desire to leave the denomination. Many of them are people I’d gone to seminary with, people with whom I had fond memories, people who’d been in the crucible with me as we were shaped into pastoral people by our professors and books and papers and studies. We’d learned together—our souls out on the table to be examined and poked and adjusted. We had very few secrets from one another.

Now, however, there was something different. There was a part of our souls that needed to be left in our back pockets if we were to remain cordial. The elephant in the conference was enormous, but once the clergy session got underway, I discovered that I’d underestimated the size of the elephant, and it would leave no room for anything else.

This year (and last year, and next year…) I serve as chairperson of the Committee on Resolutions. As resolutions chair, I'd spent all of my prep time for annual conference reviewing the standing rules, the Book of Discipline, Roberts Rules of Order, and the rules of grammar; and had been emailing, calling, and texting resolution submitters about process, procedure, the order they'd be addressed, and giving advice on crafting speeches for their resolutions. I’d had time for little else.

Before we began voting on the candidates, there was a motion to vote on all of the classes together. I thought that was odd, considering that’s what we always do. The first speaker against the motion dramatically accused the submitter of conspiring to forward an agenda, and accused the Bishop of involvement by calling on him first. He proposed an ammendment to the motion to vote on them individually. There were speeches against it, with accusations going back and forth that this was an effort to push an agenda. Then, in a speech against the motion, a pastor got up and said, “There are two self-avowed, practicing homosexuals being brought up for commissioning.”

So that was why they wanted to vote for them individually—so that they could have each candidate step forward one at a time, and the ones who are gay could be pointed out before they were voted on. That vote on whether to consider them individually or separately has been the subject of lots of analysis and opinion, and so I hope you’ll permit me to share my experience of it as a person who was present.

My Experience of it as a Person who was Present

Maybe others in the room—who didn’t have their nose stuck in the resolutions process since the end of January—were more prepared than I. I’m not on the Board of Ordained Ministry. I didn’t know that there were two LGBTQ persons among the candidates for commissioning, so I had only a few minutes to process what was happening.

Truth be told, I thought it was just for show. I have been attending annual conference since 2007, and these votes have always been a formality—an opportunity for the clergy to stand and cheer for a group of people who had walked the same long journey of preparation we all had, and welcome them to the small community of people called to stand in one of the loneliest places on earth every Sunday with nothing but the Word of God and reliance on the Holy Spirit to carry us. Every one of these votes I’ve seen has been unanimous.

I figured the show would be that this time it would not be unanimous. Either these two people would be singled out and not receive a unanimous vote if considered separately, or the whole class would not be unanimous if voted on together. I thought maybe someone might motion for a roll call vote to put all of us on record in the published minutes of the annual conference so all could see where everyone stood.

Maybe it was appropriate that it shouldn’t be unanimous. Very little is ever unanimous anymore anyway! The vote was taken, and the amendment asking for individual consideration of each candidate did not pass. After another vote, the motion to vote on them together passed.

A roll-call vote was not requested, but the Bishop then said he was aware of the desire to have the vote conducted by secret ballot, and so he proceeded to do so without any motions being made. I assume that he’d been contacted by those opposed to including the LGBTQ persons being commissioned so that it could be in the official record that the vote this year had not been unanimous.

What I couldn’t imagine in a zillion years was that the class—all 16 of them—was in jeopardy of not passing the vote whether we did it individually or not. Everybody knows that the UMC is eventually going to be the one that will allow LGBTQ clergy and weddings at churches that want to have them, and the WCA/GMC won’t. Frankly, WCA affiliated clergy and laity actually walked out of the 2019 annual conference in protest—I wasn’t even sure how many, if any, of them would even care that we were having annual conference let alone actually be there. The GMC had already been in existence for a month by that point, actively working on putting as much distance between themselves and the UMC as they could as quickly as they could.

Beyond that, I knew so many of the the WCA folks in the room—maybe they’d make the show of it in protest, or walk out during the vote, or have a mass abstention or something. However, they’d all been through the same long, difficult process of training, examination, and sacrifice; and weren’t going to do something to put a candidate’s whole career on hold for a year or more. I thought that vote was the end of it, and we were going to go on with the rest of our business, but as you may have heard by now, I was wrong.

The class of candidates for Licensing, including Betsy Hughes, passed easily. As you know by now, the class of candidates for commissioning as provisional elders and deacons, including Carey Stevens, did not.

The Bishop leaned in to the microphone, his voice grave. “Clergy elections require a 3/4 vote. It is the highest voting standard we require for any of the business of the annual conference, which is a testament to how important it is to get this work right. The required vote to elect the class for commissioning as provisional elders and deacons is 75%, and they have received 70%.”

Gasps, groans, and other noises of anger, shock, and frustration immediately filled the room.

The Bishop continued, “Just to clarify, this is historic. There will be no candidates commissioned as provisional deacons or elders, which has never happened before.”

There were motions to revote and other Robert’s Rules process questions tossed out as ways to give the class another chance, but that would require a person who wanted to change their vote or who had abstained from voting to make the motion, and no one did. The ordination class was then voted on, and they passed.

More process questions and motions were floated, with none being in order. But then, one person, a pastor that had actually been a predecessor of mine at my previous appointment at Seminole Heights, motioned to revote. He had abstained the first time. Another person who had abstained seconded the motion. The motion to revote only needed a simple majority, which it got. I thought about Carey Stevens and the others in her class—thankfully she would get another chance. I was sure the people who abstained would vote for the class now that they knew how close it was.

Then a hand went up in the section where the licensing, commissioning, and ordination candidates were sitting. It was someone from the ordination class who had just been approved.

“Does this mean we can vote now?” The Bishop turned to confirm with the Conference Secretary, and then told them they could. A nervous cheer went up at the thought that perhaps this group who had been provisional members just ten minutes prior would help push them over the 75% finish line. Ballots were handed out, votes were cast, and the counting began.

A couple minutes later, the bishop leaned into the microphone again. “For the result of the revote on the candidates for commissioning as provisional deacons and provisional elders, percentage needed is 75%, and they received 72%. There will be no candidates commissioned this year.”

Full Transparency: My Emotional Response to the Votes

Their call had been confirmed by their pastor, by their staff-parish relations committee, by their charge conference, by their District Committee on Ordained Ministry, and finally by the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry. Along the way they had graduated from seminary, written at least a hundred pages of answers to theological, personal growth, and leadership questions, been through background checks, credit checks, mental health evaluations, internships, and interviews; and each step further confirmed what they’d heard God say to them years before: You are called to a set apart ministry of shepherding My people.

We could have joined in, been a part of the parade route cheering them on to spread the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ. I am ashamed of what we did instead.

I found Carey among the crying, rejected candidates for ministry, and gave her a hug. All I could manage to say to her was, “I am so embarrassed, and I am so sorry.” With a line forming to come over and console her, I let her go, and said, “I’m gonna see what I can do.” For all I knew the resolution process might be the only thing that could salvage the next year of their careers, and this year the one responsible for that process was me.

Full disclosure: I think they should have passed, and I’m still aggravated that they didn’t, but now, back to the dispassionate narrative. Thank you for gracefully hearing my experience of it.

Explanations and Justifications

I had some pastors who voted against the class seek me out to talk about what happened. From those interactions and others, there are a few explanations I’ve heard people give.

1. They voted their conscience (or abstained from voting) because they believe the Bible’s teaching against homosexuality should still stand today as it did when it was written.

2. They voted their conscience (or abstained from voting) because while they don’t believe the Bible’s teaching against homosexuality should still stand today as it did when it was written, we should follow the rules and wait until the Book of Discipline is changed before approving LGBTQ persons as candidates for commissioning as provisional elders or deacons.

3. What emerged from WCA leaders, however, is a more concerted effort aimed at combating a hidden agenda of those on the Board of Ordained Ministry who are staying in the UMC. Blog articles abound in which the Board is accused of using the class as “mules,” a reference to cross-border drug smuggling practices, to shield the LGBTQ candidates from scrutiny and advance an agenda that would allow “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” to serve as clergy without waiting for General Conference to change the Book of Discipline. Therefore, those voting against the class were the ones upholding it.

So Whose Fault Was It?

There’s plenty of fault to go around. The motion made to vote for the classes together was an odd start to the session since that’s what we always do. The vote-for-them-one-at-a-time spokesperson called this out as an attempt to head off a motion he planned on making to vote for them separately. The person who made the motion in the first place is one of the best people I know, but in hindsight it’s probably true.

For me, I guess the accusation by WCA/GMC leaders aimed at “UMC-stayers” that they used the class to “sneak” two gay people in as commissioned elders or deacons comes down to how close they thought this vote would be.

• As I admitted already, I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of them not passing. If the makers of the motion to vote for the classes together felt as I confident as I did, then this was just a case of trying to spare these candidates unnecessary embarrassment since they were going to pass anyway.

• On the other hand, if they had information that it was going to be close, and that voting together increased the odds that they’d all pass, the class probably should have been consulted and given the chance to decide whether they wanted to be a part of that plan.

According to those I’ve asked about this, including members of the class, there was an effort among class members to make a statement about being voted on as one, but it never came together. (Having been through the Board of Ordained Ministry process, I can see how there might not be much oxygen left for anything extra like that.) However, even if that’s what the class would have wanted, they probably should have been consulted on it—especially if those making the motion knew that it would be so close, but I guess hindsight is always 20-20.

Was there an attempt made to have dialogue about this? Did anyone who is staying as a part of the UMC approach anyone from the WCA and ask if there’s a way they could allow these LGBTQ candidates to be commissioned now, so that in two years, when most or all of them aren’t a part of the UMC anymore and the Discipline is likely changed, the candidates will have been allowed to do the work they’ll need to do to be eligible for ordination in 2024 or beyond? I don’t know, but I also don’t know if it would have made much of a difference. It might have been a hopeful sign, however, that we still believe reasonable people can find ways to work together when the moment calls for it.

Anything Else on this from Annual Conference?

Following the clergy session, clergy and laity met together in the plenary sessions to conduct the business of the conference. You can find a general summary of the work here. Regarding issues of same-sex weddings and ordination of LGBTQ persons, there were two other items of note.

• 14 churches negotiated agreements with the Florida Conference Board of Trustees and were approved for disaffiliation by vote of the Annual Conference: First UMC, Vero Beach; St. Paul’s/Highland Avenue Fellowship UMC, Melbourne; Lake Helen UMC, Lake Helen; First UMC, Dunnellon; First UMC, Williston; Solomon Chapel UMC, Orange Lake; Wesley Chapel - Cotton Plant UMC, Ocala; Fort Caroline UMC, Jacksonville; Greenville UMC, Greenville; Hanson-Madison UMC, Pinetta; Cherry Lake UMC, Madison; Rocky Springs UMC, Madison; Davie UMC, Davie; First UMC, Punta Gorda. I understand that this agreement included paying the rest of this year’s apportionments**, plus an additional 3X the church’s apportionment amount, and any unfunded pension liabilities they still owed toward the retirement of clergy that had served there.

  • **Apportionments are each local church’s share of the important, disciple-making, world-transforming ministries we all combine to take responsibility for across the Florida annual conference, with the amount based on the size of each church’s budget. It’s roughly close to a “tithe” of the church’s budget toward our shared ministries. For context, Heritage’s apportionment amount in 2022 is $112,463. There’s more about this below under the “Let Us Go!” heading.

• In my capacity as chairperson of the Conference Committee on Resolutions I worked with concerned conference clergy and lay delegates, as well as my committee, on the crafting and presentation of a resolution that might mitigate some of the effects on the careers of the candidates of the commissioning vote. (In short, any conference delegate or church administrative council can submit a resolution to the Conference Committee on Resolutions. It is the committee’s job to make sure that it is properly before the Annual Conference according to our standing rules, to help submitters prepare to speak on behalf of their resolution, to bring resolutions to the floor during the Annual Conference event for voting, and to advise the Bishop on resolution process items that might arise as he presides.) The resolution provided for the commissioning class approved by the Board of Ordained Ministry to (a) begin the Residency in Ministry program they would have started had they been approved, and (b) have the coming year of ministry count as one of the required years they must spend in pastoral ministry before being allowed to apply for ordination as elders or deacons in full connection. The full text of this and all of the resolutions brought before the annual conference can be found here. It required a simple majority vote, and passed by a fairly wide margin.

• Resolutions and statements from annual conferences and various groups and individuals came in from across the country in support and solidarity with the commissioning class caught in the middle of the conflict.

What’s Happened Since?

As far as I understand, most of the candidates for commissioning were given clergy statuses that can be conferred at the district level, normally used for volunteer or student pastors who are in seminary yet help out at a small church who can’t afford a full-time pastor. The bishop and district superintendents did all they could to affirm their call and help them begin the ministries to which they were appointed. Many groups and individuals stepped forward to help mitigate any financial impact on the candidates as well. Despite the outcome of the vote, neither side disputed the excellence with which the candidates presented themselves and their call to ministry, so I’m hopeful that they’ll receive support from people across the spectrum of viewpoints.

The most recent development is a class-action lawsuit filed in Bradford County on behalf of just over 100 churches, which asks the court to force the Florida Conference to release them from the denomination with all of the assets they hold in trust for the denomination. You can read more about the lawsuit here, and can read Bishop Carter’s statement in response to it here.

“Let Us Go!”

If there’s a social media refrain from pastors and church members opposed to full LGBTQ inclusion, “Let Us Go” might be it. It might seem simple enough. If a church wants to leave, why not let them leave? In short, the Florida Conference, as an entity in existence since the 1870’s, has made commitments that are not, nor should they be, easily broken. We were given land in Leesburg with the expectation that it would be maintained as a place of retreat for Methodists of all ages. We’ve agreed to be a home for children without families through the United Methodist Children’s Home. We’ve agreed to help shoulder the burden of disaster relief. We’ve agreed to offer a home away from home through the Wesley Foundations on college campuses across the state of Florida. We’ve agreed to partner with the churches of Cuba and Angola to pray for and support them. We’ve agreed to help end the existence of malaria on the continent of Africa. We’ve committed to care for the faithful clergy and their spouses who gave their lives to the service of Christ’s church during their retirement years as well.

Before churches are allowed to abandon these commitments we made together, thoughtful planning will be required on how we will meet them, or how we will transition to reduce what is expected of us regarding support for college students, families at camp, victims of disasters, orphans, retired clergy, the people of Cuba and Africa, and anyone else who counts on our support. Departing churches may want to leave tomorrow and be freed from the apportionments they pay in order to share these responsibilities so they can spend the money on something else, but it would be irresponsible for our bishops, superintendents, and lay leaders to simply pull the rug out from under these ministries. What some call “foot dragging” or “being held hostage” is simply people trying to find a faithful way to answer the call God has placed upon the United Methodist Church. It’s not as simple as it’s made out to be in the oversimplified soundbites on Facebook written to make everybody as angry as possible. There are real lives being affected.

Full disclosure… the week that I spoke at Warren Willis there were several kids from the United Methodist Children’s Home in attendance. The United Methodist Church has been a refuge for kids coming out of painful places for a long time, and I got to hear about it straight from the mouths of kids who have never had the ground feel stable under their feet, and are still not sure they can trust the stability they feel now. It was a privilege to meet them, and I count it a privilege to be a part of a denomination that would tell the bickering grownups to hold on a minute until we can figure out how to continue to be that refuge for a long time to come.

So the holding pattern continues. Both sides continue to sin in their anger. It won’t go on forever, but the end is still a ways on up ahead.

What Difference Does All This Make at Heritage United Methodist?

On many occasions I have said that I don’t think any good will come from us engaging in debate, discussion, or dialogue about this at Heritage at all.

No one is asking us to host or officiate a same-sex wedding. I’ve never done one, nor would I unless the Administrative Council at Heritage changed our policy on it. In truth, I love doing weddings, but churches are rarely the setting of weddings anymore anyway.

Secondly, I’m straight, and I’ve been reappointed at Heritage once again, so there’s no possibility for an LGBTQ person to be appointed as the pastor at Heritage. Further, it would be insanity for the Bishop to appoint an LGBTQ person as the pastor of a church unless the church expressed at least an openness, and at best an eagerness, for it. If the church was not open to it it would kill the church and perhaps the pastor as well. It’s a real lose-lose proposition that isn’t good for anybody. If the Bishop were to consider appointing an LGBTQ person as the pastor at Heritage, it would be because our Ad. Council went out of their way to ask for it, not because the Bishop is secretly in the market for places to put LGBTQ pastors that will hate and hurt them.

So in my opinion, getting into this would be searching for a solution without a problem.

There are a host of other reasons of the WCA and GMC have given recently for joining other than issues related to LGBTQ inclusion. There are differences in leadership structure and other elements of governance. Here’s a brief list:

• “Apportionments Will Be Lower” GMC recruiting presentations often share that apportionments to be paid by churches to the new denomination will be less by a half or even two-thirds in comparison with what they currently pay as a part of the UMC.  This is because they will no longer be responsible for the cost and upkeep of Warren Willis Camp; the Florida Conference Center; Wesley Foundation college ministry facilities; UMC colleges like Bethune Cookman or Florida Southern; and other properties that will be left behind with the UMC.  Further, they plan to have fewer centralized denominational agencies and leaders. 

• “Churches Will Have More Freedom”  GMC recruiting presentations point out that churches will have more freedom to go to the conferences they want to attend or support mission agencies they prefer rather than supporting the ones owned or endorsed by the UMC. We've all had the option to do that already anyway, but it’s a frequent selling point.

• “There Will Be Fewer Bishops, and They Will Have Less Authority”  GMC recruiting presentations frequently cite the size of the college of bishops as unnecessarily cumbersome and self-serving.  Therefore, in his new denomination, they will reduce the authority they wield, and give them term limits.

• “There Will be Swift and More Thorough Discipline for Disobedient Clergy”  One of the greatest frustrations that traditionalists have in the United Methodist Church is the reluctance by district and conference leaders who do not bring clergy who do same-sex weddings up on charges to face discipline, including the potential removal of their ordination. This is always mentioned in GMC recruiting presentations.

• “Licensed Local Pastors will be Treated Better”  During GMC recruiting presentations it’s often said that the UMC treats licensed local pastors as "second class citizens."  Very briefly, a licensed local pastor is someone who has been through a thorough training program in pastoral ministry and is serving as a pastor in a local church, but doesn't necessarily have a master of divinity degree, and has not yet completed the examination process for commissioning as a provisional elder by the Board of Ordained Ministry.  It appears that licensed local pastors will be made the equivalent, or at least much more similar to, full elders in the new denomination.

Beyond these, the issue that WCA/GMC leaders and members would probably say underlies all of their critiques of those staying in the UMC the issue of Biblical authority. In short, they claim that those headed for the GMC consider the Bible authoritative, and those staying behind do not.

• Here is a sample of the Biblical authority argument straight from one of the leaders of the WCA/GMC themselves. This message (click here to view) is by Rev. Rob Renfroe, editor of the Good News magazine and a pastor in Texas, and he’s speaking about the work of the “Way Forward” commission, made up of UM leaders from around the world and from both points of view on human sexuality, which was tasked with researching and preparing church structure options from which delegates to the 2019 General Conference could choose that would allow the UMC to accomplish its mission despite our disagreements. It was recorded with a live audience instructed ahead of time to cheer loudly throughout, so it feels kind of campaign-rally style at times, but it’s a good example of the kind of arguments made claiming that those staying in the UMC don’t believe what the Bible says.

• As you can imagine, I wholeheartedly, passionately reject any claim that I do not love and revere the Scriptures, those who wrote them, and those who sacrificed their safety to preserve them. I wholeheartedly, passionately reject any claim that I do not hold the Bible in the highest regard as anything other than authoritative, propelled by the Holy Spirit into the ears and hearts and minds and souls of people whose lives it has changed, including my own. It takes intentional restraint at times to give a reasoned response when I am accused otherwise.

• I have written a separate article, also on the Heritage blog, that discusses the differences between the approach of the WCA/GMC and the approach of the ongoing UMC without pointing out one or the other as the villain. Click here to read it. You’ll be able to tell the one to which I subscribe, but I have tried to be fair to both approaches. Both have produced the fruit of the Holy Spirit and have their place.

How can Heritage Go About Leaving the United Methodist Church?

In 2019 a special meeting of the General Conference approved a temporary addendum to the United Methodist Book of Discipline that gave guidance for annual conferences to allow churches to be disaffililated from the United Methodist Church. You can read the addendum here.

There are resources from the Florida Conference that might be helpful as well. You can find them here.

You can find resources from the Global Methodist Church by clicking here.

All annual conferences across the United Methodist Church are doing their best to help churches navigate the way ahead until the next General Conference in 2024. Executive Director Janean Briseno’s long time mentor is a District Superintendent in the North Texas Annual Conference, and shared their resources as well. You can find them here.

Shepherding

The United Methodist Church offers a critically important, yet unique, contribution to the global conversation about who Jesus Christ was and the difference He can still make today. I will be remaining in the United Methodist Church, and hope to remain a Heritage United Methodist for many years to come! Regardless, the next General Conference at which decisions can be made about the UMC’s future will happen in 2024. Until then, we will make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, and continue to work to accomplish the mission God has given us in Clearwater and around the world.

For as long as I’m allowed I will do the best shepherding I can—because that’s what pastors do—to be the very best United Methodist church we can be, and I will do so without any ill feeling toward those who have already chosen, or who will choose, a different kind of shepherd and a different kind of church. Everyone to wants to be, regardless of your view on this issue, will always be a welcome and valued part of Christ’s church at Heritage.

The world needs a church that’s good in the grey. It needs churches that are good in the black and white too, but there are many churches covering that already. I like the grey and feel called to it—I like to look around and see where the Holy Spirit is moving—out in front, helping us navigate waters we’ve never navigated before. It’s not often easy, and not often safe, but it’s always good to go where the Holy Spirit is, humbled by the unknowns, yet emboldened to face them by the presence of the God who is with us. As followers of God with us, may we always be a church who is willing to prioritize being with, not afraid of the unknown—perhaps eager for it, because of our faith in the One who can do far more than we could ever ask or imagine.

United Methodists have and hone the skills needed by those who are blazing the trails, plotting the course, and finding the ways through, and making paths for others to follow. What an adventure we’ve been on, and what an adventure yet awaits! It is a privilege to be a part of the adventure with you!

Biblical Authority

Churches all over are currently considering the invitation by leaders of the Wesley Covenant Association (WCA) to leave the United Methodist Church (UMC) and become a part of a new denomination.  They officially began operating as a new denomination on May 1, and on May 2 announced news that 107 churches will be leaving the UMC to join.

The issue that has driven talk of the formation of a new denomination for years is the issue of hosting same-sex weddings at UMC facilities, UMC clergy officiating them, and people in same-sex marriages serving in lay or clergy leadership roles in the UMC.  

However, those speaking on behalf of the WCA have frequently stated that these are actually "symptoms of a larger problem."

The real problem, they say, is that too many who are staying in the UMC do not see the Bible as authoritative.  Frequent communication about the WCA and the invitation for churches to leave the UMC and join a new denomination, called “The Global Methodist Church,” (GMC), highlight this as a distinguishing characteristic.  Consider this from the WCA’s “About us” page:

It names the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” that uses Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience in discerning how the Holy Spirit is leading us to act, followed by a “But” that prioritizes their effort to “reestablish” the authority of Scripture.  They have repeatedly claimed that this reestablishment is a necessary correction to what is wrong with the UMC.

Both sides have lobbed criticisms in the direction of one another.  “The UMC picks and chooses the parts of the Bible they like, and ignores the parts they don’t,” or “The GMC treats the Bible as an idol.”  

However, the difference between the two is not in their level of reverence for the Bible.

United Methodism and Christian Fundamentalism*: A Match Made in Haste

(*Note:  I do not use “Christian Fundamentalism” with any kind of derision.  I use it to connect it to the historic movement to which it has belonged for over a century that urgently sought people who would push back against what was seen as a brewing crisis in the late 1800’s: an attack by science on the infallibility, inerrancy, and literal truth of the Bible’s account of human history.)

Progressive ideas from universities in the Northern U.S. and Europe were being thrust upon a population in the American South that was just 30 years removed from the abolition of slavery, the Civil War, and the bungled reconstruction effort.  Around the turn of the 20th century, the conflict came to a head when science produced Darwin’s theory of evolution, which seemed to be a direct contradiction of the Bible’s seven-day creation account.  

With their culture and their economy attacked years before, now their faith was on the defensive.  The movement began within the Presbyterian Church, but with alarm bells calling out the threat of science on the Christian faith, it quickly spread to other denominations (including the UMC, which was called the “Methodist Episcopal Church” at the time) with slogans announcing that they were seeking people willing to “go to battle for the fundamentals.”  One of these fundamentals was the literal truth and inerrancy of the Bible, including the Creation story from the Book of Genesis, leaving no room for a theory of evolution.

Over the last 100 years, Methodism and Fundamentalism became intertwined.  In fact, they’re so intertwined that it’s taken decades to start pulling them apart.  As painful as its been to date, it is a process worth continuing and completing, for they are approaches to faith in Christ with significant, incompatible differences.

What’s the Difference?

John Wesley and the early Methodists organized their movement using what came to be known as “Holy Conferencing,” and it has grown to now serve millions of people across multiple continents through Charge, Annual, Jurisdictional, and General Conference gatherings.  This conferencing has resulted in the United Methodist Book of Discipline, which is the collective wisdom gathered from over two centuries of clergy and laity regarding how to faithfully apply the Bible in the various situations faced by our churches in the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

There are leaders in the WCA and other fundamentalist Christian denominations that call this “ignoring,” “selectively” reading, or “changing” the Bible so that we more easily fit into the surrounding culture.  That of course is a danger that must be guarded against, as sometimes the church serves its community best as a prophetic voice against the direction its culture is headed.  

However, conferencing and consensus building do provide guard rails to ensure that we remain faithful to the Spirit of the law at times when the letter of the law doesn’t speak as precisely to a contemporary context as it may have in a previous one.  

The fundamentalist Christian approach of the WCA to Biblical authority does not allow as much space for these conferencing and consensus building conversations.  For them the end of the discussion is the Bible text itself, or the “orthodox” (or most commonly held) beliefs of the last 2000 years of Christianity; as the permanent and unmoving rule of faith and final word in all matters.  

By contrast, you might say that in the Holy Conferencing of United Methodism, they are the starting point in all matters that calls us together in the first place.

Are You Saying the Bible Isn’t Enough?

By no means! John Wesley’s Articles of Religion state plainly that the holy Scriptures contain all that is necessary for salvation, but that isn’t the same thing as just reading it and doing what it says. Just like getting the water out of a sponge, you don’t just look at it—you squeeze it, wring it, fold it and do whatever you need to do find those little pockets where the water is still stored in it. We search and study the Scriptures with every tool at our disposal because we know that they contain the salvation this world craves, and we’re eager to find every last drop!

The practice of conferencing implies trust that the Holy Spirit speaks through the gathered community as we study and reflect together.  As United Methodists prayerfully, humbly gather together to study the Scriptures and discern how to apply them in the situations that arise using resources such as reason, tradition, and experience; we trust that a consensus is evidence of the Spirit speaking to us.  A lack of consensus means that there’s more listening, praying, studying, and conferencing to do.

At times this process has revealed that applications of Scripture made in years past have not called for the same application in the present day.  There was a time when slavery was endorsed from Methodist pulpits using the Bible.  There was a time when God’s call upon Israel to cleanse Canaan of all the other nations and not intermarry with them was applied to mean that schools should remain segregated.  There was a time when Paul’s words that “women should be silent” were interpreted to mean women were not allowed to be ordained to preach the Gospel.

Deuteronomy 23:2 says, “No one of illegitimate birth may enter the assembly of the Lord; none of his descendants, even to the tenth generation, may enter the assembly of the Lord.” My wife was put up for adoption after her birth mother became pregnant at 16. So my wife and daughters have no place in the church, nor will any of my family until I have great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren?

Further, it's okay that the Bible says those things. It wasn't the responsibility of the people who wrote the various books of the Bible to write them in a way that would speak to me perfectly in 2022. They were writing to a specific group of people at a specific time in a specific place. It is my responsibility to read those words, study them, work to understand the time from which they came, and then discern, in cooperation with others, how to apply those words in a way that bears fruit today.

In the process of conferencing, Methodists saw that the fruit of the Holy Spirit was not produced by these applications, and therefore we changed our application so that there would be a greater measure of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  That’s why we were able to fight for the abolition of slavery, to call for the end of segregation, to begin ordaining women to preach the Gospel, and for our preachers to preach in bars, coal mines, jails, or anywhere—inside or outside—to anybody regardless of who their parents were or how acceptable they might seem to the churchgoing crowd. It isn’t always the cleanest, most efficient, easiest process; but it has forced us to do the hard, important work of listening for the voice of the Spirit together, rather than just acting on the interpretation of one or a few.

The Nature of the Debate

WCA leaders have made the point on multiple occasions that John Wesley and the other early Methodists who first gathered to conference together would never have officiated a wedding other than one between one man and one woman.  They would never have approved of a same-sex wedding being hosted at an Anglican church (That was their church affiliation, as Methodism as a seprate denomination did not exist until later.).  They never would have advocated for the ordination of a man with a husband (nor likely a woman with a wife, had they allowed the ordination of women back then).  In this WCA leaders are surely correct–I can’t imagine John Wesley even considered it for a second.  

With the Bible text and 2000 years of orthodoxy as the two sources permitted to speak on the issue regardless of the outcome, heterosexuality is the unmoving standard by which they believe all should live.

In United Methodism, the Bible text, 2000 years of orthodoxy, reason, tradition, and experience are considered in community together in order to discern which application of the Scriptures will bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Once a possible course ahead is discerned, consensus building begins.

It becomes clear, when contrasting these styles, how fundamentalist Christians would retain the belief that same-sex relationships are as bad as the authors of the Bible said they are.  By holding this line, they trust that a life of "celibacy in singleness" would yield a far better life and bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit far more than marriage would. 

At the same time, some United Methodists have considered these Bible passages through the lens of reason, tradition, and experience; wondering if prohibitions against same-sex relationships might be interpreted as a contextual requirement for the time in which they were written, rather than enduring for all time.  They were written at a time when child-bearing was essential for the new nation of Israel’s population replacement rate, for helping with farming or family chores, to care for parents in their old age, to secure the family’s possessions being inherited by the next generation, or to signal the blessing of God on a marriage at a time before we understood medical issues such as infertility or endometriosis.  Instead, they began to consider that perhaps the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons might be a better way to love and support them, and offer an approach that would yield love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in this present era. 

Why Didn’t Conferencing Work This Time?

Clearly, consensus has not been reached, and so talk of splintering has gotten louder and louder.  Some felt that the interpretations and applications of the Scriptures as currently codified in the Book of Discipline (prohibiting LGBTQ weddings and ordination) should be followed until such a time as they are changed.  

Others saw harm being done by the delay in allowing the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons.  LGBTQ teens and young adults not wanting to disappoint their families were committing suicide.  Others were struggling with addiction after turning to drugs and alcohol to help them stomach socially acceptible heterosexual relationships that were contrary to who they are.  It was becoming a matter not just of theology and Biblical interpration, but of human rights and safety and justice.

Further, LGBTQ persons were leaving the church, feeling rejection from its people, hardening their hearts against organized religion of any kind, and in some cases, against anything having to do with God at all.  

With the UMC growing the fastest in areas of the world where same-sex relationships are unacceptible, little by little more General Conference delegates were opposed to it every four years.  It began to seem increasingly unlikely that the policy preventing full LGBTQ inclusion would ever change, so some United Methodist clergy took matters into their own hands and began performing same-sex weddings.  Fundamentalist Christian members of United Methodist churches expected these clergy to face discipline for breaking the rules, but these rules were not being enforced in Annual Conferences that were more supportive of full LGBTQ inclusion, and this inconsistency brought the issue to a head.  The idea of separation stepped out of the realm of possibility and into the realm of planning and execution.

Another factor working against conferencing was the 2016 establishment of the WCA.  It was founded with the claim that it was not the formation of a new denomination, but it was.  It was collecting fundamentalist Christian leaning UMC clergy, laity, and churches by holding conferences, forming a governance structure, and raising financial support.  Soon most of those in the UMC opposed to full LGBTQ inclusion were gathered together into a group identifying themselves as the “conservatives” opposing the “liberals” who ignore what the Bible says about same-sex relationships because they don’t adhere to Biblical authority and are capitulating to the culture around them.

Previously, those in the UMC tended to hold varied, nuanced views on the subject rather than marching in lock-step, but the launch of the WCA kicked off 5-6 years of both sides reclusively retreating into separate tribes in much the same way, and along much the same lines, as our political tribes have done in the United States.  So it’s becoming more and more inevitable, but also more and more necessary, for this exit to take place, so that both approaches to Biblical authority can stop fighting, be themselves, and focus on accomplishing their mission.

What Should I/We Do?

Perhaps you are one of those people, or perhaps you attend one of those churches, trying to decide which, if either, of these denominations is where you belong. In reality, its not as easy a decision as you may have heard.

As is usually the case, there are fewer villains around than advertised. It's easier to decide this way, but please don't make the decision based on which side has most effectively villainized the other and gotten you angry about a nefarious conservative or liberal agenda. That's too easy, and the world needs us to be better than that.

It's easier to decide this way, but don't decide because one says they see the Bible as more authoritative than the other. The Bible is the primary authority for both, and besides, that's also too easy, and the world needs us to be better than that.

Don't decide because one is on a slippery slope with no accountability or guard rails to keep them faithful to the Scriptures. Neither of them is on said slope, and besides, that's also too easy, and the world needs us to be better than that.

Decide based on the actual difference. Do you think the whole Bible is inerrantly, infallibly, literally applicable as it's written for all situations at all times for the rest of time? Or do you think there are situations that require holy conferencing, sacred conversations in which we listen for the Spirit and seek consensus, because there are parts of the Bible that seem to have been applicable to the time in which they were written, but not in every situation in every time for all time?

Decide based on which is most likely to help you produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Decide which one will help you to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and which one will help you love your neighbor as yourself.

According to Jesus, that's apparently what's most important.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself."

Matthew 22:37-39

2022 Florida Annual Conference Recap

The 2022 session of the Annual Conference was held June 9-11 at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. This year’s theme was “Rebuilding the Church, Re-membering the Body: Creating a Spiritual Home for All.” (News particularly related to Heritage is in blue.) Heritage’s Lay Delegate, Mel Swets attended, as did Jim Workman and Peggy Ingram, who were Gulf Central District Delegates.

Bishop’s Offering

This year, two offerings were collected to support Encounter with Christ in Latin America and the Caribbean and to provide technology grants for rural, small membership churches. Click here to learn more about the Bishop’s Offering. Ministries wishing to apply for the grant should click here, though Heritage would not fit into the intended size category.

Episcopal Nominee (for Bishop)

Our former South Central and Gulf Central District Superintendent, Rev. Dr. Sharon Austin, was recognized as the Florida Annual Conference’s Episcopal Nominee. She is the first woman of color nominated for Bishop from the Florida Conference.

Finances

The Conference approved an overall budget of $16,142,422 for 2023, which amounts to a reduction of $187,175 from the previous year’s budget. Details can be viewed in the Conference workbook, on pages 129-132. Additionally, Conference Treasurer Craig Smelser reported that:

• 416 churches, including Heritage, gave 100% of apportionments in 2021.

• Conference expenses were down $425,000 in 2021 in comparison to 2020 — much of this is due to a planned reduction along with the lessons learned about new ways to do our work from the pandemic.

• The Cabinet approved $2.3M in direct grants to local churches through the New Church Development Endowment and Cabinet Development Fund in 2022.

• So far, 34.3% of apportionments have been received through the end of May.

Laity Session/Lay Leaders

The focus of the Laity Session was on the “Four Ps” of laity leadership: Purpose, Presence, Partnership, and Passion. The session ended with a Service of Recognition for Certified Lay Ministry. Click here to view the Laity Session.

At the Thursday afternoon plenary session, Derrick Scott III, executive director of the Campus to City Wesley Foundation (including the University of North Florida and other Jacksonville area colleges), was elected as Conference Co-Lay Leader to serve alongside Co-Lay Leader Alice Williams.

Licensing & Ordination Services

Sixteen people were licensed as local pastors, including Heritage’s Betsy Hughes! Two were ordained as deacons, and ten were ordained as elders, including Tamara Isidore, the first Haitian woman to be ordained in the Florida Conference. Click here to email Betsy your congratulations.

The entire Commissioning class approved by the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry was not approved at the Clergy Session, including Heritage’s Carey Stevens, a candidate for provisional deacon. While her class was not approved, Carey and her entire class are to be admired and congratulated for being approved by the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry after a grueling preparation and evaluation process. Hopefully they will pass next year. Click here to email Carey your congratulations and encouragement.

Click here to view candidates names in the Worship Book. To watch video of the services, click here.

Milestone Churches

The following churches celebrated milestone anniversaries:

• 200 Years: Alachua, First (NW); Fernandina Beach, Memorial (NE); Fernandina Beach, Trinity (NE); Live Oak, Pine Grove (NW)

• 150 Years: Largo, Anona (GC); Waldo, Freedom (NC); Shady Grove, Hendry Memorial (NW)

• 125 Years: Miami, Cornerstone (SE), Tallahassee, Lake Jackson (NW)

• 100 Years: First, Cross City (NW); Jacksonville, Ft. Caroline (SW); Lake Placid, Memorial (SW); Miami, Kendall (SE); Miami Springs, Poinciana (SE); Orlando, Broadway (EC); Lake Helen (EC)

• 75 Years: Tallahassee Heights (NW)

• 50 Years: Longwood, Sanlando (EC); Orlando, Christ Hispanic (EC)

• 25 Years: Naples, Cornerstone (SW)

Connectional Relationships

The Conference voted to approve the discontinuance of Riverview UMC in Ormond Beach.

The following churches were approved for disaffiliation according to ¶ 2553 of the Book of Discipline: First UMC, Vero Beach; St. Paul’s/Highland Avenue Fellowship UMC, Melbourne; Lake Helen UMC, Lake Helen; First UMC, Dunnellon; First UMC, Williston; Solomon Chapel UMC, Orange Lake; Wesley Chapel - Cotton Plant UMC, Ocala; Fort Caroline UMC, Jacksonville; Greenville UMC, Greenville; Hanson-Madison UMC, Pinetta; Cherry Lake UMC, Madison; Rocky Springs UMC, Madison; Davie UMC, Davie; First UMC, Punta Gorda.

2022-2023 Pastoral Appointments

Rev. Matt Horan is reappointed as the pastor for a fifth year at Heritage. Click here to view a list of all clergy appointments in the Florida Annual Conference as of July 1, 2022. Some notable Heritage “alumni” clergy include:

• Rev. Trevor Johnson is reappointed for a ninth year at Community of Hope UMC in Loxahatchee.

• In lieu of Commissioning as a Provisional Deacon at Annual Conference, Rev. Carey Stevens was approved as a local pastor by the Gulf Central District Committee on Ordained Ministry and appointed to serve at Skycrest UMC in Clearwater.

• Rev. B.J. Foster is on a temporary medical leave.

Memorial Recognition

The Service of Remembrance for the clergy and clergy spouses who died in the last year featured a sermon from Rev. June Edwards. View the service here.

Resolutions

Heritage’s Rev. Matt Horan served as the chairperson of the Conference Committee on Resolutions this year. The following resolutions were approved by the Conference:

• A Resolution Offering Apologies and Hope for the Commissioning Class of 2022

• Resolution on Equity in Congregational Development (Amended to include Indigenous and Native American clergy)

• A Resolution on Gun Violence

Resolutions not voted on will be referred to the Conference Table. Resolutions can be found here.

Retirement Recognition

The Conference noted the long and dedicated service of 25 pastoral leaders who move on to retirement. They combined for 671 years of service. Click here to view a video of the service.

Setting the Date for Next AC

The 2023 Florida Annual Conference is set for June 8-10, 2023, in Lakeland, FL.

More Information

Complete coverage of this year’s Annual Conference event is available at flumc.org/news. Full ministry reports are included in the 2022 Annual Conference Workbook.

This update is provided with thanksgiving for, and is based on the work of, Conference Communications Director Brittany Jackson.

Amazing Grace at the Sand Bar Grill

This Story Brought to the Heritage UMC Blog by Guest Contributors Jason, Lauren, and Maria LeBlanc!

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This Story Brought to the Heritage UMC Blog by Guest Contributors Jason, Lauren, and Maria LeBlanc! 〰️

Picture it: Ash Wednesday, 2022. My family and I had attended the 7PM Ash Wednesday service after working and going to school during the day. We were hungry, tired, and not in the mood to have to cook, so we decided to check out a small restaurant that we’ve driven by a thousand times. The Sandbar Grill, which is literally a single wide trailer and some decking in the Curlew Road shopping plaza by the Causeway, is always packed. For several years, we’ve passed by this restaurant, always concluding that one day we would go there to eat, only to ultimately forget about it when looking for a place to eat.  Finally, this night would be the night.

As it turns out, the Sandbar Grill is more of a bar than a grill at the time of night we went, although we imagine there’s a bit more balance to that during the daytime hours. Immediately, we were taken aback that the bulk majority of the people there were very conscious of our daughter being present and refrained from using inappropriate language. They even offered up places that we could sit at where she might be more comfortable; our daughter wasn’t too terribly fond of the loud live music that evening.  Everyone seemed to almost be protective of her even though we had never eaten there before and didn’t know any of them; still we couldn't help but feel like we had just become family members by merely showing up to eat there.

Since we went straight from church, we still had our ashes on our faces for Ash Wednesday. This was met with excitement amongst our impromptu family members, many of whom exclaimed that they had either forgotten or didn't realize it was Ash Wednesday. As the evening progressed, one of the regulars was so moved that she got up on stage (it seemed to be an open mic night of sorts) to sing Amazing Grace adapted to the rhythm of the song House of the Rising Sun.  She then started talking about Jesus and the sacrifice He made for us.

We have never experienced anything like it, but we thought it was really cool!  We immediately thought of Pastor Matt’s sermon about the sacred intruding into the secular.  We were exhausted and hungry and weary from the day, but the Lord led us to exactly what was needed that evening, and we left uplifted, inspired, and couldn’t stop smiling and talking about the experience.  We felt that sharing the story would be a good idea, if for no other reason that it may help others to look for the Lord’s blessings in everything, even in the places and moments one may not necessarily be looking for them. 

Your A-Team!

I was about 9 when I first saw The A-Team. It started with this opening voiceover describing the team’s journey from army commandoes to wanted fugitives to mercenaries for hire, and that’s all I needed. 9-year-old Matt was transfixed as they inventively solved problems, usually requiring a healthy dose of car chases and explosions along the way.

The leader of the A-Team was portrayed brilliantly by George Peppard. Sure, he was Audrey Hepburn’s love interest in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but that pales in comparison to his performance in the role he was born to play, John “Hannibal” Smith. In every episode, when the obstacles were overcome, the mission was accomplished, and the day was saved, Hannibal would look over the carnage left in their wake with a satisfied smile and say his famous line.

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

— John "Hannibal" Smith, in "The A-Team."

It is with abundant thanksgiving we can assure you that the staff at Heritage is one of the best. Every person on your staff team contributes positively to our leadership culture, making it a great place to work. Each is a disciple of Jesus Christ who earnestly strives to walk and talk as Jesus did. I know you join me in giving thanks for them!

As you know, our attendance was absolute zero for seven months in 2020. Once we reopened in November of 2020, people began to slowly trickle back in. The first week back we had more staff and volunteers than attenders, but eventually we saw a couple dozen people, then 50, then 75, and then we topped 100. We seemed to have hit a stride in 2022, now seeing lots of new and returning faces in the services, with something like 200-250 people or so now in attendance.

There is cause for hope for sure, though the shifting size of our congregation has created some challenging financial realities for us to face together. Your Staff Parish Relations (SPR) Team has been working on a plan to organize our staffing in a way that reflects the areas of responsibility that need coverage, and that best employs the skills of the incredibly gifted, hard-working, and faithful people we have on the team. I'm pleased to announce that the plan has finally come together.

I am so thankful for their hard work, both the 2021 SPR team led by Mike Quigley, and the 2022 team led by Steve Elliott. Please read the note below from Steve, and from Administrative Council Chairperson Michael Pate, about how our staff is now organized for the coming season of ministry.

Sincerely,

Pastor Matt

Dear Heritage United Methodist,

After many months of hard work by Mike Quigley and his 2021 SPR team, as well as some finishing touches by our 2022 team, we’ve introduced some changes that will allow the staff to shift as needed during busy times to give leadership to our various ministry areas. For example, during Vacation Bible School, more staffing support might shift towards children’s ministry, or during Christmas, there could be a shift toward worship and hospitality.

Here are the changes:

Janean Briseno | Executive Director

This will be a role that touches all areas of church leadership. She now has decision-making authority in each area of the church, with her guidance treated as if it was guidance from Pastor Matt. She will run staff and other meetings, track follow up steps, and will coordinate pulling staff resources from areas in a slow season to support those in a busy season, ensure that each area is staffed in a way that will allow it to continue to function with excellence. She will also coordinate on agenda setting with Pastor Matt and Chairperson Michael Pate for Administrative Council and Executive Team meetings.

Peggy Ingram | Discipleship Director

Peggy will be equipping our staff and lay leaders to make and grow disciples among middle school students, high school students, and adults; and equip them to transform the world. This creates an overlap of our work in discipleship and missions in the hope that having a Kingdom impact on our community will become a natural result of our growth as disciples of Jesus Christ.

With Jake Authier's retirement from our staff team, he has moved into the role of Missions Lay Leader, serving on our Executive Team and Administrative Council in order to keep missions ever before us at our highest levels of leadership.

(Like Janean, Peggy is also a staff leader being given decision-making authority to speak for Pastor Matt or Janean when needed. With Curtis Paige and John Silkauskas no longer on staff, and Pastor Matt taking on leadership of our congregational care ministry and school partnerships, Janean and Peggy have been asked to function in congregation-shepherding roles as needed. If Janean is the vice-president, Peggy is the speaker of the house. If all three of them go down in the same plane crash, just ask Pat Bluhm what to do!)

Eric Johnson | Communications Director

Eric will take on the work of coordinating our external messaging and online content, and will be developing an internal system in which every upcoming event we communicate is followed up by communicating it’s result or impact afterwards. He will also take the first swing at any IT issues we have. As a seminary graduate, Eric brings a congregation-shaping theological perspective to this role that most churches don’t get to have in their communication efforts, for which we’re thankful.

We have gradually been moving in this direction for the last few months, and as of this past Sunday, these new roles are now in effect. We hope you’ll join us in expressing thanks for the hard work and flexibility that your church staff has shown over the last two years, and continues to show. We have an A+ Team!

Sincerely,

Steve Elliott, SPR Chairperson
Michael Pate, Administrative Council Chairperson

The Wheatfield

It’s one of the greatest pieces of oratory in the history of spoken language.  It’s barely three paragraphs.  It contains just 271 words, but if there are verses of American scripture, these are surely foremost among them.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The words need little help, but they do indeed receive it from the place where they were first spoken aloud by President Abraham Lincoln, November 19th, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

It’s ironic that part of Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address predicts that it will soon be forgotten, and perhaps this ironic prediction serves to add to its renown.  He made the prediction, however, because he felt the weight of the place as well as anyone.  It was more than 7,000 members of The Army of the Potomac, organized and deployed on his orders, along with over 7,000 members of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia who opposed them, that now lay buried a few feet beneath the feet of those gathered to hear him.  So many people died there that bodies were still being found more than 70 years later, the last in 1939.

I have wanted to visit the site of the Battle of Gettysburg for years, ever since seeing the movie with amazing performances by Martin Sheen as General Robert E. Lee, Tom Beringer as General James Longstreet, Jeff Daniels as Colonel Robert Lawrence Chamberlain, and many others who brought those terrible days to life on the big screen.  

The decisive moment of the battle is known as “Pickett’s Charge.”  Several brigades of about 12,000 Confederate troops, led by General George Pickett–portrayed brilliantly by Stephen Lang in the movie–took cover behind rocks and trees across a large wheatfield from about 6,000 Union troops in a highly advantageous position on a ridge above.  Robert E. Lee ordered General Pickett to march across the field to take the Union ridge.  

Standing there, you realize how far these soldiers had to go.  It was a distance longer than 13 football fields, slowly marching shoulder to shoulder in long, orderly lines, all the while being shot at with rifles and cannons.  There was no way to take cover–these 12,000 troops knew that there was a near certainty that they’d lose either their limbs or their lives as they walked together into the waves of bombs and bullets crashing over them.  

The battlefield is a national park now.  You wouldn’t know it was anything other than a small rural Pennsylvania town if not for the large granite monuments placed all over that commemorate events and participants in the battle.  The piles of amputated limbs are gone–buried beneath the field hospitals where they were taken from wounded soldiers.  The 5,000 dead horses piled in a heap and burned.  People like Elizabeth Thorn, pregnant at the time, buried more than 100 soldiers in graves herself in the spot where they fell, later to be exhumed and removed to the cemetery consecrated during Lincoln’s address.

158 years later I stood in the very place where it all happened, the very place where so many died.  Staring at the spot for five, then ten, then fifteen minutes, I just couldn’t comprehend it.  How did they do it?  How did they find the courage to leave the shelter of those trees, line up shoulder to shoulder, walk across that enormous field, and–if they were one of the very few that even made it that far–up that hill?

It was the strangest experience.  I felt awestruck at the courage of those men marching into mortal danger, but I also felt angry that their commanders would order them to do it, and that their politicians convinced them that it was necessary.  I felt angry that those commanders and politicians, who were the ones who owned slaves, ordering soldiers to die to protect their right to own them, even though the vast majority of those soldiers couldn’t even dream of ever owning a property that would benefit from slave labor.  

I know that the Civil War wasn’t just fought over slavery–there was a larger debate over whether the federal government had the authority to impose laws over a state government.  In fact, blame could go all the way back to the founders, who in their eagerness to protect themselves from tyrannical kings, they wrote a Constitution that was long on stating what that government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” could not do, and pretty short on what it could.  

In the end, the wealthy delegates to the Continental Congresses found a way to make sure that no king or ruler of any kind could take their money or goods without their permission.  Four score and seven years later, when the government began to talk about taking away the wealthy’s stuff through taxing them and emancipating their slaves, the non-wealthy were sent in to fight and die to prevent it.

Lincoln told those assembled on that November day in 1863, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”  He went on to extoll the virtues of the Union they died to preserve, and as a resident of that Union, I am indebted to them.  

As a disciple of Jesus Christ incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and looking forward to the kingdom of God coming on earth as it is in heaven, I share the hope that we’ll never forget.  I hope we’ll remember not to celebrate a victory that preserved a nation, but to mourn the brokenness that sees people as expendable for the causes of our choosing, to push back against the laziness that prevents us from collaborating to find a better way, and to eradicate the greed that lets us profit from it.

To the Yay-Sayers

During Roman times, Northern Europe was referred to as “Germania.” Eventually the languages used in the area were influenced by Vikings who settled in the Normandy region in the north of present-day France, and in 1066, these “Norman” Germanic-French-Vikings brought the influence of their language to Great Britain when they invaded there.

One of the elements of this Norman language collection was their words for answering a question in the affirmative or negative. The affirmative was “Yay” or “Aye” depending on your accent, and the negative was “Nay.” These continue to be the way that members vote in the British Parliament and other government bodies influenced by the former British Empire around the world today.

It’s also where we get the word “Naysayer.” It’s the negative person who doubts, who usually seems to focus on problems rather than solutions, and is one of the last to jump in and help a group overcome the challenges of the process and press on to success. Their instinct is to say “no.”

Every church has their share of naysayers, and we’re no different. This week, however, we’re reminded of all of the many selfless members of the Heritage United Methodist family who, when asked to help accomplish our mission, have responded time and time again with a resounding “Yay.”

So from all of us on your staff here at Heritage, we offer our most heartfelt thanks to all the amazing “Yay-saying” volunteers who make it possible for Heritage to continue serving our church family, community. and world each and every day. There are literally hundreds of Yay-sayers, from the dedicated team who shop, prepare and deliver meals to the homeless twice a month; to those who shop and deliver to food shelters each week; to the all the teams who supported and spent endless hours working in the pumpkin patch; to those who are now getting ready to become the city of Bethlehem as we celebrate the birth of Jesus with our community; to all those who deliver beautiful, powerful music during both of our services each Sunday; to all of the greeters, ushers, communion preparers and servers at Ignite and the Traditional services; to those who count and process the donations each week; to all the caregiving teams; to our faithful youth and adult small group facilitators; to those helping keep our facilities looking great; to those on our leadership teams; to those running our foster closet; you make Heritage the kind of church where anyone would be glad to be, and you are the ones God is using to infuse hope and joy and excitement for our future.

We love and appreciate you, give abundant thanks for you, and we wish each of you a very safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

Sincerely,
Pat Bluhm, Ashley Allen, Tom Allen, Jake Authier, Janean Briseno, Nathaniel Briseno, Wayne Bloodgood, Barbara Davis, Barb Galbreath, Peggy Ingram, Rob Knabel, Matt Horan, Eric Johnson, Jason Langdon, Colleen Lastkowski, Curtis Paige, Margot Savage, Laurie Spaulding, Tracey Walling, Logan Webb, Charlie Wood, and Neil Yarian

Caution: Pastor Matt Does Some Math

Check out Pastor Matt uses his family’s income to help us practice doing some tithing math. Click here to watch, and click here to see all of the different ways that are available for us to contribute at Heritage!

Ways to Give

• NO FEE OPTIONS:

  • In-person on Sunday

  • Drop by or mail to the office during the week

  • Use your bank’s online ‘bill-pay’ option to have your bank mail a check to Heritage at 2680 Landmark Dr., Clearwater, FL  33761

• NEW ‘CHURCHTEAMS’ ONLINE GIVING PLATFORM:

  • When you give online through our website, heritageumc.com, you will see we have switched to the Churchteams platform for processing online and text-to-give contributions.  

  • Opting for giving from ‘bank account’ versus ‘credit/debit card’ reduces processing fees.

  • When giving online, you can check the box to ‘cover processing fees’ with your contribution, and this helps Heritage save on administrative costs.  Thank you!

• TAX-ADVANTAGED CONTRIBUTIONS:

  • Stock transfer – eliminate capital gains tax; donation is received at current stock valuation

  • IRA Qualified Charitable Donation transfer – eliminate income tax on the withdrawal amount 

  • Beneficiary Designation – for bank/brokerage accounts, insurance policies, retirement accounts, wills

  • Estate Gifts

  • If you would like more information about the tax-advantaged giving methods, please contact Neil Yarian at neily@heritageumc.com

An Upcoming Change in Online Giving

To our Church Members and Friends,

We need your help in moving your online giving from Pushpay to Churchteams so we can reduce fees and better serve you, your families, and our community.

Thank you for your faithful support of Heritage United Methodist Church. Your generosity allows us to continue to serve our church, our community, and our world.

We are reaching out to each of our members and friends who have utilized our online giving platform through our payment processing vendor, Pushpay. In order to be better stewards of your contributions, we are changing our online giving tool to a platform called Churchteams. Our Finance Committee has decided it is prudent to make this transition as it will both save over $5,000 annually in fees and facilitate administrative tasks since we already use Churchteams to record member giving and create your giving statements.

We would like to shut off our old vendor system on November 30, 2021. In order to foster this change without disrupting your support we ask you to please undertake the following steps before the end of November:

#1) SET UP NEW GIVING WITH CHURCHTEAMS: You can go to our website (at https://heritageumc.com) and click the button to give online. This will now take you to our new Churchteams giving page, where you can make your new contribution and set up a Churchteams account. (Or from this email you can use this LINK to NEW online giving (Churchteams), which will take you directly to our new Churchteams giving page, where you can set up a contribution and create an account.)To set up your Churchteams profile and save time in the future, just leave the "Save Account" box checked when you make your first contribution.

AND

#2) CANCEL YOUR PUSHPAY GIVING: Use this LINK to OLD online giving (Pushpay) to cancel any scheduled contributions in our old system. Once you click the link and you are on the Pushpay giving page, in the upper right corner click 'Your Account' and then 'Manage Account' to login and disable your recurring giving and/or remove your payment method to avoid any unintended transactions.**With this change, if you are accustomed to using the Heritage app to process your giving, we ask that you transition to using the church website instead.
Please contact Tracey Walling, Bookkeeper, at traceyw@heritageumc.com or (727) 796-1329, extension 124, if you have any questions or need assistance.

Thank you again for your continued support of Heritage, where we are always working to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Sincerely,

Neil Yarian
Treasurer | 727.796.1329 x 133

Tracey Walling
Bookkeeper | 727.796.1329 x 124

Sherry Thode and Jesus vs. the Coronavirus

When I went into the hospital desperately struggling to breathe and feeling miserable, I saw Jesus in the corner of my room. This was the Jesus of my childhood. You know, the one with long blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes and flowing robes. It was also the Jesus my freshman year college professor tried to make appear weak by putting him in a suit and giving him a haircut. Anyway, there He was - motioning me to come to Him. I thought I was going to die....go to heaven. But, I ARGUED with Him. I had things to do and places to go. It was just like me to argue with God and usurp His authority! What NERVE!

God said to me, “I made you just the way you are. I love you and Jesus loves you. Your purpose is to love and praise me”. Historically, I was never really able to say “I love you, God, I love you Jesus”. I believed, but had too much junk in my life to express myself openly.

Now I said it. “I love you, God. I love you, Jesus.” Jesus reappeared in my corner. A younger, more modern Jesus - rugged, dark-skinned, brown curly hair ... a smiling Jesus. I ran to Him and jumped in His arms like a child runs to his daddy and jumps into his arms.

I know now what God wants me to do - simply love God and to focus on Him! To go and love my family, friends and others. He wants me to build a stronger relationship with Him, and my husband - a strong cord of three: God, Thode and me. I am not a leader or speaker, but I am to love all, accept all, listen to all.

I belong to God. God belongs to me. DOUBT - run away. My calling is to be open to God, to praise and worship him continuously and to love others. This caused a reassessment of my life and the reasons I do what I do. Am I just a doer? Is what I do for the Lord? Am I listening to God’s direction? Do I just want to get it done? Who gets the recognition? God doesn’t want us to overly focus on what we DO. His emphasis is on what we are to BE. Who He is developing in me. DO should be a natural and spontaneous action of who we are in Christ.

During this Covid journey there have been many cards, prays, helpers, meals and friendships. I never realized what an awesome community of faith Heritage is. We have a unity in faith and love for each other first and then we reach out beyond our church family.

Thank you Heritage!
Sherry Thode

Welcome Jason Langdon!

Jason Langdon has accepted our invitation to join the staff at Heritage as our next worship director! We'll introduce him at Administrative Council, Monday night, September 27!

A Letter to Heritage from the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church

The Power of Our Stories: Mindy Crawford

Written by Mindy Crawford

For a long time I took my relationship with God for granted.  I grew up in a Christian family.  I was baptized Methodist, but raised Presbyterian. I was involved in my church.  I believed in God and I was sure he knew me, but after enduring an abusive marriage for 7 years, my life was shredded. 

I stopped attending church when I got married.  It felt like it was too late for me to go back.  I was living in another city, and I didn’t have any friends that went to church.  I decided that I would try praying, and if I thought God answered my prayers, I felt like He was seeing me again.

I married Bob, a wonderful man. He was raised Catholic, but we married in the First Presbyterian Church in downtown St. Pete. Shortly after we got married, we moved to Baltimore, MD. Bob had been married previously too, and had 2 children from that marriage. Bob wanted to be where his children lived. When our son Cuinn was born, we decided we needed to attend a church so we would have a place to baptize him--it seemed hypocritical to get him baptized without actually belonging to a church, so we picked one and gradually started to become involved.  I was on my way to a restored relationship with God, but little did I know that, a couple years later, something would happen to bring me all the way back.  

In 2001,  when Cuinn was four-years-old, he was life-flighted to Johns Hopkins Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in Baltimore with life-threatening pneumonia.  He had more than a liter of fluid removed from one lung during emergency surgery.  Both lungs then collapsed, and the doctors told us the situation was much worse than they had originally believed. 

We were praying with our minister in a room down the hall when the doctor burst into the room.  He told  us that “for no medical reason” one lung had reinflated.  A half hour later, they told us his other lung had reinflated. We knew the reason, and we claimed it as a miracle.  I felt God’s presence in the room with us, and I knew at that moment that Cuinn would survive.  That one moment changed everything for our faith and our family.

In 2012, I had a massive stroke.  My church family from Heritage came along us in unbelievable ways.  They paid all our bills for a month.  We had meals delivered every other day for five months.  Eight ladies in the church paid for two women to clean our home every two weeks.  A woman from church came to mow our lawn, and when Cuinn was deemed old enough to do it himself, she gave us her mower.  All our needs were met, and we were able to thrive.

I see God’s love for me every day.  He didn’t abandon me, He didn’t punish me, He didn’t reject me.  We credit God with every good thing in our lives, and we turn to Him in prayer about the difficult stuff too. I am married to a man who is with me on my spiritual journey. We tithe, and have found that our money worries are diminished.  I don’t feel like I need to answer every altar call anymore.  I belong to God and He knows that.

How the Bible is True

I’ve been told recently that I pick and choose the parts of the Bible that I want to believe, and ignore the parts that I don’t. That is not true.

I cannot express enough how thankful I am to those who have taken the time to say as much to me directly and engage in conversation with me about it. Those conversations have enriched me.

My beliefs about the Bible can be summarized in 2Timothy 3:16-17, which says “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (NIV) In the passage, Paul is referring to the Old Testament, but it also summarizes how I feel about the Gospels, the Book of Acts, the letters, and the Book of Revelation—the New Testament—as well. I have no authority to add anything more to the passage, nor to take anything away from it. I don’t take away words like “All” or “every.” It is what I believe about the Bible.

I don’t have the right to “pick and choose the parts of the Bible I want to believe, and disregard the parts that I don’t.” No one does. I don’t want to believe that God told the Israelites to commit genocide as they conquered the Promised Land, but it’s not up to me to decide what is in the Bible and what isn’t. So yes, the God of the Bible is a genocidal God, and we have to try and make sense of that, because we don’t have the option to just ignore it.

There is something that I admit I cannot do. I cannot show all of the stories of the Bible to be true with archaeology or linguistics or some other evidence from a field of expert study. There are simply many parts of the Bible that no one can prove or disprove, so I choose not to spend time doing it. I’m not going to spend time arguing with someone on whether or not God really changed everyone’s languages at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), really turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19), really caused Jonah to be swallowed by a whale (Jonah 1), really told the people of Israel to kill every man, woman, and child in the towns they conquered (1Samuel 15), really caused Jesus to be born of a virgin (Luke 1), really commanded that disobedient children should be stoned to death at the city gates, (Deut 21) or really forbade things like engagement rings or hair braiding (1Peter 3). On top of that, I also choose not to measure the faith of another by their belief or disbelief in these things.

I can show the Bible to be true by the testimony of those who have seen it’s lessons lived out in their own lives. I can’t prove the Tower of Babel happened, but I can give testimony that if I stay where it’s safe and refuse to step out in faith into the unknown where God calls me to go, I will miss out on the remarkable opportunities God offers me to make a difference in this world. I can’t prove that Lot’s wife was really turned into a pillar of salt, but I can give testimony that if I’m stuck thinking about my own past, my own heritage, my own baggage, my own grudges, etc., I’m going to miss out on the possibilities that lie before me in the future. I can’t prove that Jonah was really swallowed by a whale, but I can give testimony that if I only hang around with safe people who are like me, I will miss out on the rich opportunities for connections that will help me and others grow in to more than we were before we met each other. I can’t prove that when attacking the Amalekites, God told Samuel to tell Saul, “Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys,” nor can I prove that it was God’s desire that disobedient children should be stoned to death at the city gates, nor can I prove that engagement rings and hair braiding are against God’s will; but I can give testimony that holiness is God’s desire for me, and to have any vision for my life other than holiness leads me astray every time. I can’t prove that Jesus was born of a virgin, but I can give testimony that being available to God like Mary was, even though it can be scary and costly, is far better than being unavailable to God.

If you want a pastor who denounces other preachers or has debates over whether the stories in the Bible are all literal, inerrant accounts of real events; or if you need me to measure the faith of a pastor or another believer by their willingness to engage in those debates or denunciations—well, I’m not going to do that.

If you want a pastor who is being saved by the grace of God poured out on me in Jesus Christ despite my brokenness and unworthiness, if you want a pastor who is humbled by the unconditional love that God has for me despite my sin, if you want a pastor who is amazed by the grace of God that called me to be a shepherd of His church and His representative to His people despite my many shortcomings, if you want a pastor who wants everyone everywhere to enjoy friendship with God, if you want a pastor who is grieves over the suffering of those who are poor and marginalized, if you want a pastor who is in awe of the people who wrote and copied and conveyed their ancient words about Jesus Christ across the centuries so that they could get to us today, if you want a pastor who loves searching the Bible for new insights into the experience of the Israelites of the Old Testament and the early church in the New and considering their implications for us today, and if you want a pastor who believes that the church of Jesus Christ is God’s plan for sharing the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ with the whole world, I’m glad to apply for the job.

For those among us who have been telling people that I pick and choose the parts of the Bible I like and disregard the parts I don’t, I hope you understand that I cannot allow that to be the last word. If you think that, or if you’ve heard that, please contact Pat in the office and set up a time to come ask me about it. It would be a privilege to get to talk about the Bible together with you. —MH