This March my wife and I agreed that I should no longer pursue ordination in the United Methodist Church. I had been planning on being ordained in the United Methodist Church for ten years.
The decision to leave a church is always a difficult one. When that church is where you have planned to spend your adult life and career in the ministry, it is perhaps all the more difficult to leave, as the stories here will attest. A decision of this weight might best be described as a divorce-it can involve legal difficulties, involves more than the two parties concerned, and creates pain that doesn't quickly subside. Reasons for the split can be listed, with pros and cons, but the reasons can never really be understood without knowing the story. No relationship ends without a history, be it short or brief, and my relationship with the United Methodist Church shares a history with the stories of others, which I include. I write this to explain that story to myself as much as to others. This story is why I left the United Methodist Church.
When I was eight years old my family changed churches. We had been at Ridgecrest United Methodist for as long as I could remember, although my parents told me we had Free Methodist roots before that. Ridgecrest had seen a slew of divorces in those high years of the oil boom, and my parents were one of a handful of young couples at the church who were still married. When one of my father's hunting companions invited us to Putnam City United Methodist, we left for better shores.
My parents had grown up at Putnam City, named after a school district that served northwest suburban Oklahoma City. They were married in what was then the brand new sanctuary. All four of my grandparents still attended, living half a mile away, although my mother's parents didn't attend as often. Grandma Riley was unhappy with several people at the church, citing grudges that seemed to go back to when she started the Mothers' Day Out program when my mother was a child. Grandma also liked to tell us how "they"- an indefinite group that sometimes had names-liked to run off preachers.
When we moved to Putnam City, the preacher was Gene Nease, a middle-aged pastor from rural Oklahoma who had gone to seminary at Candler. At the time he was finishing a Doctors of Ministry in church growth, knowledge he seemed to be putting to use. Putnam City was busting at the seams. The church had just broken ground on a new building when we first visited, a building that would become the "family life center," including a gym and several rooms that could be used for offices and Sunday School rooms. New people joined every week. The congregation had memorized their liturgical response: "Now we rejoice to recognize you as members of Christ's holy church. . ." The youth program was growing, and an innovative children's program called "His Kids" met at the same time on Sunday afternoons before evening worship. We joined a few months after visiting the first time.
Gene was becoming renowned for more than a growing church, however. Throughout his eleven year tenure at Putnam City some eleven people, including myself, decided to enter the ministry in the United Methodist Church. Two of them, Jim and Kay Shock, met while on church staff and were married before leaving for their first charge. Gene was known for creating staff positions for persons called into the ministry, equipping them to do that ministry, and challenging them to improve their lesser points.
But all was not well at Putnam City. Two years after we joined the oil bust hit, shattering the economies of the oil belt of the south and southwest. My father, who cut hair across the street from Penn Square Bank, lost at least half of his business in a matter of weeks when the bank failed, a story that was all too common in Oklahoma City. About the same time, a handful of people from the church started to attend a nondenominational charismatic bible study hosted by Linda and Alan Jackson, who were not affiliated with Putnam City. Linda wore purple from head to toe, including her cowboy hat, topping her outfit off with a gold broach that read "praise the Lord." We found out later that Alan was having an affair with the man across the street from us, who was later arrested for child abuse. The group would study portions of scripture and then try to practice the faith healing or speaking in tongues they had just read about. The group grew exponentially. At the meetings, my brother and I would peek through the fireplace from the den where we watched "Gospel Bill" videos with the rest of the children. The charismatic movement was not something we did-it was everything we did. Feelings of terror shot through me if my mother was not in her room when I came home from school: I was afraid I missed the rapture.
As interest in the bible study group grew, more and more people from Putnam City began to attend. The evening service at Putnam City began to take on a more charismatic tenor as we sang praise choruses from Maranatha or the Gaither family. Occasionally someone would come up to the microphone and deliver a message in tongues, usually my mother. Unofficial field trips were organized among the charismatic contingent, who would travel to the different megachurches in the city for special speakers or "praise and worship" services. The group developed a cohesive identity and began to lead Putnam City's Monday night visitation program. The church's youth group quit attending the district youth camp because it was not "spiritual" enough, attending instead a camp named "YouthAmerica," a regional charismatic camp held at Oral Roberts University. Linda Jackson would even come to worship from time to time.
My grandmother reminded us of her unnamed "they," the movers and shakers at Putnam City who in her view had kicked out every pastor who had been good for the church. When Gene started, he was their nineteenth pastor in thirty-nine years. A handful of people wrote letters to the bishop and district superintendent, complaining that Gene had prayed for healing in the morning worship service. The district superintendent supported Gene. It seemed to be the end of the matter.
But the charismatic movement was gathering momentum at Putnam City, and a new set of complaints to a new bishop, Dan Solomon, garnered a different response. District superintendent Lester Meyers met with members of Putnam City without Gene's knowledge. Gene believed this to be against the Discipline. Conflict at Putnam City only escalated, culminating in a public Pastor-Parish meeting. At least fifty people attended, each airing their grievances or offering applause for Gene. The mood of the church completely changed. The camps were now clearly defined and set on a collision course.
Putnam City had paid about $70,000 of its $105,000 in apportionments that year. During Gene's eleven year tenure the operating budget of the church had grown from $120,000 (with $20,000 in apportionments) to over $500,000. Because Putnam City had not paid its apportionments in full-which were almost as much as the church's entire budget when Gene had begun-Gene was told he would be moving to a small rural church after annual conference. The charismatic contingent left the church to found a nondenominational congregation called Liberty Chapel. Gene, who was by that point in his early sixties, retired from the United Methodist Church with his pension and began to pastor at Liberty Chapel, which he had helped to plan. One of the associate ministers became the interim pastor at Putnam City, a man now appointed to Ridgecrest.
In time Gene became uncomfortable with Liberty Chapel's nondenominational identity. He intentionally sought out a denominational body that would allow him to be under some authority structure and also recognize what he calls "my strong belief in the supernatural," meaning the typically charismatic experiences of faith healing and speaking in tongues. After some months, Liberty Chapel joined the Four Square Gospel Church, a charismatic denomination with a loose episcopal structure. Gene receives counsel from one of nine regional supervisors, who assist pastors and churches when moves are desired. However, only Gene or Liberty Chapel can decide when he leaves.
From time to time he sees some of a group of about one hundred "church hoppers" who were involved with the church in its early months, persons known by charismatic pastors to move from one church to another seeking the perfect congregation. Gene views these persons as "typical charismatics who will not settle down and be real church people." I laughed when he called this group "flaky" and immediately thought of Linda Jackson. Gene is proud that three Nigerian families have recently joined the church, marking Liberty Chapel's crossing of a cultural boundary. Currently, Liberty Chapel pools from about 170 worshippers, about 120 of which might be seen on any given Sunday. Its operating budget is almost $250,000. It recently merged with a smaller Four Square congregation and plans on building a new structure on land owned by the smaller group.
I turned sixteen when Putnam City split and the charismatic contingent left to start Liberty Chapel. Due to our own involvement in the politics of Putnam City, we didn't feel welcome at either church-a difficult situation because my mother had worked her way up to the director position of the Putnam City's daycare. I hung around in Putnam City's youth group for a couple of months when the new pastor was appointed, but by the end of the summer I had started to attend an Assembly of God church on Route 66.
I spent six months in two different Assembly of God churches, but at the end of that next summer I returned to Dayspring, a United Methodist evangelical discipleship camp for high school students in the Oklahoma annual conference. Even though Putnam City had quit sending its teenagers to the district camp, it was still a loyal participant in Dayspring. Youth would share testimonies in the evening service the Sunday after the camp. That was where my friend Owen, a couple of years ahead of me in school, had first shared publicly his experience of being called into the ministry (my call was at YouthAmerica). Gene Nease had been one of the founding pastors of the camp, which now had to meet in two different locations to house all the campers.
I came to Dayspring hoping to find pieces of the United Methodist experience I still fondly remembered, seeking "like minds." Several of the male clergy at the camp were aware of the situation at Putnam City and went out of their way to look after me that week, especially the moderate charismatic who led the camp that year. He assured me that there was space in the United Methodist Church for evangelicals and charismatics. My hope was renewed. There were good clergy in the United Methodist Church, and I could go to them with my problems. When my senior year started a couple of weeks later, I led my family to First United Methodist Church, a blossoming charismatic congregation in downtown Oklahoma City. First Church's pastor often spoke from the pulpit about the "good pastors" in the United Methodist Church.
One of those good pastors was Paul Cunningham. Paul had been one of Gene Nease's seminarian associate ministers at Putnam City. Paul-who grew up with loose connections to Putnam City-had been a cocaine addict until he had a born again experience. He felt a call into the ministry, left his career as a pharmacist, and began seminary at Oral Roberts University. Paul had been in charge of the young adult ministry at Putnam City that included college students and young married couples. I remember a water balloon war between the youth and young adult groups on the lawn of the parsonage during a lock-in.
Paul's second appointment after seminary was to Capitol Hill United Methodist on the south side of Oklahoma City in what was becoming a Latino neighborhood. New members began to join the aging congregation under Paul's ministry, and the church hired a youth director for the first time in quite a while. Paul was considered a darling of the conference, had a good working relationship with the bishop, and was often invited to speak at conferences and camps. He was the keynote preacher at Dayspring for several years running.
During the first two years of that appointment, Paul conducted ninety funerals for church members. He began to articulate a calling to minister to the unchurched of his own generation. He wrote out his vision, went to see Bishop Solomon, and asked for an opportunity to put it into practice. Paul relayed that he didn't think it would be fair to an older, established congregation to turn their understanding of church upside down, that a new church start would be more appropriate. Solomon was receptive but directed Paul to try to enact his vision at Capitol Hill. He said a church start might be possible down the line. Paul was 34 at the time. He was unconvinced but agreed.
In the weeks that followed Paul sought out advice from several United Methodist ministers. After three months he made the acquaintance of Bill Clark, a former United Methodist minister who was now in Tulsa leading an Evangelical Covenant congregation, a moderate evangelical denomination. Clark told Paul that his congregation had been praying for three years for someone to start an Evangelical Covenant church in Oklahoma City. Three months after that conversation Paul was planting Westmoore Community Evangelical Covenant Church in south Oklahoma City.
The Evangelical Covenant denomination defines itself as "evangelical but not exclusive, biblical but not doctrinaire, traditional but not rigid, congregational but not independent." As few as 650 North American congregations support missions that have planted thousands of congregations worldwide. Denominational positions are endowed, allowing 80% of funds to go to missions rather than administration. Two new churches are planted each month by the North American Covenant, compared to one every two or three years in the Oklahoma annual conference-an annual conference that has actually grown in the last decade and has about as many congregations as the entire Evangelical Covenant in North America.
Paul insists that he did not have a bad experience in the United Methodist Church. He accounts his departure to a difference of vision. But when asked if he misses anything in the United Methodist Church, he said, "No. Not one thing. Nothing." When he announced his departure, the cabinet angrily asked for his orders. Paul countered that he would be leaving on a transfer of orders unless they planned to bring up charges against him. Cunningham happily keeps up with the success of a United Methodist church planted in the same part of Oklahoma City and still maintains close friendships with several United Methodist ministers.
He has a close friendship with his Covenant district superintendent, whose chief function is to serve as Paul's pastor. The superintendent asks about his family and offers direction for the church. Paul usually follows his advice. It was at his recommendation that Paul took a month's vacation when the church grew large enough to hire some support staff.
Attendance at Westmoore Community averages 450 people in three worship services. Dress is casual; Paul rarely wears a tie. Loud rock music, rather than hymns, predominate. No offering is taken-baskets are available at the back of the sanctuary. Cunningham relates that persons raised in a church are often not comfortable with Westmoore Community's style of worship. He tells his congregation that everyone is welcome at Westmoore Community, but that Westmoore Community is not for everyone. The church is beginning a second building expansion.
I learned about Paul Cunningham's departure in the library at Oklahoma City University, a United Methodist liberal arts college with about 5,000 students and faculty if the law school were included. A fellow Dayspringer gave me the news as we worked the circulation desk in the school library. I replied, "He was one of the reasons I was staying in the United Methodist Church."
By that point I was in my third semester of a religion major. I had been gradually drifting away from "Single Truth," a Friday night worship service for singles at First Church that had grown to over 200 worshippers. When I did go, I would show up forty-five minutes late so I would miss most of the first hour, which was nothing but "praise and worship" music. I could no longer motivate myself to stand with my hands in the air for an hour, singing simplistic lyrics over and over again. It wasn't that I no longer believed that my charismatic experience was meaningful-I just didn't need the fix any more.
When I visited OCU as a high school student, a charismatic organ major who had attended Putnam City told me about the different demons that had control of the buildings on campus. The worst one, I was told, was the demon in the sixth room of the sixth floor of the women's dorm, a demon that supposedly caused a suicide annually. The demons were apparently brought in by new age witches, who had set up a table at a campus fair two or three years earlier. He was confident that the spiritual battle would be won, however, because two students had started up a charismatic bible study on campus. One of those two students, Craig Groeschell, was now seeking ordination in the United Methodist Church and led Single Truth at First Church. Before my first semester, Craig told me that he hoped I would pick up the spiritual battle where he had left off. I was to be the new charismatic light to OCU's inebriated frat boys, homosexual dance majors, and liberal professors.
But what shocked me my first year at OCU was not the hedonism of campus life, the secular humanism of professors, or the demons said to be perched atop the dorms. What shocked me was my biblical studies professor. What shocked me was that he was nice.
Bill Martin was an older United Methodist minister who had served on faculty in the school of religion for several years, and a charismatic friend told me early on that he was a liberal to keep an eye on. I watched as he dealt with a classful of freshman and sophomores that didn't want to take a biblical literature course, a requirement for graduation. Most were skeptical of mandatory religious studies, fearing indoctrination or three hours a week of Sunday school. There were a couple of us, though, that were skeptical of him and skeptical of the curriculum, fearing a liberal deconstruction of biblical truth.
To my amazement, Bill Martin never once took sides against either of the two factions, never once forced his views on anyone, never once used sneaky arguments to get his way. He was truly open minded, allowing all views equal time so long as students would back them up with arguments or evidence from the biblical text. He often followed up after class with students who were having a hard time in class or problems back home. In short, he cared for us, without regard to what we thought or where we came from. He was not the typical liberal I had been warned about for years.
I wrote my term paper on the Philistines. I had seen copies of Biblical Archaeology Review in a couple of charismatic pastors' offices, so feeling that biblical archeology was charismatic-approved, I decided that the Philistines would be a noncontroversial way to meet course requirements, stay in my charismatic safe zone, and perhaps even use archeology to prove the Bible true.
What I discovered was that the archeological evidence had neither proven nor disproven the biblical record. There was evidence that the Philistines had indeed existed in ancient Palestine, to be sure, and that they would even have been an immediate threat to the Israelite tribes. But I was intrigued: the Philistines were more advanced than the Israelites, having larger cities and making iron weapons while the Israelites hid in the hills with bronze. Everything was still there in the biblical stories, except now the Israelites were the underdogs, the backward hill people fighting for their right to survive. God's chosen people were weaker than the people who opposed them, and God was displeased that they were being hurt by the more powerful. I turned my paper in, documenting my research. But I was left wondering, could it be that God sided with the weak?
The day that I moved into Smith Hall at OCU, I was immediately greeted and hugged by Loren and his girlfriend Glenda. Loren lived across the hall from me, and several of his friends in the dorm were members of Sigma Theta Epsilon, a Christian service fraternity that met for weekly devotionals, had occasional service projects, and held an annual formal dance with Kappa Phi, our Christian sorority counterpart. Glenda ended up being president of Kappa Phi my second year, and when she went off to seminary I took her position as youth director in a suburban United Methodist church.
I was suspicious of "Sigma Theta" at first, but daily conversations with the president, a fellow religion major, seemed to calm my fears. When the same charismatic who had warned me about Bill Martin told me that he was a member, I decided it was okay to join.
During that first year at OCU, Loren and Glenda broke up. Everybody was talking about it, but no one would give out any details. Glenda and I were becoming friends (she was my Kappa Phi "big sis"), so I went to her directly to find out why they had broken up. After some pressing, Glenda told me. Loren was gay.
Of course, news of this magnitude spread like wildfire throughout our small campus; no amount of damage control could have kept the gossip from going straight to the grapevine. There was a large homosexual presence on campus already, but Loren was a part of Sigma Theta, and Glenda was a part of Kappa Phi-and a religion major! Now the two Greek societies that had served as refuges from the big city for dozens of small town evangelicals had to process something they never thought would happen within their closed quarters. Somebody had come out of the closet.
I still don't know exactly when Kevin came out, whether it was after Loren did or whether I just found out later. Kevin had gotten engaged that first semester to a girl I saw from time to time at First Church. I remember her being extremely upset in a small group at First Church, but, again, no one would talk about it. I didn't make the connection that Kevin, my Sigma Theta "big brother," was her fiancé. I learned later that when Kevin broke off the engagement and told his fiancée he was gay, she attempted suicide and dropped out of school. Apparently, the demon had moved to a different dorm that year.
Loren planned Sigma Theta's service projects, and Kevin kept the books, and they both stayed active in the fraternity that year. We knew Loren and Kevin to be good men before they came out of the closet, and nothing they said or did detracted from that. My beliefs and my experiences were in direct contradiction. It took me well over a year to take it all in.
The next year we told our pledges a couple of weeks before initiation that we had gay members in Sigma Theta. We were careful and discreet and told them one at a time. We told them that different members had different opinions about homosexuality, but that all we demanded was that the different opinions be tolerated. No one dropped out of that pledge class. The next year we told people during rush week, but this time we told them that tolerance was not up for discussion-they would have to be accepting of homosexual fraternity brothers if they wanted to join.
We created a safe place for homosexuals at OCU. More and more people in different campus groups started to come out of the closet, gradually, so that a community developed. Loose associations developed between Sigma Theta and the lesbian community at OCU. Our growing community became one of the social centers of campus life, drawing in people from the social sororities and sports teams. A few people left the business and education schools to become religion majors. Our being a community put subtle pressure on the campus Greek system to be more inclusive and more honest about its own gay and lesbian members. Our national fraternity knew that it would lose its only chapter west of the Mississippi if it passed any language against homosexuality. We were making progress. I felt I was being a light to the drunken frat boys, gay dance majors, and liberal professors that Craig Groeschell from First Church had hoped I would be, although I knew it was in an entirely different way.
Rachel Morse was president of Kappa Phi the same time I was president of Sigma Theta, our senior year. We were both religion majors, and usually one of us could be found hanging out in the "religious life lounge," joking with or counseling underclassmen. Besides having most of our religion classes together, Rachel and I ran in the same crowd and would swap stories of our joys and frustrations.
Rachel's second home growing up was a United Methodist church in southeast Oklahoma. She transferred from a Presbyterian congregation when she was eleven and became involved in the youth group, choir, and mission program. She liked her pastor, and the church supported her growth. When it was time to pick a college, she chose OCU so she could study religion. Rachel planned to be a teacher during the week and a youth director on the weekends. As she progressed through the program, she began to realize the diversity of ministries available and realized that she didn't need to be ordained for most of them. But she also discovered a talent for preaching and decided to follow in her father's and brother's footsteps and pursue ordained ministry.
Like her father and brother, Rachel decided to go to Princeton to get her Master of Divinity. Her brother was struggling with cancer at the time, and being in the northeast made it easier to visit him. She also went in search of her father's ghost; he had died from AIDS complications several years earlier.
While at OCU, Rachel had attended Epworth United Methodist Church. For years, Epworth had been a dying congregation in what was once a thriving neighborhood. But the neighborhood had changed and Epworth had stayed the same, leaving a congregation numbering in the twenties in a structure built to house hundreds.
Kathy McCallie, a new minister in her thirties, was appointed to Epworth while we were at OCU. Kathy had previously served a small congregation in Oklahoma City, but had aroused the ire of the conference through her involvement in the reconciling movement there. The move to Epworth seemed be part retribution of her work there, since Epworth was so small. It also seem part affirmation, since it was known that several of the members from her previous charge would follow her to Epworth, which they hoped would be more accepting of a reconciling ministry. And Epworth was. Within a year Epworth was a growing church hovering just under two hundred in worship each Sunday.
While Rachel was away at Princeton, Kathy got into a fist fight on the editorial page of the Daily Oklahoman, a paper in the habit of running front page editorials on behalf of the religious right and christened the worst paper in the nation by Columbia Journalism Review this year. It was not long before ecclesial charges were filed with the bishop. Rachel had been planning to return to Epworth for the summer to do her field education work for Princeton. The same day that Princeton approved her request, Kathy called her to tell her that she was leaving the United Methodist Church.
Rachel was shocked. Kathy had been her pastor for a couple of years, and she was eager to learn from her that coming summer. Rachel was frustrated more than angry, in disbelief that no agreement could be made, no consensus reached. And she was hurt.
Rachel continued at Princeton. The overwhelmingly conservative student body made no secret of their disdain for Rachel's more liberal theological stances, one fellow student going so far as to tell her she was "evil and of the devil." Her brother's health improved. Rachel decided to leave Princeton, moved back to Oklahoma City and Epworth, and wrote to remove herself from the candidacy process. She moved in with a good friend, a gay man and fellow Epworth member who was struggling with AIDS complications. She took a couple of courses and found a job as a social worker.
In the time since Kathy McCallie left the United Methodist Church, attendance dropped to fifty but has now climbed back up to near two hundred. Kathy's new congregation, part of the United Church of Christ, is struggling and has been criticized by gay friendly Christians as being more of a political statement than a church. When Kathy's bisexual identity became public, she lost credibility among many in gay friendly circles, who had thought her leaving the United Methodist Church was entirely due to her gay friendly stance and not self-interest. In the meantime, Epworth operates a free medical clinic, leases a building to the Oklahoma City School District for one dollar a year, houses an after school program, and is starting a community gardening program.
Rachel has not completely closed off the possibility of pursing elders orders, but she doesn't intend to rethink the subject until the current controversy surrounding sexual orientation issues dies down. At first, her decision not to pursue ordination troubled her-having been a major part of her identity for some time-but after she found a niche back at Epworth, her anxiety subsided. She is currently running for a position as a lay delegate to General Conference, hoping to continue her tradition of serving on United Methodist boards and committees. She says, "I'm fiercely loyal to the United Methodist Church for some reason, even though they're not loyal to anyone."
Mark Crenshaw grew up in a conservative United Methodist congregation in a tiny rural town in northeast Oklahoma. The church saw two charismatic pastors during Mark's teenage years. Although the church was skeptical at first, it eventually rallied behind the charismatic thrust, hoping to bring in the town's younger generations. Mark himself began to identify closely with the charismatic movement and articulated a call into the ministry as early as age twelve. Most weeks, Mark-who has cerebral palsy-would be called up to the altar so the whole church could lay hands on him and pray for his healing.
It wasn't until Mark began the religion program at OCU that he gained some distance from his charismatic past. He began to sense a freedom that he didn't need to believe what his parents believed and started to look for alternative ways to interpret scripture (though he sometimes feared hellfire for doing so). Key to his searching was a new concept of healing, one that didn't depend on his being "fixed." He became aware of a wider United Methodist Church than the one he had grown up with in rural Oklahoma. And he grew close to the lesbian community at OCU, whom he felt knew what it felt like to be told all your life that you need to be "fixed."
Mark went on to get his Master of Divinity at Wesley and switched to Candler after a year. But recently he has decided to switch to the Master of Theological Studies program, effectively removing himself from candidacy for ordination. As he reflected on how the Church has responded to him as a person with a disability-whether it was using "walking" as the dominant metaphor for discipleship or complaining about having to make a building handicap accessible-Mark began to understand that he was not welcome. When he heard several stories that other friends with disabilities were denied ordination because they couldn't do home visits, for example, Mark's decision only solidified. "God forbid that we should reorder the way the Church does things so we can make room for persons with disability," he says.
After graduation, Mark hopes to work for a national disability advocacy group located in New York, a group that has been courting Mark for several months now. He hopes to help children with disabilities and their parents find healthier language for God, language that doesn't view disability as a punishment from God.
When Mark, Rachel, and I first heard about Leslie Penrose we were shocked. During college, I had helped organize a mission trip to Leslie's appointment, an outreach to homosexuals and persons living with AIDS in Tulsa. When Leslie started her "Community of Hope," Bishop Solomon acknowledged that her ministry there would be different, if not controversial. But he agreed to support the mission so long as Leslie was quiet about it.
Perhaps we should not have been surprised when a United Methodist pastor filed charges against Leslie for technically co-officiating (Leslie was not there) with dozens of other United Methodist pastors in a holy union service in California-a public, non-quiet act of ministry. When the cabinet asked her accuser to drop the charges as a gesture of collegiality, he found three more charges to file against her. Leslie soon filed for a transfer of order to the United Church of Christ to avoid a church trial.
It was at that time that I decided to no longer pursue ordination in the United Methodist Church. Halfway through my last semester at Boston University School of Theology, I has experienced sprinklings of doubt for two or three years, but with graduation immediately in front of me, the issue became all the more pressing. I sorted through my memories and found about a dozen people who had either been kicked out, pressured out, or locked out of ordination in the United Methodist Church. Checking in with a few friends, I found that of my religion class of about twenty at OCU, only one of us still intends to be ordained in the United Methodist Church. Some have changed to more liberal or more conservative denominations. Some, like Mark and Rachel, have found ways to be in ministry outside of an ordination track. If these stories had just been statistics, I might not have left. Or if they had only involved one issue-homosexuality or the charismatic movement, for instance-then I might not have left. But taking all of them into consideration, I decided that I could not be a part of the United Methodist Church and keep my integrity.
Some trends emerge as to why people left. The premiere reason was the behavior of bishops and district superintendents. Gene Nease believes that the district superintendent met with parishioners behind his back, a direct violation of the Discipline. Although Paul Cunningham doesn't count it among his reasons for leaving, it is certainly no mark of high honor that the cabinet asked for his orders when he told them he was leaving for the Evangelical Covenant. Bishop Solomon and now Bishop Bruce Blake (the current resident bishop in Oklahoma) have both played a pivotal role not only in pressuring Kathy McCallie and Leslie Penrose to leave but also (because of their arguments before the Judicial Council) in ensuring that the United Methodist Church has legal grounds to throw anyone out who disobeys the Social Principles. The Jimmy Creech incident could not have happened without the help of Solomon and Blake.
Some friends have advised me that the answer to this crackdown on left-leaning pastors is to bring some more conservative pastors up on charges for not supporting their local union, for example. It would not be long, they say, before the Good News crowd would see that their bluff had been called and back down. It is just this sort of competitive ethos that is another key reason people are leaving the denomination. Paul Cunningham believes that just this sort of reasoning was used to justify the Oklahoma conference's treatment of Gene Nease-that he was to be made an example of for the benefit of other right-leaning clergy whose churches did not fully pay their apportionments. On top of this more obvious example of clergy competitiveness, the politicking for better appointments creates an atmosphere that diminishes trust and collegiality among clergy and positions bishops and district superintendents as persons to be placated and kissed up to (instead of being pastors to the pastors). It is no wonder, then, that annual conferences resemble pre-television political conventions (complete with deal-making in smoke-filled rooms) more than revivals or prayer meetings.
Also key is the perception that the United Methodist Church does not make room for theological diversity. Mark feels unwelcome because he lives with a disability. Rachel has seen her pastor forced out because she ministered to homosexuals. Paul was told to put his vision for evangelism on hold until the system found it convenient. Gene was punished because he practiced gifts of the Spirit. Given this level of diverse theological visions, it is hard not to wonder if anyone is welcome in the United Methodist Church.
Another trend is a perception of the denomination's inflexibility. Apportionments can be exorbitantly high in some conferences, and raising the funds can give a pastor the precarious choice of offending her flock by over-prioritizing money or risking the wrath of the conference for not coming up with the money. The capriciousness of the itinerancy system is frequently lamented by clergy and non-clergy alike, but its use as an instrument of punishment makes it all the more base. Single pastors face being appointed to small rural churches where their every move is watched, dating prospects are few, and they are forbidden to date within their congregation-the one place they are most likely to find someone who will share their passion for ministry.
Candidates for ministry are refused ordination because they did not properly hail the quadrilateral or Christian perfection or because they say when asked that they value their family life over their ministry. Younger, single candidates dread being asked about their sex lives by their ordination boards-a question that is not asked of older, married candidates. The list could go on. But the dominant impression is that the United Methodist Church does not tolerate dissent.
But perhaps the most important reason people (including myself) are leaving the United Methodist Church is that they don't have to be a part of it. Or as Mark said, "ordained ministry in the UMC doesn't seem to be very necessary." No clergy or clergy-to-be has by necessity to be in the United Methodist Church. Other options are available. Gene and Paul have both built stable, growing churches outside the denomination and now enjoy friendships with their new ecclesial supervisors. There is nothing sacred about the Discipline or the itinerant system, two things the United Methodist Church has made into idols in its quest for unity. Gene and Paul have both found collegiality and accountability outside of an inflexible "connectionalism;" some defenders of the United Methodist system would have us believe that no camaraderie is possible without the current arrangement. Rachel and Mark have found avenues of ministry among the laity, watching from a distance the rancor that as clergy they would have been full part of. Mark seems even to believe that ordination would interfere with his ministry.
One reason I share only with myself. It would of course be too much to expect a denomination to be perfect, and I would go a step further to say that it is too much to expect a denomination even to be mostly good. I feel that realism demands that we acknowledge that God works in spite of us sometimes (regardless of our evil intentions) and that evil also works in spite of us (regardless of our good intentions). We are too fallen to expect that our human-created institutions should be good most of the time. No denomination will be mostly good, at least not for long.
But we should expect that the good should be significant enough to outweigh the mediocre, that gray nothing that is the day-to-day reality of institutional life. Of course, our institutions will have rules and regulations and codes, and they will sometimes be tools for evil. But those institutional necessities should never become ends wholly unto themselves, becoming tools not just of an occasional evil but means that a systemic evil uses to entrench itself in the life of the institution. It is my judgement that the United Methodist Church has become just that, a tool that a systemic evil uses to demand worship of itself, casting out those who refuse to play along on either side of the aisle. The United Methodist Church is now a house divided.
With graduation just days away now, I've applied for a handful of jobs that would allow me to be in some sort of ministry outside the local church, however indirect. As I've let friends know about my decision to leave the denomination, I've been greeted with suggestions for other denominations: Evangelical Covenant, United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalists, and even the Roman Catholic Church. A passion for writing theology and reading philosophy beckons me toward doctoral work, but my broad interests would make it difficult to choose a school and a program if I decided on that route. Some have suggested social work or community organizing, knowing my passions for social justice and political intrigue, but the prospect of a wholly or mostly secular career rings hollow.
A statistic still floats in my head from college: most people have five or so careers over a lifetime. I can say with full confidence and peace that I have now completed my first career, as a youth director and clergy-to-be in the United Methodist Church. I will not be going back to it. Yet there remains the nagging conviction that now is not the time to "choose" my next career. The notion of a calling is still very present to me, and I could not choose a path based on a cost-benefit analysis alone-I need to feel I am drawn toward it, feel the moving of the Spirit in it. The possibility of other denominations is present in my mind, but wisdom dictates that now is not the time to "rebound" into another church out of pain from my last one.
It may be that two or three years from now, I may find the Spirit leading me into ordination again, but in the meantime I will not turn Sunday mornings into a scouting expedition for the next denomination down the line. I will rest, and there is grace sufficient for me to wait or to not ever again pursue ordination. I trust that I'll know if the time ever comes. Until then, trust in God will be enough.