The church I grew up in has disenfranchised from the United Methodist as well as many others in the same area.
The church I grew up in has disenfranchised from the United Methodist as well as many others in the same area.
We had that experience too at (name removed)l in Edmond. We were new in town and looking at all the local churches. The pastor spent the whole sermon like yours, asking for money to repair the roof and put sheetrock on a wall that got leaked on They even had a big cookout Sunday evening where they had members put "pledge" numbers on a slip of paper and turn it in before they ate. The whole thing rubbed me wrong.
I pulled the pastor aside, seemingly a nice country style pastor (my kinda guy) and said, "I bet we could have that roof fixed over two weekends if you called for workers. I'm sure we've got some roofers in the congregation and sheetrock is baby work. I can help with that."
He agreed with me, but said the church board wouldn't let him ask for help because people might get hurt, so they had to spend big funds hiring contractors for everything. I guess so, but it sure left a bad taste in my mouth for the whole place. We never went back. Later on they sold the building to a hong fong doey place to teach kids kung fu.
I hope it's got fixed. Mold and young lungs don't go together very well.
Around here in east TX, there are United Methodists and Congregational Methodists. The UM churches are ultra liberal and are basically a religious wing of the Democratic Party. The CM are basically liberal Baptists and absolutely don’t go along with the same liberal agenda of the UM.
I’m a Christian first and a Baptist last. I grew up in and sometimes still attend a Baptist church, but the church I attend is always looking for new ways to shame me into giving more money. I firmly believe in tithing, but it aggravates me to no end that they always have their hand out for more. It’s become less about the salvation of souls and more about adding to the budget.
Been attending a Baptist church in “Paradise Valley” for 2.75 years and have yet to hear one sermon on money. We don’t have much money so we all pitch in to clean, mow the lawn, do repairs we can handle and take care of things best we can on our own. You know, even though churches may be under the same denomination they’re all different, some good some bad.
It's not just as simple as a local UMC saying we are no longer going to accept your new rules and walking away. Even though our congregation built and paid for the church, it became the property of the UMC mothership. If we vote to leave the UMC we would have to buy the building back from the UMC plus a severance fee that covers the pastor's and maybe the secretary's retirement fund for 5 or 7 years, I can't remember for sure. Our church is small and we do not have the reserves to buy the building and pay the fees. The only way we could afford to do it is take out a loan against the building to buy the building. But is kind of a catch 22. What bank would loan us the money using a property that we currently don't own to buy the building which would be the collateral for the loan.
Of course we could just walk away and give the building back, but finding a suitable replacement would be difficult designing and building a new facility let alone paying the mortgage.
The membership has to vote on whether to stay under the new rules or leave and pay the fees. The other convoluted situation is the UMC won't tell you ahead of time what the total severance price will be until after you vote to leave so it is very difficult to decide whether we could afford to do so or not. We can only guesstimate the cost based upon what similar sized churches have paid already to leave. I'm not even sure which way our membership would vote at this point.
Of course we could just walk away and give the building back, but finding a suitable replacement would be difficult designing and building a new facility let alone paying the mortgage.
The membership has to vote on whether to stay under the new rules or leave and pay the fees. The other convoluted situation is the UMC won't tell you ahead of time what the total severance price will be until after you vote to leave so it is very difficult to decide whether we could afford to do so or not. We can only guesstimate the cost based upon what similar sized churches have paid already to leave. I'm not even sure which way our membership would vote at this point.
Nope, my church doesn't align with any of the woke, homo,lezbo,baby killing crap.
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Last Baptist Church I Pastored was poor from a financial standpoint, little town on the Arkansas River. Town's population was 150, we had usually around 85 people in attendance on a Sunday morning.
I personally love little country churches with regular folks. I worked a full time job & preached and at the same time. We needed to put windows in the church building once the curtains would move when the wind blew outside . God put it on the hearts of the people to get together and buy windows and we all got together and installed them ourselves one Saturday. It was the best time of fellowship I can remember. Our ladies cooked while the men & boys tore out the old & installed the new ones.
We had every kind of people there you could imagine, had a lady with a nervous condition who brought her little spaniel therapy dog with her, we had a group who went outside in the parking lot and puffed on cigarettes between Sunday school and morning service. We had hillbillies, a few fancy dressing folks, folks in overalls, some smelled like catfish from running jugs before service, had a few bikers. Had a few pot smokers in the crowd, a few drinkers and more. Just really people who realized they weren't perfect and needed Jesus.
We distanced ourselves from the Baptist convention seeing that they were headed towards a liberal direction and we just kept doing our thing & didn't worry much about what other churches were doing. It wasn't perfect but I can say It was a good church that stuck together and loved the Bible and tried their best to follow it.
It's tough to keep a church on the right track, Pastoring is hard work and everyone has an opinion on what needs to happen in each situation. What I learned the hard way is you have to stay in prayer and the church has to as well if you're going to make it
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The other bizarre situation is that it won't be until the global UMC conference at the end of 2024 gathers to vote to accept the new woke agenda or stay with the traditional rules. However any church deciding it wishes to leave the UMC must vote to do so by Dec. 2023. So you don't know for sure which doctrine you are leaving. You may have paid all the costs to leave only to find out they vote to stay traditional. It was originally believed that the conservative members would vote to remain traditional. Most of the other countries have very conservative beliefs. However over the last year or so the liberals have gained the upper hand. The rich liberal leaning countries have pressured the poorer conservative countries to vote to accept the new doctrine or risk loosing needed money doled out buy the mothership to keep them afloat. It is now expected the conference will vote to accept the woke rules.
The second oldest profession....with a great many similarities to the oldest.
I don't understand how people can believe that the word of God can bend to popular opinion. By it's very nature the word of God is unpopular, it is not fun, it is not easy, it is often harsh and brutal for that is the nature of truth. If it was about doing "what feels good" then we wouldn't need God and could joyfully descend into the hedonism and chaos of our fallen nature.
As Christ said in Matt 10/22: "And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved."
If your church if falling to globohomo, I would quit. I wouldn't just walk away, but in addition cause a confrontation. Let the pastor know that he is a heretic and a servant of the devil. After all it is a sin to stay silent in the face of evil, and Jesus himself had a pretty good upheaval at the temple.
As Christ said in Matt 10/22: "And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved."
If your church if falling to globohomo, I would quit. I wouldn't just walk away, but in addition cause a confrontation. Let the pastor know that he is a heretic and a servant of the devil. After all it is a sin to stay silent in the face of evil, and Jesus himself had a pretty good upheaval at the temple.
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