New website initiative

From Adam Hamilton, Lead Pastor at The UMC of the Resurrection (Leawood, KS)

Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing updates with you on the future of our denomination. You may know that about 15 to 20% of the churches in the UMC are anticipated to be leaving. Some will join a new denomination called the Global Methodist Church, others will be independent. 80% of the UMC’s 30,000 churches in the US – 24,000 churches – will remain in the UMC.

The leading figure in the formation of the Global Methodist Church, a pastor from the Houston area named Rob Renfroe, produced a series of six short videos aimed at persuading churches to leave the UMC. I recently watched all six videos and recorded a brief video response to each, correcting what I believe was misinformation, and describing why I’m #proudtobeumc – proud to be a part of the United Methodist Church.

I’d love you to watch each video, which starts with the conclusion of Renfroe’s video. My videos range from 5 minutes to 18 minutes in length and cover who we are as United Methodists, how we read the Bible, our commitment to and faith in Christ and the historic essentials of the Christian faith, our love of scripture while also believing it is important to rightly interpret scripture, our denominational divisions of human sexuality and the future of the UMC. My aim was to be gracious, but to also speak clearly to what I see as misinformation in Renfroe’s videos.

The videos, along with other helpful resources, are on a new website called Proud to Be UMC.

We are also inviting individuals and churches who are remaining United Methodist to indicate that on the website. You can do so here.

Eventually those whose churches are leaving the UMC but who wish to remain UMC will be able to search for those churches that will remain UMC in their community. Please sign on if you are committed to remaining UMC and share this site with others. We anticipate 80% or more of UM’s across the US will remain UMC.