A word from Bishop Oliveto

AC member hold light of welcome

Below is Bishop Karen's weekly message to our conference:

Greetings from Annual Conference! On our first night together, we released 38 churches that formally disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church. Below are the words I shared at the conclusion of the evening:

As we release these churches, we want the clergy and members of the disaffiliated churches to know we are holding you with tender prayers. May God bless you as you establish a new identity apart from the Mountain Sky Conference and The United Methodist Church and may God bless your ministries.

At the same time, I want to acknowledge the grief we hold in this moment. Our own identity as the Mountain Sky Conference has been shaped by your presence among us, as clergy colleagues and as laity sharing in ministry. We, too, have a new identity to establish as the Mountain Sky Conference. We, too, have ministries to strengthen, a witness to be even bolder as we seek to share the love of Christ Jesus in tangible ways across our conference.

If your church has disaffiliated yet you wish to remain United Methodist, you may transfer your membership to another UMC. If there are none in your area at this time, or you haven’t found the right church yet either online or in person, you may transfer your membership to the conference and we will hold your membership until you find a UM faith community.

I want to be clear that even as we change because there are some who no longer want to be in relationship with us as United Methodists, there are some things that are unchanging:

We will continue to serve our triune God.

We will continue to follow Jesus Christ.

We will continue to be led by the Holy Spirit.

We will continue to affirm our faith as Christians.

We will continue to ground ourselves in Scripture and hold it as an authority for our lives.

We will continue to allow our faith to be informed by the unique ways we United Methodists do theology, which is through the primacy of Scripture as informed by Tradition, Experience and Reason.

We will continue to be Wesleyan, grounded in grace, grace and even more grace.

We will continue to affirm our connectional system, knowing that we can make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world more effectively in our neighborhoods and around the world together than we ever could separately.

We will continue to ensure the dignity of every child of God, and make sure they are welcomed in our churches for who God has created them to be, not who we think they ought to be.

Within the DNA of our denomination as United Methodists are the stuff of schisms and splintering, yet also the stuff of reunions and reunitings.

Who knows what God holds for us, whether disaffiliating or remaining United Methodist. However, I do believe God seeks a unity that defies our own desires.

As I have held this in my heart and pondered this in my prayers, a voice keeps coming up, “I’m Tom Bodette for Motel Six, and we will leave the light on for you.”

With love,

Bishop Karen