A New Day

Sunday was a busy day. After church, Trinity Hill voted 95% in favor of joining the Global Methodist Church.

We drove to Owensboro for the Kentucky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. There, in a rare Sunday evening session, delegates voted 89% in favor of approving the disaffiliation of 286 churches, about half of the United Methodist Churches in Kentucky.

Those pastors and laity who have withdrawn were given badges that had what looked like caution tape around it, to make it obvious we could only vote Sunday evening. I was talking with a few pastors and Nadia said, “y’all look so dengerous.”

I think it’s weird that I don’t feel much. I know many of my colleagues are hurting. I am glad to be free from the conflict and the bureaucracy of a bloated denomination. I will miss some colleagues. I will miss our Bishop.

The ministry possibilities are greater than what they were as a UMC pastor. The work of planting new churches is too important to be held back by a structure that no matter how well-intentioned, could not get out of its own way.