The letter calls for “bishops and annual conferences to develop resources to assist local churches in discerning their future, including resources on how to have difficult conversations in ways that reduce harm.”
It also asks for abeyance in adjudicating complaints under church law related to ministry with LGBTQ individuals.
The letter comes as many United Methodists have grown weary of waiting for General Conference to act on a proposed denominational separation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has now twice delayed the international denomination’s top lawmaking assembly, originally set for May 2020. With the challenges of vaccine and visa availability around the globe, it’s not certain whether General Conference can go forward as scheduled on Aug. 29-Sept. 6, 2022, in Minneapolis.
Still, the hope is that a denominational separation will resolve decades of intensifying United Methodist debate over the status of LGBTQ people.
The most endorsed plan submitted to the coming General Conference is the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation. If adopted, the protocol would allow traditionalist churches and conferences (those that support restrictions on gay marriage and ordination) to leave with church property and $25 million to set up a new denomination. The proposed protocol also sets aside $2 million for other groups of churches that might leave.
The theologically conservative advocacy group the Wesleyan Covenant Association is working on that new traditionalist denomination, the Global Methodist Church. Meanwhile, a group of progressive United Methodists is developing the new denomination Liberation Methodist Connexion.
The Rev. David Meredith, a member of the mediation team that developed the protocol, is one of the Call to Grace letter’s signers.
“The two core principles of the Protocol are called forth: 1) a gracious exit for congregations and pastors seeking to leave the UMC and 2) an abeyance that ends the harm directed at clergy and congregations targeted by anti-gay prohibitions of the Discipline,” he said in a press release about the letter.
The bishops plan to spend this week in discussions about The United Methodist Church that will continue after any separation.
“We must begin to shape a narrative for the continuing United Methodist Church that serves as a great witness of love rooted in Scripture, centered in Christ, and united in the essentials,” Harvey said.
The United Methodist Church and its predecessors have maintained a policy since 1797 that all congregations hold property “in trust” for the benefit of the entire denomination.
