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Bishop Scott Jones Moves From ‘Extreme Center’ of UMC to New Global Methodist Church

Jones — who pastored several congregations in Texas and taught at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University before he was elected bishop in 2004 — had previously positioned himself in what he calls the “extreme center,” a phrase he said he first encountered in “The Economist.”

He wanted to convey how Methodist doctrine holds in tension things other Christians may see as contradictory, such as evangelism and social action.

After reaching out to the magazine to make sure it wasn’t trademarked, Jones said, he wrote it into the title of his 2002 book “United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center,” his social media presence and his website.

Methodist doctrine is “conservative in some ways and liberal in other ways; it occupies the extreme center and is totally opposed to the dead center,” he explained in his 2008 book, “Staying at the Table: The Gift of Unity for United Methodists,” in which he argued the debate over homosexuality was “a symptom of deeper disagreements,” including Christology, ecclesiology and authority of Scripture.

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Alongside essays from a diverse group of United Methodist leaders, he wrote that he believed the denomination should not split.

“Now, years later, I realized that my hope and my dream turned out not to be possible because the church has in fact, split this last year,” Jones told Religion News Service. “But it was a desire to try to do whatever I could to hold it together and point the way forward. It just didn’t work.”

It didn’t work, he said, because some church leaders and regional conferences have taken action to oppose the denomination’s official stance barring LGBTQ members from ordination and marriage.

“These doctrinal and moral disobedience questions have made it hard to keep the idea that we really are a church following the same Book of Discipline,” he said.

In June, after more than 18 years as a bishop, he announced he was retiring from the United Methodist Church. But, Jones said, he thought he might have a few more years of “good service to Christ” and wanted to go where he was most needed.

In the meantime, he said, he continued helping churches in the Texas Annual Conference discern whether to remain United Methodist or join the Global Methodist Church, recording videos, writing articles and leading decision-making processes. Either was a great option, he said.

“I think God has a great future for the United Methodist Church. God also has a great future for the Global Methodist Church, and people needed to decide which place could they best serve Christ,” he said.

On vacation for the last few weeks of December, he said it was time for his own discernment.

On the last day of 2022, nine days after his retirement, he joined The Global Methodist Church as an elder and bishop in the fledgling denomination.

The move touched a nerve with Methodists.

The Rev. Keith Boyette, who heads the Global Methodist Church as its transitional connectional officer, said in a statement at the time that the GMC was “rejoicing over God’s good grace to us,” calling Jones a “tremendous blessing” to the new denomination.

Boyette told RNS he commends Jones for creating a “fair playing field” for churches and clergy to discern whether to stay in or leave the United Methodist Church, though he understands others might be critical.

The Rev. David Donnan — pastor of Glennville Methodist Church, a Global Methodist congregation in Glennville, Georgia — penned a blog post titled, “Why Scott Jones is a Bigger Deal than You Think.”

“By moving he is demonstrating how his views align better in the Global Methodist Church. This (is) more than any person moving. This is the extreme center poster child himself moving out,” Donnan wrote.

Others were skeptical of the timing.

In his own post, which came in the form of a satirical video on his Picklin’ Parson YouTube page titled “Dear Bishop: What Took You So Long?,” the Rev. Stan Copeland of Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas said he wasn’t surprised.

Copeland had already raised the alarm about Jones and two other bishops he said had provided “promotion and support” to the Global Methodist Church, all the while being paid by the UMC.

The Texas Annual Conference, once one of the strongest conferences in the UMC, has lost 302 of its nearly 600 churches since 2019, according to United Methodist Church data. That doesn’t happen if a bishop is presenting neutral information, Copeland said.

Jones then retired — with benefits, Copeland stressed — before joining the new denomination himself.

“I think when he wrote those books, he really believed in an extreme center, but he’s extreme right of center now,” he said.