Readers of OrdinationTruth.com know that we have a Seventh-day Adventist Church focus. Still, happenings in other churches often forecast what we will face as a body. The United Methodist Church is now in disarray over issues of same-sex marriage and church polity. Hundreds of their pastors are acting in insubordination toward their General Conference, and in several jurisdictions, leading Bishops are refusing to support their GC prohibition on conducting same-sex “wedding” ceremonies. There is now very open talk of separating an already divided church into separate bodies.
There are groups of Methodists seeking to set in order these matters, yet with little success so far. In peeking into the present battle within Methodism, we hope that are not seeing a near Adventist future. The following links will give readers a flavor:
http://goodnewsmag.org/
http://www.wesleyancovenantnetwork.org/what-we-believe.html
http://www.confessingumc.org/schism-has-happened-what-about-division/
http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/bishops-seek-to-help-church-find-way-on-homosexuality
Above: Yet another take on the volatile current Methodist situation.
Category: UMC Reverend Shaefer
The United Methodist Church (began ordaining women in 1956) is today dealing with pastors performing same-sex unions in defiance of their own denominational Book of Discipline. We included a link to a previous video about the attempt to legitimize homosexual practice at the 2012 UMC GC session. The 11 minute video above updates some developments since then. While this is not specifically a Seventh-day Adventist matter, there are similarities between the Methodist and Adventist Churches—as there are between the women’s ordination and homosexual practice advocacies (both driven by liberation theology) (See also LGBTQ theology).
UPDATE 2013-12-24: Pastor Mark Shaeffer (the subject of some of the video material above) was defrocked by the United Methodist Church on December 19, 2013 after he refused to be repentant for his actions, refused to commit himself to uphold the UMC Book of Discipline, and refused to surrender his credentials.