Some (Genuine) Theological Questions for those of us in the GMC
It’s very exciting and interesting to be a part of a new denomination being formed. You can see so much potential and opportunity to make things better than they were in a previous system! Yet you also can sense that strong gravitational pull to simply revert to your old institutional muscle memory (I feel this whenever I see an acronym being used…)
I’m personally very excited and optimistic about the continuing formation of the Global Methodist Church; the heart, passion, and faith of the leaders and pastors that I’m around is contagious and captivating.
And yet I also have begun to have a few genuine theological questions that I think we need to do some more work on. I offer them here as simple questions that I think we need stronger, clearer answers to—because if we don’t know the answers to these questions, I think we will be walking in the dark as we try to build strong, faithful, Spirit-led organizational structures.
So anyway, here’s five questions that I don’t have a good answer to at the moment:
Is there a meaningful difference between deacons and elders in the GMC?
In the GMC, we are reverting back to a system of ordaining people as deacon and then later ordaining them as elder, and it’s my understanding that both will have sacramental authority (the authority to preside over baptism and communion). My question is, in this system, what is the meaningful difference between the two orders? Since we seem to be functionally eliminating the itinerant system (see question 4), what really are we saying when someone is ordained from being a deacon to being an elder? Becoming an elder in the UMC used to mean that you were being stamped with a guaranteed appointment. Since this is not the case in the GMC, what is the meaningful difference taking place in the ordination of an elder?What happens during ordination?
Along those lines, I am still unsure about what we believe is actually happening during ordination (is it merely a sign, or is it sacramental w/o being a sacrament)? How is what is happening in ordination connected with our sacramental theology?Are we really committed to infant baptism? Are we really opposed to re-baptism? Can we articulate why?
How committed are we as a movement to not only the practice of infant baptism, but also the underlying theology of it? I personally feel strongly in support of infant baptism because of my understanding of the theology of grace that supports it (see the article I wrote about infant baptism in Firebrand magazine here)—but I sense in the GMC a wavering on this issue that makes me a little uncomfortable. I think there exists an earnest evangelical desire to give people the spiritual experience they are longing for (“I want to be re-baptized, pastor”), one I very much sympathize with; but I pray that the GMC is a church where theology and doctrine, especially around the sacraments, forms our experience (and not vice versa). I think getting this clear and right up front will save us a lot of headaches down the road; I also happen to think that keeping our position keeps us in unity with the great tradition of the church (which will lead to a greater unity of the Church Catholic, which should be our goal anyways). But how do we clearly, simply communicate it?Is itineracy really dead?
One of the very appealing things about the GMC to me, and one reason (among many) I felt happy to join, was the way that it eliminated the concept of itineracy. I was told, quite frankly, that we were very much leaving a “sent” system, and it would be very much more so a “call” system, where churches and pastors would together work, in co-ordination with a bishop, on hiring and firing of pastors. But the language in the Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline (TBDD) is somewhat fuzzy on this point. My question is, is itineracy actually dead? Why are we so hesitant to call a spade a spade on this point? I think that people that have hiring and firing power need to be very clearly named in the revisions of the TBDD; I also think any reversion to the previous system of “go where you are sent and don’t complain about it” will surprise (and upset) most of the clergy who agreed to transfer into the GMC. Having this more clear will I think increase the number of clergy and churches willing to enter into the GMC from both the UMC and other denominations.What are bishops for?
This question in some way encapsulates all the other questions. How are we, as a movement, going to make sure that we don’t replicate the authority structures that became so problematic in the past? How are we going to really let local churches take the lead? I’m not very well read on this subject, but having an overseer of churches does seem to be a very biblical and historical model. My hope, though, is that bishops would live into being a pastor of pastors and teacher of teachers. In fact, I would love for a bishop to be the person to step in and help bring clarification on these kinds of theological questions. I wonder, though, if American protestants are really willing to live in a posture of submission in that regard to understanding our doctrine better, as helpful as it could be. But in any case, we need very clear and very good answers to this question, especially for the many churches waiting on joining the GMC because of how burnt-out they are on a kind of top-down model of church leadership.
Anyhow, these are my questions right now. What are yours?
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Considering your Number 3 - and spilling over to others - I see a need for a more biblical doctrine of grace and salvation than what we find in Wesley. With the explicit inclusion of sanctification in what we mean by "salvation," we have a clear advantage over what we find in generic evangelical discourse. When I look at scripture, however, I see an ecclesial dimension of grace & salvation that our tradition just misses. The most obvious & condensed text where I see this is Ephesians 2. In his Scripture Way of Salvation JW works from a phrase in 2:8. The "way of salvation" he and the later tradition develops is individualistic - the individual's way of salvation. But when I read 2:11ff, I see a parallel structure to what I see in 2:1-10. In the second half of the chapter the aspect of salvation in view is corporate, tying into the long concept of God's desire to create a people who are his very own.
Given this context, I reinterpret Cyprian's dictum, "Nulla salus extra ecclesiam" ("No salvation outside the church") as saying that church - being the people of God, the Body of Christ, bound together by the Holy Spirit - is part of what salvation is all about. This is different than the traditional interpretation that has Cyprian saying that the church (taken as The Roman Catholic Church) is the place where grace is available, so if you want the grace of salvation, this is the only place you can get it.
If salvation is ONLY about one's personal, intentional relationship with God, it's easy to make the case that babies aren't capable of that so they are not appropriate recipients of baptism. But what if salvation is also corporate, also inclusion in a community of faith in Jesus? Babies are capable of that. This approach opens the way to people beyond babies: those with mental incapacity of any sort are some I think of in particular.
(I also put this comment on Facebook where I saw the link to this post)
A question I'd like us to spend some time on is what doctrinal faithfulness looks like and how it happens.
The UMC had (I use the past tense because I'm speaking as a former participant) doctrinal standards. It did not, however, have a clear and shared understanding of what doctrine was and what it was supposed to do. To use Lindbeck's terms (in The Nature of Doctrine), it was most common for those in the UMC leadership to have an experiential expressivist conception of doctrine combined with a "historical landmark" view. Christian doctrines were verbal expressions of the religious experiences of Christians. With such an understanding of the nature of doctrine it made sense to say that their doctrine should not be taken "literally or juridically." The primary exception to this understanding of doctrine was infant baptism. With baptists seen as the primary enemy (the Other we were NOT), putting forth that doctrine theoretically and in practice was essential and deemed worthy of literal (though not always juridical) adherence.
Outside of denominational leadership what Lindbeck called a cognitive propositionalist understanding of doctrine was more common. The doctrines of the church were truth claims and those claims were put forth to be believed by the members of the church.
The people who currently form the GMC are mostly from this second group. Additionally, I think the GMC is much less prone to see baptists as the enemy (which might decrease our vehemence around infant baptism as essential boundary marker between us and the Other). If we are prone to take our inherited doctrine as found in the Articles and Confession "literally and juridically," we may find ourselves in a difficult place. The Articles in particular originated in a period when the rejected Other was the Roman Catholic Church and it's easy to identify the individual articles that center on saying "We're NOT Roman Catholic!"
I'm not a baptist. I'm not a Roman Catholic. Given our current cultural context, however, are these the primary boundaries our doctrine needs to identify and police? Can we find an approach to doctrine that is built on a kind of faithful adherence to our doctrine while at the same time allowing for change and adaptation as we face new contexts and challenges? If we have a simplistic view of faithful adherence we likely won't, since the key aim will be to parrot the words of the Articles, the Confession, or Wesley himself. I think we have much work to do in this regard. It's not going to be easy work: not only is it conceptually difficult, but it's also complex. I don't know if our main constituency, given the doctrinal debacle of their former denomination, can tolerate the necessary complexity and levels of nuance we'll need.