It honestly named missional and connectional challenges the church faces moving into the third decade of the 21st century, including the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racism and our denominational impasse. In November 2020, our Conference Leadership Council affirmed a Strategy Task Force’s work convened by Bishop David Bard. In 2019, we began charting a course for a more “faithful, just, and equitable” Conference focused on ministry “with vulnerable communities across the State and around the world” ( GCR#2019-2, “Aspirations for the Michigan Conference”). I also have great hope for the United Methodist Church in Michigan. I am committed in my role as Director of Connectional Ministry to make these hopes reality. I also hope that in a generation or two, we might contemplate receiving, again, God’s gift of Christian unity. I hope we might forge formal ecumenical relationships and find in the midst of ecumenical dialogue as denominational cousins the conversations we never allowed ourselves to have as siblings living under the same roof.
My hope is we will be able to mutually bless each other as we head in different directions. People I know well and care about will join the Global Methodist Church and the Liberation Methodist Connexion. Colleagues, friends, and even family members will find themselves in separate Methodisms. I have no doubt we, as a denomination, are at a parting of the ways. We United Methodists again find ourselves at a breaking point. It became somewhat of a symbol for the 2004 General Conference. The cup, reassembled and held together by a jagged superstructure of wire, returned to the altar. The worship leader reported that it had been a personal gift with great sentimental value. In the remaining days of the General Conference, much was made of this broken cup. Placing the shards in our hands and carrying them to the altar. The three of us slowly and silently collected the pieces of the broken chalice. I found myself on my knees with Chip Aldridge, the Admissions Director at Wesley Theological Seminary, and Bishop Don Ott, former Bishop of the Michigan Area. At the end of the service, a member of the group climbed on the stage, took the ceramic communion chalice resting on the altar, lifted it up, cried out words I barely heard and no longer remember, and threw the cup to the ground. ~ UM News photo/Mike DuBoseĪfter the plenary session was released and delegates filed out for cookies and coffee, I joined a group clad in rainbow stools gathered around the main stage and altar for a service of grief and lament. A communion chalice, broken in protest of the United Methodist Church’s stance on homosexuality, is returned to the General Conference altar after being mended with wire. From my seat on the convention center floor, I craned my neck, scanning the bleachers surrounding the bar looking for my friends who I knew would be hurt and heartbroken by the vote. Some of my institutional cynicism took its place. Some of my idealism for the Church was shattered that day. Hope for even a modest compromise dashed. The long hours our committee spent conferring came to naught. The minority report, which maintained and slightly strengthened the Book of Discipline’s “incompatibility” language, won the day.
When our legislation work came to the plenary floor, it was challenged by a “minority report” led by the traditionalist members of our subcommittee. Comprised of people from across the theological spectrum of varying races, nationalities, and sexual orientations, we argued, laughed, cried, and emerged from our work with a modest compromise that, for me, allowed a more honest statement of the denomination’s conflicting understandings of human sexuality. I was on the Human Sexuality subcommittee. I spent six long days in a windowless convention center room as a Church and Society legislative committee member. I was a lay delegate of the Detroit Conference, 22-years-old with one year of seminary under my belt.
PICKING UP THE PIECES PROFESSIONAL
In many ways, “picking up the pieces” has defined my entire professional ministry in The United Methodist Church. Every time there is news about the General Church, like the recent further delay of General Conference and the calling of a Special Session, I return to this moment. Pittsburgh’s memories inform his thoughts on the “breaking point” The United Methodist Church has arrived at today.ĭirector of Connectional Ministry, Michigan Conferenceġ7 years ago, I found myself picking up the pieces of a shattered communion chalice from the floor of a convention center in Pittsburgh. Paul Perez remembers picking up pieces of a broken chalice at the 2004 General Conference.
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