Asking Different Questions of United Methodists

Many conflicts can be resolved simply by asking questions: “How exactly did I offend you?” “I’m not sure I heard correctly, did you say...?” “Can you help me to understand why you did...?”

But some conflicts—especially chronically endured, bitterly divisive conflicts—don’t respond well to those types of questions. Over time, we have learned how to respond within predetermined, pre-emptive, and predictive ways that justify, vilify, victimize, rationalize and/or evade, rather than in ways that draw us deeper into the lower, more difficult levels of intimacy, where raw honesty, shared under the macroscopic lens of Christ’s Light, exposes the caverns of our brokenness. There, alongside the stalactites of long-tempered tears, we discover some of the more profound opportunities for hope and healing. We just have to have the courage to rappel down there.

Rather than asking the same questions over and over, even with reframed words or phrases, we need to ask different questions. Rather than seeking the expected—even hoped for—resolution to the rift, we need to ambassador a genuine reconciliation that dares to bypass tolerance on its way to sacrificial love.

Are the people of Christ capable of this? Are we United Methodists, in particular—amidst the present cognitive dissonance of our existential plight?

As followers of Jesus, we are, after all, called to be purveyors of hope and New Life.

While I am only one voice crying in the dessert of our ecclesial brokenness, I do posit a few different questions—questions that I find myself wondering as I filter through the echoes of emotions that want to pull me towards therapeutic intervention rather than necessarily towards our mission mandate.

1. Whether progressive or traditional in theology, what is the evidence that God is using our churches to multiply and advance God's Kingdom mission? How are our churches defining God's Kingdom mission and how is that definition consistent with both Scripture and the character of Wesleyan theology?

2. How, specifically, are our churches carrying out the mission mandate of Matthew 28? How is the fruit of the Spirit being evidenced in the life of the church? If it is not, why not?

3. For the sake of love (as our primary witness of discipleship in Christ to the world), what are we willing to sacrifice in order to preserve the unity of the Body of Christ? Are we willing to sacrifice our own rights and privileges for the sake of our sisters and brothers in Christ? for the sake of those with whom we disagree? for the sake of our "enemies"? What specifically does it mean for us to “deny ourselves,” and to “take up our cross” to follow Jesus? Are our actions and attitudes consistent with what it means to be disciples of Jesus—not just in His ethic, but also in His walk to the Cross?

4. What would it take to keep us united on the essentials? What are those essentials? What specifically are our "non-negotiables"—that we will not sacrifice even for unity’s sake? What makes them non-negotiables?

5. Do I genuinely understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree? Have I truly listened to why they believe as they do, to their personal investment in what they believe? Have I dared to set aside my own responses to their “arguments” long enough to hear them? In the words of St. Francis of Assisi, have I sought to understand before being understood?

6. How will we show love to each other even in our disagreement and/or separation? What does love require of us (especially when we don’t feel so loving)?

7. Are we willing to respect each other within our differences for the sake of the witness of the gospel? In John 13, Jesus washed Judas’s feet, even though He knew about the pending betrayal. Are we willing to do the same?

8. Are we willing to own our own responsibility in the breakdown of the unity of God's Church, rather than blaming those with whom we disagree? Are we willing to repent of our own violation of the Upper Room mandates of John 13-15... and Jesus’s prayer in John 17?

9. Are we willing to allow our pride at being "right" to die for the sake of the greater mission of the Church? Would I grieve if the UMC split? Am I grieving now for what’s happening to the Church? Or do I feel somehow (self-) righteously vindicated for my attitude and behavior?

10. Do I really want to stay in the United Methodist Church? Why or why not? What if I don’t agree with either “side” of the conflict?

I’m sure that many more questions can be added to this list. Yet knowing the human propensity to defend our dysfunctions, the questions that we add potentially will betray the very human condition that has us in our present impasse. If social media is to be viewed as evidence, it would seem that we simply cannot be a people without an agenda.

Of course, questions are easy to ask. The answers are what take work.