Tuesday, June 25, 2019

PRIDE MONTH AND THE UNITED METHODIST BROUHAHA


A Washington Post story, published on DC Pride weekend, told about an evangelical family whose college freshman son came home one weekend, and came out as gay.  The parents went into panic mode and convinced the young man to do sexual orientation reparative therapy for a year.  But beyond that year of panic, these folks proved their mettle. They began to invite his friends to their home, and to hear the stories of others in the LGBTQ+ zoological garden. Eventually, the healing of their family required them to leave their megachurch and join a local United Methodist congregation.  Now they could have found any number of churches in which they might have worked out their faith in light of their changing life experience - but like untold thousands before them, they picked the Methodists.

Monday, June 10, 2019

WHEN MERGERS WORK



Some of the most rewarding work that I have done in the last few years is to coach churches that are going through a process of merger, property divestment and re-launch as a fresh church in their community. Dirk Elliott discovered a decade ago in Ohio that mergers work best when: