Grace United Methodist Church

This past month many of us were able to participate or be entertained by our fashion show during our Rockers for Christ Brunch. It was a fashion show which demonstrated the difference in clothing over the past century. A special thanks to all who participated, and to each and everyone who prepares, cooks, cleans up afterwards for these monthly gatherings. These monthly gatherings are always a lot of fun with fantastic food and great fellowship! The fashion show was a reminder of not only how fashions have changed over time, but how nothing seems to stay the same in the world as we know it, even within the Church. It is with that in mind that I’m asking for your prayers as Ms. Frances, and I will be attending the first in person Annual Conference since the Covid pandemic. The South Carolina Annual Conference will be held in Florence, SC from June 4th through June 7th. I am asking for your prayers as we, along with delegates from across the conference, will be voting on a couple of resolutions that bring to the floor the opposing voices within our conference. The resolutions being presented for a vote, if passed do NOT change our Book of Discipline (laws governing all levels of the United Methodist Church). They do, if passed send a message to the General Conference (governing body of the United Methodist Church), asking delegates to consider voting and doing whatever is necessary to amend our Book of Discipline to conform with the current “civil religions” of the times. Gil Rendle in his latest book, Countercultural: Subversive Resistance and the Neighborhood Congregation, uses the term, “civil religions” in identifying the cultural movements currently seeking to keep the cultural pendulum swinging toward a world of individualism, in which the individual is above all and has the right to be or make themselves into anyone they desire as long as they don’t infringe upon the rights of others within our society. The “civil religions” continue to battle against anything and anyone they see as a hinderance to this ideology of self as more important than the community or anyone else, including God. According to Emile Durkheim (French Sociologist), these “civil religions” have the similar elements of all religious movements such as meaning, purpose, community, and ritual. They do not however, look to God or His Word as they primarily see the individual, self, as sufficient and independent of God or anyone beyond the individual. We see this same spirit of elevating self above God all the way back in the book of Genesis, chapter 3, with Adam and Eve. Think about it, it was their desire to elevate themselves by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, replacing God with self. Many of the struggles we are witnessing today, even in the Church, are the same one from the very beginning, that have individuals caught between the gravity of Sin and gravity of grace. As J. D. Walt expressed in a recent post in his daily Wake Up Call, “Our problem comes from our very real lived experience of being caught between these two gravitational pulls— between these two masses. The gravity of Sin is dead and yet it remains a mass that exerts pull simply by being what it is—a dead mass. The gravity of grace is alive and powerful in the Holy Spirit and as a result, it has infinitely more power, and yet until we move fully into its sway there is the old pull of this dead mass from our old life. He was speaking about us individually, but I believe this to be true for the Church as well. When will we move toward the gravity of grace, of God and his Living Word, and stop being pulled back by the pull of “civil religions” away from God and the truth? Again, I ask for your prayers. Sincerely your brother IN Christ, Lee