Bishops urged to stop looking backward

Key points:

• In her final address as Council of Bishops president, Bishop Tracy S. Malone encouraged fellow church leaders to move beyond institutional anxieties and be formed anew as witnesses for Christ.
• Malone also urged bishops to be willing to speak with moral clarity and name sin and evil.
• She spoke to bishops preparing for the Leadership Gathering intended to bring together United Methodists from around the world to discern a new direction for the denomination.
• During the morning session, Bishop Kristin Stoneking also acknowledged parts of Methodist history that United Methodists must honestly confront.

Council of Bishops President Tracy S. Malone challenged fellow United Methodist leaders to let go of fear-driven institutional preservation and listen to where the Holy Spirit is leading.

“Let me say this plainly: It is not helpful for leaders to remain imprisoned by nostalgia,” Malone said April 27 to about 90 of her fellow bishops and other church leaders from four continents as they began their spring meeting.

“There is a difference between honoring our history and being governed by it. We give thanks for what has been. But we cannot build the future by trying to recreate what no longer serves the mission of God. God is not calling us backward.”

Malone was addressing bishops as they prepare for a first-of-its-kind Leadership Gathering intended to bring together United Methodists from around the world to discern a new direction for the denomination rocked by thousands of church disaffiliations. The gathering is scheduled for Oct. 20-24 at Knox United Church in Calgary, Canada.

The United Methodist Church is now in a different place with a commitment to greater inclusion and a new structure that grants the denomination’s different regions more self-determination. But the denomination is still dealing with financial repercussions and grief after years of internal strife and church departures. 

“God is calling us deeper,” Malone said. “That requires holy imagination — not scarcity-driven fear. Not institutional defensiveness, but courageous theological stewardship.”

She also was speaking at a time of rising violence around the world and especially in the United States. Just that morning, the bishops released another statement condemning political violence after the U.S. Secret Service stopped a would-be assassin who fired shots at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner attended by President Donald Trump.

While no one was killed in the April 25 attack, this latest spasm of violence comes as the U.S. government has waged war against Iran and cracked down on immigration, militarizing multiple U.S. cities in an effort to round up suspected undocumented immigrants. The current administration also cut off international humanitarian aid. 

A number of African bishops at the meeting, whose nations are dealing with the fallout of U.S. actions, also face travel bans and visa restrictions that could prevent them from attending future gatherings in the U.S.

Amid the challenges both within the church and in the wider world, Malone called for United Methodists to be willing to be formed for the work God is doing now.

“God is often doing the deepest work where we are least in control,” she said. “And faithful leadership requires the humility to recognize that our task is not to preserve the church as we have known it, but to participate in the church God is still forming.”

For her address, Malone drew on Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:7 — “We have this treasure in clay jars, to show that its extraordinary power comes from God and not from us.”

Malone pointed out that earthen vessels, like people, are imperfect and often easily cracked. Yet that is where God has put the treasure of the Gospel.

United Methodists know well their own cracks and wounds. But the purpose of a clay jar is not to draw attention to itself, Malone said, but to carry forward what matters and make visible what belongs to God.

“That should humble us, and honestly it really should free us because the future of the church does not depend on our perfection, our control or our ability to hold everything together,” she said. “It depends on our faithfulness to God. … We are not the guarantors of his future, but we are participants in what God is already doing, and that changes how we lead.”

She also discussed how God is already shaping United Methodists to be public witnesses to justice, mercy, reconciliation and truth. In February, thousands of United Methodists gathered alongside ecumenical partners in Washington, D.C., to stand up for immigrants.

“That wasn’t political theater,” she said. “It was a moral witness. It was the church refusing silence in the face of dehumanization. It was an acknowledgement that every person bears the image of God, and when dignity is threatened, the church must be visible.”

Even as Malone encouraged United Methodists to move on from overly rosy views of the past, Mountain Sky Conference Bishop Kristin Stoneking focused the bishops’ morning devotional on a part of the Methodist movement’s history that often goes ignored.

She noted that about 40 miles from where the bishops are meeting stands Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. Originally built in the 17^th century by the Spanish using forced Native American labor, the fort by the late 19^th century had become the place where the U.S. government incarcerated Native Americans as prisoners of war.

Among those imprisoned at the fort were Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho forced to leave their Colorado homes after the Sand Creek Massacre. The 1864 attack that killed mostly women, children and older adults was led by Col. John Chivington, a Methodist Episcopal pastor, and ordered by Colorado Territorial Gov. John Evans, also a Methodist and namesake of Evanston, Illinois.

In confronting a bloody past of cruelty and colonization, Stoneking encouraged those gathered to look to the example of Paul, who was a persecutor of early Christians before becoming one himself.

“The Gospel that Paul embraced did not erase his past, but it reoriented his life toward repair and relationship through the love of Jesus Christ,” Stoneking said. “As the second chapter of Philippians opens, Paul enjoins the new Christians to love with one heart, join together in one spirit and walk side by side on one path. Love boldly, he says, but examine your reasons because the habits of domination, of selfishness, of arrogance, of entitlement are often invisible to those who benefit from them.”

Bishop Héctor A. Burgos-Núñez, who heads the Upper New York and Susquehanna conferences, said both Malone’s address and Stoneking’s reflection gave the bishops a helpful perspective to start the week.

“I felt this morning was an embodiment of who we are becoming in this new era, as United Methodist people — people who are willing and ready to wrestle with the hard truth of our past and to work with God to be the healing and liberating presence of Christ in the world.”

He also saw it as an embodiment of courage as the church looks forward.

“I believe that real hope, it’s born out of reality. So naming realities and challenging assumptions and inviting us to imagination, as it was done this morning by both worship and the episcopal address, are real signs of hope.”

Bishop Ruby-Nell M. Estrella, who leads the Manila Area in the Philippines, offered a similar sentiment.

“The morning devotion message and the president’s address are very powerful,” she said. “It’s very timely for us to really take that message into our leadership as bishops of the church.”

Malone, the first Black woman chosen as Council of Bishops president, was delivering her final presidential address. Later this week, Malone — who also leads the Indiana Conference — will pass the gavel to Horizon Conference Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr. He will be the bishops’ third Hispanic president.

Throughout her address, Malone reminded the bishops that an important verb in the denomination’s new vision statement is the word “forms.” The statement says:  “The United Methodist Church forms disciples of Jesus Christ who, empowered by the Holy Spirit, love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously in local communities and worldwide connections.”

God is not done forming The United Methodist Church, she stressed.

“There is vitality in this United Methodist Church,” she said. ‘There is renewal. There is revival. There are new ministries emerging in new faith communities being formed. There are new forms of connection and witness taking shape. We are not a dying church.”

Instead, she said the church is being formed and formation requires pruning.

“It involves surrender; it involves trust. But pruning is not death,” she said. “Pruning is preparation for fruitfulness.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.