Activist Urges Radical Change, Evangelical Renewal to Reverse UMC's Decline
by Jim Brown
March 31, 2006
(AgapePress) - - New statistics reveal that nearly half of United Methodist churches in America are failing to carry out the "Great Commission." According to the denomination's Board of Discipleship, 43 percent of United Methodist Church congregations in the U.S. did not receive a single member by profession of faith in 2004.United Methodism has been declining in membership every year in the U.S. since 1964, and the denomination has lost three million church members over that time. According to a recent United Methodist News Service report, Bishop Michael Coyner -- the president of the denomination's Board of Discipleship -- called the statistic on churches reporting no growth due to new member professions of faith the "one number in our denomination which keeps going up." This steadily growing number is "causing all kinds of other numbers to decline," he remarked, "including our ability to stand before God and say we are doing a good job in making disciples."
Mark Tooley, a church renewal advocate who heads the United Methodist Action Committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, believes there are many reasons for his denomination's declining membership and renewed emphasis on evangelism; however, he feels one factor stands out.
"Methodist theology as taught in seminaries starting in the early 20th century became theologically liberal and universalist in its perspective, denying the need for personal salvation and personal evangelism," Tooley asserts. "And so now we are seeing the consequences of that."
The UM Action Committee spokesman says Methodist churches that are growing and making disciples of Christ tend to have pastors who proclaim a traditional gospel message and who come out of evangelical rather than official Methodist seminaries. He believes the facts and trends indicate that radical change needs to occur within the denomination.
"We need local church pastors who believe in the essentials of the gospel and who believe in traditional Methodist beliefs," Tooley says. If the church is to thrive again, he urges, it needs leaders "who believe in the demand and the urgency of wedding people to Jesus Christ and in the message of salvation -- and the fact that every soul is eternal and will someday face judgment."
However, the church renewal advocate points out, that is not the church's current reality by a long shot. With some exceptions, the UMC is "not winning people to Jesus Christ," he says, and for some reason the leadership and bureaucracy of the church cannot seem to respond to the problem.
The latest statistics support the fact that thousands of the United Methodist Church's clergy neither preach nor adhere to the essentials of the Christian faith, Tooley notes. Until that trend is addressed, he doubts the denomination will be able to do much about reversing all the other indicators of church decline.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
