A Shared Vision
for the United Methodist Church

Our Crossroads Moment:
We Must Act Anew

Four hundred years ago, the intersection of Trade and Tryon streets in downtown Charlotte—mere blocks from where we are gathering for General Conference—was the intersection of two Native American trade routes. One path led to the tribes north, the other to the Catawba River and from there, the sea.

Charlotte is where the decisions were made. Which route. Which direction. Which future.

And now, we come to Charlotte at our own crossroads. The decisions we make here will determine whether we travel up the path toward an inclusive, graceful witness to the Glory of God, or drift further toward disaffection, dissolution, and disaffiliation.

I ask for your prayers—and, yes, for your vote—for Judicial Council because I believe the witness of the Wesleys, the planting of the Methodist tradition in the Americas, and the growth of our church worldwide all point to an inescapable conclusion that the work of the Gospel is not yet done. We must witness—in all our institutions—to the movement of God’s grace in our church. Or we must fail.

Abraham Lincoln understood such a time as this. With the nation teetering in December 1862, Lincoln wrote to Congress: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.” One month later, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, beginning a work of justice so mighty we are still engaged in it today.

I come to this work convicted as an LGBTQIA+ ally, a father of a 23-year-old daughter who says, with transparent beauty, “I love who I love.” I have worked with others for years to support my home church in Nashville toward broader and deeper inclusivity. I have spoken up at Jurisdictional and Annual Conferences to support resolutions urging integrity in our decision making and leadership. And, as a attorney, I have represented our great church in the courts of Tennessee against a breakaway congregation that sought to avoid the basic requirements of our Discipline.

We won, too.

I ask, then, for your support at General Conference—where justice must be done for all our siblings in Christ and for the church itself—for I firmly believe the dogmas of the quiet past will no longer do. The shameful harm of the 2019 General Conference inspired me to put my name on a ballot. I did not expect to be here now. None of us did, truthfully. But in this time, piled high with difficulty, I sense the spirit of justice moving among us.

The Judicial Council can—and should—inspire us. The Council can—and must—witness to God’s grace in the application of our Discipline and Constitution. 

We are not, praise God, a state legislature or the Congress. We are God’s great church. And it is time every institution so act.

Our case is new. We must act anew. And we must not look back.