Vocation

What is to become of the United Methodist Church?

This is a question I have been grappling with for the last year or so.

What is my role in a denomination in turmoil? What is the answer to a complicated divide over homosexuality? How will young adults like myself, raised, educated, and formed in the church, interact with a denomination we see full of contradictions and blurred lines?

I feel compelled to begin to answer these questions for myself and seem to keep referring back to the denomination’s guiding principle: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”

It’s hard to miss the word ALL in this quote.

But history’s interpretations of the word ALL seem to miss the mark, especially in our country’s own definition seen in the famous lines:

“that ALL men are created equal,”

and

“with liberty and justice for ALL.”

These statutes have certainly not been upheld, yet Americans treat them with a certain reverence any Methodist might similarly use for John Wesley’s most famous motto.

Perhaps it is time we learn from our shared history and reflect on how our tradition is failing to interpret the meaning of ALL just as the forefather’s of our nation did.

As the world quickly becomes more inclusive and the definition of ALL seems to be shifting towards a more comprehensive concept, it is no doubt a difficult task to modify a communal definition of ALL at such a rapid pace. However, it is necessary. It is necessary to push ourselves as one united body in Christ, to create a lasting definition of ALL that means ALL, even if that means taking on the more difficult task at hand.