Episode 14 Love Wins

Last weekend, I joined our confirmation retreat along with 14 seventh and eighth graders. Our teens asked great questions like “why is our denomination splitting up?”   I felt drawn to the whiteboard and with help from Faith Friend Dr. Micheal Stephens I drew a timeline of church splits: Christianity from Judaism 45AD, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox 1054, Protestant Reformation 1517, Methodism 1730, baptist, anglicans, freewell, church of God,  Methodist Episcopal Church North and South 1844 (our youth shrieked with horror when realizing that Belmont’s spiritual ancestors once stood with the oppressors), Pentecostal, non-denominational, independent, and since 2019 as before the Civil War the UMC is in a slow motion schism. Since 2019, 9677 churches or about ⅓ of US churches have closed or disaffiliated. Ironically the leaders and churches that pushed for and passed the exclusionary 2019 Tradition Plan are the very churches now leaving.