United
Methodist Heritage Sunday this year falls on May 20. That is also Pentecost
Sunday, giving the day a double-heritage significance, since that is when we
celebrate the birth of Christ’s church.
Speaking of
births, however, I invite us all to begin our United Methodist heritage celebration
a month early, on Sunday, April 22, in order to commemorate the birth of our denomination
from merger and reorganization 50 years ago. That labor-intensive birth
happened on April 23, 1968. But it came after nearly a decade of prayerful
negotiations, General Conference legislation and prevenient mergers of racially
segregated annual conferences—like ours—until the glorious day of delivery when
we finally became The United Methodist Church.
The
Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church—both
denominations being offspring of earlier mergers themselves. The new
denomination abolished Methodism’s Central Jurisdiction, created in 1939 to
unify and segregate annual conferences with predominantly black churches and
members across the nation, like our former Delaware Annual Conference.
So, in 1968
and in the years that followed, after a history of divisions and dubious
mergers, we finally got it right, for the most part. Getting it right meant
reorganizing churchwide agencies and creating legislation and special commissions
to monitor our still-unfinished journey toward racial and gender equity and
denominational inclusiveness. For that same journey and others, it also meant
creating special programs and funds, Special Sunday offerings and eventually,
missional priorities.
It meant—and
it still means—living into our divine call to manifest integrity, generosity,
grace and other bedrock Christian values, as we strive to become what our own
annual conference approved as its vision statement in 2017: United in Christ, Committed to
Transformation.
We are 50
years old as a denomination this year, and we have made much progress. But
there is much more to be done. I pray that our life expectancy, our arc in history,
is long, with no end in sight, and that it will forever bend toward justice, in
James Russell Lowell’s famous words.
The year
1968 was one of emergent change, not only in our church, but across our nation
and throughout society. There was turbulent racial conflict, violence in our
streets, war, protests and questions about the relevancy of the church.
The Rev. Dr. Albert
C. Outler, a prominent theologian at the time, cast a vision for the Uniting Conference
in his address on the morning of our merger ceremony. He called for the new church to be steadfast
in unity and committed to ecumenism and evangelism in word and deed. He also
stressed the need for the church to reform itself from being an insulated
institution to actively demonstrating the presence of the living Christ.
In order to
reform, he said, we needed to be “…a church united in order to be uniting, a
church repentant in order to be a church redemptive, a church ‘cruciform’ in
order to manifest God’s triumphant agony for mankind (sic).” When he finished,
the 10,000 people at Dallas Memorial Auditorium gave him a prolonged standing
ovation.
Dr. Outler’s
call is still with us today as we celebrate 50 years of United Methodism. If each one of us would take to heart these
principles of unity, ecumenism, evangelism and reform, we could become the
church that our founders envisioned many years ago, as they sought to spread
“scriptural holiness” across the land.
“This is the
day the Lord has made,” said Outler. “Let us really rejoice and be glad in it—glad
for the new chance God now gives us.”
Indeed, for
the next month, from April 22 through May 20, and for months and years to come,
let us really rejoice and be glad in this faithful, if not faultless, heritage
we share as United Methodists. Let us clothe ourselves in love, seeking always
to be transformed as those redeemed through grace. And let us be glad for our unity in a Christ
who “binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:14). Yes, glad
“for the new chance God now gives us.”
Please read and share these recent
accounts, resources and ideas to help celebrate our United Methodist history,
as we celebrate 50 years together. Also, be sure to view the compelling,
11-minute historical video that shares diverse views on the in 1968 merger of
the EUB and Methodist denominations and related concerns.
- The United Methodist Church Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Historic Merger
- Amid tumult of 1968, a church came together
- Uniting Conference sermon still talked about
- Formation of The United Methodist Church
- "JUBILEE": The 50th Anniversary of The UM Church
- VIDEO: Proclamation of and Responses to EUB-Methodist Union, 1968
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